The Mighty "Hot Dog" - Cancer-causing Nutrition?
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Also refer to: Cancer-Fighting Nutrition
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service,
September 30, 2008
Most Cancer Patients Eating Wrong:
- Hot Dogs Promote Cancer
- Vitamins Prevent Cancer
(OMNS, September 30, 2008) 75% of all Americans do not even eat five servings a day of fruits or vegetables. That is bad enough. It is even worse with cancer patients.
A study of over 9,000 survivors of six different types of cancer showed that only 15% to 19% were meeting the "5-A-Day" recommendation. That means that 81% to 85% were not. The researchers commented that these findings indicate that even a cancer diagnosis may fail to improve fruit and vegetable consumption. (1)
Better nutrition helps cancer patients live longer. This may seem too obvious to state, but its significance is still hidden from the people who most need to know it: the cancer patients themselves. Another study found that "The majority of new patients with cancer presenting to a medical oncologist are at risk of malnutrition or malnourished." (2) Specifically, 66% of patients were either at risk for malnutrition or malnourished. In other words, two out of three new cancer patients are eating wrong. Perhaps very wrong.
The best solution is prevention, and prevention has to start long before cancer. In fact, it starts before birth.
A recent review looked at 45 years of research on the protective effect of prenatal vitamin supplementation on the frequency of childhood cancer. It concluded that ...
- "maternal ingestion of prenatal multivitamins is associated with: a decreased risk for pediatric brain tumors, neuroblastoma, and leukemia."(3)
- Vitamin supplements reduced the chance of a brain tumor by 27 percent.
- Vitamins lowered children's leukemia risk by 39 percent.
- Risk of neuroblastoma was cut in half.
Clearly, prenatal vitamin supplements are very important cancer fighters.
Prevention must then be continued throughout childhood. To illustrate how extraordinarily important vitamin supplements are, consider this: Children who eat hot dogs once a week actually double their risk of a brain tumor. Kids eating more than twelve hot dogs a month have nearly ten times the risk of leukemia as children who eat none. (4) However, hot-dog-eating children taking supplemental vitamins were shown to have a reduced risk of cancer. (5)
Although this research was done over 14 years ago, remarkably little has been said of it in the news media. Howard Straus of the Gerson Institute comments: "When children die from small toy parts, the toys are instantly recalled. When the connection between hot dogs, ham and lunch meat is manifest, and it has been documented numerous times, silence." (6)
But hot dogs? Just how important a factor are hot dogs?
Americans eat an estimated 20 billion hot dogs per year. According to the American Meat Institute's "National Hot Dog and Sausage Council," on a single July 4 day alone, Americans eat "150 million hot dogs, enough to stretch from D.C. to L.A. over five times. During Hot Dog Season, Memorial Day to Labor Day, Americans typically consume 7 billion hot dogs or 818 hot dogs consumed every second during that period." (7) That is a lot of exposure.
What are hot dog eaters exposed to?
Hot dogs and other "cured" meat products typically contain chemical additives such as sodium nitrite, a color and anti-bacterial preservative that has long been suspected as promoting cancer. (8, 9) Now there is a controversial television commercial that spotlights the risks to children. You can watch the commercial at
{Note: Recently, nitrite-free and natural hot dogs have become available. Make sure to read the ingredients carefully ... Also refer to this information about processed meats)
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPaxW3BrgIY_
- Are Your Feeding Your Family "Cancer"
- Pass the Mustard, or Just Pass on the Hot Dog?
The good news is that vitamins such as vitamin C help counteract harmful byproducts (nitrosamines) of heating and eating nitrites. Perhaps this is why nutritionally-oriented physicians have for so long been advocating vitamin supplements along with a no-junk-food diet for children. In addition to cancer prevention, vitamins are part of the cancer cure. Abram Hoffer, M.D., has had considerable success using high doses of vitamins as supportive therapy for over 1,500 cancer patients. He writes that such treatment "has increased the longevity from 5.7 months to approximately 100 months, which is very substantial, and half of the patients are still alive." (10) Vitamin supplements dramatically reduce side effects of cancer therapy, and yet vitamins do not otherwise interfere with conventional cancer treatments such as radiation or chemotherapy. (11) This makes nutritional therapy perfect for adjunctive cancer treatment, and a very good idea for cancer prevention.
- Vitamin C's application in cancer treatments
People fighting cancer, or wanting to prevent it, need to eat better. That means far more vitamins, and far fewer hot dogs.
References:
(1) Blanchard CM, Courneya KS, Stein K; American Cancer Society's SCS-II. Cancer survivors' adherence to lifestyle behavior recommendations and associations with health-related quality of life: results from the American Cancer Society's SCS-II. J Clin Oncol. 2008 May 1;26(13):2198-204.
(2) Read JA, Choy SB, Beale P and Clarke SJ. An evaluation of the prevalence of malnutrition in cancer patients attending the outpatient oncology clinic. Asia-Pacific Journal of Clinical Oncology, Volume 2 Issue 2, Pages 80 - 86. Published Online: 10 May 2006.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118593110/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0_
(3) Goh YI, Bollano E, Einarson TR, Koren G. Prenatal multivitamin supplementation and rates of pediatric cancers: a meta-analysis. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2007 May;81(5):685-91. Epub 2007 Feb 21.
(4) Peters JM, Preston-Martin S, London SJ, Bowman JD, Buckley JD, Thomas DC. Processed meats and risk of childhood leukemia. Cancer Causes Control. 1994 Mar; 5(2):195-202.)
(5) Sarasua S, Savitz DA. Cured and broiled meat consumption in relation to childhood cancer. Cancer Causes Control. 1994 Mar; 5(2):141-8.)
(6) Straus H. Letter to the editor
(7) http://www.hot-dog.org/ht/d/sp/i/38579/pid/38579_
(8) Hoffer A. High doses of antioxidants including vitamin C do not decrease the efficacy of chemotherapy
For more information:
Video of Linus Pauling discussing Hoffer's nutritional cancer treatment:
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YM-i_7JWw&feature=related_ Hoffer A and Pauling L. Healing Cancer: Complementary Vitamin & Drug Treatments. CCNM Press, 2004. ISBN-10: 1897025114; ISBN-13: 978-1897025116
The work of Robert F. Cathcart III, MD
The Vitamin C Foundation
For free access to peer-reviewed nutrition therapy journal articles: http://orthomolecular.org -
Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine
Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness
The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.
Editorial Review Board:
Damien Downing, M.D.
Harold D. Foster, Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
James A. Jackson, PhD
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D.
Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D., Editor and contact person.
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