We all know that if we want to improve our
health, the first thing we need to do is change
our diet! Even though everyone has heard of
this, the fast-food lovers and sugary-treat
fanatics are yet to be convinced. They might
have heard of the consequences their favorite
foods cause to their bodies, but they continue
diving in their high-fat, high-sugar foods, without
giving it a second thought.
Nature Medicine recently confirmed that foods
containing processed sugar are the main reason
behind the growth and spread of cancer tumors.
In fact, the results were so conclusive, that
future cancer screening may rely on scanning
the body for accumulated sugar for signs of the
disease.
This discovery was made after the University
College London (UCL) in the U.K. experimented
with a new cancer detection method that
involves utilizing a unique form of magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI). The scientists
sensitized a MRI scanner to look specifically for
glucose in the body, and it revealed
that cancer tumors – which have been proven
to feed off sugar – light up brightly as they
contain high amounts of sugar.
Explained by a recent UCL announcement, “The
new technique, called ‘glucose chemical exchange
saturation transfer’ (glucoCEST), is based on the
fact that tumors consume much more glucose (a
type of sugar) than normal, healthy tissues in
order to sustain their growth.” The university
gave an update saying that the tumors appear
as “bright images” on the scanner.
When traditionally scanning for cancer, the
presence of tumors is identified by using low-
dose radiation injections because radiation is
another known cause of cancer. But such an
injection is not the best choice due to
its potential side effects. However, this method
is effective because the things that activate and
encourage cancer cells to expand and multiply
can also be used by doctors to detect it inside
the body. And now, sugar can be officially
added to that list.
“The method uses an injection of normal sugar
and could offer a cheap, safe alternative to
existing methods for detecting tumors, which
require the injection of radioactive material,” says
Dr. Simon Walker-Samuel, lead researcher of the
study from the UCL Center for Advanced
Biomedical Imaging (CABI).
The study’s senior author reported that it was
shocking to discover that the glucoCEST
method could effectively identify the presence
of tumors only by using the amount of sugar
that can be found in “half a standard sized
chocolate bar.” This finding is astonishing, as it
suggests that even moderately low amounts of
sugar have the potential to
promote cancer proliferation.
UCL is not the first source to link processed
sugar with diseases like cancer. Dr. Robert H.
Lustig, M.D. and Professor of Pediatrics in the
Division of Endocrinology at the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF), cites that
sugar consumption causes most of the chronic
illnesses prevalent today. Lustig is a famed
author of “ Sugar: The Bitter Truth”, and he
describes his findings in many videos.
The main culprits of deadening sugar include:
white sugar and flour, sweetened and processed
foods, and fast food. When these foods break
down in the body (when compared to natural
sources of fructose from fruit), they cause an
increase of hormones to be released
(specifically insulin), and in effect, signal
for cancer cells to feed and continue to grow in
size.
Dr. Lewis Cantley, head of Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) at Harvard
University, shared the sugar-cancer link in a
CBS interview: “What we’re beginning to learn is
that insulin can cause adverse effects in various
tissues, and a particular concern is cancer.”
He continued, “If you happen to have a tumor that
has insulin receptors on it, then it will get
stimulated to take up the glucose that’s in the
bloodstream. So rather than going to the fat or to
the muscle, the glucose now goes into the tumor,
and the tumor uses it to grow.”
These sources came to the conclusion that the
only way to have a healthy body, and a
nourished mind, is to choose wholesome,
unprocessed, and predominantly plant-based
foods. You should consume more greens,
vegetables and plant-based proteins, and
decrease the amount of processed foods in your
diet. Our bodies can be capable of healing
themselves, and it is becoming increasingly
evident that we must make the necessary
changes for that to happen.
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