Sugar and cancer patients
Once you’re diagnosed with cancer, eliminating sugar doesn’t seem to slow or halt cancer growth in most cases, Ms. Shawhan said. “By this point, it is not sugar intake that is driving cancer growth, but the cancer itself.”
Additionally, sugar is essential for most living things, Dr. Scherer said. And when it occurs naturally in foods like dairy products, fruits and vegetables, it’s part of a healthy diet, said Natalie Ledesma, an oncology dietitian at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.
For the most part, experts agree that there’s no need to abstain from sugars that appear in whole foods. But Ms. Ledesma notes that consuming excess added sugar has been associated with worse outcomes — including higher mortality rates — in patients with certain solid tumors like breast, colon and prostate cancers. Other cancers may also be impacted, she said, but research on rarer cancer types has been limited.
It’s also important that cancer patients manage their diets without becoming afraid of food, said Dr. Santosh Rao, an integrative oncologist at University Hospitals Connor Whole Health in Cleveland. Up to half experience muscle loss as a result of their disease. And sometimes things that doctors recommend for patients during rounds of grueling treatments — like Ensure, electrolyte drinks or even potatoes — can contain a lot of sugars, Ms. Shawhan said.
While all people should avoid diets high in added sugars, cancer patients with certain metabolic diseases should be especially vigilant because those diseases can affect their prognosis.
“Patients with poorly controlled diabetes tend to have more aggressive breast cancer,” for example, said Dr. Rao. And a meta-analysis suggested obese patients were more likely to die from colon, breast and uterine cancers.
How to eat more healthfully without depriving yourself
The best way to lower your cancer risk, and to eat if you have a cancer diagnosis, is to follow a healthy diet that has plenty of whole fruits and vegetables. Mediterranean diets meet these goals and help reduce cancer risk, some studies show. Pairing carbohydrates with protein, fiber and fat (a dab of peanut butter on an apple slice, for example) prevents spikes in glucose that can, over time, wreak havoc on our metabolism and increase cancer risk.
