THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter (02/20/05)

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THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter (02/20/05)

 

 

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Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. Weekly CancerDecisions.com

Newsletter #172 02/20/05

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THE MOSS REPORTS

 

 

For thirty years I have studied the constantly changing world of cancer

and its treatment. The fruit of this long involvement in the cancer

field is The Moss Reports, a comprehensive library of reports on the

conventional and alternative treatment of more than 200 individual

kinds of

cancer.

 

For a cancer patient, a Moss Report represents an invaluable guide and

handbook for the journey ahead.

 

If you would like to order a Moss Report for yourself or someone you

love, you can do so from our website, www.cancerdecisions.com, or by

calling Diane at 1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367 from outside the US).

 

We look forward to helping you.

 

 

THE PUREST PLEASURE

 

 

Looking out my window, I see a study in grays, blacks and whites. My

garden lies under a crushing layer of snow. Today, a soft rain is slowly

eating away at the fringes of ice in the driveway. Somewhere under the

snow my perennial favorites - lavender, asparagus and sorrel - are once

again struggling to survive the punishing frost of winter.

 

Inside the house, a single light bulb casts a golden glow on my papers.

A shelf full of interesting teas beckons, but I am still too groggy to

put up the water. And scattered over the bed and dresser are those

distinctive remedies for the winter blues, the seed catalogs, which

started

arriving in the mail soon after New Year's Day.

 

I have relished seed catalogs since childhood. Back then I had little

interest in gardening, but a consuming passion to obtain tons of free

stuff from large companies. (This is what we did for fun while waiting

for personal computers to be invented.) I particularly enjoyed Burpee's

catalog, with its pictures of sumptuous sunflowers taller than the young

Midwestern women standing next to them. My actual childhood garden

consisted of a strip of sandy soil, just one by six feet in size, wedged

between my parents' house and the driveway. One summer my mother and I

planted carrot seeds, which I promptly forgot about. A year later,

noticing some unfamiliar green tops, I dug up a couple of carrot

roots, the

first time that I realized that store-bought food actually grew in

somebody's soil.

 

There is a reason that gardening is the most popular hobby in many

parts of the world. Since the days of Eden, gardening has had

something of

the numinous about it. Shortly before he fell from royal favor, Francis

Bacon (1561-1626), wrote an outstanding essay on gardening.

 

" God Almighty first planted a Garden, " he said, " and, indeed, it is the

purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the

spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross

handy-works. "

 

In 1811, Thomas Jefferson wrote that " no occupation is so delightful to

me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of

the garden. " Many other people of high intellectual accomplishment have

found something consoling about rooting around in the roots.

 

 

Plants at ASCO

 

 

What does that have to do with cancer? Plenty. Many cancer drugs,

wrapped so neatly in their sterile containers, have botanical origins. In

fact, modern scientific chemotherapy would be inconceivable without

plant-based treatments. " The treatments of many diseases owe much to the

important medicines that have been derived from plants, and the treatment

of cancer is no exception, " according to a modern textbook (Cancer

Medicine, 5th Ed.) " Unique classes of natural product anticancer drugs

have

been derived from plants. "

 

At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting one year, a

drug company ringed its display with hundreds of perikwinkle plants. It

was a living reminder that several commonly used drugs, vincristine,

vinblastine and vinolrebine, originated in the Madagascar variety of this

popular garden plant. Taxol and Taxotere are derived from parts of the

yew tree. And etoposide and teniposide come from an old American folk

remedy, the Mayapple. Camptosar comes from the Chinese " happy tree "

(Camptotheca acuminata).

 

Fruits and vegetables also have the ability to prevent many kinds of

cancer. So, as you plan your summer garden (something you can plant even

on an apartment window sill), think about the health value of what you

grow.

 

You can start with the most popular of all garden plants, the tomato.

Johnny's Selected Seeds, a Maine company that specializes in organic

supplies, has a dizzying array of over 40 tomato seed varieties for sale.

Over the years, I have tried many of these: determinates and

indeterminates, slicing, eating, grape and cherry tomatoes as well as

several

exotic heirloom varieties. Not all of them seemed worth the effort,

although the prolific " Sun Gold " cherry tomatoes have never failed me.

In the

end, it is probably the amount of TLC that you put into them that makes

the biggest difference.

 

Some European authors say that one should especially seek out fruits

and vegetables that have the colors of the traffic light—green, yellow

and red. And in the catalog there are tomatoes that fit all three of

these categories. Yes, they even have green tomatoes! Not just the kind

that are served up at whistlestop cafés, or in Heinz's Blastin' Green

ketchup (a bizarre, artificially-colored product that has now mercifully

been discontinued).

 

Johnny's offers a variety of tomato called " green Zebra, " which is a

green-striped salad specialty. It is ripe when the green fruit develops a

yellow blush. You can mix it with red, yellow, orange and pink

varieties for a kind of tomato confetti. Sounds like fun.

 

 

Benefits of Lycopene

 

 

Red tomatoes contain lycopene, an antioxidant that has been much in the

news. There are in fact over 450 scientific articles linking lycopene

to the prevention of cancer. Perhaps the most exciting of these was a

randomized trial at Wayne State, Detroit, that tested the effect of

adding lycopene to the diets of men undergoing conventional treatment for

prostate cancer. Twenty-six men who had been newly diagnosed with

prostate cancer were randomly assigned to receive a tomato extract

containing

30 mg of lycopene or no supplementation for three weeks before the

complete removal of their prostates (radical prostatectomy).

 

Nearly twice as many men who took lycopene had small tumors compared to

those who didn't get the tomato extract (80 vs. 45 percent). Men who

took lycopene were also nearly four times more likely to have the disease

confined to the prostate than those who didn't take it (i.e., 73 vs. 18

percent had organ-confined disease). When it came to the widespread

involvement of the prostate in cancer-like changes, 33 percent of the

controls had this vs. zero percent of the lycopene group! And the average

prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels were also lower in the lycopene

group compared with the controls. (Kucuk 2002) Those are impressive

numbers that should be tested in larger, more rigorous studies.

 

You can of course buy lycopene supplements, and you might need to in

order to get huge therapeutic doses. But for most purposes dietary

sources of lycopene are readily available: tomato, tomato products and

some

other fruits and vegetables, such as watermelon. But make sure to

drizzle your tomatoes with olive oil, the way the Italians generally do,

since lycopene needs some oil to be properly digested and absorbed.

Although I generally favor raw vegetables, scientists tell us that

processed

tomato products are rich in lycopenes. This includes tomato paste,

tomato sauce and, of course, ketchup, which beneficially contains some

oil.

 

 

Benefits of Organic

 

 

Talking of ketchup, a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

study from the end of 2004 showed that organic ketchup has three times as

much lycopene as some commercial brands. It also contains organic cane

sugar as opposed to high-fructose corn syrup, which could be a boon to

people with corn allergies. The USDA group tested 13 commercial

ketchups – six popular national brands, three organic, two store

brands and

two from fast-food chains. They found that the organic brands were the

most abundant in lycopene: one contained at much as 183 micrograms per

gram of ketchup. By contrast, non-organic brands averaged 100 micrograms

per gram. In fact, one fast-food brand contained a mere 60 micrograms

per gram. Happily, Heinz is now marketing an organic ketchup in

supermarkets. (Ishida 2004)

 

Choosing a tomato product for its lycopene content is relatively easy.

First of all, read the label. Reject any product that uses artificial

coloring, flavoring or preservatives. Then hold the bottle up to the

light. Look for the darkest red color. Since lycopene is the natural red

pigment in the tomato, the deeper the shade of red, the more of this

phytonutrient you are likely to get.

 

A word of caution, though: one should use ketchup in moderation – even

the organic brands are generally loaded with sugar. Despite what

President Reagan thought, ketchup is not a vegetable, although I'm

sure he

would have taken comfort from this latest USDA finding.

 

 

The Cruciferous Vegetables

 

 

Then there is the question of cruciferous vegetables. These are not

easy to grow, and seem to magnetically attract precisely those cabbage

moths, loopers and maggots that devour every square inch of these

beauties

before they can make it to the kitchen countertop. Broccoli,

cauliflower and Brussels sprouts are beyond my meager gardening

skills. But kale

is a possibility, especially because of its cold hardiness. It can be

planted in the late summer and then harvested even in the snow. The

leaves are high in iron and vitamins A and C and their sweet flavor is

heightened by a fall frost, something we have no lack of in the northern

states.

 

These cruciferous vegetables are the subject of over 500 scientific

articles. Most of these concern the presence of indole-3-carbinol

(I3C), a

potent anticancer agent. At Johns Hopkins, my summertime neighbor, Paul

Talalay, MD, is investigating the use of these compounds in the

treatment not just of cancer but of H. pylori infections (Fahey 2004).

How

times have changed: Johns Hopkins University, the height of scientific

respectability, now has an entire Brassica Chemoprotection Laboratory

devoted to the study of these vegetables!

 

A trial at the University of Toronto showed that men who ate

cruciferous vegetables had 31 percent less prostate cancer than men

who didn't

eat them ((Jain 1999).

 

 

Eat Allium

 

 

Finally, I intend to devote a few of my raised beds this year to the

various members of the allium family - onions, garlic, and leeks. Since I

live in a cool climate, they grow slowly - and I grow impatient. I

usually wind up harvesting the onions in their green, or scallion, phase,

which is a delightful addition to many dishes.

 

There is a staggering variety of 200 different chemical components in

garlic (Allium sativum) alone. These include some unusual substances

that are unique to this revered plant. Appreciation of garlic's healing

properties goes back to the beginnings of recorded history. Sumerian

stone tablets dating from 3,000 BC contain recipes or prescriptions

containing garlic. The Egyptians swore on a stack of...garlic bulbs.

In the

Bible, the Hebrew wanderers complain to Moses, " We remember the fish,

which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the

leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. " In other words, three out of

their six favorite foods were in this pungent family!

 

Onions (Allium cepa) were employed against tumors in China by the year

502 AD. In the West, there are similar mentions of onions' anti-cancer

utility throughout the Middle Ages. Benjamin Rush, MD, signer of the

Declaration of Independence, used a mixture of garlic and zinc oxide to

treat skin cancers. In America, garlic juice was also taken orally for

cancer. In the days before hypodermic needles, sublingual veins were cut

and garlic was rubbed into the opening - which had to hurt. A century

ago, garlic, peppermint, and brewer's yeast were administered orally for

cancer in Texas and California.

 

In the 20th century, garlic was used as a folk remedy for cancer in

French Provence, Italy, the Netherlands, the Balkans, Egypt, India, and

China. Isn't it interesting that garlic consumption is generally

associated with lower rates of cancer? There have been at least nine

studies

comparing the incidence of cancers of various types in areas of high

garlic consumption vs. those with low garlic consumption. In all but one

case there was a significant protective effect from living in the

high-garlic areas.

 

The Iowa Women's Health Study found that " garlic was the only food [out

of 127 studied, ed.] which showed a statistically significant

association with decreased colon cancer risk. " Just one serving per

week was

enough to lower the risk of some kinds of cancer by 35 to 50 percent!

" Consumption of garlic was inversely associated with risk, " the authors

wrote. " In other words, the more garlic, the less cancer (Steinmetz 1994).

 

But the most astonishing study was a comparison between two counties in

the same Chinese province, each of which had very different

garlic-eating habits. The incidence of stomach cancer in one of these,

Cangshan

County, was only 8 percent of that in nearby Qixia County. The only big

difference scientists could identify between these two counties was that

people in low-stomach cancer Cangshan County averaged an ounce (28

grams) of fresh garlic a day, whereas those in high-stomach cancer Qixia

County ate less than one gram per day (Mei 1982).

 

You can get all of these fruits and vegetables, and many more, at the

store. Upscale supermarkets have now become the focus of social life in

many towns, and neighbors now meet for a chat over the cherimoya, donut

peaches and pummelos. But there is still nothing to compare with

picking your own hand-sown, home-grown tomatoes, cucumbers or

raspberries and

eating them raw, still filled with their indefinable vitality,

straight from your own garden.

 

This is the perfect fusion of good taste and good health. Plus a dash

of unspoken pride in bringing this delight all the way from soil to

table. It is indeed, as Bacon said, the purest of human pleasures. It is

what sustains us through the darkest days of winter.

 

 

 

--Ralph W. Moss, PhD

 

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References:

 

Fahey JW, Munoz A, Matsuzaki Y, et al. Dietary amelioration of

Helicobacter pylori infection: design criteria for a clinical trial.

Cancer

Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2004;13:1610-6

 

Ishida BK, Chapman MH. A comparison of carotenoid content and total

antioxidant activity in catsup from several commercial sources in the

United States. J Agric Food Chem. 2004;52:8017-20.

 

Jain MG, Hislop GT, Howe GR, Ghadirian P. Plant foods, antioxidants,

and prostate cancer risk: findings from case-control studies in Canada.

Nutr Cancer. 1999;34:173-84

 

Kucuk O, Sarkar FH, Djuric Z, et al. Effects of lycopene

supplementation in patients with localized prostate cancer. Exp Biol

Med (Maywood).

2002;227:881-5.

 

Mei, X. et al. Garlic and gastric cancer: the influence of garlic on

the level of nitrate and nitrite in gastric juice. Acta Nutr Sin

1982;4:53–56.

 

Steinmetz KA, Kushi LH, Bostick RM, etc. Vegetables, fruit, and colon

cancer in the Iowa Women's Health Study. Am J Epidemiol. 1994;139:1-15.

 

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