Transcript of: Access to Health Experts Interview Series - The link between cancer and nutrition: Insulin resistance and digestion
Aired: 1/17/2008
More info: Innovative Healing
Transcript by: The Transcript Library
MALE ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Access to Health Experts, hosted by Dr. Elizabeth Lipski. Bringing you health information you can trust. Now, here’s Dr. Lipski.
LIZ LIPSKI: Hi, it’s Liz. We’ll start our Access to Health Experts interview segment in just a moment but first I’ll introduce myself. I have a Doctorate and I’m also board certified in clinical nutrition. I’m the director of doctoral studies in holistic nutrition at Hawthorn University and the author of DIGESTIVE WELLNESS, DIGESTIVE WELLNESS FOR CHILDREN and many other publications. I’m also the founder of Innovative Healing, Access to Health Experts and your host for the ACCESS TO HEALTH EXPERTS INTERVIEW SERIES.
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LIZ: Today’s segment is on cancer and nutrition with Paula Bartholomy, Director of Hawthorn University. Here Paula and I are discussing whether sugars affect tumor growth and susceptibility and whether processed sugars are different than the sugars found naturally in food. We also talk about the growing body of research between cancer and insulin resistance. And about the benefits of fermented foods to healthy digestion.
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PAULA: You brought up sugar, as an element to avoid. Let’s talk a little bit because there’s a number of questions about types of sugar, sugar that occurs naturally in foods vs. refined, processed sugars.
LIZ: There’s more and more research these days on insulin resistance and increased cancer rates. And insulin resistance is one of the really big issues in Americans today because even if you’re thin, 20% of us are likely to still be insulin resistant. As a nutritionist, I really look at insulin resistance a lot as nutritional deficiency and fitness deficiency that we have. And sunlight deficiency. Because what happens is we adults sit inside all day, so we become vitamin D deficient. An enormous part of our population is vitamin D deficient. And vitamin D is implicated in type I diabetes, insulin resistance in general, cardiovascular disease, and most important to this conversation, cancer. And to the conversation we were just having bone health, osteoporosis, muscular health. And down the line, in fact next month’s teleseminar we’re going to be talking about vitamin D. So one, I think vitamin D levels are really important for maintaining blood sugar levels and insulin resistance and also, I look at the body like a big bank account. And in order to actually metabolize our foods and turn it into ATP energy, we need manganese, we need B vitamins, we need vitamin C, we need [xx], we need chromium in the glucose tolerance factor which kind of sits on the cell receptor and allows the glucose to get into the cell and lowers insulin resistance. And what happens when we eat poorly, which most of us do, is that we become depleted of many of these nutrients. So it’s no wonder that three or four generations into this “Twinkie” and processed food experiment, we’re starting to see more and more chronic illness of all sorts at a younger and younger age. And a lot of that is just really nutritional deficiency.
Also, a lot of us don’t exercise as much as we ought to. And that helps with the insulin resistance as well. When I did research looking up what’s really known, for virtually every type of cancer there’s research that insulin resistance increased that type of cancer.
As far as the effect of sugar itself, there are less studies. There are some studies on soft drinks. There are some studies on sucrose consumption. And they do show some changes, but it’s not specifically cancer causing. What it is it’s just unhealthy in the first place. And I think that that’s probably what’s contributing to the increased cancer rates. All of the kind of “nutritional” diets for cancer take away sugar. But the main reason is probably because sugar is nutrient-deplete, because it depresses the immune system in general. And then again, we have this glycemic index insulin resistant factor there as well.
As far as natural sugars like fruit and eating vegetables that have sugars, eating whole grain that have complex carbohydrates, using a little bit of honey, again I think natural foods, they’re not going to cause the same kinds of issues. They took cookies, and they made cookies with either honey or sugar, and they gave kids the cookies and said, “You can eat as many as you want.” The kids gorged themselves on the sugar cookies but they just ate a few of the honey cookies. I don’t think we eat as much of it. It’s kind of sickening if you eat too much honey, at least for me. So that’s kind of a long-winded answer but yes, there is some research. It’s not as direct. You always have to look at the dollars involved and there’s not much money to do studies on whether soft drinks are actually going to increase cancer rates. And I couldn’t find any research on corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup and cancer. That research hasn’t been done. As far as I can tell. It’s not in the National Health Institute’s database at all.
PAULA: Well something that we do have clear evidence of and clear studies of is the impact of refined sugar on the immune system. The studies that I’ve read indicate that a teaspoon of sugar can suppress the immune system for five hours. And if you get 10-12 teaspoons of sugar in a soda, and you have several sodas a day, plus all the other additional sugars that could be in someone’s diet, you depress the immune system that significantly, that consistently, there’s going to be trouble brewing. But with natural sugars and whole foods, I think part of the issue you addressed is blood sugar and insulin resistance, so combining fruits and vegetables with a little bit of protein, a little it of quality, healthy fats, will help slow down the conversion of the food to glucose and have a significant blood sugar spike. So again, small frequent meals and balanced the nutrients of the carbohydrate and the protein and the healthy fat.
LIZ: You know Paula, we’re kind of burning our time up here, I’m wondering if we want to kind of just go back and forth and answer some of the questions quickly that have come in. And then open the phone lines. What do you think?
PAULA: Sure. I was leading with the sugar question into chronic yeast infections that tend to be present in cancer patients. And so the concern about staying away from fermented foods, kiefer, tempeh, things like that, or are fermented foods okay?
LIZ: Again, we can answer this in a long way or a short way. The short answer is that fermented foods have great probiotics, they have great enzymes, they have natural probiotics and they’re healthful to people who have candidiasis. Candidiasis is an opportunistic infection, when we’re run down it tends to flare. It’s really difficult to get rid of. And in my experience adding either supplemental probiotics or cultured and fermented foods, really helps to protect the body. Also what we know is that the chemo and the radiation treatments, and surgery in general, can increase leaky gut and can contribute to disbiosis and imbalance in the gut, and can also lead to candidiasis. Often people are put on antibiotics as well as the many other drugs that they’re given. So I’m a big, strong fan of cultured and fermented foods. The early pioneers, like Orion Truss, who did the very first work on candidiasis, just noticing it in his own patients, and then bringing together small groups of doctors and saying, “You know, I treated somebody who had chronic vaginal yeast infections and her multiple sclerosis went away. So then I treated somebody with asthma who had vaginal yeast infections, and her asthma went away.” It all started very anecdotally, but that was 25 years ago. What’s happened over time is we’ve had a lot more people looking at this and experimenting with it. And the fermented and cultured foods are one of the innovations that have come back that we’ve found are really good for people with candidiasis and people with cancer as well. There’s not loads of studies on fermented foods and people with cancer, but there are certainly some wonderful studies and high quality ones showing that eating a little bit of fermented foods every day is helpful and protective to the immune system.
PAULA: And if people are new to this, I certainly recommend it as a condiment and bringing it in in very small amounts. You don’t need to eat a big bowl of sauerkraut. You can have a tablespoon of it and see how you respond to it.
LIZ: And I love kiefer, personally. Kiefer is just loaded with beneficial bacteria. It’s just loaded with good probiotics. Even a lot of my clients who don’t tolerate dairy do very well on kiefer.
PAULA: And it’s so easy to make yourself. And I’ve been making it with fresh coconut water. Really delicious. What about helping people that are having issues with appetite? People lose their appetite when they’re under treatment with chemo and radiation.
LIZ: What I can say is in the last 25 years the doctors have gotten so much better at this because they’ve been adding anti-nausea drugs with the chemotherapy and they’ve gotten so much better at giving the medications. That said, there are still some people that get really sick during therapies. The main thing is to have really easy to digest foods. So we come back to the idea of, when I was sick when I was a little kid and had colds or flues, what my mom would bring me was consommé or she would bring me chicken broth. One of the reasons why bone broth and why animal broths are so good for us is they have lots and lots of minerals in them, they have glucosamine, they have glutamine, they have reparative and restorative nutrients. And they’re very, very easy to digest because they’ve already cooked for a long time. So soups and broths are wonderful to have in small amounts. People also tend to like eating little bits through the day. Well-cooked foods, so rather than having an apple you might do better on a little dish of applesauce. Rather than having a big salad you might do better having softly cooked, well-cooked vegetables. In terms of proteins, things like well-cooked meats like brisket, which gets cooked for hours, or chicken that’s been cooked in soup, so it’s been boiled for hours or cooked in a crock pot. Because what you want is you want the foods as digestible as possible. The other thing is if you’re really feeling nausea, don’t force yourself to eat so much that you actually start vomiting. Pay attention to what your body tells you. You’ll be okay if you can’t eat for a day or two, or you can’t eat much for a day or two.
There’s some things that can be really useful like ginger tea or ginger ale even. I know we were talking about sugar, but sometimes you feel so badly that you just want to do anything that you can to settle your tummy. Ginger is great for nausea. From all sources. Also, there’s some wonderful homeopathics. One is called Ipecac, which if you ever have little kids it’s what you keep in your medicine cabinet to provoke vomiting. But homeopathy works opposite. It works more like a vaccine. So you give a little bit of a dose of what you want to avoid. So putting a couple of those tablets under your tongue and seeing if that helps with your nausea. Also Nux Vomica, is another homeopathic that sometimes works really well. And just kind of know that the nausea usually passes in a day or two and you’ll be able to eat again. So don’t freak out about it too much. And then in between your treatments is when you want to try building your appetite and eating. Eating small frequent meals and really working on overcoming, especially if you know there will be a few days when your appetite is really bad after a treatment, you can build up in between.
PAULA: I want to put a plug in for Rebecca Katz’s cookbook, ONE BITE AT A TIME.
LIZ: Good plug.
PAULA: It’s really fantastic, full of simple, easy, delicious, healthful recipes. Very deeply nurturing. And I’d also encourage people to build a support network. When you’re not feeling well, it’s hard to cook. It’s hard to do the shopping. Your energy needs to go into your healing. So if you can build a network of people that will help you cook, help you shop, it can be fantastic. Put meals in the freezer. Rebecca has, one of the recipes is for “Magic mineral broth”. And I have heard miraculous experiences with this. For people that aren’t hungry, can’t keep anything down, or feel really nauseas, to be able to sip on that. It’s made with fresh vegetables simmered for several hours. And you can make a big batch of it and put it in the freezer. You can use it as a base for soups, for cooking other vegetables, for all kinds of things. But just drinking it alone is very, very nourishing and tastes fantastic. The cookbook is ONE BITE AT A TIME, by Rebecca Katz.
LIZ: You know it’s so important, what I want to say is that when people have cancer, or when they’re sick in general, everybody wants to do something to help, yet we’re all so afraid to ask for help. You know, “I’m the helper, I’m not the one who gets help.” But there’s so many people that wish that there was something they could do for you. And if you just said, “If you would coordinate and get everybody to bring fresh food for me everyday, that would be so helpful.” Ask your best friend to do that for you. Let people know that that’s the point person. You don’t want to be this person. Build your coalition so that you do get somebody to make you good food. People want to help so much and they just don’t know what to do. Cooking for you is such an easy thing, especially if they only need to make something like once a week, once every two weeks. Because once you’ve got these systems set up, usually it’s easy to get 15 or 20 people in the loop. Then it’s not a burden on anybody. Paula so I think we should open up the phone lines. What do you think?
PAULA: Absolutely. Go ahead and open a line.
LIZ: So who’s brave and has a question?
CALLER ONE: Rebecca Katz’s book, can you get that off of Amazon?
PAULA: Absolutely.
LIZ: It was out of print for a while, but it’s back.
CALLER ONE: Okay, thank you.
PAULA: The new edition, you can also google Rebecca Katz and you’ll go to her website and can buy it directly from her site. She’s got a great blog that she’s got going, a lot of recipes, and good information there.
CALLER TWO: Hello, I was wondering if you had any source for obtaining the kombucha mother, to start making it.
PAULA: If you go to Sandor Katz’s website,
LIZ: It’s Wild Fermentation
PAULA: Also, he’s got a couple of books - WILD FERMENTATION, and there’s great resources in it. That’d be a good lead.
CALLER TWO: Thank you.
LIZ: Okay there was somebody who was starting to ask a question, you go next.
CALLER THREE: Okay, my name is Alice. I don’t have cancer but I know a lot of people with cancer so my concern is for getting information for them when they’re open to it and also for preventing my own cancer. I have been anemic for three years. I was diagnosed after lots of tests, through metametrix, with malabsorption and leaky gut and a lot of other things. I have an amazingly clean diet of [xx] vegetables. I get raw goat milk. I ferment that. I’m a Weston A. Price member and I really believe in that approach to diet, whole food and organic. And I’m at odds end, to know what to do, why is my system so out of whack? My tests showed I have overproduction of lacto-bacillus. Which is kind of weird. I thought I would throw that out and see if you had any suggestions.
LIZ: If you haven’t read my book DIGESTIVE WELLNESS, there’s a lot of information in there. And I have another little book called LEAKY GUT SYNDROME, that’s just kind of a 50 page booklet, but it has really good information about leaky gut. Leaky gut isn’t just about diet, it’s about stress and environment and everything else. And it’s rampant in our culture.
CALLER THREE: Okay, well thank you for that reminder.
PAULA: I think a couple of things, just in terms of probiotics, there’s questions about nausea, there’s questions about taking probiotics with antibiotics, or chemo, for people that have nausea and diarrhea and things like that. So I suggest that if somebody is on medication, that they take probiotics at the same time, just separate, several hours separate from the antibiotics or other medications, to build good bacteria in the gut.
LIZ: Especially for diarrhea, sacromices boulardi, which is the specific probiotic, has been studied for over 50 years for diarrhea from all causes. So specifically, if diarrhea is somebody’s main symptom, I like using sacromices boulardi. I know it’s a really big word. Unlike other probiotics it’s not a bacteria, it’s actually a yeast, it’s a cousin of baker’s yeast. One of the trade names, the French pharmacutical company that has been studying this for 50 years, is packaged under the name Florastore. But there are other companies that also make it and you can find it in your local health food stores as well.
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LIZ: Hi, it’s Liz again. That’s the end of this week’s segment. ACCESS TO HEALTH EXPERTS is not only an interview series, it’s also a membership website featuring user forms, special reports, 20% discounts on professional-grade nutritional supplements, monthly tele-seminars and so much more. Please visit us at Access to Health Experts for more information. I enjoyed sharing this interview with you and I look forward to sending you another segment next week. Until then, this is Dr. Liz Lipski wishing you the very best of health.
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