WARNING: CANDY AND CANCER CONNECTION

[Guest guest]

Here is a MAJOR WARNING for all of us!

 

Linda

 

EXIT CANDYLANDHealth Sciences Institute e-AlertMarch 13, 2003**************************************************************Dear Reader,Yesterday I saw an advertisement for M & Ms "in a convenient new travel cup." At first this struck me as funny, as if eating M & Ms from a paper bag was somehow so inconvenient that M & Ms executives had been forced to come up with an entirely new way to offer their product. Of course, this innovation has nothing at all to do with convenience - it's all about competing in a candy market where there's no end of gimmicks designed to tempt both children and adults. Once the M & Ms travel cup started me thinking about candy, I was reminded of an important detail about sugar that we've written about before at HSI. It bears repeating though, because this is critical information for every cancer patient from day-one in their fight against the disease. -----------------------------How to win a Nobel Prize -----------------------------In an HSI Members Alert we sent you some time ago (9/1/01), we told you how eating sweets can actually fuel and accelerate cancer growth. Seventy years ago, Otto Warburg, Ph.D., won the Nobel Prize in medicine when he discovered that cancer cells use glucose (sugar) for growth. All cells have a requirement for glucose, but cancer cells consume as much as 4 to 5 times more glucose than normal, healthy cells. In fact, they're unable to multiply rapidly without it. I asked HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., if he could tell us a little more about this process, and here's what he had to say: "Nutritionally oriented doctors have known about the refined sugar/cancer association for decades. Dr. Warburg was about as brilliant as they come, right up there with Hans Nieper, M.D., Linus Pauling, Ph.D., and possibly even the incomparable Nikola Tesla (no doctorate...just plain super-humanly brilliant). His medical insight was amazing."It's pretty easy to figure that the cells that are dividing (multiplying) the fastest have the highest requirement for energy (to sustain such accelerated growth). Cutting out the source is similar to cutting off the blood supply - though not quite as drastic, it's certainly a step worth taking."Another issue is the fact that refined sugars are not nutrient-dense...they contain none of the nutrients necessary for the assimilation of the sugar ingested. Therefore, the body must drain body stores (if any are present) to handle the job, leaving less (or none) for other tasks. This is why chewing on natural sugar cane is not the problem - it's eating the pure, concentrated, naked-calorie refined sugar after processing out the water, fiber (which slows the sugar assimilation), and nutrients."Obviously giving up sugar isn't the cure for cancer. But I'd recommend the tactic STRONGLY to anyone with cancer (or, actually, any other illness)."-----------------------------Send in the substitutes-----------------------------Because I've addressed sugar substitutes in recent e-Alerts ("Keep It Sweet" 2/25/03 and "The Sweet Life" 3/10/03), I wondered if one of these alternate sweeteners (such as stevia or xylitol) might also feed the cancer cells in the same way sugar does. Dr. Spreen said, "Stevia won't, because it's zero-calorie. Xylitol could be more of a quandary. It does contain calories (about 40% less than sugar), and it's labeled a 'sugar-alcohol.' Apparently that status causes a slower release into the body and less absorption, giving it a lower glycemic index. For that reason it would be less of a problem as it isn't so strong a refined carbohydrate. How much less would be controversial, since the sugar/cancer cell growth issue itself is a tough one."-----------------------------Carbs are a problem too -----------------------------Keep in mind that the body also breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, so a diet that's heavy with high carbohydrate foods can also fuel cancer cell growth as well as other health problems that are known to be linked to excess blood glucose, including: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, an overgrowth of pathogenic intestinal flora, gout, panic attacks, hyperactivity, and depression.If you're fighting a serious illness - especially cancer - there's obviously only one way to go concerning refined sugar. To fight the good fight you have to remove anything that might give an advantage to the disease.