The Sugar-Cancer Connection…

I want to start this blog by quoting the story which my book Sugar Shock by Connie Bennett starts out the chapter on cancer:

“The cancer free lives of the Eskimos in the Arctic Circle were documented by Harvard-trained anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who lived for 10 winters among the Eskimos between 1906 and 1918. During his time among them, Stefansson shared the typical Eskimo diet of almost-raw fish and blubber supplemented by an occasional chunk of meat, but no quickie carbs, no vegetables, no grains, and no sugar.

But by the 1920s, the Eskimos had begun to adopt Western ways and a Western diet, Stefansson noted in his 1960 report Cancer: A Disease of Civilization? And so it began: In 1933, an Eskimo died of liver cancer in Alaska. Two years later, a second Eskimo passed away of colon cancer in Labrador. And from that time on death rates from cancer have risen steadily in the frozen north.”

I have learned many shocking things about sugar in the past month, but the connection between sugar and cancer was definitely one of the most shocking. We hear a lot of information on things that supposedly cause cancer or increase our risk of getting cancer such as having a family member who has had cancer, etc. And we also are told often that we should eat a lot of foods with anti-oxidants to help prevent cancer. The list of “cancer-preventing” foods is long, but the one list I have never seen is the list of “cancer-causing” foods to avoid.

These days, there are a small number of doctors and scientists who believe that a diet high in sugar and simple carbs is a significant factor in causing cancer cells to develop and grow. This has actually been known since 1931 when a German scientist discovered that cancer cells use glucose as fuel. There are, of course, many other factors which also contribute, but I feel that, now knowing cancer cells use glucose as fuel… If I’m going to get cancer someday, I want to make sure that I’m not giving those cancer cells anything to help them grow!

Here is a quote from a doctor, which I also found in my book Sugar Shock, “Very few cancers can survive without a steady supply of glucose”. Again, why wouldn’t someone want to starve cancer cells? This information says to me that all cancer patients should be advised to avoid sugar and refined carb intake. It seems so obvious, so why has most of the general public never heard this information? Why are most cancer patients not being told to reduce their sugar and refined carb intake?

Well, the answer to that question is pretty long. I think I will have to tackle it in my next blog…


Endnote:
I want to add a link to this article I found just now. It’s a short article, so you can read the whole thing or skip to the last 2 sections titled “Atkins Vindicated” and “The Key to Cancer Prevention”. Click here to read the article.