In the last few columns, we have explored some of the ways that cancer progression can be blocked, in particular cancer’s ability to increase the blood supply to its growing mass and to spread (or metastasize) to other parts of the body. 

We also identified that adopting the whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet and consuming specific plant foods can help to block the cancer’s growth. As we said, Science is constantly waging a war on cancer. Regularly, new insights into the way cancer is initiated and progresses are being discovered that might help to eventually control this disease that now affects millions around the world. And so, researchers studied cancer prevention by eating carrots. 

Based on previous studies that suggested that carrots play a central role as a protecting vegetable against the development of different types of cancers, they followed a Danish population of 57,053 individuals for more than 18 years and recorded their weekly consumption of carrots and compared this with the risk of being diagnosed with cancer of the large intestine. Those people who consumed raw carrots at a rate of 2 to 4 carrots or more each week had a 17 per cent decrease in risk of developing this cancer, compared to individuals with no intake of raw carrots or an intake below 2-4 carrots each week. They were onto something important! 

But how could the humble carrot prevent cancer? And then these researchers, joined with colleagues from Austria, just a few years ago, did make a fascinating discovery. They were studying the most aggressive of cancer cells, those that gorge themselves with saturated fats and thus have the extra energy to migrate to other parts of the body.  They found that specific phytochemicals in carrots (and also in celery), called falcarinol and falcarinol, which have been known to have cytotoxic (cell-killing) and anti-inflammatory activities, are able to make those cancer cells - which have become immortal and so keep multiplying- to become mortal again, leading them to gradually die off! 

Not only did the scientists identify the particular phytochemicals responsible for this but they also unravelled the very intricate molecular mechanisms that are involved, which are so complex that they can only be broadly summarised in this column. The phytochemicals involved promote certain genes to become active and then express themselves by increasing the production of certain proteins that rob the cancer cell of their (cholesterol) food supply by –in turn- activating several signalling pathways that break up the cholesterol and eventually remove it from the cancer cell, a mechanism called ‘cholesterol efflux’. 

Cholesterol-lowering in cancer cells is now being suggested as a potential anticancer strategy. However, patients with advanced cancer cannot wait for a further 16 years of ‘clinical trials’ (just as the one mentioned earlier) before such a treatment approach would become routine medical practice. If you have Stage 4 cancer, you only have a short time to live. And so it happened that some such patients, after searching the Internet, decided to embark on treating their cancers with carrots and get rid of their cancer! The routine treatment involves making carrot juice from about 5 pounds of carrots a day. 

Juicing is essential since the fibre in 5 pounds of carrots would be too much for the body to digest. The amount of juice extracted from 5 pounds of carrots depends on the quality of the juicer, but on average, about 5 cups of juice (which amounts to 40 ounces) could be obtained and consumed. It helps to first cut up the carrots and put them through a power blender (adding a bit of water to help with the blending), before passing them through the juicer. 

Alternatively, you can shred the carrots using a metal box shredder and pass the shredded carrots through the juicer. It takes about one hour a day to make the daily batch of carrot juice, a small price to pay for recovering from advanced cancer.  The juice should be taken in divided portions throughout the day. Readers can access further information online at www. chrisbeatcancer.com and read or listen to the testimonies of cancer survivors like Ann Cameron, who even wrote a book about her experience. 

We invite you to visit METI’s Healthy Living Clinic at House No. 51 at Motootua (across from the Kokobanana Restaurant) to become further acquainted with METI’s whole food plant-based diet and Lifestyle Change programs. Or call us at 30550. Learning how to follow these Programs might be your ‘game changer’!