Veganism vs prolonged fasting for cancer treatment

Question

This article suggests that short term fasting helps fighting cancer by making cancer cells more vulnerable while at the same time making normal healthy cells even more resistant to stress, this can help in chemotherapy.

However it also suggests that long term fasting might be enough to keep cancer at bay.

But it also demonstrates that in some types of cancers fasting, autophagy ( the act of the body eating itself) promotes cancer growth and adaptations to stress.

How does a vegan diet compare? Does the vegan diet promote some cancers? Does the vegan diet only reduce the chance of developing a cancer but doesn't suppress it once you already have one? Or is the vegan diet equal to fasting, helping some cancers and suppressing others?

If the question needs to be more focused, then what about the most common types of cancer; colo-rectal and breast cancer.

If the question is already good without needing to be more specific, then please ignore the last part.

Answer 1

I would say that a vegan diet by itself might be inferior to simply fasting.

This because the most eaten vegetables have little to no effect on cancer cells.

A normal vegan diet might prevent cancers in the sense that various animal products have been proven to cause or stimulate cancer growth like eggs, dairy and various meats.

Therefore a normal vegan diet is not cancer fighting but cancer preventing.

In this sense fasting wins.

But there are various vegetable foods which are incredibly strong at fighting cancer.

Garlic for example is able to rewrite the self kill mechanism of cells.

All healthy cells are programmed to die once they become unhealthy, but some cancer cells overwrite this mechanism.

Garlic has been shown to reactivate this strand of DNA that dictates the programmed death in cells, which is dormant in cancer cells.

There are also other foods which have similar properties like turmeric and lemons.

The problem is that people don't eat those products and that supplements have been shown to be ineffective. And some supplements might even promote cancer growth instead of fighting it.

But I don't see people eating cloves of raw garlic or turmeric roots or lemons on a daily basis because of either taste, strong odors or upset stomachs.

Answer 2

I don't think that drinking cola and eating fries with ketchup is a good choice for cancer prevention. Therefore the obvious answer is fasting.

As Aci mentioned in his answer, there are certain vegan foods that are indeed healthy and are lowering the chances of developing cancers. My guess is that a right balance between fasting and eating healthy food would give the best results.