The Diet-Cancer Connection
Investigating the influence of cruciferous vegetable, fiber, resistant starch, red meat, and organic food intake on cancer risk
While cancer is an umbrella term for a number of different diseases, cancers nonetheless share certain hallmarks, such as resistance to cell death, sustained proliferative signaling, and reprogramming of energy metabolism. To begin, let us examine one trait in particular: acquired resistance to apoptosis. Under normal conditions, cells that fail to pass certain cell checkpoints during mitosis, or cell division, are marked for programmed cell death via apoptosis, a form of cellular suicide. Cells that die in this manner slowly shrink and leave surrounding tissue intact (“not with a bang but a whimper”), and countless functional studies demonstrate that apoptosis serves as a natural barrier to cancer development. Similarly, suppression of apoptosis promotes tumor growth.
In contrast to apoptosis, necrosis involves lysis, or rupture, of the dying cell and the subsequent release of proinflammatory cytokines into the surrounding tissue microenvironment, akin to a supernova explosion. Necrotic cells recruit inflammatory immune cells to the site of damage, which can be actively tumor promoting since many such cells are capable of angiogenesis, the formation of new blood…
