What Are the Benefits of Alkaline Foods for Cancer Patients?

Alklaine foods are recommended by some advocates of an alkaline diet as an aid in cancer treatment and prevention. Believers argue that eating alkaline diets can adjust the pH level of the body, making the body less acidic. Because tumors have been demonstrated to grow in acidic environments, advocates believe that changing the pH balance of the body may be useful in fighting cancer. However, most medical experts (including those at Bringham and Women's Hospital and Lymphoma Nation) are skeptical about these claims.

What is an Alkaline Diet?

• An alkaline diet is a diet that is high in alkalizing foods and low in acidic foods. The premise is that by eating this way, you alter the pH balance of your body. Foods to be avoided include dairy products, sugar, meat, caffeine and tobacco, wheat, pasta and white flower. Alkaline foods to be consumed in greater numbers include broccoli, carrots, lettuce, celery, squash, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, kidney beans, onions, lettuce, ginger, squash, cucumber, parsley, basil, olive oil, lemons, limes and watermelon, among others.

Claims About Alkaline and Cancer

• Believers in alkaline diets argue that acidic environments help tumors grow, which encourages cancer and other illnesses. They believe that by altering the foods you eat, you can create a change in the pH balance of your body that actually makes your body inhospitable to tumors and cancer cells.

Can You Make Your pH More Alkaline?

• Doctors at Bringham and Women's Hospital dispute claims that altering the foods you eat can have a lasting impact on the pH balance of the body. Doctors point out that the body is self-regulating and has an amazing ability to correct inconsistencies and restore its balance. Certain bodily functions, such as breathing, can help to maintain the body's normal pH balance, and excess alkalines may also be excreted as part of the body's normal process of eliminating waste. Thus, any change in the pH balance achieved from an alkaline diet is too short-lived to make a noticeable impact because the body self corrects.

Does Alkaline Kill Cancer Cells?

• Test tube studies support the fact that tumors grow faster in more acidic environments. They have also demonstrated that chemotherapy treatments work better if the area surrounding the tumor is made more alkaline. However, doctors caution that these studies have not been replicated in humans and that test tube results do not indicate conclusively that the same effect would occur in humans. Furthermore, even if the same effect did occur, doctors dispute the ability of the alklaine diet to change the pH in a sufficient manner to have these effects.

Risks of an Alkaline Diet

• Doctors caution that many of the foods excluded by an alkaline diet may be helpful in treating cancer, and that eliminating these foods can be dangerous. For example, dairy is excluded from an alkaline diet but contains high levels of vitamin D--which has been shown to potentially increase cancer survival rates. In addition, patients undergoing chemotherapy require high amounts of protein, and excellent sources of protein are excluded in an alkaline diet.