Eat to Keep Cancer Away! (Remission For Life)

What you eat is the best tool you have to prevent cancer or keep it from coming back. So that's exactly what I'm going over today. Because imagine being told you have cancer, suddenly you're questioning everything. How did this happen? Was it sugar? Was it the cocktails I had down in Mexico? Should I now be cutting out carbs and start juicing celery? And everyone has an opinion. Your neighbor knows someone who cured their cancer with fasting. Your cousin sends you a video about the carnivore diet. And someone on Facebook is deeply concerned that you're still eating oatmeal. And then you ask your doctor a very reasonable question. What should I be eating? And they'll likely say, just eat whatever you can. But that's actually the worst advice you could ever get. And even if you've never had cancer, but it runs in your family, or you care about preventing it, what I'll be talking about today actually applies to all of us. So first off, there's something really important that not many people are aware of. But to prevent cancer, you have to protect your muscle like it's your job. We don't just have muscle to make us look better on the beach. Muscle helps you to have better blood sugar control. High blood sugar is now so strongly linked to cancer that cancer is the number one cause of death for people with type 2 diabetes. Now does that mean you have to cut out sugar completely and never eat a piece of birthday cake again? No. Does it mean that sugar directly causes cancer? No. But the leading cancer experts agree that eating too much sugar or refined carbs like white bread, white pasta, pancakes, pizza, can indirectly lead to cancer. Because over time, these types of food create an environment inside your body where cancer cells actually have an easier time surviving. Cancer cells love high insulin, high inflammation, and a weakened immune system, which is exactly what eating too much sugar over the years can do. But how does having more muscle actually help to keep your blood sugar in check? Well long story short, anytime you eat anything, your blood sugar goes up, that's normal, but then your muscles pull that sugar out of your blood so you can use it for energy or store it away for later, rather than having it just floating around causing all kinds of inflammation. So as you can imagine, the more muscle you have, typically the better blood sugar control you have. But the problem is, as we age, it gets harder to maintain our muscle, especially if we don't eat enough protein. And yes, exercise and strength training are equally as important too, but today we're just talking about food. We need to be treating protein like the main star of each meal, rather than the side dish. Because not eating enough protein is the fastest way to lose some of that valuable muscle you have. And then you'll have fewer places for all the sugar and carbs you eat to be stored away safely. And when it hangs around in your bloodstream longer, your body has to pump out insulin to deal with it. And then over time, you become insulin resistant. Now I have another video on the best and worst sources of protein, so I'm not going to go over them too much today. But I will link a protein calculator below for you, so you can figure out how much protein you should be eating according to your age, size, activity, all the things. So when we're trying to keep cancer away, how much sugar or carbs do you think are safe to eat? Because you've probably heard that sugar feeds cancer. And although that's misleading, there is some truth to it. We do know that most types of cancer cells love sugar more than any other type of fuel. But that doesn't mean that eating a cookie sends sugar directly to a tumor. And unfortunately, we can't just cut out sugar and carbs to starve cancer. I wish that were true. So the goal isn't to become afraid of all carbs, especially the healthy complex carbs like fruit and legumes that also contain a ton of nutrients and fiber. The goal is just to have better blood sugar control and insulin sensitivity. Because then when you do eat that cookie, your body will handle that sugar properly. A lot differently than somebody with insulin resistance or pre-diabetes. So if we're trying to keep our blood sugar and insulin in check, we do really need to cut back on the white bread, white pizza dough, croissants, anything that has no fiber and spikes your blood sugar just as fast as an ice cream sundae. So rather than being afraid to eat a banana because it has sugar, focus on the bigger picture. If most of what you ate this week was protein, veggies, healthy fats, and high fiber carbs, go ahead and have that ice cream on Friday night. But having that ice cream every other night, then you're pushing it. Okay, so you're going to focus on having protein with every meal, keeping sugar and refined carbs as a special occasion thing, or maybe a once a week thing. But we can't ignore the extreme importance of fiber. Not when it comes to preventing cancer or staying in remission. And I'm not just talking about preventing colon cancer. I mean, it is great for that, but eating fiber actually supports your main defense system against cancer, your immune system. How? Because fiber keeps your gut healthy and 70 to 80% of your immune system is controlled by your gut. You may already know this, but your gut is home to trillions of little bacteria and they don't just sit around waiting for you to eat yogurt. They do so much. But when you eat fiber, some of them turn it into something amazing called butyrate. Butyrate is basically food for the cells lining your gut. So it actually helps to repair and strengthen your gut, which means a more robust immune system and an immune system that has an easier time detecting and getting rid of abnormal cells like precancerous cells before they can become a problem. It's a process called autophagy. So that's one of the big reasons that people who eat a lot of fiber have a lower risk of cancer. And as a bonus, a lot of the foods highest in fiber are also some of the top cancer-fighting foods on the planet, like berries, broccoli, kale, spinach, flaxseeds, avocado. In fact, if you can just start doing one thing today to lower your risk of cancer, start eating a handful of berries every single day and then thank me for it in 10 years from now. But berries are a top cancer-fighting food because they contain a bunch of different polyphenols and antioxidants. And I know antioxidants is one of those words that gets thrown around so much now, just barely seems to mean anything anymore. It's actually probably written on the side of your $14 smoothie. But antioxidants are what help to protect our cells from damage and lower inflammation. And inflammation is another big deal when we're talking about cancer. A little inflammation is normal. You cut your finger and inflammation rushes in to help repair the damage. But chronic inflammation is different. It's when your immune system stays slightly irritated and switched on for months or years even though there's no emergency, like having a fire alarm in your house going off every day because someone burnt toast. But chronic inflammation builds up over years of eating processed foods, being exposed to toxins and everything from our shampoo to our laundry detergent, and even from stress believe it or not. But chronic inflammation increases your risk of cancer in a few different ways. One, it can damage your healthy cells. Two, it can weaken your immune system so it has a harder time getting rid of those precancerous cells. And three, it creates an environment in your body where cancer cells have an easier time developing and surviving. So as you can imagine, the more foods we eat with antioxidants, the better. And you don't have to go and find some rare mushrooms that only grow on the side of a mountain in Japan. The foods highest in antioxidants are sitting in the produce section of your grocery store. Colorful veggies, herbs, and spices, they'll all give you the compounds you need to protect your cells the most. Take garlic and onions for example. They contain things like allicin and quercetin, and these support your body's natural detox processes. Or cruciferous veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts. When you eat them, your body turns their compounds into little cellular bodyguards that help to protect your cells from being damaged by inflammation. So these are actually some of the most important foods for cancer prevention, but eating these veggies once a week isn't going to do it. It's important to have them show up on your plate again and again. One kale salad isn't going to undo 10 years of McDonald's drive-thru. Your body pays attention to patterns. What do you eat most days? Are you eating enough fiber and veggies most of the time, or is your vegetable intake mainly the pickle that came on your burger? Now there's one more thing we need to talk about here, because it can work magic alongside of this way of eating to further improve your blood sugar control and lower insulin and inflammation, and it's intermittent fasting. Now I have a ton of other videos on how to fast, how long to fast, and why you'll be raving about it to everyone and their mother once you really get into it, but most people do well by simply finishing dinner by 6pm and then not eating again until breakfast the next morning around 10am. That'll give you a 16 hour overnight fast without doing anything too crazy or miserable. But with that kind of daily break from food and spiking your blood sugar and insulin, it means your body has a chance to become more sensitive to insulin again and develop better blood sugar control again, and then inflammation tends to come down with that. And if you can throw in a slightly longer fast here and there too, even better, I have a lot of videos on that too. But if fasting causes you to under-eat protein and lose muscle, that's not going to help your long-term health at all. You still have to make sure you're getting enough protein and nutrients during your eating window. But at the end of the day, the anti-cancer diet I wish everybody knew isn't actually a strict meal plan at all. It's not zero sugar, zero carbs, and hating life. Eat enough protein every day, eat enough fibre, make colourful plants a part of every meal, throw some intermittent fasting in there if possible, and keep the refined carbs and sweets to a once-a-week thing, not things that somehow become a special reward every night at 8.30. But cancer prevention isn't about eating perfectly clean all the time. It's about turning your body into a place where your immune system can do its job properly and cancer cells have a much harder time surviving. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week.