Dr. David Servan-Schreiber Anti Cancer a New Way of Life

Dear Christi,

I found this link, and I did send him an email requesting  a schedule of his upcoming speaking engagements, and you may want to also. I have told everyone about his book both on this site and the TNBC site.My daughter was dx with TNBC in June of 2007.

http://www.instincttoheal.org/article.php3?id_article=5

edited to add...i got my email returned, so the site is no longer in use? I will keep looking for his speaking schedule

Try his website: Anticancerbook.com

Hello.  Dr. David Servan-Schreiber is the keynote speaker at MD Anderson's Cancer Survivorship Conference September 24-25, 2010 at the OMNI Westside in Houston.  The website for the event is www.mdanderson.org/patientconference.

Take care 

hi there everyone

i've got a question about the pocket book accompanying the book. has anyone looked at the graphs of cell growth inhibiting foods? i'm trying to figure out what the foods at the bottom of the list do. to me, the graph is indicating that these foods accelerate cancer cells growth. but i can't find any more information, not even in the book by the people that this information was drawn from. basically, if carrots are going to accelerate the growth of the tumour cells then i don't want my carrot and apple juice! any thoughts or facts?

thanks and regards

Pinnih :  From as best as I can understand, those ratings are based on the activity of certain foods in a petri dish with cancer cells, so the ones at the bottom would seem to have a positive effect on the growth of the cancer cells.  My concern was tomatoes, since those are typically considered a "healthy" food.

 This is the best book ever!!!  After I asked my doctors and got the standard "follow the ACS guidelines" or the eat calorically dense foods like milk shakes during chemotherapy, I went searching for complementary nutritional advice.  This book is much more readable than The China Study, which is not cancer specific anyways, but is overall good.  As a big time meat eater my whole life (although I did include veggies all the time), it required quite a shift in my way of cooking and thinking about food.  I already loved iced green tea (made from japanese variety of green tea), fruits and veggies, so now it's just getting all that while flour and sugar out of my diet.

Sandy 

I'm a little perplexed by the graphs too.  According to them, eggplant, bokchoy, carrots, tomatoes, endive and fennel all accelerate breast cancer growth.  Has anyone heard of this before or know what studies this information might have come from?  For instance, later he lists bok choy as having IC3 which is good for BC.  I really wish I could find more information before cutting these foods from my diet, especially the carrots and tomatoes! 

I guess Schreiber cancelled out on the MD Anderson conference. I'm so glad now that I didn't fork over the $50 specifically to go hear him! Someone else is speaking on the book. I'd worry that he won't speak as clearly on the subject. I've tried since my mid-20s to eat a more healthful lifestyle but it's challenging. Especially since my husband lives on fried foods and other no-nos. He turns up his nose at most vegetables. So I'd have to prepare two meals.

Instead, I strive to do the best I can and hope that's enough.

Thanks pinnih, my edition didn't come with a "pocket book", in mine the graphs are inserted into the center of the book itself.  But now I'm going to look up the work by Beliveau and Gringas and see what they say... "from the horse's mouth" right?...

 but I am surprised to read that carrots are phytoestrogenic, had no idea!

 As much as I like David SS's work, I do question some of his conclusions, such as his recommendations to eat soy...  there is still a whole lot of controversy there so I've decided to avoid it for now.  I just don't know who to believe.

To really understand things like the soy debate, you need to know how to read a research study -- how to analyze controls, the way the study was set up, are the results duplicable, etc -- to help figure out if it's even a valid study. And how to find that study to begin with (many things we read refer only vaguely to studies and/or omit details). Most of the info we're given is actually someone's opinion based on what they read or think, which may or may not be based on a valid study, or may be based on something else they read, or anecdotal stories (which are not evidence but for many people are more compelling than evidence).  There are many strong studies that support soy if eaten as mentioned as gutsy mentions, but I understand that a lot of people are still afraid to go there, and I understand the confusion.  One of the reasons I like Dr. SS's book is that he backs up what he says with large numbers of studies. Ultimately, though, it's pretty fair to say that health/nutrition/medicine is still as much art as science, and there's always a need for more and duplicable studies.

As for the graphs in his book (I think I'm looking at the same ones), those only refer to one measure of a food in the anticancer regimen -- the ability of the food to inhibit cancer cell growth.  Anything above zero on the graphs is good, of course, but some of the foods that fall below zero have other anticancer effects that push the food into the anticancer group.  That's why you may see a food on the graph below zero that is generally considered a good food for people with cancer.  Complex issues!  

Texas357, all any of us can do is the best we can do... I try to eat really clean and healthy but will admit that once in awhile I cave to an urge for something not-good -- but the important part for me is that I don't beat myself up for it.  If I want pizza with my family, I'll have it and enjoy it.  Life is too short.  

naturegrrl: thanks for the post. that makes a lot of sense.

did weedgirl have any luck looking up the work by Beliveau and Gringas?

if anyone can find any explanation of the graphs on the anticancerbook website, please post a link for me. perhaps i'm not seeing the wood for the trees..!

so: if carrots are shown to stimulate cancer cell growth, AND have other anti-cancer properties, would you drink fresh carrot juice? (which is often a prescription of anti-cancer juicing regimes).

i know! i didn't know carrots had phytoestrogens either. but to be honest, upon further investigation i discovered that of course most (all?) fruit and vegetables have some amount of phytoestrogens. which helped put it into perspective.

if anyones interested there is a small table (not exhaustive) on this page of this website of herbs, fruit, and vegies with higher levels of phytoestrogens:

 http://www.sensiblehealth.com/Journey-04.xhtml

I do plan on purchasing this book, but just wondering if anyone has found any other anti-cancer books for triple negatives or if this one book would suffice for all types of cancer?

I just read today that he died - obituary in the LA times. This breaks my heart.

Oh no! That's upsetting.