Last month, I encouraged you to eat, drink and be merry, in moderation. And that advice holds true for drinking a toast, socializing and partaking in some of your favorite foods on the holiday table.
But while you indulge in the holiday festivities, beware of the holiday “sugar rush.” New research out of Belgium found a clear link between sugar consumption and cancer.
Of course, for decades, government health “experts” gave sugar a free pass. They said as long as you burn off the calories, sugar doesn’t pose a health risk.
Eventually, they came to admit sugar’s role in the development of obesity and Type II diabetes.
Not to mention, sugar can also cause diabetic complications in the blood vessels, brain, nerves, eyes, heart, and kidneys. (Metformin, which derives from a natural remedy, is the only drug shown to prevent these complications. And the new diabetes drugs certainly don’t prevent them.)
Sadly, government entities are still less likely to admit the role sugar plays in various other chronic diseases…
For one, research suggests that sugar plays a role in the development of Alzheimer’s dementia, which I call, “Type III diabetes.” And sugar consumption most certainly plays a role in the development of cardiovascular disease, the nation’s No. 1 killer.
But starting in the 1960s, the sugar industry began to secretly campaign to deflect the blame for heart disease away from sugar and onto dietary cholesterol and fats. Of course, zero evidence backed this claim. So, the sugar industry hired researchers to secretly “whitewash” or “sugar coat” all the research about sugar.
And then there’s cancer…
National Cancer Institute turns blind eye to sugar
I vividly recall the “benign” attitudes about sugar early on in my career in the 1980s.
The U.S. Congress had just directed the National Institutes of Health to finally start looking at the role of nutrition in chronic disease. They also directed the National Academy of Sciences Food and Nutrition Board to compile a compendium of all the research evidence to date, documenting the role of nutrition in cancer specifically.
There was absolutely nothing in that compendium report on the link between sugar and cancer.
Well, let me clarify that statement…
There was a sentence or two about it. And they both dismissed the role of sugar in cancer.
I was astounded.
At the time, I was a young research scientist in the new Diet and Cancer Research program at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). And I remember asking the political science bureaucrats who ran the NCI about this particular oversight. Of course, they quickly shut me down and gave sugar a “free pass.”
Instead, the NCI went on to waste decades and billions of dollars running after fats, and even proteins, as the supposed causes cancer.
None of it made much sense to me…
At the time, we knew how cancer cells grow. In order to do so, they need more oxygen and glucose (a type of sugar created when our body digests certain foods —which is then used for energy). And we were aware of the fact that cancer tumors deviously cause the growth of new blood vessels (a process known as “angiogenesis”) that supply the cancer with even more blood — also filled with oxygen and glucose (blood sugar).
No excuse for ignorance
We’d known about the connection between sugar and cancer for 35 years. Otto Warburg (1883-1970) had won a Nobel Prize for his research into it.
Warburg was a German physician and physiologist, and son of a prominent physicist. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize 47 times. And he was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1931. (He received it for both medicine and physiology).
Specifically, Warburg and his colleagues studied how human cells convert sugar into energy. All his work led Warburg to conclude the following about cancer:
“Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.”
Let me further simply Warburg’s two points:
- Sugar is a primary cause of cancer.
- Cancer cells stop taking in as much oxygen and begin fermenting more sugar.
Warburg was frustrated by lack of acceptance of his ideas. And he often stated a quote he attributed to Max Planck: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
I suppose enough funerals have occurred because today, after being set aside for 70 years, the sugar-cancer connection is — yet again — garnering attention.
Belgian scientists’ eye-opening report
In a new report published in the journal Nature Communications, Belgian scientists explain how yeast with high levels of glucose overstimulate the same proteins found mutated inside human cancer tumors, making cancer cells grow faster.
The researchers started investigating sugar’s link to cancer a decade ago by looking at the “Warburg Effect.” (The aptly-named Warburg Effect explains how cancer cells create energy through the rapid break-down of glucose — not seen in normal cells. This extra energy fuels cancer tumor growth.)
The lead researcher of the new study told USA Today, “This link between sugar and cancer has sweeping consequences.”
Of course, in that same USA Today article, a scientist with the American Cancer Society (ACS) made it all sound very complicated. And she wouldn’t admit the truth about something that a Nobel laureate figured out 70 years ago.
What’s so complicated? It’s pretty simple, actually.
Cancer cells harm you because they grow faster than normal cells.
And they need more oxygen (blood) and energy (sugar) in order to grow faster.
In fact, some modern oncology drugs may work by cutting off the blood supply to tumors. And now, maybe finally, someone will talk about cutting off sugar too.
For my full report on the cancer-sugar connection, look for the January 2018 issue of my Insiders’ Cures newsletter. In it, you can also learn about how natural constituents — such as vitamins and herbal remedies — can prevent or slow the growth of new blood vessels to essentially starve cancer tumors. (If you’re not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here.)