I'm really confused
My aunt was diagnosed with terminal liver and pancreatic cancer, carcinoma. She started itching and her skin became yellow and they thought she suffered with icterus but eventually found the cancer and the metastasis.

She is the fourth member of my family who develop cancer and like the other one she has always been an heavy meat eater with a special dislike for bread, rice and most veggies. She grew eating grilled meat and lot of steak.

My parents are now feeding her vegetables juices and fresh fruits and her health, in spite of their condition, is improving since eating only plants.

I started searching "cancer survivors" and "diet" or "alternative therapies" on the net and I found only references to eating more plants and less meat.

Researchers at the University of Victoria in British Columbia did a follow up on 200 persons who underwent cancer remission and 90% of them had switched to a vegetarian diet.

I found lot of stories of people drinking only carrot juice and healing from cancer but I could found nothing about going into cancer remission while eating roast-beef and lard.

In fact the most ardent zero carb person I know, The Bear, developed cancer several years after switching to an only meat diet. According to his story he had always eaten a lot of meat but switched to an only meat diet in his 20's and developed cancer in his 60's.

Dr. Williard J. Visek a research scientist at Cornell University even claims to have found the reason why meat increases cancer risk, being the metabolism of ammonia.

I think it's kind of thought-provoking that all people in cancer remission are eating lot of veggies and fruits, that all people who switched to a diet with lot of veggies and fruits lived a long life with no more health issues, that there's no information, study or positive statistics about people going into cancer remission eating nothing but meat and that so far all the long term meat eater we know of had severe health problems late in life (Stefansson, The Bear... and others I can't remember)

This is the real life, not some kind of philosophical battle of who's right.
We're all humans and we want to live a long disease free life. My mind is changing about ZC, very low carb and the healthiness of eating lot of meat.

This thread is in the war zone but let's not make this a "war thread"
What I'm going through is really painful and I don't want wars.

Then I think it would be wise to cut through the bullshit quickly and to get to the truth, don't you? Allow me to share my story. My dad married a nice woman who died of brain cancer. She ate less meat than my dad. My dad is still alive and as far as I know doesn't have cancer yet he smoked for over 45 years of his life. Right there I can't stick with the idea that eating meat causes cancer. So what does cause cancer? Well, I vote for sugar.

Sugar (glucose and fructose especially) will bind with protein inside our bodies to produce AGEs (advanced glycation end products). These corrupted proteins don't work right. The enzyme that splits DNA is a protein. If this protein becomes corrupted, we can see the potential for the creation of cancerous cells.

Sugar stimulates insulin which in turn stimulates IGF-1. IGF-1 stimulates cell division. We can see that eating sugar will stimulate the growth of cancer after it has been created.

Sugar contains 50% glucose (starch contains 100% glucose). Cancerous cells can only use glucose for fuel. We can see that sugar is essential to the maintenance of cancerous cells.

Finally, sugar comes from plants, not animals. So how does a vegetarian diet get people better? Simple: They cut sugar from their diet.

Ketones stimulate the recycling of junk protein aka AGEs. This means a direct reduction in the chance of cancer creation. When we eat only meat, we are in constant ketosis throughout the day. When we eat a varied diet, depending on how many carbs we eat per day, then we might be in ketosis some of the time. When we eat only meat, we eat very little, if any, sugar.

But don't take my word for it, look it up for yourself and consider the other posters opinions as well. You are here for a second opinion after all, aren't you?

Best wishes.

But my aunt has been eating very little sugar and doesn't have a sweet tooth. I'm not saying she never ate sugar but a lot less than the majority of people eat.

And if the problem is glucose and fructose, shouldn't people get worse instead of better from drinking carrot juice and eating fresh fruits and veggies?

Anecdotes of people consuming cooked factory farmed meat are not of huge relevance to my own diet. And I don't know why meat is the star of discussions here, when fish is probably an even more evolutionary-appropriate food. Myself? I eat meat only if it's grass-fed, I only cook about half my meat, and I eat it only in the winter. Seafood and plants tide me over the summer.

I used to be a member of a raw vegan site and several members had cancer. It was hard to tell if raw veganism worked for them because they combined it with modern chemo and other therapies. Any study about how these things work would have to deprive people of that, which would be unethical.

Yes, eating more sugar is worse. So is she eating more sugar? Is she eating more or less bread for example?

But I think you're missing the point. If my dad's wife died of cancer, and if she ate less meat than my dad who's still alive without cancer, then it's not the meat that caused cancer, it's something else. So what else did your aunt cut out of her diet? Stop looking at meat, and start looking at everything else.

I think about this all the time. I am not completely sold on eating a bunch of meat either as every culture that has high longevity eats a ton of plants and just a little meat. There is the Warburg(sp?) study where they put the terminal cancer patients on a ketogenic diet and they did very well but I think they were eating at least 80% fat. I am thinking it is the excess protein that is dangerous about eating an all meat diet, after all that's what causes the ammonia in your body right? A ketogenic diet could be good if you make sure to eat the minimum protein you need and basically live off of fat but that is hard to do without dairy(I am against it completely) I know too much meat makes me feel terrible so that is my first clue it isn't doing good stuff in my body. I feel good with lots of fruit/vegs, nuts/coconut, egg yolks, a little fish and meat, but that's me and I still have some intestinal distress.
I guess my goal is to live as long as possible being as healthy as possible so I tend to want to mimic cultures where they are doing that. The inuit and masai are robust and healthy while they're alive but they are not known for their longevity. The greeks and okinawans are and even though I don't plan on eating grains any time soon I wonder if it's good to eat close to what they are eating. Idk it is a lot to think about.

I dunno, put two and two together.

Yep you're right. I have done zc experiments and my intestinal distress does clear up but I can't get past the nausea and fogginess I get. I feel so bad on zc that even though it does fix that one problem for me I don't see how I could live like that for my whole life. DH feels great on all meat so I think I should be feeling great on it too but I feel like I am dying.

She never ate much bread to begin with though, lunch and dinner was meat for her. Now she is drinking lot of carrot juice, eating fresh fruits and greens and nothing else.



I think the study was about people who chose not to have chemo

But let's pretend for a moment that meat does indeed increase cancer risk, that still wouldn't mean that everyone would develop cancer from eating meat, only the people predisposed and falling within the risk percentage. It's the same with your dad smoking a lot and being healthy while there are people who smoke and develop a form of lung cancer that is strictly correlated with their nicotine consumption.

Likewise there are people who eat ton of refined sugar all their life but never develop diabetes or other health issues, still sugar excessive sugar is unhealthy right?

The "predisposed and within the risk range" argument. Considering that cells in my body and cells in anybody else's body has DNA which is divided by the same exact enzyme which can be glycated by the same exact molecule, i.e. glucose, then it's safe to say that we are all equally predisposed to develop cancer. Granted, of course, that we also happen to be in the same risk range. In other words, all other things being equal, developing cancer is merely a question of luck.

I don't believe that. Do you?

No, we're looking at it wrong. Does sugar cause cancer? Yes, it does. So what's the difference then? It's how much sugar it takes for each of us. In other words, it's the dose that makes the poison. With meat, there just isn't any correlation between dose and disease rates. Indeed, those who eat less meat and more vegetables still get colon cancer which is typically linked to eating meat.

But maybe you want to prove that meat causes cancer or you want to find agreeable opinions to that effect? Then do you really want to find the truth?

Even then, there is one common denominator we can count on, it's the absolute amount of sugar we can eat before we fall out of ketosis. That number is around 130 grams per day. Above this and we can be sure that we won't stay in ketosis for long. Below this and we can safely say that we will be in ketosis for most of the day. The reasoning for this is the total amount of glucose we consume during the day and that is pretty much the same for everybody regardless of genetics or any other predisposition. Considering that ketosis stimulates the direct recycling of junk protein, then it's safe to say that this is a good barometer of the actual risk of developing cancer.

Edited.