Interviewer: Gail Edgell
Gail Edgell: What can you tell us about cancer risk as women age, especially during their menopausal years?
Dr. Chilkov: The statistics in the United States are not good. Today, 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with cancer. We expect, decades from now, that will be 1 in 6 women. Why is this so? We all now live in a very toxic environment. We are all exposed to very toxic chemicals. This really increases the risk for everyone, even those who have no family history of cancer.
There are a number of things that we all can do to reduce our risk of developing cancer. One is to reduce our exposure to toxic chemicals in food, water and the environment. You want to look at the cleaning supplies that you use in your home. You want to look at what you are using in your garden. You want to look at the food that you are eating. You want to be eating organic, unprocessed, fresh, whole food when you have that choice. You don’t want to eat packaged, processed foods that have preservatives and artificial chemicals and flavorings in them.
You have a choice. Make the choice to avoid exposing yourself to chemicals. This is one of the biggest things that every single person can do to reduce cancer risk.
Gail Edgell: Is it true that if the word “organic” is on the label, that item is definitely better for people? This organic thing is really getting blown out of proportion. Everything is labeled “organic,” even Pop Tarts.
Dr. Chilkov: You have to read labels. You have to actually turn the box over and read the list of ingredients — maybe the item has one organic ingredient, and the rest are chemicals. We are in a marketing-and-consumer society. Labeling is not well regulated. You can certainly stick with brands that are highly ethical and known to use pure ingredients. But I think that we still have to be responsible consumers and turn the box over, read the label and see what is really in it.
I want to talk about how to choose foods that not only reduce our exposure but also reduce cancer risks. One of the things that everybody can do is eat six to eight servings of deeply colored or deeply pigmented fruits and vegetables a day. That is not as hard to do as it may seem. A serving is a good handful. Why is this so important? The pigments that color fruits and vegetables — blueberries, strawberries, carrots, spinach, pomegranates — are molecules called flavones and flavonoids, which actually turn off cancer genes. They actually stop damage to our cells. This is how human beings evolved, eating a lot of plant foods. But the standard American diet is not high in fruits and vegetables; it also is not high in lots of colors.
For people who have busy lives or find this difficult to do, another option is a greens powder or a reds powder that you can find in your health-food store. You can put a scoop of that in your water once or twice a day and get all those wonderful pigments that come from fruits and vegetables. It’s a great insurance policy. You can get up in the morning and put a scoop of powder in a glass of water, and you have at least some of your antioxidants for the day.
Gail Edgell: I know what I will do if I am running short: I will stick a bunch of it into a blender and make myself a shake. I am getting three or four servings at once.
Dr. Chilkov: You can do that or use fresh juices, absolutely. There are lots of ways to do it.
Among the vegetables, the cabbage family, or cruciferous vegetables, is very, very important in terms of cancers. Within that family, broccoli, kale and broccoli sprouts are the most potent. A constituent called sulforaphane is found in this whole plant family, the cabbage family — which includes radishes, cabbage, parsnips, cauliflower and brussels sprouts — that actually changes our estrogen metabolism. It changes the growth of cancer cells. It’s very simple to have a serving of steamed broccoli, broccoli sprouts or kale in your diet on a daily basis. It is incredibly protective. I highly recommend this for normalizing estrogen metabolism, so that estrogen is detoxified in the body and not allowed to stimulate cells toward cancer. This is a specific way to reduce breast, ovarian and uterine cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.
Gail Edgell: Is there a problem with steaming something, or putting it in the oven? Will it kill things that are beneficial to you?
Dr. Chilkov: Lightly steaming broccoli, broccoli sprouts and kale gives you the most access to the sulforaphane in the food, moreso than having it raw. But overcooking will destroy a lot of nutrients.
I will also say that this family of sulforaphanes has the well-known molecule di-indole methane, abbreviated as DIM. It can also be used for premenstrual syndrome, polycystic ovarian syndrome, fibroids, endometriosis and other problems of estrogen metabolism. They are well treated with this. DIM comes in a capsule, but it’s pretty easy to get your dose by eating some steamed broccoli or kale every day.
Gail Edgell: What other supplements can we take?
Dr. Chilkov: The omega-3 oils, EPA and DHA, primarily come from cold-water fish. You also will find them in flax oil. You will see lots of these oils for sale in the natural food store. You should really keep these oils in the refrigerator once you purchase them. You also can take them in capsule form. I like to mix flax oil and olive oil together and use that in my salads. That way, I will get more omega-3s in my diet.
Taking omega-3 oils is one of the most powerful ways to reduce inflammation and reduce the growth of cancer cells. Omega-3 oils have many, many other functions that I am not going to discuss at length. But the most important reason that omega-3s decrease cancer risk is because they decrease inflammation. Cancer is an inflammatory disease; by decreasing that inflammation, we decrease our cancer risk. These oils also build very healthy cell membranes, decrease the expression of certain cancer genes, and slow down the growth of tumors. For those reasons, they decrease cancer risk as well. They help normalize some of our insulin and blood-sugar issues, which can contribute to increased cancer risk.
I believe that people who are familiar with these oils have heard about them in terms of reducing cardiovascular risk as well as depression. But all of my cancer patients have omega-3 oils as a part of their protocol. These oils can be taken safely during chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Gail Edgell: I have never heard a negative thing about omega-3s.
Dr. Chilkov: If they get rancid, they are not good for you. So you want to keep them in the refrigerator. And you do not want to use them if they’ve been around for a long time.
They really should be part of the human diet; they are just not really a part of the modern diet.
Gail Edgell: Are there any other supplements that you would recommend?
Dr. Chilkov: There are two more things that I want to discuss. Vitamin D is very important. Vitamin D has been in the press quite a lot. A safe dose, if you are taking it on your own, is 1,000 units a day. In a doctor’s office, you will see much higher doses. But you really don’t want to go higher than that without the supervision of a professional. Many of my patients take 5,000 to 10,000 units a day. But they have to be under supervision, with a professional monitoring their blood levels.
Vitamin D really reduces the risk of quite a number of diseases. It’s very well documented that it blocks the development of many types of cancer. We also know that Vitamin D will strengthen our bones. It will also help to alleviate depression, particularly winter depression. But in terms of cancer, it really regulates cell growth. I will say that Vitamin D is also very important for treating a lot of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, arthritis and thyroiditis.
People really are not getting enough Vitamin D today. It’s made in the skin with exposure to sunlight. But people use sunscreen so much that they have inhibited the natural levels of Vitamin D. Therefore, most of my patients will take Vitamin D in the capsule form.
Gail Edgell: I have heard a lot about Vitamin D on the news lately. It’s definitely getting a lot of exposure. You had one other thing that you wanted to discuss?
Dr. Chilkov: This is really, really important. But I don’t think a lot of people understand the relationship of body fat to cancer risk. If you are overweight, that is a risk factor for developing cancer. By keeping your body lean, you will reduce your risk of cancer in a dramatic way. Overweight and obese women have a much higher risk of developing cancer and having recurrences of cancer.
Gail Edgell: At the very beginning, we discussed the percentage of women who will get cancer. It’s about 1 in 8 women. Is that the number of women who develop all cancers?
Dr. Chilkov: That statistic is specific to breast cancer. The ratio would be higher if we included all cancers.
Gail Edgell: Can you review ways for us to reduce our risk of cancer?
Dr. Chilkov: We want to reduce our exposure to toxins in the environment by choosing clean food and water as well as nontoxic cosmetics and cleaning supplies. We want to increase our intake of deeply pigmented fruits and vegetables every day. We want to be sure to include the cabbage family, or cruciferous vegetables, so that we get sulforaphanes and DIM. The richest in sulforaphanes and DIM are broccoli, broccoli sprouts and kale. We want to increase our intake of omega-3 fatty acids — EPA and DHA. We want to be sure that our blood levels of Vitamin D are adequate. And we want to reduce our body fat and have a normal, lean body weight.
Note: This article is an edited transcript of an audio interview. Changes have been made.
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