Nutritional Intervention for Cancer

Altering the diet of a patient with lung cancer has been able to shrink cancerous tumors to 10% of their size and prolong the patient's life.

Ron Pardini, a professor of biochemistry and associate director of the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Nevada, Reno (USA), has conducted research that shows omega-3 fatty acids can depress the growth of human mammary, ovarian, colon, prostate and pancreatic cancer cells that are injected into athymic mice, also known as nude mice. Other studies demonstrated that fish oil consumption improved a mouse's responsiveness to chemotherapy. This research was inspired by the observation that Inuit Eskimo populations have fewer breast and prostate cancer deaths.

When a neighbor was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, Dr. Pardini sprang into action, radically changing the neighbor's diet. He reduced the corn-based foods in the patient's diet, because corn contains omega-6 fatty acids that have been found to increase cancer growth. Instead, he drastically increased the patient's intake of fish oil and golden algae oil capsules daily. Five years later, the patient is still alive and has gained some weight.

"We have good evidence for employing nutritional interventions to improve cancer treatments and patient well-being,” said Dr. Pardini.

An article on nutritional intervention was published in the Nutrition and Cancer journal (2005,52;2:121-127), co-authored by Dr. Pardini and colleagues.




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