It is not only what you eat; but what you can absorb. Is raw food better than cooked food? Is vegan better for cancer patients than fish and meat? What about raw vegan? Extreme diets often pair with extreme supplementation to make up for what’s missing…so how safe is that approach? What about juices and their value? What is the truth about diet and Cancer?
Listen on Voice America Health & Wellness Channel – free to download or available on streaming
It is not only what you eat; but what you can absorb. Is raw food better than cooked food? Is vegan better for cancer patients than 
vegetarian? What about raw vegan? Extreme diets often pair with extreme supplementation to make up for what’s missing…so how safe is that approach? What about juices and their value?
Having gained a distinction in nutrition plus assisting cancer patients for 40 years has given me great insights….there is not much I haven’t seen cancer patients try with regards to dietary regimens and alternative medicine during those decades. Most often, the outcomes have been far from ideal. Maybe short term dietary experiments are OK if you are not ‘relying’ on the diet for curing cancer – but the main issue goes way beyond symptoms, such as rapid weight loss, because the most important thing is that cancer is time sensitive – you don’t have time to wait and see if the diet works in 3 or 6 months. The wait and see mentality is heavily criticized in conventional medical systems – but clearly it exists on both sides of the healing divide.
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We live in an age where fashion fads and dietary fads change like the wind. With lifestyle medicine a cultural trend; a lot of long term dietary experimentation is going on at the cost of lives. Cancer patients often get swept up in the winds of dietary fads and before they know it, they are inside a
culinary tornado that offers more stress; less peace of mind, confusion, social isolation, unnecessary weight loss and nutritional deficiencies…all from a so called nutrient dense diet that many cannot absorb.
This I know from experience; in fact from 3 different roles in my life.:
as carer of a cancer patient
a qualified health professional
and then as a patient
Many others have experienced this – this website is a fascinating read!
Resource # 1: http://www.beyondveg.com/
So where does the truth lie for people just want to eat well? I think it lies in the middle of the road approach!
Cancer patients need to be careful that they are not buying in to an someone else’s ideological dietary regimens.
There is no cure cancer diet that I know of….and there is no one size fits all in the world of diet! But if you are a cancer patient and particularly if you have colorectal or a gastrointestinal cancer – you need to be even more cautious.
What is the best way of eating for this specialised group?
The only way is to access a health practitioner who can help you with a personalised diet based on results of functional pathology stool tests. Yes – your own stools hold the secret answer as to what you should eat and what you can absorb! Makes sense doesn’t it!
The best type of tests are those that require a stool sample collected over a 3 day period…
Why a 3 day period? As well as examining all the digestive functions and our end products…the 3 day test is far more accurate for detecting any parasite eggs from unwelcome intestinal hosts…this problem is more common that most people believe.
Some cancers such as cancer of the bile duct (called cholangiocarcinoma) is one example of a cancer known to be caused by a parasite – in this case – Chinese Liver fluke.
Resource # 2: Chart and references: Parasites and Pathogens associated with cancer
Resource # 3: In Australia – to source a test ask your health practitioner to organize a Healthscope functional pathology test for digestion including a 3-day parasitology test. They have an excellent series of different tests – your practitioner can advise which one is best for you..
For stool testing in the USA & internationally – CONTACT
http://www.metametrix.com/test-menu/profiles/gastrointestinal-function/dna-stool-analysis-gi-effects
It is almost a given that patients with colorectal cancer will have had surgery to remove a segment or segments of colon affected by cancer. Depending on the length of the segment removed – type of diet and quantity of food should be adjusted accordingly.
Excess fibre and raw seeds and nuts and even raw foods can become indigestible irritants causing inflammation and bloating to the patient who has had colorectal surgery….it can especially be a problem for the patient who loses a significant portion of small intestine. Yours truly in one of those people!
Prior to my own surgery losing 5 ft of large colon and the same amount of small intestine; I was a prolific salad & raw food consumer – but I also ate a great deal of cooked vegetables and seafood – I think you would call me a Pescetarian…I had a diet that contained a good deal of dietary fibre- a good balance of cooked and raw foods. However after my surgeries– my gastro – intestinal tract was clearly traumatised and it took years to recover to a satisfactory degree.
Remember the saying………… it is not only what you eat – but what you can absorb…..this statement becomes a simple rule to live by and is especially important for those dealing with or those who have had colorectal cancer.
Now back to diet….. cooked vs raw…
Now I am interested in the work of primatologist Richard Wrangham…. his research claims that learning to cook food was the hinge 
on which human evolution turned. Eating cooked food, he argues, enabled us to evolve our large brains, and cooking itself became a primary focus of human social activity — in short, cooking made us the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today.
His book – Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human is available on Amazon..
From the book’s promo:
Contrary to the dogmas of raw-foods enthusiasts, cooked cuisine was central to the biological and social evolution of humanity, argues this fascinating study. Harvard biological anthropologist Wrangham dates the breakthrough in human evolution to a moment 1.8 million years ago, when, he conjectures, our forebears tamed fire and began cooking.
Starting with Homo erectus—who should perhaps be renamed Homo gastronomicus—these innovations drove anatomical and physiological changes that make us adapted to eating cooked food the way cows are adapted to eating grass. By making food more digestible and easier to extract energy from, Wrangham reasons, cooking enabled hominids’ jaws, teeth and guts to shrink, freeing up calories to fuel their expanding brains. It also gave rise to pair bonding and table manners, and liberated mankind from the drudgery of excessive chewing (while chaining womankind to the stove). Wrangham’s lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, palaeontology and studies of ape behaviour and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cooking’s role in daily life. More than that, Wrangham offers a provocative take on evolution—suggesting that, rather than humans creating civilized technology, civilized technology created us.
http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/1469298708
Listen on Voice America Health & Wellness Channel – free to download or available on streaming
http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/75179/navigating-the-cancer-diet-maze-special-needs-for-colon-and-liver-cancer
Thanks for visiting…..More on this thought provoking topic in next blog-soon: Enjoy! Grace
My interview with author Regina Cate went live to air today: You listen to the interview on live streaming or you can download from Voice America.
