What is an Anti-Breast Cancer Diet?

So first, I’m going to talk about when we eat. Now, we are beings that are highly tied to the circadian rhythm, the rhythm of the sun. And we are modern beings living on a very old gene code. And our genes have not changed in thousands and thousands of years. And that’s going to come up time and time again in this talk. But let’s start by saying that from an evolutionary standpoint, if you were to come out of the cave in the morning and encounter a saber tooth tiger, you couldn’t say to said tiger, can you just give me a minute because I haven’t had my breakfast yet. We are built to be able to function and function optimally, whether when we’re in a fed or an unfed state. And so that is part of what drives health and what and what diminishes health because when we are overfed, we get into a lot of problems. When we are in an unfed state, a fasting state that is when a lot of the healing happens in our body. And so we have to make sure that we spend enough time in an unfed state. Another thing that we can think about from an evolutionary standpoint is that if we were out after dark and we were cooking food or eating food, that made us targets. And most likely, if we were out after dark in that unprotected state, we were probably going to be someone else’s food. We really were not meant to eat after dark. And as a result, our metabolism drops off significantly after the sun goes down. All of these evolutionary clues, we are supposed to learn from them. We are not supposed to defy them. So most of our eating and this is a big when, most of our eating should happen during daylight hours with the bulk of our meals happening midday when our metabolism is strong, when our smaller meals happening at the end of the day. 

So the Europeans have it right and the Americans not so much, but as in as much as we can eat in an evolutionary way, we will be healthier. Now, going back to that, when eating during the day, eating when the sun is out, not eating after dark, that’s very important. But remember I said before that there are a lot of processes that happen in our body healing processes and they only happen in an unfed state. And so that means that we have to have some fasting and all of us have to have some fasting because we were meant to survive times of great scarcity, great food scarcity. And for many of us that was a survival mechanism that we could survive winter and be able to gain weight in the summer effectively so that we could survive winter, but we don’t have winter anymore. Food is available everywhere and readily available everywhere. So to be evolutionarily true, we need to create winter for ourselves. We need to eat seasonally and we need to abide by that circadian rhythm. And if we have longer fasts during the winter, again, not eating when the sun is not up, not eating after dark. So our when becomes being tied to that circadian rhythm and building fasting. And now, if you do not have a fasting practice as yet start and you can start to slow, you can start with 12 hours and add on an hour a day. Remember, you want to tie that into the circadian rhythm, but you want to make sure that you get your body in a healing state. 

Now, most people say that that won’t start until you hit 14 hours of fasting. And I actually think that we need longer fast than that. Some people need 23-hour fasts. Some people need 48 hours fast. And depending on where you are in your journey and I am talking about not dry fast, water fast. Depending on where you are in your journey, you may not be ready for that yet, but you can build on that. Everyone can build to that because I know you’re all capable of it. If you weren’t capable of it, you wouldn’t be here. That was an evolutionary power that we had. That is what got us here today because the people that couldn’t do that didn’t survive. So you can all do that. You all have the power. You just need to work up to that. So when you eat really matters. I want to talk about how you eat because how you eat matters because when we eat there are a number of processes going on. There is saliva that helps us to digest our food. There is chewing that helps us to break down our food. There is the situation in our stomach with an acid-rich environment, and we have vilified acid much to our detriment because all those antacids only increase the likelihood that you’re going to get breast cancer and other gastric cancer is GI cancer. So acid is really good. It’s really important. It fights infection, it helps us with our digestion. And then there are a number of other processes, your gallbladder adding bile, your pancreas adding enzymes, and when those processes aren’t happening, your digestion isn’t happening as it should. 

In order for all those processes to happen, we need to be in a parasympathetic state that is our rest repair digest state. So if you’re standing up and eating at the counter or eating in your car or eating on the go or watching TV while you eat or doing work while you eat, that’s not a restful state. That’s not a repair state. That’s not a digest state. And so not only are you not going to get the nutrients out of your food but you’re not going to break down your food properly and it’s going to create an inflammatory situation. So we really want to make sure that when we eat, we are in a proper state to receive, to be nourished, to digest, to really make that situation as optimal as we can. So when you eat be grateful for your food, maybe say a prayer, maybe think about what it’s doing to your body, how it’s nourishing your body. Think about taking in the nutrients, think about incorporating it because when you do that, or when you enjoy a meal with friends and it’s a joyous occasion, it has an entirely different meaning in your body. So we talked about when you eat and we talked about how you eat, now let’s end with what you eat. 

There are lots of different diet theories and each one of them probably has some validity. And I think that with the exception of the pure carnivores and we know in the long term that a carnivore diet is just not good for you. Dr. Atkins died of heart disease. So, you know, let that be the cautionary tale and the example. I think we all agree that whole food plant-based, low glycemic diets are the best thing for anyone cancering. This is not a short-term diet. It’s not a short-term solution. This is how to eat in a way that nourishes you and can continue to nourish you for the rest of your life. I really love Dr. Michael Greger’s book and he is on this podcast, so on this summit. So make sure that you don’t miss his talk. Eat to Beat Disease is a wonderful book filled with a lot of research about why whole food plant-based diets are so very beneficial. Now, I add in the low glycemic part because we all know how harmful sugar is and that in the long run, breast cancer, diabetes, and heart disease these are all caused by inflammation. And inflammation comes from a high glycemic diet. So we want to make sure that we’re very intentional about the sugar that we take in. And that sugar is okay if it comes in the form of whole fruit, the more colorful the better. So not a lot of bananas but berries are great. And eating that fruit seasonally, locally, and as much as you can. But remember, at the end of the day, that fruit, the evolutionary purpose of fruit was to make us fat during the summer so that we could survive winter. So if you are going to eat fruit year round and that’s okay if you’re using it for nutrient purposes, but if you’re going to eat fruit year round, just be mindful of how much you’re putting in your diet. Most of your color, most of your diversity should come from your vegetables. 

And the reason why vegetables are so important is the fiber of the vegetables. That is what is feeding your microbiome. And we talked about the microbiome before. That is the collection of organisms that live in it on you. They mostly live in your gut. I mean, they’re everywhere. Your skin and your nose and your mouth and your ears and your eyes and vagina and they’re everywhere but most of our microbiome lives in our gut and that microbiome lives on vegetable fibers. The nutrients that go along with virtual fibers are what nourish us. And so most of your diet should be low glycemic vegetables. So this isn’t about carbohydrates because all vegetables are carbohydrates. All fruit is carbohydrates. So I am not telling people not to eat carbohydrates. I am asking you to eat a whole food plant-based low glycemic diet because that is what is going to nourish your microbiome. Your microbiome is an intimate, constant contact with your immune system, and we all need to strengthen our immunity to be able to deal with this environment that we’re living in right now. So everyone’s diet across the board should be fiber-rich, should be super colorful, and you do not have to limit that. I can assure you that I do not walk around hungry. And once you remake your diet to prioritize these foods that nourish you, I promise you that a nourished person is not hungry. 

So I hope that this has been helpful for you and that you can go on from here and know that when you eat matters, how you eat matters, and what you eat matters and you can be in control of having a wonderful diet that nourishes you, that gives you the energy that you want, the mood that you want, that allows for you to sleep soundly. That gives you that spirit that you want and protects you not only against breast cancer or a breast cancer recurrence but against heart disease, against lung disease, against depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, osteoporosis, and arthritis. All of these things that plague us, 80% of them can be solved by just adopting this diet. Now, I will give you one caveat. I am a no-grain person. Grains are the seeds of grass, and grass is what terminators eat. They have very different digestive tracks than we do and we are not able to extract the nutrients from grains. And if we never ate another grain again, we would suffer. No nutritional deficiency. Grains, for the most part, are very high glycemic index and so I do not include them in my anti-cancer diet. And it’s up to you if you want to adopt that too. So stick around there are lots and lots and lots of great information here. Make sure that you catch Dr. Greger’s talk. It’s Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.