"This Fruit Can STOP INFLAMMATION & Starve Cancer!" - What You NEED TO KNOW! | Dr. William Li

I'm about to bust one of the biggest myths that cancer patients are told and it's a damaging one. Have you ever heard the saying that sugar feeds cancers and therefore cancer patients should avoid anything sweet, even fruit? Well, that's not true. Cutting out sugar is not going to stop your cancer from growing. If you cut off all sugar, you'd be starving your normal healthy cells as well. What does matter for slowing down cancer using diet if it's not eliminating sugar? Here's what's really important. Number one, I'm going to talk about the origin of this myth that sugar feeds cancer because it actually comes from something very real. Sugar, glucose, is in fact needed in every part of our body for cells to function. It's actually part of our normal healthy metabolism for every single organ. Cancer cells do take up glucose, sugar, faster than normal cells do. And that's the basis for a kind of body scan that oncologists, cancer specialists, sometimes order to assess cancer called a PET scan. So here's how it works. A PET scan is a positron emission tomography scan. And what you do with the scan is you give the patient an intravenous injection of a liquid that contains a radioactive form of glucose. That's a sugar molecule. And then the sugar molecule goes into the bloodstream. And then what happens is that you see, using the scan, wherever the radioactive signal of the tracer, that's the radioactive glucose, is picked up in the body at high levels. Now, because cancer cells have a high metabolic rate, they're going to pick up the radioactive tracer, the glucose, faster than normal cells. But the normal cells are going to pick it up as well. But in the PET scan, you're looking for this early tracer signal. Now, the utility of a PET scan is that you can actually use this to find exactly where the cancer is and whether it's metabolically active. Okay. So that's a PET scan. The observation is absolutely correct. Cancer cells do feed on glucose, but guess what? All cells feed on sugar and cutting out sugar is not going to stop your cancer from growing. And in fact, if you cut out all sugar, you'd be starving your normal, healthy cells as well. When I say normal, healthy cells, I'm talking about your brain, your muscles, your immune system. These are parts of the body that keep you thinking, moving, and fighting diseases, including cancer. And your body is not going to let that happen. So what happens is that the body is sensing glucose all the time, blood sugar all the time, and it's designed to keep you alive and strong. If your body is sensing it's not getting enough fuel, enough glucose, guess what? It steps in and makes its own sugar. So your body will generate its own glucose if you cut it out of your diet. That's an important thing to know. So if you're actually going to cut out all the sugar from your diet, because you're afraid that glucose feeds sugar feeds cancer, your body's going to step right in and make more of it. Let's talk about that. Where does a body make sugar? Well, one of the most important places is in your liver. And there's a process for this. Every doctor in medical school learns it. It's called gluconeogenesis. Glucose, sugar, neo, new, genesis, making new sugar. Regardless of whether you get sugar from your diet or your liver, your metabolism is going to release insulin. That's the hormone insulin. And it'll cause the glucose to be absorbed into your cells as energy, right where it belongs. This is normal, healthy cells. Importantly, clinical studies have shown that cutting out sugar does not stop cancers from growing. In fact, cancer cells are pretty clever and very adaptable. So they can actually morph themselves if you actually try to manipulate the amount of sugar in your body to use multiple types of fuel, not just glucose. What does matter for slowing down cancer using diet if it's not eliminating sugar? Here's what's really important. Number one, inflammation. Number two, blood vessels that are growing to feed the cancer. Number three, how well your immune system works. These are the processes that influence how fast cancer grows and behaves. And they are influenced by what you eat, but not in a black and white sort of way that people often assign to sugar. By the way, if you're finding this video helpful, please subscribe to my channel because this is where you're going to find me explaining the science behind health and disease and busting myths. So let's take a look at what is safe to eat when it comes to sweet foods. And the first one I'm going to tell you about are fruits. Fruits can be deliciously sweet. Think about that sweet, juicy peach in the summertime or strawberries or blueberries or mangoes, ultra sweet watermelon. These are just some of examples of the sweet fruits that people love, including me. They are perfectly safe for cancer patients to eat, even though they're really sweet. Why? Because they are whole foods. And that means that in addition to the natural sugars that are found in the fruits, they also contain dietary fiber and polyphenols. What's really important is that the dietary fiber and polyphenols, they actually fight inflammation. They improve your gut health and they starve cancer by cutting off their blood supply. And they improve your immune system's power to be able to find and destroy cancer cells. So what I'm telling you is that it's not just about the sugar. It's about the matrix of the food and everything that's actually in it. So what diet does to your body is it can influence the environment in which your immune system operates. Not in the way that of the myth that sugar feeds cancer. What we do know is that in large clinical studies, like the EPIC study in Europe, the Women's Health Study, the Nurses Health Study, the NIH AARP study, these are monster studies involving hundreds of thousands of people. What has been consistently found is that those individuals who consume more whole fruits and vegetables, more polyphenols, more dietary fiber, many of those fruits and vegetables are going to be really, really sweet, right? Remember the peach, the strawberries, the blueberries, etc. Guess what? All of these studies have consistently found that those who eat more plant-based foods have lower risk of multiple types of cancers. So I want to go through a couple of examples so you actually can hear from me some of the real data. All right, so one of my favorite fruits, which many people consider a vegetable, is the tomato. Now, if you've had a really good tomato in the summer, you know that it's kind of sweet. Actually filled with natural sugars. In fact, a medium-sized tomato contains three to four grams of sugar. Sounds like a lot, right? Is it dangerous for you if you have cancer? Absolutely not. Not in a tomato. And human studies have shown that the higher the intake of tomato products, like tomato sauce, been associated with a lower risk, 20 to 30% lower risk of prostate cancer. All right, something sweet has other good stuff in it in the matrix that lowers the risk of developing cancer. Berries, another super sweet fruit, even more sugar than tomatoes, right? A cup of strawberries that you know has seven to eight grams, almost double the amount of sugar as a tomato. That's two teaspoons worth in a cup of strawberries. A lot of sweetness, right? Well, guess what? In one large prospective study, higher berry intake was associated with an 18% lower risk of estrogen-negative breast cancer. And blueberries, also sweet, had a 31% lower risk. And by the way, blueberries are even sweeter than strawberries. They've got 14 to 15 grams of sugar. It's almost twice as much, four teaspoons of sugar in a cup of berries. So it's not the sugar that is automatically damaging. It's the matrix of everything that's in that fruit, the polyphenols, the fiber, that actually net-net might actually provide you a benefit. All right, we talked about tomatoes, we talked about berries, both of those sweet. Let's switch to another fruit. How about apples? You've heard of it. The apple a day keeps a doctor away. Will an apple a day keep an oncologist away? Well, guess what? Apples are really sweet. They have 18 to 19 grams of sugar, more than blueberries, and that's in a medium-sized apple. That's five teaspoons worth of sugar. But guess what? Higher consumption of apples has been associated with a 11% lower risk of lung cancer. Sweeter, but lower the risk, okay? And that actually tells you something really important. It's not the sugar alone. I'm telling you, this is what the scientific and clinical evidence says. You don't want cancer patients to actually avoid fruit or people who are scared of cancer to avoid fruit. Fruits are actually really, really beneficial. Want some more examples? What about stone fruit? I mentioned peaches, one of my favorites. Apricots, plums, and other stone fruit. Peaches and nectarines, which are some of my favorite stone fruit in the summertime, they've got 12 to 13 grams of natural sugar. And guess what that's associated with? A 41% lower risk of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer. So I think I made my point here that this whole idea of sugar feeding cancer actually is based on something real. We actually use the PET scan in oncology clinics to actually measure higher metabolism because the tumors will take up the sugar faster. But normal cells also take up sugar, need sugar. And if you try to deprive your body of sugar, whether you've got cancer or not, guess what? The body will step right in and make more sugar. So you can't get away from using sugar because it is the fuel we need for life itself. So let's return to the original question. I mean, myth. Does sugar feed cancer? Answer is sugar feeds everything, including cancer cells. Cancer cells do use glucose, but eating sugar does not drive cancer growth in the way people think. What matters is the overall composition of the food and the health defenses of the patient. So if a sweet food contains the right stuff that can lower inflammation, starve the cancer by cutting up the blood supply, feed the gut microbiome, boost the immune system, then you don't need to worry about the natural sugar in food. It's not about the sugar, actually about the whole food. Sugar is not dangerous when you get that sugar from whole fruits and vegetables eaten in moderation if you're a cancer patient. So if you enjoy what you've just heard and you want more clear, evidence-based explanations of myths like this, then subscribe to my channel because I'm going to continue breaking down. This is myth busting, breaking down how foods actually can be useful for your health. We got to bust some of those myths using science because believing those myths can actually be harmful to your health and deprive you of the opportunity to use something that Mother Nature provided us. Then that is food as medicine. I will see you in the next video. Hey, if you liked that video, then you're going to love this one. Check it out.