Nutrition

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Preface \| Preface (3rd edition) \| Introduction \| Review by Beata Bishop \| Review by Kate Neil Preface by Richard A. Passwater Preface for the third edition by Pat Pilkington MBE Introduction for the third edition Book Review by Beata Bishop Book Review by Kate Neil Nutrition and Cancer: State of the Art Nutrition and Cancer: State of the Art says it how it is. Dr Sandra Goodman presents a host of well-selected data about the potential role of diet and specific nutrients in both the prevention and management of cancer, demonstrating the rigour of a true scientist whose mission is to seek and state the truth. In appropriate places she bluntly states the ostrich approach by many scientists, medics and oncologists who dismiss the potential role of nutrition in the management of cancer or, indeed, consider it to be outright quackery and an abuse of a vulnerable sick individual. The reader is left questioning whether such revered scientists, medics and oncologists have ever taken the time to evaluate the research or are just so fixated in relying on quantitative research data that they are fearful of making a clinical application in a world of scientific uncertainty, or even applying sound logic from the plethora of persuasive data that currently exists. Courageous and far-sighted health professionals who have braved the hostility of their colleagues are given special acknowledgement in her dedication. Her aim for the text is clear and will, I trust, achieve its objective. Without doubt it provides the discerning health professional, both orthodox and complementary, with key sources of research in the field and to feel confidant that their therapeutic principles are based on sound scientific research. Individuals suffering with cancer, the concerned relative or friend, or the person who wants to prevent cancer particularly where there is a strong genetic risk, should find this book invaluable. It supports the 'lay' reader through provision of the research and science base for using nutrition as part of their management plan and strengthens their case for pursuing support rather than expecting derision from their doctors and specialists in successfully implementing a sound nutritional protocol. The hard work over the past decade that Sandra Goodman has put into compiling the database of research for the Bristol Cancer Help Centre is a resource to all. The book has taken key data from the database and those studies included in this, the third printing, covers key research from 1998-2003. I strongly recommend that health professionals and the public alike make maximum use of the research database to further the clinical application of nutrition in the prevention and management of cancer. The synergy of nutrients is superbly highlighted helping to explain the anomaly of the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta Carotene Cancer Prevention Study Group, which found an 18% higher incidence of lung cancer in Finnish male smokers, aged 50-69, who received beta carotene, as compared to those who did not. This research finding left the author with many questions, which were addressed in the Update research section of the book. Recent in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated that beta-carotene itself may act as an anti-carcinogen, but carcinogenesis may be facilitated by its oxidized products. The lungs produce an oxygen-rich environment providing the right medium for the unstable beta-carotene molecule to be oxidized in the free-radical-rich environment of a smoker's lungs. Vitamin E and C help protect the unoxidised form of beta-carotene. A complex of antioxidant nutrients is suggested as an appropriate way forward. The continued belief that 'hard' scientific data represents the ultimate in scientific research is somewhat naive when applied to complex, multivariate, highly adaptive systems as found in the human organism. Scientific inquiry for the 21st century must find ways of addressing complexity and draw logical conclusions and strategies for prevention and intervention that are free of personal, political and industrial vested interest. Dr Sandra Goodman has contributed professionally to the future of nutrition and cancer by this book. It should be a well-thumbed text on the shelves of every health care professional, academic and public library. Given that almost all of us will have a brush with cancer either personally or through a close relation or friend, it would not go amiss as a reference book in every home.

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Preface \| Preface (3rd edition) \| Introduction \| Review by Beata Bishop \| Review by Kate Neil Preface by Richard A. Passwater Preface for the third edition by Pat Pilkington MBE Introduction for the third edition Book Review by Beata Bishop Book Review by Kate Neil Nutrition and Cancer: State of the Art Let me start by declaring an interest. I did have a particularly virulent form of cancer, and I recovered from it twenty years ago solely on a nutrition-based therapy. Clearly, for that reason alone I would approach this book in a positive spirit. But leaving my personal bias aside, I feel that this third, updated edition of Nutrition and Cancer is even more topical and important than when it first appeared in 1995. Then it sounded a brave, new and to many ears eccentric note in the deadly silence that surrounded the subject. (I recall the kindly patronizing voice of my truly caring and humane oncologist when he told me that diet had nothing to do with cancer...) What that first edition of Sandra Goodman's thoroughly researched book provided was clear evidence, based on the results of international research, that nutrition had a huge role to play in the prevention and treatment of cancer and that the medical profession was studiously ignoring that evidence. Today, eight years later, the medical profession continues to do so, thus lagging behind the health-conscious part of the public and even behind the Government, which urges us to eat five portions and fruit and veg a day, to help prevent cancer and other degenerative diseases. We have come some way. But there are still many battles ahead. And this is where Sandra Goodman's updated book provides much needed ammunition. Is it significant, I wonder, that while the jacket of the first edition looked restrained in silver and blue, the current one is fiery red? There is no lack of fire in the contents, either, but the author's passionate beliefs and anger over the financial, political and commercial interests interfering with the medical establishment never affect the detachment and objectivity that is the precondition of good science. Yet both in the introduction and in the first chapter Dr Goodman gives full vent to her frustration, as she contemplates the near-epidemic rise of cancer incidence, the depressing mortality figures, the vast sums invested in conventional oncological equipment, and the medical establishment's rigid refusal to consider alternative methods. The title of Chapter 1, Nutrition and Cancer: Success is a Well-Kept Secret tells it all. To go through this slim volume is a crash course in all matters nutritional. The author has the gift of taking her readers by the hand, so to speak, and make clear to them material which for the lay person might otherwise appear difficult. She devotes a chapter each to the most important vitamins in the field of prevention and treatment - Vitamins C, A/Beta Carotene, and E are methodically presented, their roles explained, and illustrated with the results of relevant research from the world over. Next, the role of selenium, zinc, folic acid and Vitamin B12 is similarly explained; the function of Essential Fatty Acids concludes the presentation. Chapter 7 takes a hard look at the methodology of conventional research and finds it inadequate. Randomised Clinical Trials may work for testing a new drug, but they are considered 'too blunt' by some health practitioners, who feel that numbers don't tell the whole story - qualitative data are just as important. Indeed. If doctors refuse to consider any data unless they are based on a trial of minimum 250 participants and reject fully documented remarkable recoveries as anecdotal evidence, how will they ever discover anything new and effective? After all, it's individuals and not statistics that fall ill, suffer and die. Further chapters describe the best-known alternative dietary regimes, and certain cancer treatment substances used by the alternative-complementary camp, including Iscador, based on mistletoe and widely used in Germany and Switzerland; shark cartilage; antineoplastons, and Laetrile, the controversial remedy made from apricot kernels. CoEnzyme Q10, another innovative substance was actually put on the medical map by two Danish doctors and has accordingly gained more acceptance than the others. Dr Goodman calls these "up-and-coming treatments", and adds a lucid summary of psychoneuroimmunology, the study of the body-mind link in sickness and health, which is bound to grow in importance as time goes by. And so we reach the final part, entitled 'Update: 1998-2003', another galaxy of research data, dietary studies, guidelines and advice. The material is dazzlingly international. Much of it comes from the USA; the rest is from New Zealand, Norway, France, India, Poland, Italy, Japan, Greece, Chile and Germany. That in itself is hopeful - a sign of many little green shoots appearing worldwide, with scientists questioning the 'received wisdom' of orthodox cancer medicine and urging new approaches. By gathering all this material and presenting it in such a clear and digestible form, Sandra Goodman has been playing an important role in the process ever since 1993, when she set up a pioneering database on cancer and nutrition, for the Bristol Cancer Help Centre. To spread the news about the scientific basis for nutritional approaches, she then wrote the first version of Nutrition and Cancer - State-of-the-Art. The rest is not history, but the continuation of a vital work. Based on my personal experience and on my work over twenty years with cancer patients, I am convinced that the only truly effective way forward for cancer medicine is the double track of nutritional healing and psychological support, integrated with whatever else individuals may need. Anything else, i.e. nothing but the conventional model with its insistence on 'more of the same' - surgery, radio- and chemotherapy is bound to bring disappointment. This book is a good guide to finding the better path.

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Preface | Preface (3rd edition) | Introduction | Review by Beata Bishop | Review by Kate Neil
Preface by Richard A. Passwater
Preface for the third edition by Pat Pilkington MBE
Introduction for the third edition
Book Review by Beata Bishop
Book Review by Kate Neil

Nutrition and Cancer : Introduction for the third edition

Considerable time has passed since the original publication of this title (1995) and its second printing (1998). During the early 1990s there was an urgent need to provide professional researchers, medical professionals and cancer patients with reputable published research regarding the many proven facts and demonstrable associations in the giant field of Nutrition and Cancer.
In fact, when I compiled the original database for the Bristol Cancer Help Centre in 1993/94, there were over 5000 database entries from Medline just covering the preceding seven years! Since that time, now almost a decade later, and with the advent of many wonderful books, journals and publications, including my own Positive Health magazine and the internet, the bookshelves and internet sites are overflowing with published research about the numerous tangible effects of Diet and Nutrition, including Antioxidant Vitamins and Minerals, Fatty Acids, specific Dietary regimens, Molecular Action of Nutrients upon the progress of Cancer.

This, the Third Printing of Nutrition and Cancer: State-of-the-Art, provides a comprehensively referenced update of the research from 1998-2002, a Further Reading and Suggested Internet Site Guide, as well as suggested Guidelines both for Diet and Nutritional Supplements.

I shall be eternally grateful to Pat Pilkington MBE who originally commissioned me to compile the Cancer and Nutrition database for the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, not realizing at the time, how enormous the task is to keep up to date with research.
Now, some ten years later, publishing research updates monthly in Positive Health, I have come to the conclusion that the research is vital, but almost as important or perhaps even more important, is the agenda of the medical profession, the government and the health service, who to date, by and large, still do not acknowledge the vast role played by nutrition in cancer treatment and still does not apply nutritional solutions to cancer treatment.

In fact, with the passage of the EU Supplement Directive in 2002, gravely restricting specific supplements and their dosages available to consumers, the fight for the right of the public to protect their health by taking nutritional supplements looms large for the foreseeable future.

Thus, I anticipate that the tasks for the next decade will have to be, in addition to performing, compiling and keeping abreast of Nutrition research, also to fight t

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Nutrition and Cancer : Preface for the third edition by Pat Pilkington MBE

Who would have believed when we started the Bristol Cancer Help Centre in 1980 that nutrition and health would command such wide and general public interest by the turn of the century? We were labelled as cranks and quacks then, and the whole idea that a disease like cancer could be influenced by what you eat was ridiculed and derided.
It was to demonstrate that serious, widespread and scientifically sound research existed for nutritional approaches to cancer, that in 1993 we called on Sandra Goodman PhD to create a substantial and far reaching cancer and nutrition database. From this widespread evidence base, it was possible to see how much hard work had gone into providing the medical profession with life saving information. Almost all of this research has been completely disregarded and ignored. It is astonishing! So much good time, so much money, such years of hard work, all ignored.
The database, however, proved very popular and to further explain and describe the scientific basis for nutritional approaches to cancer, Sandra Goodman PhD wrote the book Nutrition and Cancer. From the start it had wide appeal and quickly went to a second edition. Patients found it a godsend to have all the information they needed at their fingertips. Complementary practitioners were delighted to have the evidence they sought from reputable scientific sources and quickly added it to their reference libraries. And slowly, bit by bit, doctors here and there began to get the message, learning from their patients that nutrition had a part to play in the recovery of health.

At the time of this printing of the third edition of Nutrition and Cancer it is true to say that patients are still advised to eat cream buns by hospital dieticians! Nevertheless the message coming from the Department of Health has changed radically. You can hardly read a magazine or open a newspaper without being advised to eat five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day. Listing the causes of cancer, Government places nutrition firmly ahead of all other risks, except smoking. Finally the message is getting home that fresh, whole and if possible, organic food can and will lead to a healthier nation. Even if this change of heart is dictated by the outrageous costs of the NHS, nevertheless it is heartening to know that the pendulum is beginning to swing in favour of healthy nutrition.

Change is most needed, of course, in the field of cancer prevention. People may be prepared to change the dietary habits of a lifetime when they are faced with a diagnosis of cancer but it is an uphill task to convince people that prevention is better than cure. There has, however, been an enormous shift of consciousness in a comparatively short time. Books like Sandra Goodman's Nutrition and Cancer have played a vital role in persuading people that the evidence is out there, that the research already exists to prove the point. We owe a great debt of gratitude to scientists like Dr Goodman for doing the hard work for us; for collecting and collating the evidence to show that what you eat can have a profound influence on your health. Now patients and doctors can see for themselves how far research in the field of nutrition and cancer has progressed over the past decade.

To anyone who has just picked up this book in idle curiosity and has read thus far I would say: you have pure gold in your hands! Contained within these covers is information that can change and shape your life. If you have responsibility for the health of others, you have here enough evidence to help and heal those who look to you for guidance and succour. I know from the past decade what this book has done for patients who have come from far and wide to the Bristol Cancer Help Centre. The vital information contained here is easily accessed, and enjoyable to read.

A marked change is taking place in the very fabric of society's approach to medical care. It is important that patients take responsibility for their own health as far as possible. Commitment to this care of self is proportional to self-esteem and self-empowerment, and may most tangibly be observed in the daily relationship each one of us has to food and to nourishment.

Pat Pilkington MBE
Co-Founder
Bristol Cancer Help Centre
February 2003

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Nutrition and Cancer : Preface - Richard A. Passwater, Ph D.

Nutrition and Cancer: State of the Art will save countless lives and reduce needless suffering by bringing the latest health advances to the attention of both health professionals and the public. Here, many readers will find the precise information that will be life-saving to them. This vital information may also serve humanity in a manner not directly intended by Dr. Goodman. The facts in this book, gleaned from many thousands of scientific and medical articles, may become the database used to prevent the political blunder that could otherwise take away free access to the effective nutrients that the public needs for optimal health. Thus, this book is doubly timely, firstly because it presents life-saving information to readers and secondly because it presents information that the public can call to the attention of the Ministry of Health to dissuade them from allowing the United Kingdom to downgrade its health policies to the lowest common denominator of the EC where dietary supplements are often restricted to ineffective dosages.
In Nutrition and Cancer: State of the Art, Dr. Goodman succinctly condenses over 5000 scientific and medical research reports on nutrition and cancer alone. This is no easy task but Dr. Goodman clearly distils the important facts from the background information with sufficient detail and references to satisfy professionals without too much information to confuse or bore the general reader.
Unfortunately, too many physicians in practice are unaware of the extensive depth of evidence about nutrients preventing and alleviating many deadly diseases. These reports are beginning to trickle down to the practising physicians but they often have the feeling that this research is only elementary, fragmentary and not meaningful. This misconception is largely due to the fact that medical school curricula have little involvement with nutrition as almost all of the available time is allotted to basics, drugs and surgery. Nutrition and Cancer: State of the Art will be a fascinating guide to the practitioner who wishes to enter the new nutrition and health information superhighway. Through her professional newsletters and scientific articles, Dr. Goodman has raised the awareness of many health professionals as to the experimentally increasing evidence of the role of nutrients in health.

When one considers the many scientific and medical contributions of Dr Sandra Goodman PhD, two of the most important are her scholarship and ability to educate both professional and public alike. In this book, she continues to break new ground as she did so effectively in Vitamin C: The Master Nutrient. Examples of this new ground includes her discussion of the role of Coenzyme Q-10 in overcoming breast cancer, adjunct and alternative therapies and many other newly discovered relationships between food components and cancer.

This book is aptly named because her research keeps her at the state of the art and she integrates the new knowledge from the research frontiers into the core of existing knowledge in a manner that clarifies so well the steps that must be taken by individuals. This is a strong point of the book. Her entire approach is 'person-centred'. She does not advocate imposing a dietary regime on patients in the manner that practitioners often impose drug or surgical treatments. Since every person is unique by virtue of his/her genetics, personality, biochemistry and life style, she teaches the reader how to adapt the latest research findings to each individual.

Richard A. Passwater, Ph. D.
Berlin, Maryland USA.