What if preventing cancer was done with a regular trip to the fresh foods section in your supermarket? Would you begin paying more attention to the meals you prepared? Dr. William Li thinks you should. Everyday, our bodies work to keep us in healthy balance.
Chief among your body’s responsibilities is regulating blood flow throughout your body, connecting muscles and organs to their vascular lifelines.
This process is called angiogenesis, and despite the vital roles it plays – such as healing wounds – it is also responsible for providing cancerous cells the resources necessary for growth and dispersal.
“What we eat is really our chemotherapy three times a day,” says Dr. William Li, The Angiogenesis Foundation’s president and medical director. There are close to a dozen FDA-approved antiangiogenic drugs available today, though you may be surprised to learn that your local food store also carries the goods – and in a variety of berry flavors too.
“What really intrigued me was when I saw that diet accounts for 30-35% of environmentally caused cancers. Now the obvious thing is to think about what we could remove from our diet – what to strip out, take away – but I actually took a completely opposite approach and began asking ‘What could we be adding to our diet that’s naturally antiangiogenic, that could boost the bodies defense system, and beat back those blood vessels that are feeding cancers?’. […] Our search for this has taken us to the market, the farm and to the spice cabinet, because what we’ve discovered is that mother nature has laced a large number of foods and beverages and herbs with naturally occurring inhibitors of angiogenesis.” – Dr. William Li, Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference 2010.
Speaking at TED’s 2010 conference, Dr. William Li explains that dietary factors may be the cancer-preventing solution the world has been looking for. Li believes that reducing tumor accessibility to the blood by preventing angiogenesis is a excellent idea, not only because nature provides an abundance of naturally occurring inhibitors, but also because those inhibitors are as effective – and in some cases more – than their medicinal counterparts. For more info, watch Dr. William Li full talk at TEDTalks on YouTube.
The next time your out to restock your fridge, you might consider adding a few items from the list below. The Angiogenesis Foundation has tabulated 33 of the top antiangiogenic foods.
| Green Tea | Cherries | Nutmeg |
| Strawberries | Red Grapes | Artichokes |
| Blackberries | Red Wine | Lavender |
| Raspberries | Bok Choy | Pumpkin |
| Blueberries | Kale | Sea Cucumber |
| Oranges | Soybeans | Tuna |
| Grapefruit | Ginseng | Parsley |
| Lemons | Maitake Mushroom | Garlic |
| Apples | Licorice | Tomato |
| Pineapple | Turmeric | Olive Oil |
| Grape seed Oil | Dark Chocolate | Pomegranate |
Though angiogenesis remains an important element needed for healthy living, necessary for rebuilding tissue or forming the placenta for example, it is also a weighty contributing factor to obesity. Fat is nourished by the same process that fertilizes cancerous cells, and it is believed that an antiangiogenic diet may result in dramatic weight loss.
Regulating angiogenesis may regulate weight gain and weight loss, as evidenced by the Angiogenesis Foundation’s experiment on a genetically obese mouse.
Dr. William Li explains “In effect, you can cycle the weight up and down simply by inhibiting angiogenesis. So this approach we’re taking for cancer prevention may also have an application for obesity.”
RSS