Understanding Cancer
Cancer has ruined a lot of lives. We associate its diagnosis with despair and death. Most of us know someone who’s suffered from it. But as terrifying as cancer is… there’s hope.
Cancer cases are on the rise:
In 2020, an estimated 1,806,590 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed and 606,520 people will die from the disease in the U.S.
An estimated 16,850 children and adolescents ages 0 to 19 will be diagnosed with cancer and 1,730 will die of the disease. (Stats from cancer.gov)
Approximately 39.5% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes
Cancer is becoming a part of our lives, young and old.
When we start to understand what cancer is and how it works, we can see a path to prevention and healing. Because cancer has a weakness. And there are proven ways to contain, prevent, and possibly even reverse cancer. Our bodies have the tools to do it, we just have to be supporters.
When it comes to fighting cancer, we have modern advanced medicines and treatments. But we cannot limit ourselves to just Western Medicine. There’s a lot science now supporting how beneficial combining modern Western medicine and traditional Easter medicine can be.
We have a say in cancer. It’s not always up to fate.
But first: What is cancer? How does it work?
Cancer lies dormant in all of us. Every single person has cancer cells. Cancer is nothing more than defective cells that are not working like a healthy cell should. And when these defective cells mass together, they create tumors. Cancer and their tumors are like any other living thing. They need to survive. In order to do this, they take nutrients and food from our bodies, while also releasing toxic chemicals. When cancer goes unchecked or grows faster than our bodies can handle, this can lead to illnesses (symptoms), organ failure, and even death.
Cancer cells exist outside the body’s law. Because of their abnormal genes, they escape the rules of normal, healthy tissue. Here’s how:
Cancer cells don’t die like they should. Normal healthy cells die after a certain number of divisions. This helps with crowd control and allows balance in the body. Too many cells can be a bad thing. Plus, every cell in your body has a lifespan. Your body is constantly replacing cells. But cancer cells become immortal in a sense. They ignore signals that tell them to stop multiplying.
Cancer poisons tissue in the area. They release toxic chemicals which create inflammation in the body that stimulates cancer growth.
Cancer feeds from nearby blood vessels. They force blood vessels to furnish oxygen and nutrients they need to survive and grow.
Cancer grows into tumors and spreads through the body.
What does cancer need to survive?
Cancer has a terrain.
Imagine cancer as a seed in soil. In order to grow it needs the right food, water, sunshine, and a nutrient-rich soil. Cancer has allies. In order to fight cancer, we need to understand what helps it grow and do our best to prevent this.
Inflammation in the body is the perfect terrain for cancer cells. In fact, inflammation plays a major role in every health issue across the board. Everything from headaches to autoimmune diseases to anxiety and depression.
What is inflammation?
In short, inflammation is meant to heal the body by creating new tissue and providing aid when the body is in crisis.
Say you have an injury. Your body detects something is wrong and releases chemicals to alert the white blood cells of the immune system. These white blood cells also send out signaling transmitters. These transmitters are cytokines, chemokines, prostaglandins, leukotrienes and thromboxjnes.
Image a fire breaks out in a city. First responders are informed and now they are gathering together in the area; firefighters, EMTs, police officers and even construction workers.
The body dilates vessels in the area to allow more cells to come in. Imagine these first responders are miraculously widening roads and creating new paths so they can get to the area faster and with more supplies and people.
Inflammation allows our immune system to do its job. Immune cells are tracking down bacteria, pathogens and viruses. New cells are being created to come to the fight and help repair the damage. This means we need more blood vessels to bring food and oxygen. After the fire is out, the rebuilding process begins. The immune cells return to standby mode.
Cancer uses inflammation the same way the body does. It needs inflammation to sustain growth, to get food, oxygen and to spread. Cancer cells produce the same inflammatory substances to reproduce cells and grow tumors.
Normally after healthy tissue is restored, a natural process called apoptosis occurs. Apoptosis is the natural suicide of cells. Every cell in genetically programmed to do this to prevent overproduction of tissues and to prevent wasted food and oxygen. Again, when our bodies are in a crisis, they produce extra cells. So when things are back to normal, we may have unnecessary cells taking supplies and getting in the way.
Remember, cancer cells ignore this process. They don’t respond to these signals to stop multiplying.
Cancer cells also disrupt immune cells. The overproduction of inflammation throws white blood cells into disarray. (Too many people in one room can be a bad thing.)
Inflammation molecules stimulate tumor growth and supply chains. Blood vessels supply oxygen and food to our cells. Cancer steals and develops new blood vessels to survive. And they attract “deactivated” immune cells that produce even more inflammation.
The cycle of cancer looks like this:
Encourages immune cells to produce inflammation
Uses the inflammation process to grow and spread
Disrupts immune cells from attacking the cancer
The cancer cells don’t die off like they should after inflammation, so it can only grow.
The tumor gets the body to make the fuel for its own growth through blood vessels and invading surrounding tissues.
It enters the blood stream and neighboring tissue allowing it to spread through the body. (metastasis)
Cancer is successful because of inflammation. The more inflammation, the more dangerous cancer will be.
If we were at war and cancer was the enemy, cutting off its supply chain would have the most impact. This means cutting down inflammation in the body. This means cutting out the things in our lives that cause inflammation.
What causes cancer? And what causes inflammation?
Since 1940, cancer has increased in all industrialized countries. The rate of cancer is increasing across the board, including young people. Prostate cancer alone has risen 258% in the U.S. from 1978-2000. There are 9x more cancer cases in the US and western Europe than most Asia countries. The more developed a country, the more industrialization, the more likely you’ll find cancer.
Why? What’s changed since World War 2?
The addition of large quantities of highly refined sugar to our diet.
Changes in agriculture and farming: our food.
Exposure to a very large amount of chemical products that didn’t exist before 1940. Toxins.
The short answer:
We live in a toxic world and eat a lot of unhealthy “foods”, leading to nutrient imbalances, inflammation, and an overwhelmed immune system that can’t do its job.
Food
Our genes expect the food of our ancestors: a diet of mostly fruit, vegetables, eggs and occasional meat. Today 56% of our calories come from either refined sugar, bleached flour or vegetable oils.
None of these foods contain the proteins, vitamins, mineral or omega-3 fatty acids need to keep our bodies function. Worse, these other “foods” directly fuel cancer and chronic illness by causing inflammation in the body.
Cancer feeds on sugar:
The average person consumes 150 lbs of sugar a year. It’s in everything. When we eat sugar or white foods like rice, flour, and pastas that have a high glycemic index (meaning they increase the glucose levels in our blood rapidly), our bodies release a dose of insulin to enable glucose to enter the cells. This also releases another molecule called IGF, that stimulates cell growth.
Meaning: Sugar nourishes tissues and makes them grow faster. Insulin and IGF promote factors of inflammation, which also stimulates cell growth and acts as a fertilizer for tumors. Insulin and IGF also help cancers capacity to invade neighboring tissues.
Cancer cells are less susceptible to chemotherapy when the insulin system is stimulated.
Sugar and inflammation affects our skin. Acne isn’t a thing in tribes/ groups cut off from civilization. Researchers in Australia convinced adolescents to go on a strict diet of no sugar or white flour for 3 months. In a few weeks, their insulin and IGF levels diminished and so did their acne.
Those who eat low-sugar Asian diets tend to have 5-10 times fewer hormonally driven cancers than those with diets high in sugar and refined foods, as is typical in most industrial nations.
Women with the highest level of IGF are 7 times likely to develop breast cancer than those with the lowest.
Men have 9 times greater risk of prostate cancer with higher levels of IGF.
High Glycemic index is associated with pancreas, colon and ovary cancers.
If your want to protect yourself from cancer, you should seriously reduce the consumption of processed sugar and bleach flour.
Dairy and Meat:
Omega-3 fatty acids are anti-inflammatory acids that the body needs. Livestock that consumes grass will be higher in Omega-3s.
Omega-6 fatty acids are high inflammatory acids and store fat. Livestock that consumes grain, corn, soy and wheat, will be high in Omega-6s.
Because of the demand on our food industry. Food has changed. Our agriculture and farming standards have shifted to be more efficient and profitable. What’s not good for our livestock is not good for us. What they consume, we consume.
Most of everyone is low in Omega-3s and high in Omega-6s. Our imbalance increases inflammation and the growth of cancer cells.
Hormones: Our farm animals are also given hormones to fatten them faster. These hormones build up in the fatty tissue and are even excreted in the milk. Over the years, we have seen an increase in hormonal imbalances in our society. Hormones play a hue role in our health and immune system. Areas in the world where meal and milk products are consumed the most also see a rise in cancer rates.
Processed Food and Trans Fats:
Processed foods use vegetable oils to keep them from going stale. These fats are less digestible and create inflammation in the gut. Our gut is responsible for 80% of our immune system.
Toxins
The average American is exposed to 150-300 toxic chemicals a day. They’re on our bed sheets, receipts, clothing, in our food containers, deodorants, fragrances, shampoos, etc.
More toxins are found in pesticides, herbicides, fungicides (which are used on our food. Heavy metals found in our water supplies, in the air we breath and again on our food.
Toxins play the biggest role in our chronic health issues.
In 2004, the European World Wildlife Fund measured the amount of toxic chemicals people are carrying. Those who were tested had 13 chemical waste products (phthalates and perfluoro compounds) and 25 chemical substances including flame retardants, pesticides and PCBs (poly chlorinated biphenyls) in their bodies.
In America, The Center for Disease Control have identified 148 toxic chemicals in blood and urine samples.
Since 1930, our annual production of synthetic chemicals has risen from a million tons in a year to 200 million tons a day.
We have tested 900 potential carcinogens out of over a 100k substances released. Only 1 was found to be non-carcinogenic.
The Paris Deal calls for application before an introduction of a new and potentially toxic chemical.
Toxic Synergy
When individual toxins are studied alone in a lab, they’re less dangerous. But when combined with other toxins they create a “cocktail effect” and become quite dangerous. (They tested this with mimicked real-life conditions with several species of plankton and tadpoles in aquatic environment. When combined with other pesticides, 99% of the tadpoles died)
Toxins that are water soluble travel everywhere. They get in our water supplies and make their way all over the world and in places that shouldn’t have them.
Toxins that are fat soluble wedge themselves in our tissue. Then it becomes very difficult to remove them from the body.
Plastics
Like toxins and pollutants, another menace to our world and our health is plastic. Most of our food and beverage is wrapped in plastic. Toxins leak in, we consume them, and they do damage to our bodies.
BPA (bisphenol A) is one component of PVC (polyvinyl chloride). Hard plastic. PVC is everywhere: inside soda cans, plastic food tubs, electric kettles, baby bottles, cups, microwavable bowls, etc. When PVC is heated or makes contact with hot liquids or food, it releases BPA.
BPA has been found to block effects of several chemo agents on breast cancer cells. It becomes an ally for tumors in fighting cancer.
If a plastic bottle has the number 1 on the bottom it’s made with PET (a safer plastic) Softer plastics are safer.
Additives
Additives help retain water and improve texture to food. These Phosphate additives have been linked to cancer.
We absorb an average of 1000 milligrams of phosphates every day.
They are found in processed meat, cheeses, pastries, all sodas, fruit syrups, processed ice creams, ready-made processed foods like frozen pizza and fish sticks.
Calcium phosphate, disodium phosphate, phosphoric acid, sodium triphosphate, tri-calcium phosphate, etc.
A study of 91,000 women over 12 years found the risk of breast cancer is twice as high in those who eat red meat 3x a week.
The same conclusion for colon cancer. Twice as high for those who ate large quantities of meat.
How do we prevent and fight cancer?
We have to change the terrain in our bodies.
We know cancer has a terrain. It likes inflammation and the things that cause inflammation. And now we know there’s a lot we’re exposed to.
But there is good news. We have the ability to restore balance to our bodies by removing the bad things that feed inflammation in our bodies and help cancer grow.
3 Stages of Tumor Growth:
Initiation: when the seed settles in the soil. The seed depends on our genes and the toxins of our food and environment.
Promotion: when the seed becomes a plant. Depends on the conditions for its survival, like inflammation.
Progression: when the plant becomes a weed and invades the garden.
Promotors are dietary factors that feed cancer growth.
Anti-promotors are factors that slow cancer growth.
Cancer growth is a push and pull process. When we limit promotors or “weeds” in our garden, while supplying our bodies with nutrients that stop growing like “anti-promotors” we protect our garden.
A experiment at Wake Forest University found mice that were immune to cancer. They gradually injected cancer cells into mice to study antibodies. The cancer cells they used were S180 cells, some of the most toxic and deadly. They found one mouse and his offspring were immune. They injected up to 2 billion cancer cells (10% of their body weight) and nothing happened. Typical mice with a few thousand cells would die within a month.
Why?
The mice had incredible immune systems that prevented cancer from taking hold.
Does this translate to humans? Absolutely.
How to disrupt cancer growth:
Having a strong immune system to mobilize against cancer cells.
Lower inflammation in the body to prevent cancer growth.
Prevent blood vessels from reproducing and providing the supplies to cancer cells. Stop the angiogenesis of cancer.