The Rainbow Diet

'The Rainbow Diet - and how it can help you beat cancer'

On the very day my new book went to print, the British Journal of Cancer reported a new Harvard Medical School study with the headline 'MEDITERRANEAN DIET CUTS CANCER RISK'. Not that my book is simply about the Mediterranean diet. It is an attempt to look at the facts on food and all sorts of diets to help people build a diet that can help prevent, and also correct if they already have the disease. Its full title is 'The Rainbow Diet - and how it can help you beat cancer'. It was launched on July 14th (Bastille Day!!) 2008.

Five years of study and all the research that has crossed my desk has gone into The Rainbow Diet. In the book I look at the research available on various cancer prevention diets, and then I look into their relevance if you already have cancer.

 

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Many people are using diets that just won't deliver

I explore which foods and natural compounds have what benefits and, in doing so. I explode a number of common beliefs. For example, many people with cancer are using just bits of supposed prevention diets and frankly wasting their time!

However, I also look into claims from top Professors that changing your diet makes not a jot of difference once you have cancer and show that, not only are they at odds with the UK Cancer Plan, but there is good research on disciplined and thorough 'Diet Therapies' including ones with clear Clinical Trials on their success. The issue is how do normal cancer patients replicate this discipline and thoroughness?

I explore the Truth behind foods and diets, and how officialdom in the West - including Governments and Doctors - actually misleads us through a mixture of ignorance, vested interest and handed-down mythology. I review the research into everything you ingest from organic food to tap water and from good fats to the need for sunshine.

Does your diet do this?

And then I rebuild it all giving you the discipline and thoroughness - explaining that cancer is a multi-step process and how certain foods act on the different steps in the process. If you want a Diet to help you beat cancer you need to build a complete, disciplined diet that offers a range of benefits across a range of foods. It is exactly what Boik at MD Anderson argues, and successful Doctors like Gonzalez and Pfeifer put into practice. So, for example, do you know which natural compounds
 - can help kill a rogue cell?
 - can help stop a blood supply forming?
 - can help lower aggressive oestrogen levels?
 - can boost your immune system best
 - can actually improve the success of radiotherapy and chemotherapy?
 - can help stop cancers spreading?

This book gives you the answers - and much, much more

 

Eat-to-beat cancer

We've all heard that this vitamin can help beat cancer, and that mineral helps too. But then there is always a piece of research that muddies the water - sometimes with good reason. The Rainbow Diet tells you the truth about this. It also tells you that research has moved on significantly. For the last 8 years or so many natural compounds have been studied and their benefits in fighting cancer have truly surprised the researchers. There are herbs that seem to stop certain cancers better than the drugs on offer, natural compounds that are better than the breast cancer drugs on offer, others that prevent HPV infection turning into cervical cancer, others that stop liver cancers, others that fight brain tumours, and many more.

 

All these findings are pulled together in a series of 'eat-to-beat' chapters - for example on oestrogen, insulin, inflammation, yeasts and microbes; or eat-to-boost your immune system, or eat-to-oxygenate your cells, or eat-to-improve your radiotherapy or chemotherapy result. Oh, and lots more!

The French Connection

Importantly, I look at all the various diets that people turn to when they want to 'beat cancer'. For example, the South East Asian Diet, macrobiotics, or the Vegetarian Diet. And I tell you why many, many people are completely wasting their time, and even increasing their risks.

I also explore the French Paradox: That the French eat more fat and drink more alcohol than anyone else in Europe, yet have less heart attacks and less cancer; a fact that has sat uneasily with Western Government recommendations to cut fat and alcohol if you want to avoid those diseases.

Again I go into the research: That their diets from olive oil, to honey, fish, figs and aubergines, from natural berries, to garlic, red wine, and sunshine, organic local, often self-grown foods - each and all of these produce natural compounds that PROTECT you. These French folk may well be making 'rogue' cells and even creating daily illnesses, but their diets include natural compounds that correct and protect, making prevention - and even cure - a reality. And I use research to explain why. (In fact the area around Gascony has the very highest consumption of fats - and the very lowest levels of cancer and heart disease - the geographers amongst you will immediately know that Gascony is not actually on the Mediterranean). Did you also know, for example that low cholesterol is associated with HIGHER rates of cancer?

And I review all the research on the Mediterranean diet - and explain which foods do what. But how they cannot 'do it all' and there are other 'factors' you need to add to complete the picture and ensure your 'home-made Diet Therapy' really does deliver.

 

Stop confusing 'nourishment' with 'eating'

The increasing problem in the UK is that we fill our supermarket shelves with refined pap, sugar and salt is hidden in all manner of packaged foods, fruit and vegetables may come from the other side of the world picked unripe to improve 'shelf life', many have pesticide levels that exceed the limits set (according to the FSA), we pooh-pooh organic food preferring to acclaim the new dawn of hydroponic salad vegetables - grown all year round in liquids not soil, with hardly a mineral in sight. Our fields are depleted of minerals, now crop rotation has been forgotten, and even the fertilisers (not just the pesticides) reduce the levels of crucial natural compounds in our foods. Meanwhile, our Government (which could put a stop to the rot immediately), simply says getting cancer is your fault because you eat too much, smoke and take no exercise.

The sad fact is people confuse 'nourishment' with 'eating'; and quality with quantity. We have become little more than scavengers - the human equivalent of rats.

The UK Diet - 'eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day and beware of the sun'.
The French Diet - 'nourish your body with wonderful foods and go in the sun'.

I look into the research behind 'organic foods' - there can no longer be any debate that they do deliver more nourishment. But. I also tell you how you still might be losing out on nourishment even though you are spending a fortune on eating and juicing organic foods - for example, by understanding the importance of beneficial bacteria, often killed off as soon as you start your orthodox treatment programme.

Natural Compounds - the research is there

The latest research from Harvard, merely backs up the studies I cover in the book. (And I have covered so many times in icon, as regular readers will know). In this case it was a study, as part of the European Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), of 26,000 Greeks.

My book, The Rainbow Diet, concludes that there are a number of natural compounds (for which most of the research has occurred since 2000) like Resveratrol from grape skins, polyphenols in olive oil, allicin in garlic, ellagic acid in berries, quercitin in onions and apples, vitamin K and indole-3-carbinol released by beneficial bacteria from 'greens' and broccoli, anthocyanins from deep purple foods like beetroot and figs and so many, many more, that when combined by eating different ones across a few days can make a significant contribution to defeating the process that is called cancer.

Natural Compounds: The more you eat, the bigger the effect

Cancer is not a single step; it is not an event; it is not a cockroach to be trodden on - and I doubt that there will ever be a single drug, vitamin, herb or natural compound that will kill all the parts of the process in a human's body. There could be up to 20 stages - from rogue cells, to full cancer cells, to forming a tumour, developing a blood supply, or sending out cells to form secondaries.

And what does the new Harvard study say?  Lead author Dr Dimitrios Trichopoulos, professor of cancer prevention and epidemiology at Harvard University, said: "Our results show just how important diet is in cancer risk. Of the 26,000 people we studied, those who closely followed a traditional Mediterranean diet were overall less likely to develop cancer.

Although eating more of one food group alone didn't significantly change a person's risk of cancer, adjusting one's overall dietary habits towards the traditional Mediterranean pattern had an important effect. Consuming more good fats – like those found in olive oil – than bad fats – like those found in chips, biscuits and cakes – had the greatest effect, reducing cancer risk by nine per cent. It also showed that making any two changes to your diet, such as eating more peas, beans and lentils and less meat could cut cancer risk by 12 per cent. And the more changes made, the bigger the effect".

I rest my case.

No difference - Prevention or Correction - Foods deliver

One of the biggest myths I explore is the view that 'Diet might work in prevention, to reduce the risk - but it can't work in correction and cure'. I study how we are actually developing illnesses all the time, every day of our lives - and that is exactly how good nourishment works - to correct the 'faults' as they start to appear - so you never really notice them. A 'Good Diet' is like having your personal mechanic on site 24/7 to ensure you never breakdown. A crazy theory?

Only recently another Harvard Professor was talking about how we develop illnesses all the time - almost without knowing it - but providing we have the right nutrients in our bodies we corrected the problem.

And that, in a nutshell, is the basis of The Rainbow Diet: A package of differently pigmented and colourful foods that can each do a different job at correcting your illnesses. Interestingly, the research studies I found suggested a dose-dependent relationship - the more you ate, the more effect.

Pharmaceutical Companies know I'm right

And before the Quack Brigade rush to attack me - let me add that I even list the natural compounds that beat drugs in side by side tests, and talk about the current plans of big Pharmaceutical companies to concentrate and patent them. From vitamin D to indole-3-carbinol, from feverfew to Resveratrol.

The research is there - your Doctor doesn't know it yet

In the USA, so worried are the Medical Directors that Doctors know little or nothing about food, natural compounds, good diet and so on, that each is to receive a 900 page booklet on the subject. And in future it will be included in the Medical Course. What of Britain?

In the Press release on the new research, Cancer Research UK's director of health information (CRUK own BJC but appear to have had nothing to do with the study) said: "This is an important study that helps us to understand more about the simple changes a person can make to their diet to reduce their risk of cancer and improve overall health. Although we know that unhealthy diets generally and being overweight are important risk factors for a number of cancers – the link between individual foods or food types and cancer has been less clear.

It's just not true - all you have to do is read the hundreds of studies produced in the last few years. And that's exactly what I did for The Rainbow Diet - and how it can help you beat cancer.

The research is there, natural compounds when combined in a disciplined and thorough approach can increase your odds of beating cancer - I am absolutely convinced.

 

Click here to get your copy of  The Rainbow Diet - and how it can help you beat cancer