best cancer fighting foods

[Tenet Nosce]

Agreed. Yes, a lot of them miss this basic understanding and some even mix up acidic and alkaline!

Yeah, that's a real bummer. I've gotta say I have a difficult time understanding how somebody could claim to be so passionate about helping others improve their health, but fail to educate themselves on such basic things. How can somebody really "care" when they obviously don't care enough to not spread misinformation?

That site offers only a single sentence. Here is a more detailed explanation of his discovery:

(This is from a document so I don't have a linked source.)

I found this resource which goes into much detail.

Looks like the Nobel wasn't awarded for that specific idea you mentioned, but nevertheless was related to his work on cancer. From what I read here, his ideas were more multifaceted than just the pH of the blood, but that was indeed a factor owing to the Bohr Effect which observed that the more alkaline the blood, the higher oxygen content contained therein. One thing to keep in mind when discussing blood pH is that it is very tightly regulated between 7.35 and 7.45 (which is actually all in the alkaline range, which is why it is a misnomer to claim the blood is too "acidic"). If it goes out of that range, on either side, somebody has a serious issue going on and could die.

One of the things which always intrigued me is the presence of what are called isozymes. These are enzyme families which perform the same functions, but work optimally at slightly different pH points. For example, one set could function best at 7.38 and another at 7.42. If I am remembering correctly there are as many as seven different isozymes for certain functions in the blood. I've got a theory that what we are seeing in many cases is a depletion of an isozyme set that functions toward the lower end of the range. Now based on the Standard American Diet, most people are going to trend to the lower end of the range due to too much meat and refined carbs and not enough veggies. But, theoretically speaking, one could conjecture a similar effect if a given person is consistently trending toward the higher end of the range. I suppose that could happen if somebody was chronically protein deficient, for example.

[As a side note, earlier I was listening to a YouTube video by a guy identifying himself as "Dan the Man with the Master Plan" who is a hardcore juicer making some very odd claims. He was saying that, if anything, a reason to eat meat is to get essential fatty acids (EFAs), rather than protein. Firstly, it is totally unnecessary to eat animal products to get EFAs as they are plentiful in nuts and seeds. Secondly, with respect to protein, he was saying that bananas and grapefruit are great sources of protein?! Um.. there is about 1-3 grams of protein in a fruit. Again, nuts and seeds (along with legumes) are great vegetable sources of protein, and a person can certainly meet their protein needs by eating nuts, seeds, and legumes. Oddly, he didn't mention any of these in his message. I guess because they can't be juiced? *sigh*]

The other thing is that many cancer cells aren't in direct contact with the blood, but with an intermediary called extracellular fluid (ECF). It's quite possible that the cancer cells that alter the pH of the ECF to be more acidic, and resistant to change even if the blood pH is normal. I know that harmful gut bacteria engage in similar shenanigans.

He also talked about malfunctioning of the mitochondria- which I think is a very intriguing angle. As I was speaking about earlier, immune cells that kill cancer cells often use free radicals that have been sequestered in little sacs. The free radicals themselves "leak" out from cellular respiration processes in the mitochondria. A certain amount of this is normal, even beneficial, but too much of it can cause issues. I don't think any of this was known during his time, so this all looks like very forward thinking to me.

Incidentally, this is the basis for my concerns about pounding too much fruit juice. All that sugar entering the cells and bypassing the body's natural control mechanisms can increase the "leakage" of free radicals when the mitochondria get overwhelmed.

But again- much gets lost in the oversimplification of concepts. In this case it sounds like some folks may have plucked the pH balance part out of the equation and left the other parts behind.

(or, rather, to be more precise: facilitate homeostasis).

I like precise!

Weeeeeeell, I'd say their half-baked arguments might be hokum, but the basis in fact isn't hokum.

Oh, I totally agree. It's the oversimplification that is the problem, and the overwillingness to extend oneself beyond their boundaries of knowledge. But this issue is as much a problem among doctors as it is laypeople, albeit in different ways.

IMO- we'd all be better off sticking to the basics like "eat more vegetables" and steer clear of claims of "cure". One of the tenets of naturopathic philosophy is that the body does the healing, not the practitioner or the foods and supplements they recommend.