How You Can Get Cancer From Obesity

Cancer from obesity is a real problem. Discover how obesity causes cancer. Find out why eating a low-fat, plant-based diet can help you lose weight and prevent cancer. Also, learn why you shouldn't use the ketogenic diet to lose weight.

Obesity Is A Big Problem In America

Obesity is when you have to too much body fat. You can measure your obesity by using Body Mass Index (BMI).

BMI is a person's weight divided by height squared. This measurement uses the metric system. The standard weight categories based on BMI for adults ages 20 years or older are:

Obesity has become more common in the United States in recent years. In 2011, 27.4% of adults ages 18 or older were obese or severely obese. Then, in 2020, 31.9% of adults ages 18 or older were obese or severely obese. 

The number of obese children and adolescents ages 2–19 also increased. From 2011 to 2012, 16.9% of 2–19-year-olds were obese, and 5.6% were severely obese. By contrast, in 2017–2018, 19.3% of 2–19-year-olds were obese, and 6.1% were severely obese. 

Obesity is incredibly costly. The reported annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was nearly $173 billion in 2019. The average medical expenses of overweight people were $1861 more than slender people.

Overweight people have a greater risk of getting sick. Examples include diabetes, high blood pressure, heart issues, and stroke. You also increase your risk of at least 13 types of cancer. Obesity also boosts death from all causes. 

A study used BMI and cancer data from the U.S. Cancer Statistics database. Between 2011 to 2015, 4.7% of men and 9.6% of women got cancer due to being overweight.

A 2018 study found that in 2012, excess body weight accounted for about 3.9% of all global cancers. IARC also concluded that higher amounts of body fat increased the risk of many cancers.

Let's explore why we can get cancer from obesity.

How Obesity Causes Cancer

The same foods that cause obesity also increase your cancer risk. In this case, the villain is animal products and processed food. There are several reasons why animal products can cause cancer. One big problem is insulin-like growth factor-1(IGF-1).

IGF-1 is a growth hormone that we need at the beginning of our life when we need to grow. But as we become adults, we don't need to develop anymore. Excess IGF-1 increases our cancer risk, especially breast cancer. 

Meat, egg white, and dairy proteins raise IGF-1 in our bodies. If you put people on a plant-based diet, their IGF-1 levels go down. And if make them follow this diet for years, their levels drop even further.

In as little as two weeks, a plant-based diet can bring down your liver's production of IGF-1. Cancer cell growth drops on a plant-based diet. But if you add back the same amount of IGF-1, you erase the diet and exercise effect. 

Vegetarians have lower incidents of cancer than meat-eaters. Less IGF-1 in plant foods can mean less cancer growth. 

Another problem with animal products is heterocyclic amines.

Hetereo Cyclic Amines, Saturated Fat, And Heme-rion In Meat Increase Your Cancer Risk

Every time you prepare meat, the outer surface becomes burned. On the surface, heterocyclic amines develop. Studies have shown that HCA can increase our cancer risk. The worst method to prepare meat is grilling.

Another issue in meat is heme-iron. There are two types of iron: heme-iron and non-heme iron. Heme iron comes from animal products and can increase our cancer risk. Non-heme iron comes from plants and doesn't cause cancer.

Animal products also contain a lot of saturated fat and cholesterol. They have a detrimental effect on our bodies.

Our liver creates cholesterol every day and is a vital part of our body. But when you add extra cholesterol from animal products, the body has difficulty dealing with it. The result is poor health.

Another possible cause of cancer in fat people is excess amounts of estrogen. High estrogen levels increase the risk of breast-, endometrial-, ovarian-, and other cancers.

Obese people often have more gallstones than healthy individuals. Gallstones are a sign that your body is toxic. Obesity also leads to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. 

Both these conditions can cause oxidative stress. It's a condition in which antioxidant levels are lower than normal. Oxidative stress leads to DNA damage and increases the risk of cancer.

High animal fat intake may increase death among breast cancer survivors. It may cause cancer through oxidative stress, hormone disruption, or inflammation.

Saturated fat intake can increase prostate cancer. In one study, the top third eating fat-rich animal foods tripled death from prostate cancer. Saturated fat also increases the risk of dying from breast cancer.

Being overweight also puts a strain on our bodies when we need to carry extra weight. Our breathing and other bodily functions get affected by our body fat.

To understand why we become overweight, you need to understand your body's anatomy.

Humans Are Herbivores

If you look back in history, few people ate meat. Only kings or pharaohs could afford it. And that is the reason why only kings were fat. Slaves and peasants were slim because they ate a more plant-based diet. 

You might believe that humans should eat animals. But if that is true, why are more humans sicker since meat became affordable?

The truth is that humans are herbivores, not meat-eaters. If you look at our body's anatomy, it's clear that we should eat plants, not other animals. There are striking differences between our bodies and carnivores like lions. For example, look at your hand. Do you have claws to catch prey?

Lions and tigers have sharp claws that are great at killing other animals. If humans were carnivores, then why don't we have claws? Our hands are better at grabbing and picking things like fruits and vegetables. 

Carnivores also have the instinct to kill and catch other animals. Why don't we have it? We also can't hear frequencies that dogs and cats can.

Our organs are also different from carnivores.

Striking Differences Between Humans And Carnivores

If you compare our organs to lions, they have much shorter intestines and bigger stomachs. Lions eat about once a week.

Humans have long intestines like rabbits, which we need to digest fiber from plants. When carnivores digest food, the stomach acid does most of the work. Their short intestines then need to get rid of the flesh as fast as possible. 

Humans need long intestines to create healthy stool from the fiber. Meat rots in our intestines and leads to infrequent bowel movements.

You don't have sharp canines like carnivores. Carnivores need them to rip an animal apart. When lions chew their food, their mouths can only go up and down.

They need to chew the food this way to cut the meat into smaller pieces. Our mouths go from side to side like a cow so that we can chew fiber-rich foods. 

Every animal and being on our planet has a perfect diet.

Every Animal On Earth Has Its Perfect Diet

Most herbivores thrive on grass like cows, and carnivores like lions need to eat meat to feel good. As soon as you give an animal the wrong diet, they start to have diseases. 

When farmers give cows corn instead of grass, their digestion gets messed up. That is the reason for the risk of mad cow disease, not bacteria or viruses. 

Humans should eat a plant-based diet as close as mother nature or God created it. As soon as we try to eat foods not meant for us, we become sick. We feel best when we eat a whole-food, plant-based, low-fat diet.

It's when you consume vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains. These foods have more carbohydrates, sufficient protein, and little fat.

One significant part of vegetables is carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates Are Our Bodies Main Energy Source

Plants use a process called photosynthesis to create energy. They use water, carbon dioxide, and energy from the sun to form simple sugars. These sugars are called carbohydrates. The most basic carbohydrate is the simple sugar glucose.

If you look inside the plant's cells, you can see that they contain simple sugars. The sugars join into chains. Some chains attach to a straight line (amylose). Other sugars have many branches (amylopectin).

There are three basic types of carbohydrates, sugar, cellulose, and starch. Each contains carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in specific configurations.

The simplest of these sugars include sucrose, fructose, lactose, and glucose. Sucrose is the granulated sugar you bake into cookies. Fructose makes fruit taste sweet. Lactose is part of milk.

Glucose is the simple sugar that comes together in chains to make cellulose and starch. Cellulose consists of chains of glucose bonded together by indigestible linkages. You can find cellulose in the cell walls of plants, wood, and other organic matter. Another name for it is fiber.

Our digestive system doesn't have the enzymes to break down cellulose for fuel. Although we get no energy from them, they are valuable to us for their dietary fiber.

The fiber in fruits and vegetables makes us feel satiated with fewer calories. When you eat fiber, your body uses it to create poop. It only takes a couple of hours for your body to digest plants, while animal products can take several days. 

The carbohydrate most beneficial to humans is starch.

What Is Starch?

The term "starch" comes from the Middle English word sterchen: to stiffen. Starch is a white, odorless, tasteless powder. Starch granules don't dissolve in water, but heat causes them to swell and turn gelatinous.

The starch gel cools into a paste that can act as a thickener, stiffener, or glue. You may have noticed that your cooked oatmeal or polenta turns stiff and gluelike after cooling.

Like cellulose, starches have long-branching chains of glucose molecules. These long chains are also known as complex carbohydrates.

When sugar chains gather in large quantities inside a plant's cells, they form starch grains. These are also called starch granules (amyloplasts).

Plants store starch in their roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds, and fruits. The starch provides them with a source of energy when they need it later. Plants use starch to keep them alive through the winter and fuel them the following spring.

Their high carbohydrate concentration sustains not only the plants but humans too.

How Starchy Vegetables Can Help Us Lose Weight

Starchy vegetables are the best way to feel full for a long time. Most fruits and vegetables contain fewer calories than animal products. They are also easy to digest. In a couple of hours, we become hungry again. 

But if we eat starchy vegetables this process takes longer. Some foods like potatoes, corn, rice, or lentils contain more starch than other plants.

It takes more time for the body to break down starch than fructose in fruits or glucose in plants. The benefit is that it takes longer to feel hungry. 

Glucose is the body's and the brain's fundamental energy source. The body stores excess glucose as glycogen, glucose mixed with water. When you expel energy, the body uses glycogen throughout the day. 

Another part of our diet is fat.

Humans Are Not Great At Digesting Fat

Fat is an essential macronutrient. It consists of complex molecules made up of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The body uses fat for energy storage when there is no food available.

Fats and oils differ in that fats are solid at room temperature, while oils are liquid. The reason has to do with their chemical structure. All fats consist of carbon atoms attached in long chains.

When the strings are more linear and rigid, they make the final products stable. When the chains bend and are more flexible and loose, they become a liquid. There are only a few unsaturated fats we need and that our bodies can’t make by themselves. 

Humans are not great at burning fat. Therefore we should limit it. If you compare animal foods with vegetables and fruits, meat has much more fat than plants.

One gram of fat contains nine calories, while carbohydrates only have four. That means you get more than twice the calories while eating meat than vegetables.

Most plants contain little fat. You don't become fat if you eat starchy and low-fat vegetables and fruits. Some plant foods have more fat, such as nuts, seeds, and avocados. These foods should not be a staple of your diet.

Our bodies are not great at using fat for fuel. Dr. John McDougall says that the fat you eat is the fat you wear. He has been successful in helping people lose weight on a vegan diet. Fat is only an emergency fuel when we don't have access to fruits and vegetables.

Animal products contain lots of fat. It's easy to become obese if you eat animal products often. Dairy is another source of fat that you need to avoid.

Dairy Is Unhealthy And Makes Us Fat

Cow's milk is food for calves. Milk contains lots of calories to make a calf grow several hundred pounds in a short time. Humans are the only specie that drinks other animals' milk.

Dairy is not healthy. It has the same cancer-causing effects as meat, such as IGF-1, cholesterol, and saturated fat. Dairy contains around 70% fat and is one of the primary reasons many people suffer from obesity.

One of the biggest myths about milk is that we need it to create strong bones. But countries that consume more milk have higher incidents of osteoporosis.

Non-organic cow's milk contains excess hormones, antibiotics, steroids, and pesticides. Even organic dairy won't protect you from harm. Cow's milk contains over 60 different hormones, even if you don't add anything to it. 

Cow's milk is devoid of fiber. It contains insufficient amounts of vitamin C, niacin, and minerals, like iron. You can't use it to meet your body's needs. Estrogen is common in cow's milk and raises your cancer risk. 

Cheese is another source of milk that is detrimental to your health.

Cheese Is Addictive And Causes Obesity

Cheese is a blob of fat. It doesn't contain any fiber, and you eat more than you should. Three things in the cheese make it addictive, salt, fat, and casomorphins.

The purpose of salt in the cheese is to stop bacteria growth from fermenting into mush. Casomorphins are protein fragments from the digestion of the milk protein casein.

They are opiates. Opiates are the same chemical class as narcotic painkillers like heroin or morphine. Casomorphins make the calves crave milk.

More cheese leads to more obesity and is one of the reasons why Americans are so fat. Cheese is unhealthy and is something you should avoid.

If you eat a diet designed for your body, obesity should not be possible.

Obesity Is Not Normal

Most people don't realize that you stay healthy and slim when you eat a diet designed for your body. Obesity is not normal. It's a sign that you're eating an unhealthy diet full of fat and processed food. 

People become fatter as they grow older because of their unhealthy diet. Obesity is not a normal process caused by our aging or genes. It has only to do with our unhealthy lifestyle. 

When you eat foods designed for you, it's effortless to stay at a healthy weight. If you're fat, it's a sign that you're toxic and consuming way too much fat. 

When your body is unhealthy, it also encloses the toxins in fat. As you eat a healthy plant-based diet, your body can finally eliminate the poisons and fat inside you. You can then slowly and steadily lose weight without trying. 

Sadly most weight loss programs use ineffective methods to make their clients lose weight.

Most Weight Programs Are Hard To Follow And Ineffective

Most weight coaches use the same ineffective way to make their clients lose weight. They start by looking at how many calories each client needs to consume per day to keep up with their lifestyle. 

Then these coaches make you eat a starvation diet where you eat fewer calories than you need. Thus you might feel hungrier when you need to use your stored fat. But that is not the end of it. Most weight coaches also use strenuous exercises to make you burn even more calories.

But the result is that you feel hungrier and exhausted. While this regimen can cause short-term effects, it's not a sustainable way of living.

That is the reason why most weight programs fail. People don't want to starve themselves to lose weight. After they have been through the weight program, they relapse again. 

All the lost weight will then return. Weight programs often fail because the diet still contains animal products and fat. The reason why you lost weight was your negative caloric intake.

But when you don't keep exercising and starving yourself, your fat and toxins will return. The result is obesity. It's like hiding your trash but never throwing it away. 

But luckily, there is a way to lose weight without starving yourself or exercising to death.

It's Easy To Lose Weight

If you eat a whole-food low-fat, plant-based diet, you don't need to starve yourself to lose weight. Focus on eating vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains. 

Avoid fatty plant foods such as nuts, seeds, avocado, vegetable oils, and margarine. If you follow this plan, your weight will go away without effort. 80% of your calories will come from carbs, 10% from protein, and about 10% from fats if you eat this way.

Obesity is not normal. It's the result of the Standard American Diet. When you eat a diet designed for your body, obesity will be a thing of the past. There is no need to count calories, starve yourself, or exercise till you are exhausted. 

When you eat a high-carb, low-fat diet(HCLF), you only need to eat until you feel full. There is no need to torture yourself or make you need to avoid food that you love to lose weight. Another benefit of eating a plant-based diet is that you need to eat more food to feel satiated. 

That means you can eat more delicious food and lose or maintain a healthy weight without trying. You won't lose weight instantly. But as you keep on following this healthy lifestyle, you will remove excess fat little by little. And when the body can remove all the junk, your weight comes off more easily.

The standard American diet is the reason Americans are fatter than Asians.

The Reason Why The US Is So Fat Compared To Asians

If you look around the world, countries that eat lots of fat and meat are the most obese. And if you glance at countries like Japan, where they eat lots of rice, they are slim and a lot healthier than Americans.

I once traveled to South Korea in my youth. They ate rice every day and little meat. Koreans love a traditional diet called Kimchi. It contains fermented Napa Cabbage and vegetables such as ginger, garlic, and scallions.

They also serve their rise with other vegetable condiments. The whole time I was in Korea, I can't recall if I saw one single obese Korean. 

But if you travel to the USA, you will spot obese people immediately. And if you look and their diet, it has a lot of meat, dairy, oils, and other processed food. 

You might have heard about the ketogenic diet if you've tried to lose weight before.  Let's learn more about this weight loss technique and why it's dangerous.

What Is The Ketogenic Diet?

The weight-loss industry is a huge business. Many different diet fads are coming and going. One popular food trend right now is the low-carb diet.

In 1972 Robert Atkins published his book Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution. It was a huge success, selling millions of copies. He taught people that they could lose weight by eating more fat and protein.

The book praised foods like pork rinds, meat, and cheese. Atkins also condemned carbohydrates such as whole-wheat bread and potatoes. To him, insulin was poison to the body and caused weight gain. Atkins was overweight, suffered a heart attack in 2003, and died at 72.

There are many different incarnations of the low-carb trend. One such diet is the ketogenic diet. Various sites claim that the ketogenic diet can prevent cancer and diabetes.

The ketogenic diet started at the Mayo clinic when doctors treated epilepsy patients in the 1920s. Doctors observed that patients with low blood sugar levels had fewer seizures. So they wanted to create a diet that mimicked this starvation mode.

Let's explore how the ketogenic diet works.

How The The Ketogenic Diet Works

There are three macronutrients that we all need for optimal health:carbohydrates, fat, and protein. The ketogenic diet is a low-carbohydrate diet. It allows a maximum of 30 grams of dietary carbohydrates per day.

The diet prohibits carbohydrate-rich foods like fruits, starchy vegetables, legumes, and grains. Instead, you eat meat, dairy, leafy greens, non-starchy vegetables, nuts, seeds, and oils.

It's a meal plan where 60-75% of your food consists of fat, 15-30% protein, and 5-10% carbs. The goal of this diet is to reach a state called ketosis. To achieve this state, you are only allowed to eat a small number of carbohydrates.

The keto diet works by mimicking starvation.

The Ketogenic Diet Mimics Starvation

We store excess carbs as glycogen in the liver and our muscles. Glycogen consists of glucose mixed with water. When the body depletes its glycogen store, it goes into starvation mode.

The body creates ketones in the liver to digest the fat and use it as fuel. So what this diet does is mimic starvation.

Your brain runs off of glucose and is dependent on carbohydrates for energy. Ketone bodies from the liver can work as an emergency backup fuel for your brain. But it is not its preferred food source.

When you remove carbohydrates, there is only protein and fat left. Therefore this diet consists primarily of meat and fatty foods. You lose weight on the ketogenic diet by eating so few carbs that your body needs to use its stored glycogen. Your body then creates ketones to burn the fat.

This same condition, ketosis, occurs when people are starving to death. During starvation, your body suppresses your hunger signals. So, in essence, the ketogenic diet simulates this sick state.

If fats make you fat, how can the keto diet make you lose weight?

How The Ketogenic Diet Can Make Us Lose Weight

Stating that ketones are the body's natural way to digest food is misleading. It's like saying that the gag reflex is a natural mechanism and should be used to lose weight.

It's possible to eat a lot of fat or protein to control your hunger signals. The initial weight loss is rapid and rewarding for the desperate dieter. But most of the reduced weight is because of water loss.

The ketogenic diet also reduces our desire to eat, thus lowering our caloric intake. One side effect of ketone production is nausea which ruins our appetite. 

Eating a ketogenic diet becomes boring fast. It's a restrictive diet, so many people give up. The biggest lie you will hear is that carbohydrates alone make you fat. But it is the fat in the American diet that is the biggest culprit.

Carbs Don't Make You Fat

Excess starch does not turn to body fat that easily. Your body can turn carbs into fat in a process called de novo lipogenesis. Pigs and cows use this process to convert carbohydrates into calorie-dense fats.

However, we humans are inefficient at converting glucose into fat under normal conditions. The cost for this conversion is 30% of the calories consumed. Why should the body turn it into fat when it can use it as direct fuel?

After we eat vegetables our bodies break down the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars.

Your body absorbs these sugars into the bloodstream. It then transports the sugar to trillions of cells throughout the body for energy.

If you eat more carbohydrates than your body needs, you'll store them as glycogen. Your body burns off excessive carbs as body heat. Or you can use it when you exercise.

Overeating fat makes you fat. If you combine carbs with fat, as in the Western diet, they promote obesity.

Most ketogenic studies are only short-term. We can't know the long-term effects of eating this kind of diet. The keto diet is an an excuse to feel good about your bad habits.

You can lose weight on any diet if you consume fewer calories. A diet full of chips and candy can cause weight loss if you eat limited calories. But that doesn't mean that your diet is healthy.

Some sites such as The Truth About Cancer claim that the keto diet can help us fight cancer. But cancer cells can feed on ketones.

Cancer Cells Can Feed On Ketones

Cancer feeds on sugar. Therefore, keto followers tell us to starve cancer cells with fat. But all cells feed on sugar. But here is the kicker. Cancer can feed on fat and ketones, too. 

Ketones can fuel breast cancer. Cancer becomes more aggressive if you drip ketones on breast cancer cells in a petri dish.

A 2012 study showed that tumors could use ketones for fuel. Cancer cells are metabolically flexible. If you starve them of glucose, they will adapt to using fatty acids or amino acids for energy.

Do yourself a favor and stay away from the ketogenic diet or other low-carb diets. The same foods that cause cancer don't become harmless because you eat the ketogenic way.

Humans are plant-eaters. When we follow the diet designed for us, we stay slim and healthy. You can't fool the body.