Plant-Based Nutrition & Cancer: Clinical Support for Prevention, Management and Recovery
Prevention vs. Clinical Support: Choose Your Path
While evidence strongly supports the role of plant-based nutrition in cancer prevention, navigating dietary choices during active management and recovery is highly specialised. Our approach is clinical and systems-based, ensuring maximum safety and benefit.
If you are navigating active management or post-treatment recovery: This highly complex nutritional approach requires the intensive, bespoke support of our Comprehensive Cancer Support Programme to ensure safety and optimal outcomes.
If your focus is on Cancer Prevention, General Risk Reduction, or Optimising Long-Term Health: The principles for healthy aging and risk reduction are fully addressed within our Optimise Health Programme, designed for proactive longevity and comprehensive systemic support.
A wholefood plant-based diet reduces cancer risk and risk of recurrence, supporting outcome potential, quality of life, and tolerance to treatment side effects (4).
A Wholefood Plant-Based Diet and Cancer Risk: What the Research Shows
The Role of Diet and Lifestyle
It is now widely understood that the genes we are born with contribute to the development of cancer in only 5-10% of cases. Studies demonstrate that the remaining 90–95% of all cancers have their roots in environmental and lifestyle factors (1). The critical factors affecting cancer incidence and mortality include tobacco, alcohol, diet, obesity, infectious agents, environmental pollutants, and radiation.
Current medical practice often focuses solely on the eradication of tumour cells—using a combination of surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and targeted treatments—while largely ignoring these influential lifestyle factors. This singular focus remains despite overwhelming evidence demonstrating the vital role that diet and lifestyle play in cancer prevention, reducing the risk of recurrence, and significantly improving outcomes after a diagnosis.
Cancer is a multi-faceted disease. In every phase of its development and progression, optimised nutrition can play a significant role (4, 5). It has the potential not only for improving clinical outcomes but also for enhancing energy levels, increasing general wellbeing, improving tolerance to treatments, and ensuring speedier recovery.
At Eglin Health, we aim to fill this informational gap, providing evidence-based, clinical recommendations to ensure the best possible nutritional support and outcome for our clients.
Why a Wholefood Plant-Based Diet (WFPBD)?
There is now a large and ever-growing body of evidence demonstrating that dietary intake is intrinsically linked to cancer outcomes, with the overwhelming majority of research supporting plant-enriched diets for cancer prevention and control (6).
The Wholefood Plant-Based Diet (WFPBD) is part of established, universally recommended healthy lifestyle habits. Adherence to a WFPBD is associated with a significantly reduced cancer risk (6), and may also prove beneficial for prognosis (2).
Additionally, the WFPBD confers valuable side-benefits that directly influence cancer risk and progression, including:
Supporting a diverse microbiome (3).
Improving outcomes for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Optimising body weight and body composition.
All these systemic improvements further contribute to a reduced risk of cancer development and progression. Accordingly, several professional organisations, including the American Cancer Society and Cancer Research UK, recommend dietary patterns that are entirely consistent with the WFPBD for primary risk reduction.
Personalised Support for a Multi-Faceted Disease
Cancer is a complex, multi-faceted disease where the power of personalised nutrition cannot be overstated. While the evidence supporting the WFPBD for prevention and prognosis is strong, navigating the shifting nutritional requirements during active treatment, recovery, and prevention requires highly specialised, clinical support.
Do not navigate this crucial area alone with generalised advice. Choose the systems-based, evidence-driven approach of the Cancer Support Programme or Optimise Health Programme to ensure your nutritional strategy is safe, effective, and fully tailored to your unique journey.
Sources
Anand, P et al. (2008). ‘Cancer is a Preventable Disease that Requires Major Lifestyle Changes.’ Pharmaceutical Research. Vol 25(9). p2097-2116
Hardt, Luisa et al. (2022). “Plant-Based Diets and Cancer Prognosis: a Review of Recent Research.” Current nutrition reports vol. 11,4 (2022): 695-716. doi:10.1007/s13668-022-00440-1
Lee, K A et al. (2021). “The gut microbiome: what the oncologist ought to know.” British journal of cancer vol. 125,9 (2021): 1197-1209. doi:10.1038/s41416-021-01467-x
Kassam S et al. (2022). Plant-based Nutrition in Clinical Practice. UK. Hammersmith Health Books
Ravasco P. (2019). Nutrition in Cancer Patients. J Clin Med. 2019 Aug 14;8(8):1211. doi: 10.3390/jcm8081211. PMID: 31416154; PMCID: PMC6723589.
Shah, Urvi A, and Neil M Iyengar. (2022). “Plant-Based and Ketogenic Diets as Diverging Paths to Address Cancer: A Review.” JAMA oncology vol. 8,8 (2022): 1201-1208. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2022.1769
