What Causes Cancer and What Can You Do to Avoid It?
Can plant-based diets reverse cancer? My most recent podcast guest for The Adiel Gorel Show is Dr. Dominic Brandy. He is a surgeon, cancer lifestyle coach, author, and public speaker. He doesn’t just speak about cancer, he has lived through it. Dr. Brandy received the life-altering diagnosis of an incurable cancer called Multiple Myeloma. However, he has been in remission for the past five years and has also written the book Beat Back Cancer Naturally – 5 Scientifically Proven Natural and Plant-Based Ways to Prevent, Survive and Thrive with Cancer. He shared his story and his insights with me on my podcast.
Why does cancer happen?
When he was diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Brandy’s life changed. He became very interested in supplementing his cancer therapy in natural ways and started to research this. Dr. Brandy also became interested in the causes of cancer. He wondered – can plant-based diets reverse cancer? He found that a whole food plant-based diet, exercising every day, and a targeted supplement regime could actually make a big difference. The attending oncologist was amazed when he went into remission even on a very low immunomodulator dosage.
One of the big single contributions to the development of cancer in humans is the accumulation of DNA mutations as we age. – Dr. Dominic Brandy
Dr. Brandy’s research led him to understand that the DNA mutations that occur in our cells due to aging are one of the biggest factors causing cancer. He explains that there are about 19,200 hits to our DNA each day just because of normal metabolism. There are trillions of free radicals that we are exposed to in a day. All of this causes these mutations to accumulate. There is damage to our cellular membrane and to our very DNA. He also found that the particular type of cancer he had, had 5000 DNA mutations in the cancer cell.
The Blue Zone areas of the world.
As he researched more and more, Dr. Dominic Brandy became convinced that what we eat has a big impact on the way cancer develops in the body. Can plant-based diets reverse cancer? Yes! Plant-based whole foods have 63 times the antioxidant power compared to animal products, he found. Of course, he differentiates between a merely non-meat diet and a healthy plant-based diet. Being a vegan who is consuming Coke and Doritos all day is meaningless. The doctor shares a lot of his insight about how pesticide levels in the blood are different depending upon diet, and how various toxins reach the body via the food we eat.
Dr. Brandy speaks about the famous book by Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones, which speaks about certain communities in the world that enjoy extraordinary longevity. People who live in Sardinia Nicoya, Costa Rica, Okinawa in Japan, and Loma Linda in the United States live the longest, at least ten years longer than the average American. It is striking that the people in these blue zones eat largely plant-based diets, and have very low incidences of lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
Of course, I had to play devil’s advocate and I wanted to know whether all meat is bad for us and whether free-range meat can be a good compromise for our health. Dr. Brandy explains why, for him, a whole food plant-based diet is superior, and how it positively impacts the gut microbiome. When I ask about the lack of protein in vegan diets, he points out how the herbivorous apes are some of the biggest and strongest creatures we know. To find out if indeed a plant-based diet can reverse cancer, and to know more about Dr. Brandy’s story, his research, writing, and his cancer lifestyle coaching, check out this episode of The Adiel Gorel Show.
