Fighting cancer with food

Dr Wilkinson focused on the important role diet can play in overcoming breast cancer when he presented an in-depth education session to general practitioner delegates at Mater Health Services’ recent Simply Versace GP Education Conference held on the Gold Coast.

He said he chose the topic for his GP audience because alongside cancer specialists like himself, general practitioners can help shape treatment pathways for patients that support the evidence that diet is an integral factor in cancer treatment.

“In the past the perception has been that things like diet and exercise are helpful in terms of improving quality of life for breast cancer patients but not that they are significant factors to survival,” Dr Wilkinson explains.

“But studies are now showing that these things will improve survival rates and reduce the likelihood of cancer recurrence,” he says.

Dr Wilkinson points to research such as a 2005 Women’s Intervention Nutritional Study undertaken in America that found oestrogen receptor negative women on a low fat diet had a 42 per cent lower relative risk of breast cancer recurrence than women on a standard diet.

The results of a 10 year study undertaken in Canada which measured vitamin 25-OH D levels in the blood of 512 newly-diagnosed breast cancer patients and then followed their progress over the decade revealed women in the group with deficient vitamin D levels had signifi cantly worse distant disease-free survival. The prognostic significance of vitamin D levels was found to be independent of patient age or weight, tumor stage, or tumor grade.

Similarly, a four year study by Creighton University School of Medicine in the US found a 60 per cent relative reduction in cancer risk in women who received vitamin D (50 out of 1179 women developed cancer).

According to Dr Wilkinson, these and other research efforts looking at things like diets high in animal foods and refined carbohydrates and the cancer blocking agents found in green tea are providing the medical fraternity’s evidence-based sensibilities with the proof needed to give diet a new level of credence in cancer treatment.

“As a specialist oncologist whose key role is to operate on cancer patients, the diet side of things is really not my area of specialty but I see genuine merit in it so I believe I should be talking to patients about it and for that reason I would say GPs should be doing the same,” he says.

“In my view it just doesn’t get the attention it deserves and I find that patients are very enthusiastic about taking on an active a role in their own cancer management.”

Working in closer partnership with GPs during the course of a patient’s cancer treatment is also something Dr Wilkinson says he would like to build on.

“The patient may experience a bit of ‘to and fro’ between GP and specialist during their treatment and maintaining a strong rapport between the two medical professionals is beneficial,” he says.

“As evidence relating to diet and lifestyle is published we need to draw attention to it and start to implement it. This is achieved by ongoing education and exchange. I know that some GPs are very knowledgeable about lifestyle interventions and we can all learn from each other, so I really encourage any dialogue,” he says.