Poor Nutrition Affects Cancer Recovery

I almost wrote the headline “poor nutrition affects health,” but realized that nobody would be surprised. After all, we all know that, right? The question for us on this site is to what degree nutrition affects cancer?
Researchers from the University of Iowa/Mayo Clinic Lymphoma Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE), which is funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), studied 374 newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients, finding half were deficient in vitamin D, based on the widely used clinical value of less than 25 mg/mL total serum 25(OH)D.2 Further, after adjusting for other variables, researchers discovered those with deficient D levels were 1.5-times more likely to experience progression of the disease and twice as likely to die from it than did patients with higher D levels. In the end, lead investigator, Matthew Drake, M.D., Ph.D., an endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, suggested vitamin D supplementation could potentially be a viable treatment option for this and other cancers, pending further investigation.
In “A Cancer Battle Plan,” the book I mentioned in a previous blog, the author spends a significant amount of time addressing the nutrition issue and detailing the number of changes she made to her diet after her stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis. Eight years later, she’s still living by her nutritional guidelines, which include: no processed food (in other words, does it closely resemble what it originally started as?), no meat, no artificial sweeteners, organic fruits and vegetables, and much less diary.
What changes should you be making in your diet?