Simon: Sugar doesn't cause cancer. Toxins do. Avoiding animal products is a better way to stop cancer than avoiding sugar. In this episode, I'm going to explain why sugar doesn't cause cancer and why you don't need to avoid it. 

I will clarify the purpose of sugar in plants and why it's essential for our well-being. By the end of this show, you won't be afraid of eating a carrot and can actually enjoy it.

Intro jingle: Welcome to the Cancer Wisdom podcast. This podcast teaches you how to treat cancer with natural remedies without using toxic treatments. Discover how to take charge of your health and not be a slave to Big Pharma medicine. Here's your host Simon Persson.

Simon: Otto Heinrich Warburg was a German scientist, medical doctor, and Noble Prize winner. He discovered that cancer cells ferment more glucose or sugar than oxygen. Since his discovery that cancer cells use glucose or sugar, many people have become afraid of eating sugar.

All of a sudden, everyone has to avoid any food that contains sugar, even vegetables like carrots. And the low-carb movement sees sugar as the root of all evil. And they recommend that you attack cancers by starving it of sugars.

But a lack of oxygen is not the prime cause of cancer. It's toxins. Cancer cells revert to fermenting sugars because of toxins and use sugar as an alternative energy source.

But that doesn't mean that sugar is the cause of cancer. In this episode, I'm going to explain why sugar does not cause cancer, and I will explain the real cause of it.

To reveal why sugar doesn't cause cancer, we first need to know how the body utilizes sugar. Every cell in your body needs oxygen to function.

They pick up oxygen and release carbon dioxide in the lungs. And it provides the basic building blocks that our bodies need to survive.

Cells combine oxygen with nitrogen and hydrogen to produce various proteins that create new cells. And every day, about 700 billion cells in our bodies wear out and must be replaced.

Without oxygen, our bodies cannot build new cells. Our brain can only survive without oxygen for a couple of minutes. The whole body gets oxygen from the lungs, and hemoglobin in the blood transports oxygen to the whole body.

But humans must also get energy from the food we eat. Animal cells combine oxygen with food molecules to release energy to live and function. Your cells use the oxygen you breathe to get energy from the food that you eat.

Our cells use oxygen to break down sugar, and when they do that, they produce energy that your body needs.When the cells use oxygen to break down sugar, the byproduct is carbon dioxide, and after this process, energy is released. So carbon dioxide is the waste product of our cellular respiration that you breathe out each time you inhale.

Cells in our bodies produce energy through a process called cellular respiration. During cellular respiration, oxygen combines with food molecules such as glucose to create energy-rich molecules called ATP.

So humans use aerobic respiration to produce energy. When cells don't get enough oxygen, they don't have enough energy to function as normal, and they have a hard time releasing energy from the food.

So humans and other animals often rely on aerobic respiration to stay alive. So that means we use oxygen to create energy.

But the cells can perform in the absence of oxygen through anaerobic respiration. Anaerobic respiration is when the cells break down sugars to generate energy in spite of oxygen.  

But aerobic respiration is more efficient than anaerobic respiration because aerobic respiration yields more energy compared to anaerobic respiration.

Without oxygen, cells can only produce less than 10% of the energy compared to aerobic respiration, which uses oxygen.
Bacteria can live in low-oxygen environments and use anaerobic respiration. But for them to do that, they need some kind of fuel.

When I wanted to grow my own vegetables, I learned that you had to create compost. To make compost, you need to take food scraps, such as vegetables and fruits, and mix them at different intervals.

And through oxygen, the vegetables and fruits break down and become compost. I live in an apartment, so I tried to create compost on my balcony. But it was so windy on my balcony that the lid flew away.

And it was really hard to create compost. But then I found a Japanese method where you could create compost indoors, called Bokashi.

When you make compost outside, you use oxygen to start the process called aerobic respiration. But with Bokashi, you throw the vegetables in a bucket, and then you close it with a lid. But the bucket doesn't have that much oxygen.

Therefore you can't use oxygen to break down the produce. So the bacteria need to find an alternative energy source to create compost. Therefore with Bokashi, you use Bokashi bran, which contains a mix of microbes, water, sugar, wheat bran, and rice bran.

The bacteria then use the sugar in the Bokashi bran to do their work. They use energy from molasses,  syrup, or sugar to survive.

If you don't provide the bran, they can't survive, and you won't be able to create compost indoors. Cancer cells work like the microbes in Bokashi.

When the body is surrounded by too many toxins, the oxygen level goes down. Cancer cells are deployed to absorb the toxins to protect the healthy cells.

But because the oxygen level is quite low, they need to find a way to survive with less oxygen, and therefore, cancer cells use anaerobic respiration to survive.

Like the microbes in the Bokashi, cancer cells use the energy from glucose to survive and then absorb the toxins. Cancer cells live in an oxygen-deprived environment, and therefore the best energy source for them is glucose.  

Cancer is a biological program by the body to deal with extreme toxicity. We create cancer cells every day, but it's only when our body is extremely toxic that we notice cancer cells.

There are several reasons why we can get stuck in this highly toxic state, such as eating animal products, having too much stress, eating processed foods, air pollution, or other toxins from the environment.

When your body is in an extremely toxic state, it's a sign that your organs that are supposed to detox the body aren't working as they should. And the best way the body can do at that point is to absorb the toxins with cancer cells until you remove the underlying cause of this toxic state.

As I said in the first episode of this podcast, cancer cells are like plastic bags where you put your garbage. Every day garbage men pick up our waste and then recycle it or burn it.  

But imagine that for some reason, they weren't able to pick up your garbage, your garbage bags would accumulate inside your home, and you won't be able to get rid of them.

And if no one picks up your garbage for a while, they will start to pile up and become larger and larger until you can't move around your home. If you don't have a lawn, the only way you can remove the garbage is by burning them.

But that is dangerous because your home will be smoke-filled. So the best way is to solve the problem with the garbage man. Maybe you didn't pay the utility bill, or there was a strike where the workers didn't get enough paid.

When their problem is solved, they will start to pick up your garbage again, and your pile of garbage will become smaller and smaller.

In this case, the cancer cells were the plastic bags that protected your house from the toxic waste from your food or other toxins.

Or imagine that there's a traffic jam where the cars can't move because of an accident. To solve the situation, you need to remove the car that's blocking the traffic. And when you do that, you won't have any problems anymore.

For you to understand why sugar is not the problem, we need to understand how the body uses sugars. The food that we eat contains three macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are our most important macronutrient. It's a significant building block of plants. Carbohydrates in plants or fruits consist of glucose or sugar. And sugar, or glucose, is the human body's primary source of energy from the cells. And it's also the brain's primary source of energy.

Plants use water, carbon dioxide, and sunshine to create simple sugars through a process called photosynthesis. And the most basic carbohydrate is glucose.

If you look at glucose or plant cells, you can see that they join into chains, and some of the chains attach to a straight line called amylase, and others connect in many branches called amylopectin.

There are three basic types of carbohydrates, such as sugar, cellulose, and starch. Each contains carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in specific configurations. The simplest sugars include sucrose, fructose, lactose, and glucose.

Sucrose is the white sugar that you use when you bake cookies. Fructose makes fruit sweet, and lactose in milk is the only animal food that contains carbohydrates, and glucose is pure sugar that combines in chains to make celluloses and starch. So cellulose or fiber consists of chains of glucose bonded together with indigestible linkages.

You can find fiber in plants, wood, and other organic matter. Our digestive system doesn't know how to break down these enzymes, but it uses fiber to create poop.

Plants contain both simple and complex carbohydrates in various amounts. Humans have the enzyme amylase in our saliva and intestine.

Amylase breaks down long carbohydrate chains and turns them into simple sugars. Complex carbohydrates are sugar molecules that stick together in long, complex chains. So you can find complex carbs in peas, beans, potatoes, whole grains, or rice.

So the carbohydrate that's most beneficial to humans is starch. Starch is valuable to us because we can break it down into simple sugars, and that provides us with energy throughout the day.

Plants store starch in their roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds, or fruits. And they provide the plant with energy, such as when there's winter. Some vegetables contain more starch, like potatoes, rice, beans, oats, lentils, and peas.

Fruits, for example, contain mostly simple sugars that we can burn quite quickly into energy. They contain very little of the slow-burning, sustaining starch. So therefore, fruits won't satisfy you for long.

And green, yellow, and non-starchy vegetables contain small amounts of starch, and they can't sustain your energy level throughout the day.

And they should only be there to add more nutrients to your diet. And starch should be used to give your body slow-burning energy.

So when humans eat starch, we thrive. The more rice, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes that you eat, the healthier you become.

Starch is the food that all healthy populations have eaten for 13,000 years, and science has shown that eating a whole food plant-based diet reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.  

Both simple and complex carbohydrates turn into glucose in the body and are then used as energy, as I explained before.

Our bodies release these simple sugars from the small intestine into the bloodstream, and then this process provides our cells with a ready supply of energy. Glucose is healthy when it comes from natural sources such as starches, vegetables, and fruits.

And scientists have never shown that carbohydrates from whole foods cause cancer. And the best way to give your body energy is to eat carbohydrates.

It's the easiest and most efficient way for the body to get everything it needs. And if you look around the world, those who eat most starchy vegetables live the longest.

So one example is the Blue Zones, which are five places in the world that have the most centenarians or people that are over 100 years old.

And if you look at their diet, 95% of their calories come from plants, and only 5% from animal products. About 65% of their food is from whole grains, beans, and starchy tubers.

When people talk about sugar, what they really mean is white table sugar, which is a processed carb. It's a mistake to vilify all carbs based on table sugar. So, sucrose, or white sugar, is not the same as sugar in vegetables in its complete form.

Table sugar is when you extract and refine sugar from a sugar cane or sugar beet. In this refinement, you bleach the sugar and create a product that's unnatural and doesn't contain any vitamins or minerals.

White sugar is addictive and delivers the same intense stimulation as cocaine or opium. It's similar to when you use narcotics, and therefore many food producers add sugar to their products.

There's a lot of misinformation about carbohydrates. One lie is that starches turn into sugars and become fat. But if that was true, then Japanese people would be the most obese people on earth. But they are one of the healthiest in the world.

There are very few people in Japan that are obese, and most of them are slim. Populations with the highest carbohydrate consumption are the trimmest and fittest in the world.

And when you look at Asians that migrate to Western countries such as the United States, they become bigger and obese when they eat the Western diet. And the reason is because they eat less starchy vegetables such as rice and eat more meat.

It's hard to become obese on table sugar or glucose. There's a process called de novo lipogenesis that can turn glucose into fat. So pigs and cows use it to convert carbs into fats.

But humans are inefficient at converting glucose to fat under normal conditions. We are not the same as pigs or cows, and carbs don't make us obese like them.  

It takes a lot of energy for the body to convert glucose into fat. So there's a 30% conversion loss when the body does that.  

The body stores fat as fat without effort. So why would it use glucose and turn it into fat when it takes so much effort?

Instead, the body uses glucose and stores it in water called glycogen. That's a more smart and efficient way to store glucose than turning it into fat. The only way you can get fat from starch or carbohydrates is when you overeat at an extreme level.

There's a YouTuber called Freelee the Banana Girl. She's a vegan, and she told her viewers to eat 3000 calories like her. But what she didn't mention is that she had an extremely active life, and when you are more active, you need to use more calories.

But her followers didn't train as hard as her and were sitting on the sofa at home. They didn't need to eat as many calories as her.

And because they ate as many calories as her, the body then had to store the extra calories as glycogen. And if it wasn't able to do that, then it had to convert some of it into fat. Therefore her followers could get obese even if they ate carbohydrates.

My friend, he told me that he saw a TV program about a man that ate, I think, 100 oranges per day or something crazy like that. And then he wondered why he became so fat.

If you overeat any food, you will become fat because your body is not able to absorb all the foods, and it only becomes waste.

You might have heard that carbohydrates are behind diabetes. But if you look at the signs, that's a strong relationship between red meat consumption and diabetes.

Populations that consume most carbohydrates have the lowest rates of diabetes worldwide. Type two diabetes is almost unknown in rural Asia, Africa, Mexico, and Peru.

And those who eat a diet rich in fats and low in carbohydrates often develop diabetes. There was a doctor called Kempner and he was able to cure diabetes in his patients with the rice diet.

His treatment was a simple therapy with white rice, fruit, juice, and sugar. And his patients reversed their condition.

So it's fat that causes diabetes, not carbs. Insulin is used when you try to eat carbohydrates. It's the pancreas that creates insulin. The pancreas is a gland behind your stomach, and it uses insulin to allow your body to use glucose for energy.

After a meal or snack, carbohydrates are broken down in your digestive tract and changed into glucose, and then absorbed into the bloodstream through the lining of your small intestine.

And once glucose is in your bloodstream, insulin signals cells throughout the body to absorb the sugar and use it for energy

Insulin also helps your body balance your blood glucose levels. So when there's too much glucose in your bloodstream, insulin tells your body to store the leftover glucose in your liver, and the stored glucose isn't released until your blood glucose levels decrease.

Your blood glucose levels may decrease between meals when you are stressed or when you need extra energy.  

I read the book Mastering Diabetes written by Cyrus Khambatta and Robby Barbaro. And what's special about them is that they have diabetes one, but they eat a carbohydrate-rich diet. They also eat a lot of fruits, which many people have said is the worst thing that you can eat as a diabetic.

Diabetes one means that your pancreas cannot create insulin. But somehow, they thrive on a diet with a lot of fruits and carbs.

So that shows that it's not carbs that cause diabetes, but a lot of fat. When you eat a lot of fat, you block your cells from receiving insulin, and then the body doesn't know that it should consume the carbohydrate.

And when the cells are not aware that they should break down the glucose, the glucose is not used, and that raises the glucose level in the blood, and then the body needs to get rid of this excess glucose.

But promoters of the low-carb movement say that they can heal diabetes. But their diet doesn't reverse diabetes. You only avoid carbohydrates, and then you won't get any high glucose levels in your blood.  

But you haven't solved the underlying issue. You have only avoided it. Those who eat a low-carb diet actually worsen their condition. And if they were to eat carbohydrates again, then their negative reaction would be even greater than before.

And the low-carb movement has also said to everyone that insulin is bad for our body. And they tell everyone we should avoid food with a high glycemic index.

The glycemic index measures the rise in blood sugar over two to three hours after we eat. Your blood sugar should rise after you eat. So it's nothing bad.

 But because of the low-carb movement, many people assume that foods with high GI, such as potatoes and rice, are harmful. And then, they tell everyone to avoid healthy carbohydrates because of their GI ratings.

But when you replace high-GI foods with unhealthy low-GI foods like oils, meats, or cheeses, you do your body a disservice.

So high GI foods help you feel satisfied and cause you not to overeat. It's dangerous to assume that a food is healthy because of its glycemic index.

Let me make a comparison of different foods based on their GI ratings, and then you tell me which you think is more healthy.

The first food in this comparison has a GI rating of 30, and the other food has 109 GI. So which one do you think is the healthiest? If you ask the low-carb movement, the food with 30 GI should be healthier.

But in this example, the food with 30 GI is pizza supreme, and the other food is jasmine rice. So which one do you think is the healthiest? Without a doubt, it's the rice.

Let's try another one. One food has 34 GI, and the other one has 92. So, in this case, the lower GI food is a chocolate drink, and the high GI food is carrots. So which one do you think is healthier?

Let's try another one. So one food contains 32 GI, and the other one has 101. In this example, egg fettuccine contains 32 GI, and the other food was boiled potato. It's obvious that the potato is more healthy.

Insulin is natural and nothing terrible. Saying that insulin is bad is like saying dopamine is wrong because it causes pleasure. And pleasure can be used for both good and bad, such as exercising, eating healthy, or lead to bad habits, such as eating cakes, watching TV, or smoking.

But dopamine is neither good or bad. It's needed like insulin. If we don't have insulin, then we can't absorb carbohydrates.

Avoiding glucose doesn't solve the issue with cancer. If glucose is the cause of cancer, then it means that we should avoid all vegetables and fruits. But what's left when you stop eating these foods? Animal products, fats, and oils. And these things increase our cancer risk.

The only way to avoid cancer, in this case, is to not eat any food. But if we do that, we starve the death. The obvious solution to this dilemma is that we should eat carbohydrates because that's the body's preferred energy source.

And animal products cause cancer and other serious issues in the body. So that means that animal products are the cause of cancer and other things and not glucose.

And if we stop doing things that make our body toxic, then the body's organs will be able to remove the toxins from the body. And when it does that, the oxygen level in the body will also rise. And therefore, the cancer cells are not needed anymore.

So let me talk about the ketogenic diet and the low-carb movement because they tell us to starve cancer cells of glucose to reverse cancer. The ketogenic diet is a popular low-carb diet.

It started when doctors at the Mayo Clinic treated patients with epilepsy in the 1920s, and they discovered that patients that had low sugar levels had fewer seizures. Therefore they created a diet that mimic this starvation mode.

The ketogenic diet is a low-carbohydrate diet that allows a maximum of 30 grams of dietary carbohydrates per day. This diet prohibits carbohydrate-rich foods such as fruits, starchy vegetables,  legumes, and grains.

And instead, you eat meat, dairy, leafy greens, and non-starchy vegetables such as nuts, seeds, and oils that contain a lot of fat. So in this diet, 60 to 75% of your food consists of fat and about 15 to 30% protein, and only five to 10% carbs.

And if you remove the carbohydrates, there's only protein and fat left. So, therefore, this diet consists primarily of meat and fatty foods.

As I said before, we store excess carbs as glycogen in the liver and our muscles. Glycogen consists of glucose mixed with water, and when there's starvation, the body depletes its glycogen store.

And when there's no glycogen left, the body then has to use fat for its survival. To do that, the body creates ketones in the liver to digest the fat and use it as fuel. Your brain's primary source of energy is glucose, and it's dependent on carbohydrates for energy.

When you lose weight on the ketogenic diet by eating very little carbs,  your body uses its stored glycogen. And the weight loss is only water weight that has disappeared.

Ketones allow your body to burn fat. So the condition called ketosis is the same condition when people are starving to death. So what the ketogenic diet does is simulate this sick state.

Ketone bodies from the liver can work as a  backup fuel for your brain. But it's not the brain's preferred energy source.
Cancer cells can find other ways to survive without oxygen than using glucose and can use fat as an energy source.

That means that even if you avoid carbohydrates, cancer cells will use fat instead. And because fat and animal products are unhealthy for the body,  you will only create more toxins and still feed cancer cells. And you have actually made the problem even worse.

Many blame sugar for our epidemic, obesity, or our cancer. But sugar is a scapegoat created by the dairy and animal industry to remove the blame from them.

Animal products and other things are the real cause of our health problems, not sugar. Meat and dairy are behind many diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, and our bodies are not built to eat meat.

We thrive when we eat vegetables and fruits. Animal products contain IGF-1, heterocyclic amines, heme-iron, saturated fat, and cholesterol that can cause cancer.

And when the low-carb movement talks about carbs, they often mention processed foods such as cakes and pastries. But these things often contain not only sugar but also a lot of fats such as butter,  margarine, and oils.

And these things are causing obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and all the real cause of this condition, not carbohydrates.

What I find interesting is that some people say that some vegetables are healthy, such as leafy greens, or cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli and cauliflower. And then they tell everyone to avoid carbs because they make you fat and feed cancer.

But when they talk about carbs, what they really mean is to avoid complex carbohydrates. But most plants contain carbohydrates, even leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables.

If they say that sugar feeds cancer, then how can leafy greens and other healthy vegetables protect you from cancer? But as I have told you, carbohydrates are not the cause of cancer but can prevent it.

So therefore, you shouldn't be afraid of complex carbohydrates such as rice and potatoes because the longest-living people on earth eat a lot of starches. So that can't be the cause of cancer.

Fighting your instinct to consume sugar is as senseless as fighting your hunger drive. So your body wants sugar because it's our natural food source, and it gives us optimal energy.

And the cells use carbs to give the body energy. How can it be a bad thing? You shouldn't be afraid of carbs and should eat natural sugars in starches, vegetables, and fruits.

So this doesn't mean that you should eat white sugar.   White sugar is a processed food that doesn't have any fiber or nutrients. When I say that you shouldn't avoid sugar, I don't mean that you should eat candies or other processed foods that contain white sugar.

They are not healthy, and some of them can even contain animal products such as eggs or dairy. So what I mean is that you should eat the foods that God or mother nature created and not the processed foods that humans have manufactured.

Sugar doesn't feed cancer. The real enemy is not sugar, but animal products, stress, and other toxins in our environment. So the next time you want to eat a carrot, don't be afraid.

Instead, know that it will lower your cancer risk. Not raise it. If you want to learn more about plant nutrition,  then you can read our guide, the Ultimate Cancer Diet and Nutrition Guide. In this guide, I explain in detail how plant nutrition works.  

And you learn how to eat a healthy plant-based diet that doesn't contain any toxic substances. You can read this guide for free, and you don't need to give your email address or sign up to read it.

Thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll see you in the next one.