On the day of my biopsy in late 2023, I quit sugar, just like that. I knew somehow that there was a tumour in my breast. And I had heard somewhere that sugar and cancer are best friends.Â
The chocolate bar that winked when I opened my larder door was suddenly invisible. There’s nothing like nerves to quell a craving and nothing like a diagnosis to start a healthier lifestyle. While I only had a lumpectomy, I also felt that diet change would be crucial to my recovery. ‘No more sugar’ came first.
A friend also touched by cancer recommended a book, The Metabolic Approach To Cancer by Jess Higgins Kelley and Dr Nasha Winters, an integrative oncology specialist (drnasha.com).Â
The book gave me the shocking understanding that sugar is lurking in 70 per cent of packaged products on supermarket shelves which can unleash a sugar rush, triggering metabolic mayhem in our body, potentially paving the way for chronic disease down the line. My ‘healthy’ granola and low-fat yoghurt breakfasts had to stop.
The more sugar-aware I became, the more I realised how easy it is to be hoodwinked. Not only are there more than 60 different names for sugar on food labels (if the word ends in ‘-ose’, it’s likely to be added sugar), it’s often hidden in places we don’t look: cereals, sauces, bread, yoghurt, even soup, to give flavour as substitute for poor ingredients.
Sophie Benge felt that diet change would be crucial to her recovery from a lumpectomy
So many of us are ignorant around sugar, damaging our health on a daily basis
By now the science of sugar has my grey matter working overtime, but I want to fully understand because I remember the days when the end of every meal meant a cube – or three – of chocolate. I kidded myself that granola bars with oats and raisins were healthy snacks.
I’m not alone. So many of us are ignorant around sugar, damaging our health on a daily basis.
On top of excess insulin, the excessive fructose levels in sugar cannot be used by cells for energy. Instead, it overwhelms the liver to drive fat production, beckoning the onset of fatty liver disease.
My research led me to believe that metabolic dysfunction is a cause of cancer. It has its own particular truth with sugar, as I learnt from Dr Winters, who bade farewell to her stage four ovarian cancer 35 years ago, when she was just 19.Â
As a student in Colorado, her access to the college library fuelled her research and led her to integrate a holistic approach into her recovery. She later become a leading voice in the integrated treatment of the disease – where natural and supportive therapies are combined with conventional treatment.
‘Cancer cells consume significantly more glucose than normal cells, due to altered metabolic pathways,’ she says. ‘It’s the main fuel that feeds their frenzied growth. They push to the frontline, bullying out healthy cells to absorb the sugar in whatever form: pastries, crisps, chocolate bars. They don’t just like sugar – cancer needs sugar.’
Dr Winters champions a high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet, which essentially burns fats rather than glucose for energy. ‘Cancer cells can’t easily use ketones [acids the body makes from breaking down fat, not glucose] for energy, so being in ketosis cuts off cancer’s main fuel supply,’ she says.
Two years after my lumpectomy, do I stick to a no-sugar diet?
The dark chocolate bar is still lying low in my cupboard, but when it winks, I reach for its neighbour, the jar of coconut oil, instead. In line with Dr Winters’ anti-sugar advice, I down a glass of water, mix a teaspoon of the coconut oil with the same of cinnamon and send a message of love and liberation to my healthy cells.
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SOPHIE BENGE: I quit sugar after my cancer diagnosis when a doctor changed my life. She told me it’s the fuel that feeds tumours’ growth… and that’s not the only heinous effect