PREVENTION AND THERAPY: THE SAME FI

PREVENTION AND THERAPY: THE SAME FIGHT
The use of molecules present in our daily diet is important because our diet may play an important role in the equilibrium of vital forces in the body, a phenomenon known as homeostasis. We can define good health in a simplified fashion by calling it a delicate equilibrium between factors that trigger illness and others that keep illness at bay, among them factors of dietary origin. If the body is lacking in specific dietary items, such as fruits and vegetables, a disequilibrium favouring the onset of illness is produced; when the body takes in the missing nutrients in the form of food, the equilibrium needed for good health is restored. In this way, we can understand good health to be part of a complex phenomenon where the body’s control systems can gradually benefit from compounds of dietary origin (or those of pharmaceutical origin in the case of very serious disorders) in order to maintain harmony in all of the organism’s normal activities.
Not only does the intake of molecules of dietary origin allow for restoring the equilibrium needed for good health, the anticancer activities associated with these molecules allow them to act as drugs that interfere with the processes involved in the development of diseases such as cancer. This cancer therapy, which we suggest calling nutrition therapy, should be seen as an important and essential addition to the means of fighting cancer at our disposal, including the therapeutic methods that are currently used to treat cancer patients. This is as much for their capacity to act directly on the cancer cells as it is for their ability both to inhibit angiogenesis and stimulate the immune system This method of cancer prevention is especially important insofar as we are constantly at risk for developing tumours and the use of anticancer compounds derived from food lets us stop these tumours at a latent stage. Another factor that makes clear the importance of preventive therapy for cancer though diet is the existence of great differences in the genes of individuals. All human beings possess almost the same genes (if we didn’t, we wouldn’t belong to the same species), but there exist nonetheless many possible variations in these genes, variation that are responsible for the distinct characteristics of each individual.
These differences are not only responsible for the marked physical differences that exist among individuals, but also touch other genes, which, if inactivated, may render certain individuals less capable of defending themselves against different aggressions, such as those triggered by carcinogenic substances.
Even though only a small percentage of cancers may be said to be genetically transmissible, many genetic factors are indeed responsible for rendering certain individuals much more susceptible to developing cancer after having been exposed to known carcinogens. These people must defend themselves even more vigorously by consuming anticancer molecules. This concept was illustrated in superb fashion by the result of a study conducted in Shanghai, where individuals deficient in two important enzymes that act to eliminate toxic aggressors were found to be three times more at risk of developing lung cancer if their diet did not contain cruciferous vegetable. Conversely, other individuals who showed the same mutations but ate a diet rich in these vegetables had a reduced risk of developing cancer compared to the general population. These observations show to what extent diet can lessen the impact of genetic disorders in certain individuals who would otherwise have an increased risk of developing cancer.
It’s worth repeating: fighting the development of cancer through diet means using the anticancer molecules present in certain foods as weapons in order to create an environment hostile to tumours, subjecting these tumoural microfoci to daily bombardment and preventing them from growing, as chemotherapy does. We have to see the body as a battlefield hosting an ongoing, never-ending struggle: mutant cells looking to develop as an antonomous entity that will degenerate into cancer, versus our defence mechanisms seeking to maintain health. A useful analogy can be made here with an on-off switch: if a diet contains mostly foods poor in nutritional quality, or if it lacks protective foods such as fruits and vegetables, latent tumours will be in an environment favourable to their growth, and thus risk turning into mature cancers (the switch is “on”).
On the other hand, if the diet is rich in a good variety of protective foods and only contains a quite small percentage of “dangerous” foods, the microtumours fail to grow and the risks of developing cancer are therefore much lower (the switch is at the “off” position). It is easy to see that identifying those foods containing significant amounts of anticancer molecules is something that is very important if we wish to maximize our chances of fighting the development of cancer.

NUTRITION THERAPY IN ACTION
Nutrition therapy may be compared to a kind of chemotherapy that uses the arsenal of anticancer molecules present in food to fight cancer cells that arise spontaneously.
Far from being an alternative therapy, the prevention of cancer through diet is instead a complementary tool that every individual can use to enrich his or her diet with anticancer agents of dietary origin. The regular intake of fruits and vegetables may be likened to a preventive, non-toxic version of chemotherapy that is harmless to the physiology of normal tissue and stops microtumours from attaining a stage with pathological consequences.

THE “NUTRINOME” PROJECT
Our laboratory has recently begun a new initiative – the Nutrinome Project – to attempt to establish the anticancer profile of different fruits and vegetables. This strategy aims to identify not only those fruits and vegetables that boast the greatest anticancer activity, but also the specific varieties of these foods that may contain greater amounts of anticancer agents than other.
The procedure we use requires preparing raw extracts of these fruits and vegetables, sterilizing the extracts obtained, and then using this material to determine their respective inhibiting activity on the growth of different tumours of human origin, as well as on angiogenesis, by using experimental models in the lap. For example, we can see that the addition of extracts of garlic, beetroot, and certain members of the cabbage family, such as kale, triggers the wholesale cessation of the growth of cancer cells isolated from a medulloblastoma, which is a very aggressive type of brain tumour. Other experiments are required to confirm to what extent these foods can be used as complements to the anticancer therapies currently available, but the results obtained up to now are very promising. Garlic, in particular, seems to be exceptionally toxic to these cancer cells. Even at a one part per thousand dilution, garlic extract still succeeds in significantly slowing the growth of cancerous cells.
To summarise, the lowest incidence of cancer in individuals eating the most fruits and vegetables is directly related to the content of these fruits and vegetables in anticancer compounds; the presence of these compounds restricts the development of the microtumours that occur spontaneously in our tissues. A constant intake of specific anticancer substances provided by diet represents the basis of any strategy that aims to prevent the development of cancer.