 Although we're spending billions of dollars on fancy new types of chemotherapy, the overflowing sink that is cancer treatment is expected to rise by about 70% of the next two decades, because drugs are being used to merely mop up the mess rather than turn off the faucet. You can't really give drugs to people to prevent cancer because of the side effects and costs, but there is said to be overwhelming evidence that the dietary bioactive compounds found in whole plant-based foods have significant anti-cancer and cancer-preventive properties. In a previous video, we talked about the impact of diet and nutrition on the 10 hallmarks of cancer. The bottom line is that evidence points to a diet with minimal animal products and perhaps more importantly, maximal plant foods. Some foods that appear to be particularly beneficial include fruit, especially berries, a variety of vegetables, especially greens, legumes, which are being split between lentils, nuts and seeds, especially flax seeds, mushrooms, onions, garlic, herbs and spices, for example, turmeric, and as a beverage, green tea. Chemotherapy may not even be particularly good at mopping up the mess. Cancer drugs often impair quality of life and fail to extend patient survival. Let me say that again. You're paying for drugs, maybe selling your house to pay for drugs that may just be making your life worse for no benefit. Some have suggested we demand at least three months of extended life from pharmaceuticals, but if we demand that chemo actually works, might they give up altogether? On the other hand, maybe by mandating clinically important benefits, what a concept, maybe big pharma would reallocate resources towards targeting the more critical cancer process. Things like metastatic spread, because it's the tumor metastasis that accounts for 90% of cancer-related deaths. Who cares if some drug shrinks your primary tumor if it's spreading and cutting your life just as short? What about controlling metastatic cancer with some of those natural bioactive compounds in plants? Evidently, it's been proven that plant phytochemicals are able to inhibit nearly every step of the invasion through metastasis cascade, at least in vitro in a petri dish. Here's a list of some purported dietary sources of anti-metastatic phytochemicals, all shown to block all sorts of cancer signaling pathways, but let me focus on one. Matrix Metalloprotonases Since about 90% of cancer disability in death is due to cancer spreading metastasis, let's talk about these MMPs, which actively participate in the whole metastatic journey. Matrix metalloprotonases are enzymes that allow the cancer to tunnel through the surrounding flesh and invade the lymph or blood vessels and then enable it to burrow in and grow somewhere else. So Big Pharma developed Matrix Metalloprotonase inhibitor drugs, which worked great in animal models because severe side effects when they tried them on humans. So what about using food? There are special proteins in legumes that reduce MMP activity. What else might you expect from a Dr. Lima? But which is the leading legume? Researchers tested 8 different kinds, lupin beans, chickpeas, split peas, black-eyed peas, lentils, and more common beans like kidney black or pinto, fava beans, and soy beans. Which do you think worked best? Without any beans, the Matrix Metalloprotonase activity shurned away at around 100%, and dripping on some protein from pea-soup-type peas didn't seem to help much. But the black-eyed peas, lentils, common beans, and fava beans cut enzyme activity by more than 50%. Guess what slashed activity by more than 90%? Lupin beans, chickpeas, and soy beans. Yeah, but does this translate into slowing down the cancer's spread? Researchers plated a layer of human colon cancer cells in a petri dish and then took a razor blade to clear a strip down the middle. Within 48 hours, the cancer quickly converged to fill the gap. But when a little protein from lupin beans, chickpeas, or soy beans was dripped on, it looked like the cancer cells struggled to close the distance. OK, but they used raw beans. You don't know if these anti-cancer proteins are destroyed by cooking until you put it to the test, and the Matrix Metalloprotonase inhibitors in soy beans, at least, remain active after cooking. So maybe it's no wonder that dietary legume consumption reduces risk of colorectal cancer. Yeah, but colon cancer, which sprouts from the inner lining of the colon, could potentially come in contact with some of these bean proteins. Presumably they wouldn't get into the bloodstream. Those eating vegetarian do seem to have significantly lower levels of Matrix Metalloprotonase, but this is just thought to be due to their lower levels of inflammation, similar to the way non-smokers also have lower MMP levels. This is good, because this enzyme isn't just a cancer biomarker, but also may be involved in autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular disease. The machete-type nature of this enzyme can hack through the inflamed cholesterol-filled atherosclerotic lesions, lining disease arteries, and cause the plaque to rupture. People know that those eating more plant-based tend to have less heart disease, but may not realize they harbor significantly less cancer risk, too, particularly among those eating strictly plant-based diets.