There are no more doubts: many studies prove that proper nutrition is a weapon of prevention against cancer. But the relationship between food and cancer is deeper and more complex than one can imagine. Antonio Moschetta, Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Bari, and researcher of the foundation explained this to us AIRC – Italian Association for Cancer Research on the occasion of the World Cancer Day.
Here are 5 aspects to keep in mind in the relationship between diet and cancer.
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1. Nutrition and metabolism of cancer
When it comes to the relationship between food and cancer, we must undoubtedly dwell on cancer metabolism, that is, to understand what fuel the tumor uses to grow and become aggressive. This aspect is of fundamental importance because, in some tumors, the metabolic state of the sick person determines the aggressiveness of the tumor. This is why a woman with visceral obesity (abnormal waist size due to the accumulation of fat in the abdomen) is more likely to get breast cancer, while an obese man has an increased risk of developing prostate cancer.
Moschetta explains: «Visceral obesity characterizes a pro-inflammatory systemic environment that can favor the onset of cancer. Today, in particular, we speak of tumor microenvironment to describe all those cells that surround cancer, including inflammatory cells, which can create favorable situations for tumor growth.
Therefore, we must pay particular attention to nutrition and lifestyle: what we eat can influence the development of tumors not only of the gastrointestinal tract, for which a direct relationship with food is taken for granted, but also of tumors that arise in very distant as liver, breast, prostate. These tumors are most associated with a dysmetabolic condition, characterized by the accumulation of fat in the waistline which favors the creation of a dangerous inflammatory environment ».
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2. Proper nutrition improves the effect of therapies
Adequate metabolism, nutrition, and lifestyle are not only important for prevention, but also allow therapies to work better. An American study conducted on 250,000 female subjects has shown that with the same breast cancer (stage, type …), a woman with abdominal obesity has a five-year chance of healing reduced by almost 20% compared to a woman without visceral adiposity.
“If we’re in a dysmetabolic and inflammatory state, the drugs don’t work well. This means that nutrition and lifestyle, alone, will never be able to cure cancer, but will favor the creation of an environment less susceptible to the aggressiveness of the disease, which will also allow treatments to function at their best “, adds Moschetta. .
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3. The importance of target therapies
Research has always been committed to identifying which are the mechanisms through which nutrients and hormones are capable of turning off the genes of our DNA in order to starve the cancer cell, and therefore induce it to programmed death.
The professor explains: «Le terapie target that starve cancer are, in most cases, targeted treatments that modulate intracellular pathways aimed at starving the cell. Such therapies were made possible following the discovery of which are the switches on the DNA that are turned on and off by nutrients and hormones. An example of these switches is the estrogen receptor in breast cancers. When it was identified in cancer cells, it was enough to design an anti-hormonal chemical compound to starve and thus cure the breast cancer.
Others have been added to the estrogen receptor, such as that of retinoids in leukemia and that of androgens in prostate cancer. “These results indicate that we are on the right track. For patient care to be effective, we need to aim for personalized metabolic therapy. It is not chemical therapy or chemotherapy, but the selective blocking of the function of a hormone. In this way we go to zero the metabolic fuel that cancer uses to grow. And the chances of recovery increase ».
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4. Nutrition affects the environment in which the tumor develops
TAll of these paths act not only on cancer, but also on the microenvironment in which cancer arises. New therapies, such as immune or other anti-inflammatory therapies, aim to target the interaction with the cells around the tumor.
«Today we know that a particular tumor, with a specific mutation, has completely different effects in two different subjects. Comparing the tumor to a car, in one individual it runs at 10 km per hour and in another at 120 km / h. And it is precisely here that nutrition and lifestyle are the protagonists, determining the speed of this growth. In an inflamed, obese, and fatty liver, that specific tumor runs much faster. This means that in order to fight the tumor, this person will have to change his lifestyle and how he behaves at the table ».
He will therefore have to practice more physical exercise and pay attention not only to the fats in the diet, but above all to carbohydrates, starchy foods and dairy products. In fact, in most cases, these foods have too high a sugar content which, if not balanced by adequate energy expenditure, risks accumulating in the form of visceral fat. Let it be clear: we do not mean at all that flour and milk promote cancer, but that the energy taken in the form of flour and yeast is higher than that which is spent with basal metabolism or with physical exercise. Therefore, in the body, that sugar becomes fat, is deposited, creates an inflammatory environment and modulates a greater aggressiveness of the cancer.
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5. The importance of the Mediterranean diet
In conclusion, the professor states: «We know that the Mediterranean diet or the Okinawan diet are the not any more to decrease cancer risk, but in reality every diet should be built ad personam because personalization of nutrition is as important as personalized medicine ».
The axioms, in other words, do not exist: everyone has their own metabolism according to sex, age, constitution and lifestyle. An obese and a thin person do not respond in the same way to treatment. «The study of cancer metabolism is humanizing oncology. Now the oncologist, after having identified the type of tumor, the mutation and the type of drug to be prescribed, must look at the person as a whole, because if he is obese or thin he will have to treat him differently. And because a diet that is absolutely good or bad does not exist ».
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