The Food Medic - S2 E1 - Live Podcast: Cancer and Diet

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

This special episode was recorded live at The Future of Food conference. On the panel, titled Cancer and diet, Hazel is joined by Dr. Ailsa Lumsden, who is a specialist doctor in oncology, Camilla Ferraro, who is a dietician with experience in cancer services, and Dani Binnington, a lifestyle blogger and mum of 3 who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33. Hazel also has a quick catch up on everything that has happened since season 1 of the podcast and shares some exciting news on whats coming up next. Make sure to get involved in our challenge of the week with the #TheFoodMedicChallenge. Hear more from The Food Medic over on www.thefoodmedic.co.uk or on social media @thefoodmedic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to a brand new season of the Food Medic podcast. My name's Dr. Hazel Wallace and I'm founder of the Food Medic. I'm a medical doctor, a health influencer and best-selling author of the books The Food Medic and The Food Medic for Life. I'm also a qualified personal trainer and I'm currently studying a master's in clinical nutrition and public health. The Food Medic is aimed at bridging the gap between traditional medical advice and the latest thoughts and developments in nutrition and other areas of lifestyle. In this podcast, we will hear from leading experts in their field who will be

sharing evidence-based advice on how we can live healthier lives. So guys, we're back with a brand new season of the Food Medic podcast. And in this first episode, I'm going to be giving you a live podcast, which I recorded at the first Food Medic conference, The Future of Food. And I'll talk to you a little bit more about that in a couple of minutes. But before we jump into that, it's been a couple of months since we've had a catch up. So I thought I'd just give you a bit of a roundup as to what I've been doing the past couple of months. As you've probably noticed, I have gone back to uni. I'm doing a master's in clinical nutrition and public health, which is a year long master's.

And I'm absolutely loving it. I'm going to be completely honest with you guys. It's tough. It's hard jiggling everything, but I'm really, really enjoying it. On top of that, as the queen of lunchboxes, I've launched my own product range in Boots. So this is exclusive to Boots and it's available just for the next couple of months up until Christmas. So definitely check that one out. And also I can't not talk about the future of food conference. So this was my first conference. I got speakers from all over the world. We had someone flying from New York, people from Oslo,

30 speakers, 400 guests and four stages. And we talked about food and the future of food and the impact it has on our health and the planet's health. Now, I would love to have taken each and every one of you with me to the conference because it blew my mind. But luckily, in this episode, we're going to hear from one of my favorite panels from the day which was titled diet and cancer so I hope you really enjoy this one I know I did and guys make sure to keep listening until the end of the podcast because every week I'm going to be giving you a special little challenge and I know you're going to love it okay so now we're going to hear from the Cancer and Diet panel live

from the Future of Food conference. On the panel, I'm joined by Dr. Ailsa Lumsden, dietitian Camilla Ferrero, and Dani Binnington, a lifestyle blogger who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 30. So first of all, thank you guys for coming. I'm going to let you guys introduce yourselves individually. Okay. Take it away Elsa. I'll start. My name's Elsa. I am an NHS doctor. I work here in London. I've been a doctor for about 13 years and I guess I come from things from the side where I've had two chronic illnesses which led me to look outside of traditional western medical box and gave me a slightly different perspective.

So this is kind of where I ended up looking more at lifestyle and nutrition. So my name's Camilla. I'm a registered dietitian now but actually an Australian trained dietitian. I've worked in a lot of major public hospitals across a number of specialties but most recently with patients getting chemotherapy. Hi, my name is Dani. Five years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I watched a telly and I groped around in my armpit and I found a lump. And my treatment included surgeries and chemotherapy and radiotherapy. And after that treatment, I wanted to become active in my own recovery. And I want to share the message that it's really good to be proactive

and go out there and seek things and get off that chair and try and find things that work for you. Wonderful so Elsa I'm going to give you the first question and that is how much do we know in terms of how our lifestyle can increase our risk of cancer? The projections are quite scary one in two of us if we were born after 1960 will develop cancer at some point in our lifetime. So that's why I think it's amazing that you've got this panel. To have cancer, the big C word, on a mainstream kind of wellness event is fantastic because a lot of people hide away. It's a nasty word. We don't talk about it. And that actually needs to change because it affects everyone. I'm sure everyone in this room has been touched in some way by a family member or themselves. So I think I'm very passionate about the fact we just need to talk about it more. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending

on which way you look at it, our lifestyle does affect our chances. It's about a third of cancers are thought to be from preventable causes. So I see that as a thing that is positive. There's things we can do to make our lives. You cannot cancer-proof your life, but there are things you can do to make your risk of developing cancer less and even once you're diagnosed with cancer there are things and actions you can take in your life to make your treatment go better so for me it's a positive there's there is a big intervention for lifestyle okay and following a cancer diagnosis and this is to the whole panel how much emphasis is put on non-medical approaches when it comes to treatment so diet and exercise or stress management i'll start because my bit's short working within the

nhs it's very little yeah we are under a lot of time constraints budget constraints so a big shout out to the charities macmillan maggie's trek stock they do an amazing job of filling those holes which to be honest the nh NHS has to focus on the mainstream important parts. But not to say that the other bits aren't important. I'm not saying that at all. That's why I'm here. But that's the reality of the NHS. I did ask a lot of questions to my oncologists and also my nurses and everyone that took care of me. I didn't get a lot of answers. I think it's such a big subject to discuss there is no time really so I think it's up to us to do some digging to do some research to connect with people that might

have an answer for you and not give up if you think in your there is something in your diet or in how you move or something that you can do you will find someone that has an answer for you it might not be your medical doctor or your GP, but there will be someone out there. Yeah, and I think following on from what Elsa said from the nutrition space as well, like an RD working in a public system is only going to see those patients that are already not thriving with their cancer treatment or that are going to have some sort of treatment

that is going to directly impact their nutrition. So in an RD, it would be amazing if everyone could have like a pre-treatment appointment with an ID even just those questions they have floating in their head about diet and cancer and should I change my diet just to clear up some of those myths but with the current system there's just no resources there to fund that. No and Dani you said that there's not enough time and that you asked a lot of questions and you didn't get many answers. So did you, when you didn't get the advice that you were looking for, did you do your own research and what did you find?

Oh yeah, don't we all turn to Dr. Google at three o'clock in the morning when we can't sleep or Instagram or social media. There are so many places you can find inspiration from. The first time I got in contact with something that is food and cancer related was a lady. She became my chemo buddy. We always went to chemotherapy on the same day. She gave me a book and the book talked very much about cancer and food. And there was a big map in the book and I still can so remember it. And the map focused on all the countries in the world. And it showed that in the Western world there's loads more cancers than in many other places in third world countries

and I looked at a map and I can still see today and I thought there must be something in it and that was my starting point that might be very different for other people but that is how I started my research and I thought there must be something in it and then I realized of course there's diabetes too there's lots of other problems that we can heart disease there's lots of other things that we can relate directly or indirectly to how we eat so that was my starting point and I just kept digging really. And Elsa what do you think is the risk of allowing patients to go do their own research from Dr Google? Oh that's a loaded question. Oh, it's really difficult because I think in an ideal world, I have my dream about my polyclinic,

which has a physiotherapist in there to get talking about the movement. You have a dietitian in there to get talking about the diet. I'm in there talking about the oncology, the surgeons in there, you know, and we have, you know, that's my ideal world. It's not in our reality for now. So we do need Dr. Google, I guess, or equivalent. I guess one of the main points I want to get across today is that I want patients to be honest with us as they're treating teams, because a lot of the things you could be advised on the internet, some of them are dangerous. We all have anecdotal experience of things gone wrong. And so my main thing is if you are going to go down that path, is even if you take it back to your oncologist and you tell them, and I know there are some oncologists that are not receptive to this stuff.

I get that. But just tell them and then you've done your duty of candor to say. And then, you know, there's things we can do, like we can check whether the supplements you're taking might have any interaction with the medications you're on and just safety netting and things like that. And, you know, so that's what I would always advise is that there just has to be this two-way conversation.

And I don't think it's realistic. A lot of oncologists kind of say there's no role for any of this. And I think that's unrealistic because the reality is, especially with a younger population developing cancer people are going to ask Dr. Google if you do not supply the information yourself people are going to look for a source of information so I think we as oncologists

or as medical professions need to be more respectful of the wider information out there and start that conversation and have that dialogue with people yeah absolutely and I think um from my own clinical practice what my experience from working with patients with cancer is there's a lot of fear around food and particular foods tend to come up same foods crop up time and time again one of the things is um the idea that sugar feeds cancer I know we spoke about this before can you explain where that kind of concept has come from? Yeah, butting if I start going too science-y. Roughly, all our cells use sugar to provide energy, to make energy.

So the cell has to tend to something called ATP. And cancer cells need sugar just as your other cells in your body need sugar. But cancer cells, it was founded in the 1950s by a scientist called Otto Wahlberg, that cancer cells use an inefficient method to transfer glucose into ATP. They only make something like four molecules of ATP because they use glycolysis rather than oxidative phosphorylation. The point of this being that for that reason, the fact that they're inefficient in their use of glucose and the fact that they're high turnover cells, glucose collects in cancer cells. Cancer cells need more glucose than your average cell. So you have something called a PET scan, which we use to

diagnose cancer. You inject somebody with a nuclear radio-labeled glucose molecule, and it will collect in the cancer. That's one of the ways we see it. So people go, okay, that cancer is glowing because it's so full of sugar. If I lower sugar in my body, I'll starve the cancer cell of sugar. Maybe my cancer won't grow. And I think the principle is true. The nugget, the cancer does feed on sugar. That is a truth.

And then, unfortunately, the kind of data or the, what's the word for it? It's kind of been extrapolated into something much bigger than that and because the reality is there have been trials where they've looked at people trying to cut out sugar which is namely like the ketogenic diet that's the best way to cut out sugars because even if you take larger carbohydrates your body will turn them into simple glucose so to cut out all sugar means cutting out all carbohydrates which means a ketogenic diet and there are some really interesting trials going on looking at brain cancer but it's it that's still very much in the trial mode um so while i guess where i would where i'm sit with

sugar is i'm like it's true sugar does feed cancer on a level but the reality being that can you cut all sugar out your diet and starve your cancer? No, probably not. Is science coming? Are there exciting stuff happening? Yes. Like the trials in metformin, looking at lowering your general blood sugar. That's really interesting. The ketogenic diet in controlled circumstances is really interesting. But demonizing all sugar, not letting people celebrate a win with a cupcake. No, I don't think the evidence is there yet. Camillailla do you want to add to that yeah i was also just going to say we can't directly as you said elsa we can't

directly translate what we're seeing at a cellular level to just not eating sugary foods because your body loves glucose and it will yeah it will search for it as hard as it can even in the ketogenic diet and the trials that they have done, there's been mixed results. Some tumours actually thrive in that environment. So I think from a dietician's point of view as well, cancer treatment can impact nutrition quite severely and I'm often seeing patients that are malnourished and I think the more restrictive, obviously we want them to eat well during treatment,

but the more restrictive we start to get, we put them at risk for further unintentional weight loss. And especially in the chemo setting, we know that not sustaining a stable weight or gaining weight if you are underweight reduces tolerance of treatment quite a bit. So I'm always concerned that we're not being too restrictive, especially in that treatment phase.

And treatment doesn't necessarily go on forever, but I think there's a role for lifestyle moving towards remission as well. And I think definitely sugar generally at a population level, we should all be eating less. But in terms of saying you need to go strictly of sugar or carbohydrate to starve a cancer the reality is you could do that and it may not work and then what what have you lost can I add something to this yeah you've got some experience I was so scared of sugar and I don't think I'm the only one so sugar came up all the time and initially because I was born and raised in Austria

I ate loads of cakes and salami sandwiches and stuff so I really had to change my diet so initially it was the cakes that went and your chocolate bars and white table sugar and then as you read a little bit more on the big world wide web it was carbohydrates simple carbohydrates oh my god they're sugar I'm going to cut that food group out as well and then I realized there might be a bit of sugar in my dairy milk I'm going to cut that out as well and then there's sugar and alcohol so I cut that out as well so from the 1st of January 2014 I cut up seven major food groups my body probably went into shock I would never advise anyone to do this it probably wasn't necessary I now know I wasn't informed well enough but I was acting on stuff

that I thought could give me cancer or could make me more ill again. Luckily, luckily there's some amazing people out there and I read some lovely books. One of them is Tim Spector's, he was here today to speak the diet myth and I'm glad I believed in proper science and I now enjoy my children's birthday cake because it's sad. I didn't have their birthday cakes for a couple of years. And now I put my whole face in it. And I think that's something to really focus on. Food is not just food. It's not just for its nutritional value and its health value.

It's for enjoyment. It's social. People use food as a sign of love. They want to look after their loved ones with cancer. And it such a shame that it gets so many food groups get demonized um during during a cancer journey yeah thank you for sharing that that was lovely and camilla um so we've spoken about using food or looking at food from a patient's perspective who's been diagnosed with cancer but looking at food from a preventative point of view meat consumption is like a huge topic and everyone's talking about reducing their meat consumption from a health perspective but also an environmental perspective

and now we have a link between red meat or processed meat consumption and cancer can you explain how much we know and what the evidence says? I think first up, just to be clear, especially from our wealthier populations, so our first world populations, we can all benefit from eating less meat for our own health, for population health, but also the health of the environment. So that's no issues with that at all. In terms of direct link to cancer between meat, our strongest evidence is for processed meats. So when we say processed, it doesn't just mean meat coming in a package. It means any sort of meat that's been altered by a salting process, a curing process, or adding of essentially preserving ingredients.

That's where our strongest evidence is between meat consumption and mostly linking to colorectal cancer, so cancers of the large bowel and the rectum. And the thoughts behind why we're seeing this strong link, and even the World Health Organization have advised people to really limit their consumption of processed meats is primarily they think to do with the preservatives that we're adding which is often nitrites and so it's a compound that's added and they think that it's those nitrites that then react with the proteins not only in the meat but in our the amino acids so they're the building blocks of proteins. When we digest that meat in the digestive process, those preservatives actually change

into compounds which have been deemed to be carcinogenic. Again, we can focus on the nitty-gritty and the proposed mechanisms that are at play, but overall, your increased risk from including processed meats in your diet is still quite minimal it's 12 to 16 percent increased risk for every I think it's 50 grams of processed meat extra that you're having per day so it's still strong evidence but in the grand scheme of things if you're having bacon with your brunch every now and then I wouldn't be worried about that. I would be worried if you were having a ham sandwich every day, if you were having it multiple times a day. I think we need to be thinking about how often we're consuming these products but definitely the strongest links lie with processed meats. In terms of red meat though, fresh red meat,

the links are actually less clear and the latest World Cancer Research Fund report kind of concluded that there's probable evidence that our consumption of red meat is linked again to mostly colorectal cancers. But actually they're thinking that could actually be a result of or confounded by what is not in the diet so in people that are eating a lot of red meat what are they therefore not eating

plant foods also could be do with could be to do sorry with how we cook the meat so there is some evidence that if you're char grilling or burning meat, that results in the creation of what we call polycyclic aromatic PCAs, for short, essentially. I won't bore you with the long-term name, that can stick to meat and they're also considered a carcinogen. But in terms of fresh meat in general, the evidence isn't as clear. And I think aiming for including more plant-based foods is your best bet. So more meat-free meals, say. But there's no need to necessarily go completely vegan or plant-based.

So I guess just to summarise that in a nutshell for people listening, processed meat, we know that there's a link with colorectal cancer. The kind of message there is not like, it's not to say never have a bacon sandwich for the rest of your life, but to definitely reduce your consumption there if you're interested in promoting your health. And when it comes to red meat, there's a probable risk. So a good rule of thumb is reducing your meat consumption overall to help

protect your health but also the planet's health but again we still don't know what the actual risk is and we can fight over the numbers but essentially you're not doing any harm by eating less meat and including more plant foods and therefore getting more vitamins and minerals and fiber and all the other things that we know in our gut microbiome and that's a whole other topic in itself but yeah absolutely and then on the other side of the coin looking at more like plant-based foods I know one of the things that comes up quite a bit and I'm sure you guys have heard it as well is soy and estrogens so soy have a particular type of compound in them called phytoestrogens which is like a plant mimic of oestrogen and the whole theory behind this is that those oestrogen mimics can cause high oestrogen

levels in your body which could theoretically promote cancer um specifically the oestrogen driven cancers like breast cancer is where a lot of the worry lies yeah do you want to chat a little bit about this and what the actual risk is um i get asked this question quite a lot in breast cancer clinic um so what we try and recommend is that people um don't have to necessarily avoid soy if they don't want to if they eat a lot of soy there's been just on an evidence on a on a population-based level hasn't there Camilla like of actually soybean quite beneficial when it's in there it's more what's the word whole bean form rather than in the processed kind of the processed soybean form which is which correct

me if I'm wrong this is your more your territory than mine but the processed form gets added more to things like chocolate and a lot of things you can see kind of was it soybean yeah i think it's important to note so as you said hazel a lot of um the benefit is coming from those phytoestrogens and in soy they're the isoflavone compounds so it is thought that they act exactly like estrogen i think one thing to point out to begin with is that they don't yeah um and that what else are you were trying to say is that we're actually seeing lower rates of cancer, including breast cancer, in populations that eat a lot of whole soybean products. So tofu, tempeh.

So like the Asian population. Soy milk's made from whole soybeans. But to think that you can escape soy completely is a little bit naive because it's actually quite ubiquitous in our food supply as well. So there is discussion about whether that's where the issue lies potentially. But in terms of actually mechanistically plant-based phytoestrogens acting like human estrogen, we just haven't seen that. And actually studies have found that consuming the isoflavones,

sorry, when isolated, I I guess might enhance the effect of estrogen and drive cell growth but in other studies they haven't so it's just we can't we don't have that there's no conclusion yeah so it's still safety I think like many of these things I would I would recommend on my level I would eat it but I think it's a personal decision and I think it depends on it depends on where you are in your cancer journey. I think people have to make a lot of difficult decisions like Danny hinted to at the beginning about risk and risk-benefit balance. If you don't eat much tofu, then you won't miss it, I guess. I'd also say, just quickly, if you're going,

because obviously going plant-based is quite common with a cancer diagnosis soy-based foods do provide amazing source of protein as well and other vitamins and minerals and so just thinking about if you're going plant-based and then also not wanting to eat soy for your own personal reasons I guess just thinking about where you're going to get protein from and being more mindful of creating a balanced diet. And just coming back to the whole idea of starving cancer, intermittent fasting or certain times of fasting are quite big amongst people who have a cancer diagnosis.

And I've definitely heard this and we've spoken about it before and I know you've got a lot of experience. So where do we sit in the research or the evidence there and what are the potential dangers, I guess, of fasting when you're going through treatment for cancer? It's born out of the same science as the sugar story. So again, there is grains of truth there. It looks like, to me, looks quite an exciting area of science.

The studies are at the level of cellular and animal and there's been a clutch of very and the studies are at the level of cellular and animal and there's been a clutch of very small human studies like 10 people 20 people in studies mostly coming out of USC in the states they look exciting it looks like people are tolerating chemotherapy better the side effects better and there is a scientific mechanism behind it that corroborates it but and this is where the but comes in it's not at the point, they are recruiting right now for randomised control trials, it's going, but we're not at the point where we can say you should fast. And unfortunately, there are some real problems

with fasting. If you're a diabetic, I'd be very worried about your fasting. If you were already very underweight, which, and cachectic, which a lot of patients can be because of their cancer, then I'd be worried about it. So it's by no means yet a blanket advice. In fact, a lot of patients can be because of their cancer then I'd be worried about it so it's it's by no means yet a blanket advice in fact a lot of oncologists don't encourage it because they worry about those things I would say if you were thinking about fasting just make sure you speak to your team so they're aware I have been involved in cases where people have had medical problems faints and fits and things because of very very low blood glucoses so you just just make sure everyone's aware of what you're doing but it's definitely something we're seeing on the rise and then and

also be mindful of i think that one of the big scientists behind it is is promoting the sale of his own supplements that you drink during his fast and then whenever someone is making money from science it always gets my heckles up you know especially with cancer yeah absolutely and um danny this question's for you so a lot of patients going through chemotherapy lose their appetite and also sometimes their taste changes did you experience this and what kind of things did you find helpful i did it's very odd i kept and putting lots of salt on my food kept thinking that's an odd salt maybe it's off but i don't know if it can go off but i just had to add. But I think it's my taste buds that started going.

And then I could eat lots of very spicy and hot food and that wasn't really tasting as it usually did. And then I had loads of ulcers in my mouth, like so many ulcers. And I think I wanted to eat really healthily because I wanted to give myself a really good chance of, you know, the next round of chemo, of making sure that I'm strong enough for it because it's a bit like having another boxing fight and it beats you down and you pick yourself up and then you you round two and three and four and five and six but sometimes you need to pick your battle as with all those things my life had changed massively and it wasn't my choice I was

going from being a young mummy with three children and working to suddenly having loads of hospital appointments, turning up for radiotherapy every day. That was change enough. I think I couldn't have hacked making lots more changes. Sometimes you've got to decide, what's the most important for me to tackle now? So I didn't do anything about it. I just decided to get on with it.

Yeah. Camilla, do you have any, like, what would you advise a patient? So this is often what I'm seeing patients for in, I guess, a public hospital type environment. It very much depends on exactly what symptom they've got. But for taste changes, we often advise, so some patients might have a metallic taste in their mouth. So we advise things like not using metallic cutlery, going for very strong opposing tastes and flavours, so something that's very sour or tart, using mouthwashes, particularly those that are alcohol free because the alcohol is drying in itself. Going for foods, as you said, that take your fancy and maybe it's not the healthiest food or what you think you should be eating, but

in order to get some food and nutrition into you at that point when you're feeling quite rotten just go for what you fancy. I think from an appetite point of view that's when we start talking about more nutrient dense but also calorie dense foods so if patients have very low appetites or getting full quite quickly we might advise them to kind of snack or graze as opposed to trying to force themselves to eat three big meals a day colder foods can be more appealing at the time than a big hot curry say and just trying to pack in as many nutrients but also as many calories as you can in less volume of food just to help when their appetite's quite poor okay yeah and I know this is a panel about food but we can't

not talk about physical activity and I know Dani that you use yoga and you are are you a yoga instructor I now teach yeah I got hooked and I now teach yeah so obviously you found yoga really therapeutic in your kind of recovery but also now after after recovering and also I wanted to chat to you about the kind of the use of it in terms of as a treatment arm in in cancer i mean exercise has got the strongest evidence you know bar all the nitty-gritty we kind of been talking about here i mean exercise is well proven and they're doing some fantastic trials now for example in colorectal cancer they're randomizing people after they've had their curative treatment they're looking to see whether a kind of focused exercise regime will decrease their chances of the cancer

coming back which is using actually testing at a trial level whether exercise is preventative which really excites me that kind of thing so we know that it does decrease recurrence rates in certain cancers for example it's been proven in breast cancer and i think in prostate cancer and we know it helps get through some of the treatments it helps with the side effects it can help with the fatigue it's one of the best it's much better than any medication we can offer to help with the fatigue associated with the treatments we give and it can help boost appetite and it can help with the endorphins for the mood sarcopenia like to medicalize things sarcopenia is a massive problem which sarcopenia is a loss of muscle it happens to all of us as we

age but whenever you're ill all it takes is for a very well healthy person to be in bed for a few days and you lose muscle mass and that's one of the reasons why treatments can become harder and harder and the traditional i guess the traditional message we used to give patients was if you had something a serious illness like cancer was to go to your bed and we'll look after you we'll treat you and that's actually the wrong thing to say we need to say you've got to get up you need to challenge yourself your goals will be different you know you know I don't expect you to run a marathon during your cancer treatment but I would like you to challenge yourself to your level of ability on that day and do as much as you can do and and keep pushing yourself and that that message has really

flipped um in the last 10 years and and and has some really exciting evidence behind it yeah wonderful and looking at a preventative point of view we also know that physical activity or being physically active and meeting your guidelines will reduce the risk of certain forms of cancer in particular breast cancer colorectal cancer we know there's a strong link so i'm a big believer in everyone prescribing it. Okay, I wanted to ask you guys, in the spirit of sustainability, what sustainable practices have you guys adopted? This doesn't have to be about food, it can be anything. Well, I've got two little kids, and so I've been trying... They love plastic, as I'm sure you'll realise.

Kids love plastic toys. So I've been trying to... We go and we clear out our toys. I found a great local charity shop we clear out ours and they can you know have like a few pounds to buy more and so rather than get lots of new stuff they still get new stuff from grandparents etc but I'm trying to do more recycling the toys because plastic never dies so these toys are just as good and so we're trying to do a little bit more of that and stop throwing away so much yeah I would say I'm a big fan of coffee and I've usually got multiple keep cups in my bags that's one thing I've changed um and also trying to just avoid like the plastic bags that you'll

see at the supermarket to get kind of fresh fruit and veg and put it in I kind of have some eco sacks or I use paper bags and just kind of reducing the amount of packaging and always going for like the loose fruit and veg if you can because I've noticed since moving to the UK a lot of things are pre-packaged multiple times and that's quite new for me so I'm like trying to hold on to my like Australian practices I guess yeah um and yeah but I think plastic again is the one I'm trying to focus on yeah we stopped buying shampoo and conditioner in plastic bottles and we just buy shampoo bars and conditioner bars they're like normal soap bars and they work really well and they don't cost much I never thought it would work or lather

but it does work so that's one of the things and And the other thing is I've been a bit nerdy. So whenever I buy food in supermarkets now and my tomatoes come in lots of packaging, I unpack it in the supermarket and leave it there. Because I do feel it will start a conversation and I'm sure things will change. It's very weird, I know. Wonderful.

Well, I think that's all we've got time for. But before we go, do you guys want to say where we can find you? I'm on Instagram at Dr underscore Ailsa, which is A-I-L-S-A. I am on Instagram also as The Elemental Sage. I'll spell it out, T-H-E-A-L-I-M-E-N-T-A-L-S-A-G-E. And I'm on Instagram as well as Healthy Whole Me. Wonderful. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me.

Can we have a big round of applause? So, guys, that was quite a lot of information to take in. And thank you again to my awesome panel. But I just want to briefly summarize some of the main points from the panel and also give you guys my reflections. As I hope you guys have taken away from this, a healthy diet can help with both prevention and recovery from cancer. But there's no one food or one diet that's going to cause cancer or even treat it. So there's no reason that we need to be overly restrictive with our diet. We talked about certain types of foods like meat and soy and sugar, and I hope that's put your mind at rest,

because we don't have a lot of evidence to say that these foods cause cancer. The only exception is processed red meat where we have convincing evidence that there's a link between this and colorectal cancer but as Camilla said that doesn't mean that you can never have a bacon butty again. It's just to be more mindful and probably cut down on your consumption if you're eating a lot of it. And finally just to mention if you are going through cancer treatment and you are trying supplements or you want to try a diet protocol please don't be afraid to tell your doctor we really want to know. And finally I just want to mention that exercise is also super beneficial not only in preventing cancer but also in helping to deal with the side effects from cancer

treatments. So if you're up for it and you feel like your body's able to do it, please try to move even a little bit every day. Now, before we wrap up on the show today, guys, I want to start something new for this season. I'm always asked for help in how to live a healthier, more sustainable life. And I know it can be quite intimidating. And there's lots of things that we should or were told we should be changing. So So at the end of each podcast I'm going to set you a challenge to do, something we can all do together and in that way it will make it a little bit easier and we'll all

be in the same boat helping each other out. So for the first week I'm challenging you guys to make your lunch every day this week. I know for some people that's quite easy, but for a lot of people that's actually quite difficult. And now that I'm back at university, I'm finding I have to be really on top of my meal prep. Now, some of the things I'm absolutely loving are the chickpea burgers from my book, falafel, salad jars. I'm really loving veggie curries and stews,

but it also means that you can make lots of it and portion it out into the week and the reason I've picked this as the first challenge is because it's something I think we can all do we're all going to work or university or school whatever it might be but it also means that we're cutting down on the food that we're buying out so we're saving money we're also reducing the amount of plastic from packaged sandwiches and salads and things like that and also when you're making your own lunch you're in charge of what you put in there and you can make it as nutritious and delicious as you want to so if you are getting involved and I really hope you are make sure to

use the hashtag the food medic challenge so I can see what you guys are making and also get inspired myself and this will also help inspire other people and then each week I'm going to be sending you guys a new challenge so make sure to get involved it's a little bit of fun and it's so much easier if we're doing it together you can hear more from me over on social media at the food medic as always and on my website thefoodmedic.co.uk next time on the podcast I've got a really cool bonus episode from the Food Medic conference where I speak to four experts and so we've got four mini interviews with them and it gives you guys a little bit more of an insight as to what went on at the conference and I think you're going to love it. That's all

from me today I hope you really enjoyed the first episode back of season two of the Food Medic podcast I know I loved it and I love being back in your ears. So have a great couple of weeks and I'll speak to you very soon.