Food with high antioxidant content during EBRT

Just finished my 44 treatment IGRT and have some concerns about the food I ate during this treatment. I remember when my RO told me to stop taking and vitamins supplements because of possible interference with treatment. Here is a link to the article for more explanations:

https://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/radiation/types/ext/expect/vitamins

I did not take any vitamin supplements for a very long time, but I always ate food high in antioxidants including time during treatment. I did not pay much attention to it as RO mentioned that only supplements are the concern, but my question how much antioxidant food is safe to consume? Like right now is an orange pick-up season in Florida and during this time I can eat 10-15 good size navel oranges a day. Will this amount equals to a specific level of antioxidant that comes from supplements multivitamins.

The more I read about food during radiation treatment the more I get confused, Here is one more reference about the subject:

https://www.uhn.ca/PatientsFamilies/Health_Information/Health_Topics/Documents/What_You_Need_to_Know_about_Antioxidants_and_Your_Radiation_Therapy.pdf

This document does not specify the type of cancer, but in general for radiation therapy. Base on this document it is very hard to understand what I can eat.

I think it is about what type of food we eat and this has some relation to treatment efficiency. When I was diagnosed with PC in Feb 2018 and after doing much study, me and my wife switched our diet to the more healthy food, especially food high in antioxidants: Brazil, hazelnuts and pecans nuts, fruits (blueberries, strawberries, apple, grape, pear, papaya, persimmon, oranges, pomegranates), white meat (chicken/eggs), whole grain products (oatmeals, buckwheat and brown rice), coconut and almond milk, vegetables - fresh and cooked and drink plenty of water/tea. No sugar, No dairy products, very limited red meat, and no wheat (glutton) products. My primary goal was to boost the immune system in preparation for treatment and possible slowdown aggression of PC (debatable). While this diet is good for overall health and helps me drop 30 Lbs. I was on this diet since March and kept the same food pretty much through radiation therapy. I felt pretty confident about it since my RO said I should not worry about food but should not take vitamin supplements. Maybe I missing something but what is the difference between food and vitamin supplements? Are we not getting the same amount of vitamins from food or pills? As an example, one of the referenced document suggests avoiding common antioxidants such as:
• Vitamin C max daily intake 90 mg.
• Vitamin E max daily intake 22 I.U.
• Beta carotene Avoid because there is no safe level
• Selenium max daily intake 55 mcg

Now, if we take Brazil nuts rich in Selenium contains 544 mcg (in 6-8 nuts) it means while someone goes through radiation therapy just one brazil nut is double the daily dose, and if you eat 6 nuts a day as I occasionally did while on treatment than this mean I received 10 times more of the safe daily intake regardless if it comes from food or supplement. And this stuff is across all spectrum of the above list.

I understand that I have no other way to know the efficiency of the treatment other than waiting and see (praying and trusting God) for months/years what may or may not happen.

Just a suggestion for others who want to go through radiation treatment to educate and have a good understanding that side effects are not the only things that need the attention, but little things what to eat should also have some level of concern.

Antioxidants protect both healthy cells and cancer cells, if you have cancer they accelerate tumor development and cancer spread. It doesn't matter if the antioxidants comes from food or supplements.
Scientists have shown it on mice - when they get extra antioxidants, the cancer spreads twice as fast. They can not do these studies on humans, it would be unethical.
I wouldn't recommend anyone taking food supplements. There is no evidence that antioxidants in food supplements protect from cancer and strong evidence that it speeds up cancer spread.

Here is some more info on this subject:

Question:
Is it safe to take antioxidant supplements during chemotherapy and
radiation therapy? Does this concern extend to foods containing high levels
of antioxidants, such as an orange or orange juice, which contain a high
amount of vitamin C?
Answer:
Antioxidant supplementation during conventional chemotherapy and radiation
therapy is a controversial subject. Some studies suggest that taking
antioxidant supplements during treatment may be beneficial; however, there
are just as many studies that tell us this may be harmful. The scientific
evidence on this topic is not strongly for or against taking antioxidant
supplements during cancer treatment.
It is possible that taking antioxidant supplements during treatment can protect
normal tissues from the damaging side effects of treatments and may improve
tumor response and patient survival (1-3). On the other hand, some studies
indicate that taking antioxidant supplements may interfere with chemotherapy
and radiation therapy by reducing their effectiveness. It is possible that
antioxidants may protect tumor cells, in addition to healthy cells, from the
oxidative damage intentionally caused by conventional treatments. This, in
turn, may reduce the effectiveness of the treatments (4-7).
More research is needed to definitively settle the question of whether taking
antioxidants during cancer treatment is harmful or helpful. It is very likely that
antioxidants during cancer treatment may be beneficial for some people, yet
harmful for others (8,9). No two people, or cancers, are the same. A 2016
systematic review found that while the answer remains unclear as to whether
or not antioxidants alter anti-tumor effects during radiotherapy and during
some types of chemotherapy, they note that this is not the case for smokers.
They found that individuals who smoked and consumed a strong antioxidant
supplement during radiotherapy increased their chances of recurrence and
mortality when compared to those who did not smoke.

There is no evidence to support that antioxidant-rich, whole foods or drinks
should be avoided during cancer therapy. It is believed that the level of any
one particular antioxidant in a whole food is unlikely to interfere with
treatment. The same cannot be said about high-dose antioxidant
supplements.

Why look back? What happened, happened, but the general recommendation is that one should not take antioxidants during radiation therapy because one wants the free radicals to 'stay alive'. A bit more scientifically, one wants the free radicals to 'break' DNA. Cancer cells do not repair DNA as well as normal cells which, ultimately, causes the cancer cells to die.

Post Edited (Sr Sailor) : 12/5/2018 9:45:26 AM (GMT-7)

I agree, it can get confusing. I don't know about food known to have a lot of anti-oxidants,, but as we all know, apparently the general recommendation is to avoid anti-oxidant supplements during RT, since RT acts as a pro-oxidant, via Reactive Oxygen Species(ROS) the very thing anti-oxidants work against.

Gemlin said...
Antioxidants protect both healthy cells and cancer cells, if you have cancer they accelerate tumor development and cancer spread. It doesn't matter if the antioxidants comes from food or supplements.
Scientists have shown it on mice - when they get extra antioxidants, the cancer spreads twice as fast. They can not do these studies on humans, it would be unethical.
I wouldn't recommend anyone taking food supplements. There is no evidence that antioxidants in food supplements protect from cancer and strong evidence that it speeds up cancer spread.

See recent thread started by DDYSS on RCT about vitamin D or Omega 3s for a different viewpoint related to cancer deaths for all groups, and cancer diagnoses for African Americans(who typically have less vitamin D in their blood).

Then again, vitamin D is not normally touted as an anti-oxidant. Or is it? Not sure.

But if every one is not already confused enough, consider this: Vitamin C can be a powerful anti-oxidant. OR, it can be a powerful pro oxidant, acting as ROS(Reactive Oxygen Species)! Apparently it all depends on what the body needs it to do.

Some years ago, I posted here about an FDA classified "orphan drug" that was being looked into. It was some combo of vitamin K and C in some precise ratio that was being looked into for PC treatment. This oral combo was supposed to mimic the effects of IV vitamin C. There were 2 small clinical trials on men with advanced PC that had failed all conventional treatment, with fairly impressive results. They were trying to get these vitamins patented as a prescription drug called Apatone. It looked promising, but I have never heard another word about it, pro or con, in the following 5 years, it just disappeared. I went ahead and took that combo on my own, just using the vitamins(since no harm had been shown in the trials), during the 2 months I waited for my RP. My PSA, for the first time in my life, did go down from about 11 to about 8, but who knows, that could have been placebo or any number of other things. So who knows if it is helpful, neutral, or harmful.

But here is my point: Forget about the whether or not there was any actual value to this vitamin C/K3 combo if you wish, just consider it all bogus. (I will provide some links for the curious.) BUT, everything I read about that "drug", said that it worked as a pro-oxidant against the cancer cells, by generation of hydrogen peroxide at the cellular level, as a Reactive Oxygen Species. They even had another study(can't find it now) in vitro to see if common vitamins/anti-oxidants decreased this effect, and indeed some of them did by quite a lot. (some did not or even boosted the effect). So, if you are confused about whether anti-oxidants in your food can interfere with your treatment, now add to all things to be considered that sometimes vitamin C acts as the exact opposite of an anti-oxidant, in fact it can be a pro-oxidant against bacteria, viruses and cancer cells, apparently.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10830008_serum_markers_variation_consistent_with_autoschizis_induced_by_ascorbic_acid-menadione_in_patients_with_prostate_cancer

Somebody said...
Our results suggest that ascorbic
acid–menadione also produces autoschizis in vivo in human prostate cancer patients. The membrane
and cell injury produced by oxidative radicals generated by H2-O2 has been proposed as the mechanism
of action involved in the autoschizis induced by ascorbic acid–menadione. It is well known that the ascor-
bic acid–menadione association generates H2-O2 .

( H2O2 = Hydrogen peroxide )

Here is the shorter abstract from PumMed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12665684

Another little clinical trial: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2288789/

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 12/1/2018 1:22:13 PM (GMT-7)

You are welcome, Serge.

While looking at something else, I stumbled on this, and thought of this thread about being careful with anti-oxidants. And also thought of my posts claiming that vitamin C was capable of being both an anti oxidant and a pro-oxidant(like RT is a pro-oxidant)

Somebody said...

“Our findings provide a mechanistic rationale for exploring the therapeutic use of vitamin C to treat colorectal cancers that carry KRAS or BRAF mutations,” said senior author Dr. Lewis Cantley, the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor in Oncology Research at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The conventional wisdom is that vitamin C improves health in part because it can act as an antioxidant, preventing or delaying some types of cell damage. However, Cantley and his colleagues discovered that the opposite was true in regards to high-dose vitamin C’s therapeutic effects for the KRAS and BRAF forms of colorectal cancer – they occur as a result of inducing oxidation in these cancer cells.

In an oxygen-rich environment such as human arteries, a fraction of vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, becomes oxidized and is transformed into a new compound called dehydroascorbic acid (DHA). Scientists have known for some time that a specific membrane protein, known as glucose transporter GLUT1, enables both glucose and DHA to enter cells – an activity not afforded to ascorbic acid. But it was less clear what DHA does once inside the cells.

In the study, investigators show that DHA acts like a Trojan horse. Once inside, natural antioxidants inside the cancer cell attempt to convert the DHA back to ascorbic acid; in the process, these antioxidants are depleted and the cell dies from oxidative stress.

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/11/vitamin-c-halts-aggressive-colorectal-cancer-study

Pretty wild, eh? Vitamin C as a PRO oxidant? Who would have thunk it? And this does not help clear up what kinds of foods(gotta eat something) or supplements should be taken or avoided along with various treatments.

anything with "anti" in it scares me.

antibiotic = "anti life"