Lifestyle July 16, 2020
A rare cancer diagnosis at 34 sent me looking for answers.
Running six to eight miles per day … check.
Eating lean turkey, low-fat milk, and few carbs … check.
Drinking only on weekends … check.
Slathering myself with sunscreen … check.
Cancer … check
When I was in my 20s and early 30s I thought I was pretty healthy. I worked out every day — and by every day, I mean obsessively. I would run six to eight miles several times per week then go off and do an eight-hour bar shift. Then my hip gave out. No worries. I also boxed, practiced yoga, Krav Maga, and jiu-jitsu. Two-hour workouts four days a week were my norm in 2015 and 2016. Then I broke my foot in jiu-jitsu. No problem, it healed and I was right back to excessively exercising.
My diet consisted of things I thought were good for me: chicken breast, deli turkey, low-fat turkey burgers, spinach (I ate a lot of spinach). I added collagen to my fruit-and-veggie smoothies and, of course, protein powder. You can never have too much protein right? My husband often commented on how “healthy” I ate. But I never lost weight and I was always fatigued and run down.
Then, at 34, I got cancer. And I got a bad one. Like the kind where doctors give you sad eyes because 90 percent of the people who get your cancer die from it. So I started reading. My mom bought me an actual textbook on Integrative Oncology. I devoured studies on PubMed. I read about cell biology and nutrition. I learned about Dr. Valter Longo at USC and David Sinclair at Harvard. I started to realize that everything I thought was healthy … may not have been. In fact, I was possibly killing myself.
That sunscreen I slathered on my body had oxybenzone in it, a known endocrine disruptor. That deli turkey (and all the turkey I was eating) is now considered a definite cause of cancer by the World Health Organization. All that chicken breast, lean steak, and any other kind of cooked or processed meat I put in my body — it’s full of carcinogens and possibly, even, elevates our amino acid intake too much (turns out we may not need all nine essential amino acids in the same quantity).
“The chemistry of the formation of carcinogens as animal tissue cooks is well known. The higher the temperature and the longer the time of cooking, the higher the carcinogens in the meat,” writes Dr. Andrew Weil in his textbook Integrative Oncology. Clinical data indicates “well done” is a significant risk factor for breast cancer and other cancers, including colorectal, prostate, and pancreatic.
In fact, the meat-cancer connection is well established but no one seems to be listening. Getting people not to eat meat is apparently incredibly difficult.
And protein? Well, Dr. Longo (USC) and Dr. Sinclair (Harvard) both say we’re eating too much protein — animal protein that is. Indeed, people who live to be 100 years old — in areas called Blue Zones — live on low protein diets. For a woman my age and weight, I should be getting roughly 45 grams, versus the 100 grams that a personal trainer once told me to take on.
Animal protein contains all nine essential amino acids the body needs to live that we can’t make ourselves. Many meat-lovers use this an argument in favor of animal protein versus plant protein (which cannot provide all nine). But according to research, we don’t need the same amount of all nine amino acids, and having less of certain ones — like methionine — can increase lifespan and create protective effects on the body. In other words, getting different amounts, from different sources, could be better.
How about the “healthy” collagen I was putting in my smoothies? Turns out collagen is a double-edged sword. It can, at times, contain cancer cells by inhibiting tumor progression by acting as a passive barrier, but more and more research is showing that it can also increase tumor progression creating a microenvironment for metastasis. For that reason, my oncologists asked me not to take collagen during treatment or after or ever again really.
The four cocktails I had every weekend — as I never drank during the week — not good. The link between increased alcohol intake and cancer is also well established. What about red wine you ask? Turns out to get the extreme benefits of resveratrol (the element in red wine that makes it “healthy” and comes from grapes) you would need to drink 700 to 1,000 glasses of red wine a day (at least that’s the equivalent they give the mice in the studies). For breast cancer patients, some research has suggested that even one to two glasses a week can increase the rate of recurrence. But the data is conflicting, so don’t feel too bad if you’re gulping red wine as we speak, it does have some upsides.
I was even exercising wrong, in that I may have been overexercising. When I was undergoing chemo and radiation I wanted to keep running, but my heart couldn’t take it. My oncologist asked me to stop and said to just walk every day. Then, after treatment, she said walking was still fine and “is the best exercise a person can do for their body.” WALKING. When I broke my foot in jiu-jitsu they gave me an MRI and I was told the amount of scar tissue from 20 plus years of soccer was so severe my ankle might just give out when I’m “old”. My podiatrist at the time said it’s a misconception that extreme workouts lead to better health. In fact, they often lead to more injury. It’s the reason I probably had hip surgery at 32.
My point is this: a lot of things we think are healthy may not be.
Protein drinks, chemicals in our sunscreen and lotion, deli meat (or too many animal products), supplements like collagen, red wine, processed health foods, etc etc, maybe do more harm than good. And don’t even get me started on sugar! (Hint: Eat Less Sugar Now.)
I’m not trying to scare you, I am trying to emphasize the need to educate ourselves about what we put in our bodies. Doctors do not receive extensive nutrition training in medical school and nutritionists often don’t have medical or science degrees.
It’s nearly impossible to avoid all carcinogens and free radicals and other DNA disruptors — we live in a society with air pollution, UVA/UVB radiation, pesticides, chemicals, and other “bad things” that are sometimes unavoidable on a daily basis and you can drive yourself crazy trying to avoid all of it. I’ve driven myself mad looking back at every turkey sandwich (covered in processed cow cheese) or “healthy” protein bar (full of processed fake ingredients) that I ever ate wondering if that was the thing that caused my cancer. More likely, my cancer came about as a result of a million little things that all added up to a microenvironment that allowed my cancer to grow, including stress, diet, illness, and poor immune function.
My future goal is to put together a list of all the things I’ve been doing since — including intermittent fasting, high Vitamin C, curcumin, and focusing on a plant-based diet with fish (and the occasional once per month piece of meat) as a helpful guide. If you have any tips or suggestions, please let me know. I am learning here and constantly reaching out to doctors and experts for advice.
Additional Reading:
This article first appeared on Medium.
