Cancer-Fighting Foods: What to Eat to Stay Healthy | Dr. Mark Hyman

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. And vitamin D itself is anti-cancer. Lots of herbs and spices are also great. Rosemary, oregano, thyme, basil, bay leaf, garlic, parsley. Just think about it. Your kitchen is your pharmacy. Your kitchen is your anti-cancer headquarters. Okay? Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hymen Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, Supplement Store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products. Welcome back to another episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy and Health Bites, where we take juicy little bites into current health topics. Dr. Mark Hyman, and today we're diving into a topic that's crucial for all of us: how our diet can help prevent cancer. Cancer rates are on the rise, especially among young people, and understanding the connection between what we eat and our risk for this disease is more important than ever. We're going to explore the many root causes of cancer, including the significant role of chronic inflammation. This isn't just about big, obvious triggers, but also the everyday factors like poor diet, environmental toxins, and even stress. But don't worry, it's not all bad news. I'll explain how you can use food as medicine to fight back against these risks, from eating a variety of colorful veggies and fiber-rich whole grains to incorporating antioxidant-packed spices. We'll cover practical, tasty ways to nourish your body and reduce your cancer risk. So join me as we unlock the powerful connection between diet and cancer prevention and discover how you can take control of your health with every meal. So let's jump right in. First, let's talk about what drives cancer so we can better understand how we can use food as medicine to help prevent it. Now, there are many root causes of cancer. Depends on the person, genetics, and everything they're exposed to throughout their lifetime. Something we call the exposome. But chronic inflammation is one of the most common drivers of cancer. Now, this is chronic sterile inflammation, not infection. And it could be why cancer is on the rise in younger people. The development and the progression of cancer, it happens downstream of chronic low-grade inflammation. So how does that work? How does chronic inflammation drive cancer? Well, it creates a microenvironment that supports tumor development, tumor growth, and tumor progression. In other words, metastasis. Inflammatory mediators, things like cytokines, they promote DNA damage. They inhibit something called apoptosis, which is basically programmed cell death, getting rid of damaged cells. it stops the process of actually getting rid of all the cells that are going to turn to cancer. It also enhances angiogenesis, which is the formation of new blood vessels that supply tumors with blood and nutrients for growth, which they need otherwise they die if they have no blood supply. Inflammation processes can also cause changes to your DNA through something called epigenetic modifications. If you eat bad food and junk food and ultra-processed food, you are going to be silencing something called the tumor suppressor gene suppressor genes. Genes that suppress cancer. Or even worse, you're going to be activating genes that cause cancer called oncogenes. Oncology is cancer. Oncogenes are cancer-causing genes. These are genetic mutations that turn on tumors and it's caused by what we're eating and that further promotes cancer development. All right, so let's back up a little bit and go into what causes chronic inflammation. So many things. First, living in our modern world, just being alive today is an inflammatory state. We have a constant exposure to environmental toxins, things that we never had before like PFAS chemicals, bisphenol A or BPA, microplastics, and the list goes on and on. We're going to get into some more of those. Poor diet, or ultra-processed diet, or sedentary lifestyle, the open prescribing of drugs, just aging itself causes higher risk, leaky gut, food sensitivities, food allergies, hormonal imbalances, and more. All these potentially drive inflammation. Now, Hippocrates once said that all disease begins in the gut. And for the purpose of this conversation, we're going to follow his advice and start in the gut. So how do imbalances in your gut microbiome lead to cancer? Now, this is really fascinating stuff. It's cutting edge stuff. So you're not hearing about this everywhere, but we're going to get into it today. A healthy gut contains a whole diverse population of bugs, of microorganisms that play key roles in your digestion, in a nutrient absorption and your immune function. Why? Because 60% of your immune system lives in your gut. It's right underneath the lining of your gut. Why? Because you're exposed to the outside world and it's trying to protect you from all the bad stuff inside your gut, which is poop and food. Now, good gut bacteria make something called postbiotics. We've heard of prebiotics like fiber or probiotics like lactobacillus, but there's something called postbiotics. These are molecules metabolites of bacteria in your gut. They can be good or bad. So they're called postbiotics and they're made by what you're eating and feeding the bacteria in your gut. Now there's a lot of them, but some of them are really important in regulating cancer. For example, butyrate is an anti-cancer compound made by your microbiome when you have good bugs in there. They also make other compounds like acetate and propionate. These are metabolites that are produced by bacterial fermentation of fiber and all the polyphenols, all those colorful compounds and veggies and fruits that supports the integrity of the gut lining. And the gut lining is so important because without healthy gut lining, basically all that poop and food is leaking into your bloodstream and causing your immune system to go crazy. Now these metabolites, they're called short chain fatty acids, they have anti-cancer properties. They regulate our immune system, they help fight inflammation. And when there's a good balance of these microorganisms, that's great. But when that balance is disrupted, it leads to an overgrowth of the bad bacteria and a reduction in the beneficial bacteria. So it's like getting weeds in your garden. The good plants, they get crowded out by the bad weeds, right? And bad bacteria are bad because they release poisons, toxins. We call them endotoxins. That just means an internal toxin. And those endotoxins get into your system through a leaky gut and they also cause a leaky gut and they cause inflammation. and the imbalances in your gut microbiome that cause this problem is called dysbiosis. Now dysbiosis can compromise the integrity of the gut lining. It makes you have a leaky gut, and leads to something called increased intestinal permeability, and the basic lay term is leaky gut. Now basically think about your gut as one cell lining that protects you from the outside world, and the cells are stuck together like Legos. They have something called tight junctions. when those are damaged, which happens because of bad gut bacteria and all our processed food and emulsifiers and additives and all this crap, you separate these cells and then the food and bacteria can leak in between the cells and get into your bloodstream and then right underneath your gut lining is your immune system. So that's why this is such a big deal. And when you have this leaky gut, it allows toxins and undigested food particles and pathogens, bacteria to enter the bloodstream and your body is like, wow, this is not me. that leads to an overactive immune system and chronic inflammation throughout the body. It affects everything, not just cancer, but everything. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, literally everything. Autoimmune disease, asthma, allergies, autism, ADD, depression, the list goes on and on and on. We're talking about cancer here. Now, the immune system responds to these foreign substances by what? By doing what it's supposed to do. It's like, this ain't me. It triggers an inflammatory response. So it's bad. when you have bad bugs. And most of us have bad bugs in our gut. So how does this standard American diet, the sad diet, disrupt our gut microbiome? Well, it's because it's so rich in bad stuff like ultra-processed foods, which are energy dense, but they contain a lot of other stuff like added sugars, sweeteners, refined grains, bad fats, toxins, actual literal toxins. chemical additives, preservatives, PFAS, phthalates, things that are just poisons that damage the gut. Now this feeds and grows the bad bacteria and it reduces something called bacterial diversity. You want an ecosystem like a rainforest, complex, diverse, resilient. You don't want a monocrop cornfield that can go out just like that with some adversity. And we are having a low bacterial diversity in our modern world. Now beneficial bacteria, the good ones, like Bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus, Akkermansia, Faecibacterium and Roseburia. They're lower, you have to remember all those names, by the way. I'm just telling you because it's all the bugs that are the good ones. You can get to know them if you want. They're nice, actually. But they're lower in abundance when you have a Western diet. So when you have all these bad foods, you all the good bugs go down and you get less of these good short chain fatty acids, less of these good anti-cancer compounds. that your gut naturally produces. Now, in the other hand, when you eat this processed diet, it increases the abundance of something called pro-inflammatory bacteria. These like Ruminococcus proteobacteria, which produce pro-inflammatory compounds called LPS. LPS stands for lipopolysaccharides, doesn't really matter. Basically these are like poisons and these bacteria produce these poisons and they get into the system, they leak in and they start creating an inflammatory response. Now we can look at the gut in many ways, and I've seen so many stool tests. I used to call me Dr. See Every Poop at my old job at Canyon Ranch, because I looked at every stool test. And we look at a lot of different factors. We can look at levels of bacteria. We can look at levels of short chain fatty acids. We can look at ratios of good and bad bacteria. But there's a ratio of something called Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes. When you have a high ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes, these are basically categories of bacteria. It is linked to obesity and diabetes and metabolic disease. but a high ratio has also been seen with breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and it's really important to consider as a broader picture of the overall microbial diversity and your individual health and genetics. Now, in a study that was titled, Intake of Sugar and Food Source of Sugar and Colorectal Cancer Risk, in the multi-ethnic cohort study, blah, blah, blah, whatever, they're like these long names, the researchers noted that total sugar, Total fructose, glucose, and maltose, all different kinds of sugar, were associated with an increased risk for colorectal cancer, especially in younger people. Now, this is interesting because colorectal cancer is the number one cause of cancer death among men under 50 and the number two leading cause of cancer death in young women. Now, this isn't static. It's increasing by about 1-2% a year, in adults under 55. There's also a strong link between type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and risk for colorectal, hepatic, pancreatic, breast, endometrial, and lots of other cancers. Now there's something else that's really important here, which is we're all metabolically unhealthy. And there's an enormously strong link between type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, obesity, and there is for so many cancers that are the most common cancers. like colorectal cancer, liver or hepatic cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, endometrial or uterine cancer, and many other cancers. In fact, 48% of all cancers are attributed to obesity, but I think the number is probably a lot higher. And obesity, if you're overweight, is associated with a 40% greater risk of early onset colorectal cancer. That's from the Journal of Gastroenterology. 45% of adults 59 and younger are obese, so a lot of people are at risk. And studies show that diabetes significantly increases the risk of cancer, and that lots of people who have cancer have a high incidence of diabetes. Now get this, up to 80% of pancreatic cancer patients actually have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes or impaired glucose tolerance when they're diagnosed. This is a deadly cancer. It's caused by our diet. [Speaking of the] [Speaking of the] so what else do chronic diseases have in common? Well, insulin resistance, that's what we've just been talking about. And you've heard me talk about it forever. I'm gonna keep talking about it because it's the cause of everything, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia. So how does insulin resistance relate to cancer? Well, insulin is responsible for keeping our blood sugar balanced and stable. Now, insulin is a growth hormone. It causes your fat cells to grow, it causes your belly to grow, but it also binds to and causes cancer cells to grow. So eating a high sugar, high starch, high glycemic diet causes our cells to become resistant to the effects of insulin. And what does that do? Well, that leads your body to produce more and more insulin to keep your blood sugar normal. Now these high levels of insulin are what we call hyperinsulinemia. increases the production of another molecule called IGF-1. That stands for insulin-like growth factor 1. Now, it's a hormone that increases cell division, cell growth, and inhibits autophagy or cellular cleanup. Now, sometimes it's good, it's like Goldilocks, but when you have high levels of IGF-1 from all the sugar, it basically causes cells to continue to grow and divide and prevents them from being killed, okay? Now, high blood sugar is present in 39 to 99% of cancer cases. And that leads to insulin resistance, oxidative stress, chronic inflammation in the body. It also creates something called advanced glycation end products or AGEs. Now, glycation is a chemical reaction. You're familiar with it. When your chicken skin is crispy or your bread has a crust on it, or when you get that creme brulee thing, it's got that crispy thing on top. That's called glycation. It's when sugar and proteins or other Fats bind together and form this basically compound called AGEs or advanced glycation end products. When these glycated products bind to DNA, they bind to proteins and lipids, it causes something called the Mallard reaction, the browning reaction. You've seen this. But the problem is these accumulate in our tissue and they bind to something called RAGEs, receptors for advanced glycation end products. When they bind to those receptors, it activates a whole inflammatory cascade, and that accelerates not only cancer, but also aging itself. And there's lots of sources of ages in our diet. We actually eat them on a regular basis, right? Ultra-processed food is a big source. Dry heat processing is one way. Baked goods, cooking at high temperatures, browned, charred, fried, burnt foods. These ages create damage to your blood vessels, they cause oxidative stress, they reduce blood flow, they cause damage to your DNA, to your tissue, to your mitochondria, they're just bad. Now you can kind of measure this in the blood by something called hemoglobin A1C, which is essentially glycated hemoglobin. It's your hemoglobin, which you can measure easily in your blood and see how much sugar is bound to it. And that kind of gives you a rough idea. There's also an amazing new test called the insulin resistance score from Quest, which allows you to get a really good read on your degree of insulin resistance and how bad it is, because hemoglobin A1C is is a late stage phenomena. And it's great that you can do this test now. And through Function Health, the company I co-founded to allow you access to your own lab data through, you know, just going directly to a Quest Lab and getting your data, very simple process. You can go to functionhealth.com/mark to learn and sign up. But the insulin resistance scores are really important because it really tells you what your risk is. Now, the test we commonly use in medicine now to look at glycation is called hemoglobin A1c. And if it's 6% or higher, it's associated with a high cancer risk in both diabetics and non-diabetics. And even a lower level may be a problem. We find that even levels down to five are probably optimal, but anything over five, you're starting to increase your risk for heart disease and other things. So the cutoffs we have in medicine are arbitrary. We say six, it's six and a half, used to be, and then 5.7, it's prediabetes, 5.5. I mean, it's all a moving target because, you know, we're finding that at lower and lower levels, there's a problem. So basically, you want your hemoglobin A1c as low as possible. Let's look at another big factor that causes cancer. Fructose. Now, fructose is something found in fruit, which is good, but it's not fruit we're talking about here. Epidemiologic or population studies, which don't prove cause and effect, but they found strong associations between high fructose intake from sources like high fructose corn syrup and increased risk of pancreatic and colon cancers. And after you realize we never had this stuff in our food supply until the 70s, there was no high fructose corn syrup. Now it's about 50% of our calories. It's in everything and it's got not 50/50 fructose and glucose like sugar, it might have 55 to 75% fructose, which has all these adverse effects and it's free fructose. Now there's something called the fructose transporter and this is called Glut5. It's not about your glutes, it's called Glut5. And it's overexpressed in cancers like pancreatic, colorectal, breast, lung cancer. Now when you have high Glut5 expression, it basically allows for increased intake or uptake of fructose by cancer cells. And what does that do? That makes them grow because they love the sugar. It causes them to migrate and move around, meaning starting to spread and invasion, meaning metastases. So where are we getting high fructose levels in our diet? It's not from fruit. It's from added sugars and sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup, sucrose and fructose as sweeteners that are in all the ultra-processed food we eat. I mean, it's 60% of our diet is ultra-processed food. so fructose in high fructose corn syrup and all the food ads is bad. So what else could be causing cancer that's in our sad diet? Well, food additives. Over 10,000 chemicals are allowed in the food we eat in the United States. 10,000. And here's what's shocking. 99% of the food chemicals that have been introduced to our food supply since 2000 were approved not by the government, not by the FDA, but approved by the food and chemical companies that made them. It's like the fox guarding the henhouse, right? Since 2,756 new food chemicals have been added to our food supply through a loophole in the law called GRAS, G-R-A-S. It stands for Generally Recognized as Safe. So it seems like, oh, it seems like it's safe. Well, it doesn't seem to be killing anybody right now. So let's just put in the food supply. Now, this grass loophole is a big deal. Food chemical companies exploit this loophole, allowing them to make their own safety determinations for substances that they say are generally recognized as safe. Now, the 1958 Food Additives Amendment intended for rigorous FDA review, meaning if you want to add some new chemical to the food, the FDA has to review the science on this. But this Grass loophole basically has become the main approval route. You basically take the company's word for it that it's safe. How crazy is that? Right? When a company determines a substance is grass, it means they think it's safe among qualified experts. They get a bunch of experts they pay and they say it's safe and then they submit a notice to the FDA. But the process is entirely voluntary and the FDA can review these notices and issue a quote, no questions letter, but it doesn't actually approve these substances or even affirm the company's safety data. So there's all this crap on our food that got in there without any real oversight. Now, due to this loophole, harmful ingredients have been added and continue to be added to our food supply. Let me give an example. Seven carcinogenic flavor ingredients were approved as grass by FEMA. This is the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association, not a government group, an industry trade group. This is a group that reviews and approves nearly all flavor ingredients. But these ingredients were later banned in 2018 after a petition by the Environmental Working Group for being linked to cancer in animals. I'm on the board of the Environmental Working Group, so I've been part of this. I get it. It's really bad. Now, food additives are commonly used to enhance the flavor of baked goods, ice cream, candy, chewing gum, beverages, all kinds of stuff. And they got weird chemical names: benzophenone, ethyl acrylate, pyridine, styrene. Do you have these in your cupboard at home that you cook with? I doubt it. The term flavor is this vague label that food manufacturers use to hide chemical names from consumers. It's deliberate. It says it's got natural flavorings, artificial flavorings, blah, blah, blah. You don't even know what it is. A lot of other grass substances, which are not approved in other countries, include BHA, which is classified as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program. BHT or butylated hydroxytoluene, would you put that in your salad? It's in everything. And that has been determined to disrupt endocrine function by causing change to thyroid and also affects animal development and fetal development. Now, BHT isn't everything. It's in cereal, chewing gum, potato chips, vegetable oil, baked goods, cakes, biscuits, crackers, pastries, everywhere. And it's banned in Europe. We're going to get to that in a minute. There's another thing we have to think about with food, which are the toxins in food, pesticides, and all other toxins. So how do you avoid those? Well, avoid processed and packaged foods. All that BPA is in the plastics, in the cans, in the packaging. Phthalates, the forever chemicals, PFAS, microplastics that leach into our food from packaging, from the manufacturing processes, it's in our water, in our soil, make sure you filter your water. In fact, Consumer Reports tested food products for phthalates, which is one of these toxic chemicals, from 67 grocery stores and 18 fast food chains, and found that levels vary dramatically. Some of the worst offenders for having these chemicals were Coca-Cola, Fairlife Core Power high protein milkshakes, SlimFast, Yoplait, Wendy's crispy chicken nuggets, Chipotle and Moe's Southwest chicken grilled chicken burrito, Burger King Whopper, Cheerios, and the list goes on. Now, I'll put the link to the article in the show notes so you can read it yourself, but I'm not making this stuff. This is real science. Now, lab testing can really help you better understand your risk. I recommend everyone get their lab tests regularly. And that's why I co-founded and I'm the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. The link is functionhealth.com/mark and you can get access. There's 50,000 people who members, but 300,000 on the waitlist. You can jump the waitlist with that code. functionhealth.com/mark. Now, why I created this is to give people access to their own lab data to democratize health. There are over 100 plus biomarkers that are tested for just $4.99 a year, twice a year testing, and you get comprehensive testing that gives you an idea of where you're headed, what's your metabolic health. For example, fasting insulin is tested in less than 1% of all lab tests by your doctor. But that's really important as we've just talked about. Cardiometabolic health, which looks at your insulin resistance. through your cholesterol test, your blood sugar, your A1C, remember the glycated hemoglobin, your white cells, your red cells, your platelets, all important in looking at cancer. Nutritional status, which plays a big role in cancer, like vitamin D and the omega-3s, the B vitamins like homocysteine, highly linked to cancer, zinc, iron, magnesium, really important, B12, all these play a role in your immune system. Looking at inflammation is important, high CRP, because you can see, we were seeing 46% of the population that we're testing have a high C-reactive protein. That's terrifying to me. Everybody's walking around inflamed and they don't know it. And as we've talked about, inflammation is a huge driver of cancer. We also look for other things that cause cancer, like stress, cortisol levels, uric acid, another important marker looking at your metabolic health, sex hormones can be linked to cancer like estrogen and so forth, liver enzymes to show how well you're detoxifying heavy metals we can see. We're able to do other things even like PFAS chemicals, BPA we're going to be testing. All these tests, we're going to be able to show you what's going on in your body. You also may want to look at other tests like a microbiome analysis, you might want genetic testing. But we do also something called the gallery test. And this is something really important to me. The gallery cancer test, we do it function. And we've seen a tremendous amount, a surprising amount of cancer in a relatively young population. In fact, one of every 188 people that gets tested with the gallery test has a positive test. And there are is less than half a percent false positives and it picks up the cancers when they're often missed by regular treatments. A year or two or three before regular screening tests will pick them up and they could save your life. So personally, I think this should be done every year starting probably about 40. I'm certainly doing it. I've had two cancer deaths, my father and my sister died. So I'm definitely checking mine and the sooner you know the better. There are other tests to do. We do, for example, looking at toxin load, mitochondria, test in Germany I use called IGL, but this is really important to know what's going on in your body, to track yourself over time, to get your data and to kind of clean up your life so you can dramatically reduce your risk. So as we wrap up today's episode, it's really clear the power of food goes far beyond just nutrition. By understanding the root cause of cancer and the role of chronic inflammation, we can take proactive steps to protect our health, which is really important. Remember, making informed choices about what we eat and opting for whole, nutrient-dense foods and avoiding all that ultra-processed crap can make a huge difference in reducing our cancer risk. So I want to thank you for joining me on this journey on this critical link between diet and cancer prevention. And I hope today's discussion empowers you to make healthier choices and take control of your well-being. Don't forget to check out the show notes for additional resources and information and keep tuning in for more insights into how you can take control of your health in ways that empower and rejuvenate. And thanks again for joining me and see you next Friday for another juicy episode of Health Bites. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. 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Thank you again and we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I'm the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorse the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, just go to ultrawellnesscenter.com if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifm.org and search find a practitioner database. 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