Certain foods may disrupt your body’s fight against cancer cells, study says

Sign up for CNN’s Eat, But Better: Mediterranean Style. The potential culprit: an overabundance of certain omega-6 fatty acids — perhaps from ultraprocessed foods in your diet — that may hinder the anti-inflammatory and tumor-fighting properties of another essential fatty acid, omega-3. “But if you have a body subjected to years of a chronic inflammatory milieu created by an imbalance of omega-6s, the type commonly found in ultraprocessed and junk foods, I believe it’s easier for a mutation to take hold and harder for the body to fight it,” said Yeatman, a surgical oncologist and professor at the University of South Florida and the Tampa General Hospital Cancer Institute. “First, the immune system fights the infection with inflammation, like a fever, and then resolves that inflammation with specialized pro-resolving mediators created from derivatives of omega-3s.” However, omega-3 mediators only come into play when the body is fighting inflammation and are therefore often difficult to detect during the initiation of inflammation, said study coauthor Dr. Ganesh Halade, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of South Florida. “However, we found a tremendous imbalance in the tumor microenvironment — omega-6 fats coming from ultraprocessed foods were making more proinflammatory molecules inside the cancer tumor, but not in the control tissue.” Bottom line: Without enough omega-3s available to help control the inflammatory reaction created by the body’s response to cancer, inflammation continues to rage, further damaging cell DNA and prolonging an environment conducive to the cancer’s growth.