124 Ways Sugar Ruins Your Health
By Nancy Appleton, PhD
Summary: You've heard that sugar can suppress the body's immune system, but did you know it interferes with the absorption of calcium? How about that it can cause food allergies, depression, and cancer of the breast, ovaries, and prostate? Or that sugar can reduce the good cholesterol in your blood and increase the triglycerides—two of the strongest indicators we have of heart disease risk? Despite the massive commercial campaign to paint refined sugar as harmless or, at worst, merely "empty calories," hoards of scientific evidence indicate that it is far worse than that. In this startling list, Dr. Appleton documents 124 ways in which sugar has been scientifically implicated as a poison to human health, complete with 124 reputable references—many of them from peer-reviewed publications—to back up her claims. 2004.
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Cancer Cells Preferentially Use Sugar
By Patrick Quillin, PhD
Summary: "It puzzles me why the simple concept 'sugar feeds cancer' can be so dramatically overlooked as part of a comprehensive cancer treatment plan," writes Dr. Patrick Quillin in this stirring excerpt from his book Beating Cancer with Nutrition. Recounting the discovery by Nobel laureate Dr. Otto Warburg that cancer cells feed exclusively on glucose, Quillin discusses his own experience in working with over 500 cancer patients as the director of nutrition for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Limiting sugar consumption and keeping one's blood-sugar level within a narrow range, he says, "can be one of the most crucial components of a cancer recovery program." That barely any of the 4 million cancer patients in America receive this information as part of their treatment is nothing short of scandalous. This article also appeared as "Cancer's Sweet Tooth" in the April 2000 issue of Nutrition Science News.
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Cancer Cells Self-Destruct When "Sweet Tooth" Is Thwarted
Author unknown
Summary: The official Johns Hopkins Press Release of Dr. Chi Dang's famous study of 1998 showing that cancer cells self destruct when deprived of their main fuel, glucose. "The change [in the cancer-like cells] when we took away glucose was dramatic," says Dang. "By the next day, we knew very quickly that the cells we had altered to resemble cancer cells were dying off in large numbers." This document reports on the same study as referred to in the article "Scientists Trying to Starve Cancer Cells to Death" (available in these archives), but it goes into more detail regarding the actual investigation and is more technical in its language. Johns Hopkins Press Release, 1998.
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Cancer Loves Sugar
By the Minnesota Wellness Directory
Summary: A great primer on how cancer cells feed and what they will do to the body in order to get the glucose they must have to survive. "Knowing that...cancer needs sugar, does it make sense to feed it sugar?" the authors ask. "Does it make sense to eat a high-carbohydrate diet?" This article is a great complement to Patrick Quillin's "Cancer Cells Preferentially Use Sugars," also available in the these archives.
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Insulin Potentiation Therapy
By Steven Ayre, MD
Summary: An exciting overview of an innovative new cancer therapy based on the fact that cancer cells feed exclusively on glucose. To capture as much glucose as possible, cancer cells have many insulin receptors—ten times more than any normal cell in the human body. In standard chemotherapy, the chemotherapeutic drugs cannot tell the difference between cancerous cells and normal cells, so they kill them both indiscriminately. But when such drugs are delivered along with insulin, the insulin shuttles them preferentially into the cancer cells. The result of such targeting is the sparing of normal cells and the necessity of a smaller dose of drug to get the job done. "Insulin Potentiation Therapy appears to be a wonderful new way of treating cancer," Dr. Ayre concludes. Circa 2005.
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Medical School Team Ties Pancreatic Cancer to Glucose Level
By Elizabeth Crown
Summary: In 2000, a team of researchers at the Medical School of Northwestern University published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed a clear correlation between elevated levels of blood sugar and the risk of dying of pancreatic cancer. Since pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose and thus usually fatal when detected, this article suggests a hopeful measure of prevention—controlling one's blood sugar level by limiting consumption of sugar and other high-glycemic foods. From the Northwestern University Observer, 2000.
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Scientists Trying to Starve Cancer Cells to Death
Author unknown
Summary: "Scientists have observed for more than 70 years that most types of cancer cells are sugar junkies," begins this synopsis of the famous 1998 study by Dr. Chi Dang of Johns Hopkins University showing that depriving cancer cells of sugar can cause them to self destruct. "When we remove glucose from...cancer cells," Dang says, "they commit suicide, basically, as compared to normal cells." This finding echoes the earlier work of Dr. D.T. Quigley, a cancer-expert in Omaha, Nebraska, who years earlier warned of the dangers of a diet high in refined sugar. For the official Johns Hopkins press release of Dr. Dang's study, see "Cancer Cells Self-Destruct When 'Sweet Tooth' is Thwarted" in these archives. From Johns Hopkins University, 1998.
