Anticancer: A New Way of Life, checked against evidence

This page is for readers who are thinking about reading Anticancer: A New Way of Life, or who have read it and want to weigh its claims. It covers what the book says and where it matches advice from NCI and the American Cancer Society (ACS). It also shows where its claims go further than the proof.

Anticancer: A New Way of Life was written by David Servan-Schreiber, a French doctor and brain scientist. He was diagnosed with malignant brain cancer at 31. He had surgery, chemo, and radiation, as the book describes. The book describes the lifestyle plan he built for himself from research. He followed it alongside his standard treatment. He used his science training to weigh the evidence as he understood it.

It is written by someone with science training, not a layperson gathering folk claims. Much of the book looks at published research. It covers how diet, stress, exercise, and things in the world around us relate to cancer.

That is exactly why the book is worth reading with care. You should not brush it off or swallow it whole. Here is a trained scientist, facing his own death, writing about research. That research was less certain than his confident tone sometimes suggests. It still is today.

Servan-Schreiber lived with his cancer for nearly two decades. He went through several recurrences and further rounds of treatment. He died of the same disease on 24 July 2011, at age 50. What that outcome does and does not show is discussed below.

The book is built around parts of life that Servan-Schreiber argues shape cancer risk. He argues they also shape how well the body can fight the disease:

• diet
• toxins in the world around us
• exercise
• feelings and state of mind
• social connection

Each section mixes his own story with summaries of the research as he read it at the time. His story includes choices about his own treatment and lifestyle.

The diet chapters urge readers to:

• cut sugar and refined carbs (such as white bread)
• eat more vegetables and fruit
• favor foods said to fight inflammation (swelling and irritation in the body) or to slow the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors, such as turmeric, green tea and certain mushrooms
• eat less red meat and less processed food

Other chapters cover exercise, ways to reduce stress such as meditation, and why friends and family matter during illness.

The chapters on the world around us cover certain plastics, bug killers (pesticides), and factory chemicals. Here Servan-Schreiber leans more openly on "better safe than sorry" research. That means evidence that hints at harm but is not yet proven. He usually tells the reader so, rather than calling it settled.

There is no recipe section. This is a personal book of science and argument, not a kitchen guide. Sources are cited throughout. But the strength of the research behind them varies a lot from claim to claim.

The book is on firmest ground where it follows mainstream cancer prevention evidence:

• cutting sugar and refined carbs
• eating more vegetables and fruit
• staying active
• dealing with long-term stress

Eating more vegetables, fruit and whole grains, and limiting red and processed meat, matches the ACS guideline. Staying active does too. But the book often states its claims with more certainty than the evidence supports.

Servan-Schreiber is also clear that his plan is meant to go alongside standard treatment, not replace it. Not every book like this makes that as clear.

For a book of this kind, he is also unusually honest about what is unknown. In several places he admits that a tip rests on early or partial evidence. The book's overall tone, and surely its title, suggest more confidence than that. But single chapters often claim less.

In places, the book's claims run ahead of the evidence. It is worth being precise about where that happens.

Several of its claims are quite specific. They hold that certain foods slow tumor growth by a measurable amount. Or they slow the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. And they claim this changes how things go for a person who already has cancer. Those claims rest on lab and animal research, not on studies in people. NCI's pages make a related point. NCI says studies of human populations have not yet shown definitively that any dietary component causes or protects against cancer. It also says there is no proof that any nutrition trend, food, vitamin, mineral, supplement or herb can slow cancer, cure it, or keep it from coming back.

The chapters on stress and feelings suggest that state of mind shapes how cancer turns out. We did not find support for a claim that strong in the NCI or ACS pages we checked. Managing stress can help you feel better during illness. But calling stress relief a cancer treatment is a different claim.

The book could not include its own ending. It is worth naming that ending directly. Servan-Schreiber's cancer recurred and eventually killed him. That happened despite nearly two decades of the program described in the book. That is not evidence the program failed. His long survival is not evidence it worked, either. A single person's outcome cannot prove or disprove a claim about populations, however moving it is.

This book is a good place to practice, because it mixes strong and weak claims within the same chapters.

NCI's advice to patients weighing diets and supplements is direct:

• Tell your doctor, nurse or dietitian about any vitamin, mineral, supplement or herb you take or plan to take. Some supplements can be dangerous and change how your cancer treatment works.
• Be wary of any claim that a diet, supplement or practice can slow or cure cancer. NCI says there is no proof that any of them can.
• Eating a healthy, well-balanced diet is still important for your health.

The ACS guideline makes a useful contrast. It recommends an eating pattern with vegetables, fruit, whole grains and beans. It says to limit red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened drinks and highly processed foods. It states that it does not recommend dietary supplements to prevent cancer. In places the book agrees with the ACS: more plants, less red and processed meat, less sugar. That overlap is a real point in the book's favor. Elsewhere the book goes further. It suggests that single foods fight an existing tumor. NCI says there is no proof of that. The book's more supplement-friendly passages also do not fit well with the ACS position.

The appeal of the book's approach is real. A cancer diagnosis takes away much of a person's sense of control. This book offers clear daily steps: what to eat, how to move, and how to manage stress. That comfort is real, even where the strongest claims are not proven. The answer is to keep the book's two kinds of content apart. One is sensible advice for general health. The other is less certain claims about the disease itself.

For the full picture, ranked by evidence, see diet and cancer risk. Another popular diet-and-cancer claim gets the same treatment in can keto or carnivore diets prevent cancer.

It suits a reader who wants a science-savvy look at how lifestyle relates to cancer. It was written by someone with real training who was living with the diagnosis himself. The book does not fully rank its advice by evidence. It also suits someone looking for clear changes to make alongside standard treatment. Those changes are meant to support treatment, not cure the cancer.

It does not suit a reader looking for a stand-in for standard treatment. Weigh its claims that single foods fight cancer against the more careful views of NCI and the ACS. Are you thinking about a big change in diet or supplements during treatment? Raise it with your cancer team first. Some supplements can interact with treatment.

Cancer Explained runs free of charge and free of ads; donations are what keep it that way, if you're able.

• NCI — Diets, Supplements, and Cancer
• NCI — Diet
• American Cancer Society — Guideline for Diet and Physical Activity for Cancer Prevention

This page discusses Anticancer: A New Way of Life for education. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a judgement of anyone's real medical care.