Five foods that fight cancer and lower your risk of death

A world-leading physician and researcher who specialises in cancer and the relationship between food and health has named five everyday foods that can help fight cancer and lower your risk of death. Dr William Li told the Zoe podcast that microscopic cancer cells form in all our bodies "as a matter of course" but that most are "harmless" because our bodies have their own defences to deal with them. However, when our bodies' "shields are down", we are at greater risk of those cancer cells becoming something dangerous. Dr Li explained: "When cancers take off and become deadly, it's really because our health defences, the very things that are designed to protect us against these growths, actually fail us. They're weakened or they're absent." In particular, said Dr Li, "these little microscopic cancer cells love inflammation". He went on: "It's kind of like pouring gasoline onto the embers of a fire," he said. "If you put inflammation around these guys, they love to start growing faster. This is the very reason why lowering inflammation actually decreases your risk of cancer very fundamentally. [If] you want to tip the odds in your favour, you want to lower inflammation." Dr Li illustrated his point by describing two caused of cancer we all understand: sunburn and smoking. He said: "You get a sunburn, you get inflammation. We know the skin gets red. Blisters. It's terrible. That's inflammation. You do that over and over and over again. That radiation from the sun is mutating the cells, you keep on burning yourself, you're setting out inflammation. That's how a small microscopic, abnormal skin cell that turns cancerous can suddenly become a melanoma or a non-melanoma skin cancer." Explaining why smoking causes cancer, he said: "You're putting toxins into your lungs, exposing these really fragile normal lung cells. The toxins will cause DNA damage. Good news is that we'll fix a lot of the DNA damage, we'll clean out some of those damaged cells. Now you keep on smoking. And... the toxins cause that lung to be quite inflamed. Now you've got a normal cell that became abnormal. Non-inflamed lung tissue becomes inflamed tissue. And this is really that connection between smoking and lung cancer that can occur." Dr Li set out five foods that he says are effective at fighting cancer. But he explained: "It's not the food fighting the cancer. I want to clarify that. It's what we put into our body that prompts our body to rear up and fortify its health defences." Dr Li said: "A study called the Shanghai Breast Cancer Study looked at 5,000 women who are at the highest risk for breast cancer. Why? Because they already had breast cancer. Super high risk. And they found that those women who consumed the most soy, about a cup of soy milk a day, 10 grams of soy protein a day, had a 30% decreased risk of dying of their breast cancer. "Social media is filled with sceptics. They're like 'Well, you just cherry pick this one study'. Well, I could name 14 consecutive studies looking at soy intake and breast cancer. And in every single case, higher consumption of soy did not increase mortality. Rather, higher consumption of soy decreased mortality, decreased the risk of death." Dr Li said: "Tomatoes are an incredible source of an anti-inflammatory bioactive, vitamin C, great for hydration. They are packed with carotenoids that are very important and useful for healthy ageing, healthy vision. And one of those carotenoids, a natural compound called lycopene, has been studied and it has a powerful cancer starving effect. "What we've known for years is that lycopene can cut off the blood supply feeding cancer. And so [researchers] looked at lycopene intake and prostate cancer and found that those men in this study who had two to three servings of cooked tomatoes per week had a 30% decreased risk of developing prostate cancer. "Now, the other thing that's interesting is if only a 30% lower risk, some people did develop prostate cancer. They dug into those people as well. Those people who ate more cooked tomatoes and had prostate cancer had less aggressive, less vascularized, less blood vessel fed cancers. So it's a pretty tight connection between eating tomatoes and a lower risk of prostate cancer." "Turns out that there is a potent bioactive polyphenol in apples called chlorogenic acid," said Dr Li. "It is a super-potent anti-inflammatory substance found in the flesh of apples that when we eat it, really helps to lower our inflammatory biomarkers. And the fibre in apple feeds our gut microbiome, which then produces the short chain fatty acids that further lower inflammation." Dr Li explained that "the common denominator" in berries like blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and respberries were the anthocyanins, which give them their colour and are also powerful antioxidants. "They're good for cardiovascular," said Dr Li. "But they also cut off the blood supply to cancers. They're also incredible antioxidants to protect DNA from damage. And also there is fibre in berries... [Raspberries] are pound for pound the most fibre rich berry food out there, and it feeds the gut microbiome, which then lowers inflammation." "Coffee and tea both contain polyphenols that actually amplify the body's cancer fighting responses," said Dr Li. "Tea has catechins. These are polyphenols that cut off the blood supply to cancers, lower inflammation. They boost the immune system and even the fibre found in tea leaves can feed the gut microbiome. Coffee has chlorogenic acid, the very same substance that actually is found in those apples, that lower inflammation, as well as many other compounds. "If you want the full strength of cancer fighting, health defence-activating ability, go for matcha, because matcha are potent tea leaves, green tea leaves, and you get the entire thing, you get all the fibre from that leaf itself, and that's what's actually gonna help your gut microbiome as well."