As many of you know, I am a big fan of fat grafting and transfer. We are learning more and more about fat transfer as time goes on, and many studies are being done to try to figure out all aspects of fat transfer- best way to harvest, ideal size of fat, ways to screen patients to find out if they are good candidates, diseases which impair fat transfer. etc etc etc.
SO. We know angiogenesis is important to helping the new fat survive. But could what you eat affect things?
THIS IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC STUDY. I had a patient who came in recently who is quite savvy with new thinking in medicine, and she said she eats a lot of ANTI agiogenic foods. Why eat anti- agiogenic foods? Well the thought is cancers grow quickly, and they need blood supply. So changing your diet to an antiangiogenic one may help “starve” the new cancers by not giving them the new blood supply they need.
Dr. William Li has a TED talk “Can we eat to starve cancer?”
Foods thought to be anti-angiogenic:
- garlic
- green tea
- chocolate
- curcumin
- nutmeg
- artichoke
- grape seed extract
- pomegranate
- licorice
- thyme
- sea cucumber
So what do I think? I live in California where people are super healthy. Bay Area people take a lot of supplements and herbals. I would not be surprised if green tea and fish oil aren’t added to our water supply. But what is healthy? For fat transfer, we want to encourage new blood supply. So what is good for fat transfer, may not be good for other health problems. If you are a green tea fanatic, or take pills of garlic, consider stopping around the time of surgery if you are doing fat transfer. I am not sure how scientific the studies done were, but what is the harm to curtail the chocolate cravings for a bit around surgery?
Just a thought.