Read an Excerpt
1 AN OVERVIEW OF CANCER
Cancer is potentially the most preventable and
most curable of the major life-threatening diseases facing humankind.
—Dr. John R. Seffrin, CEO American Cancer Society
Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy. . . .
Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon, or lung cancers. . . .
Yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors. . . .
Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemo than without it.
—Alan Levin, M.D., Clinical Ecologist, San Francisco
'You have cancer.' These are some of the most terrifying words you will ever hear. They will change your life in an instant, turning your world upside down. Cancer is officially the second leading cause of death in the United States, and is on its way to becoming the leading cause of death—but you don't have to live in fear. Most cancer occurs needlessly, and can be turned off like a light switch.
People fear cancer for the same reason children fear the dark. It is not the darkness itself that is feared, but the uncertainty of not knowing what is there, and imagining what might be there. Cancer is scary, especially when hearing the diagnosis for the first time. It causes large uncertainties: how long will you live, how will it affect your family, your job, and so forth? This book shines light into that darkness with knowledge that reveals what cancer is, how it is caused, and how to reverse it. Eliminate the darkness of ignorance and you will never have to fear cancer again.
Preventing and Reversing Cancer
The truth is cancer cells are always being produced in the body. It is an ongoing process; some researchers estimate that we all produce from several hundred to several thousand cancer cells per day. Historically, this hasn't been a problem because our immune systems were designed to seek these cells out and destroy them. However, beginning in the mid-twentieth century we started to dramatically increase the number of cancer cells we are producing. What is driving this explosion? Our junk-food diets, living in a sea of manmade toxins and electromagnetic fields, high-stress lifestyles, lack of exercise, exposure to artificial light, and health-damaging medical treatments.
All the above have impaired our immune systems, and we are now creating more cancer cells than our overworked and deplet-ed immune systems can destroy. These same factors also shift the body's internal environment to one that promotes the growth of cancer. This is why almost all of us, especially those over age fifty, now have small clusters of cancer cells throughout our bodies. The chances are, if you are over age fifty, you already have cancer! Fortunately, these cancer cells won't bother you—unless you switch them on and drive them to grow and metastasize—and you have control over whether this happens. You don't have to be a helpless victim. If you can turn cancer on, you can turn cancer off.
We have to remind ourselves that historically cancer was a rare disease. It is only since the early part of the twentieth century, and especially over the last half century in the industrialized nations, that cancer has increased dramatically. Why is this happening? What have we changed?
We have changed what we eat and how we live. What we call 'modern civilization' has fundamentally changed our diet, our environment, and our lifestyle. These changes have reduced the amount of essential nutrients available to our cells, filled our bodies with toxins, exposed us to radiation, caused massive disruption to our normal biorhythms, and impaired our bodies' internal communication, self-regulation, and self-repair—that's a lot of change.
Changes in farming, food distribution, food processing, and an-imal management have reduced the nutritional content of our food, altered the ratios of critical nutrients, changed the chemistry of the fats and oils in our diet, and added thousands of unnatural, manmade chemicals. Large quantities of refined sugar and refined oils have been added to our diet. In fact, more than half our calories now come from foods that didn't even exist when our genes were developing. These are: refined sugar, bleached flour, and processed oils. We are now consuming a diet filled with low quality food that is woefully deficient in life-supporting nutrients while being loaded with toxins.
We live in an invisible sea of toxic chemicals, most of which didn't exist prior to World War II, and our bodies are absorbing these chemicals like sponges. Hundreds of them are bioaccumu-lating in our cells and tissues, building up to levels that cause serious malfunction, weakening our immune systems, and making us sick. Once sick, we are treated with drugs made of toxic synthetic chemicals, which make our bodies even more toxic and therefore sicker.
Our lifestyles expose us to unprecedented amounts of radia-tion; we live sedentary lives, have disrupted our sleep patterns, don't get enough sunlight, and are chronically stressed. When you think about it, it's amazing we are functioning as well as we are, but then more than three out of four of all Americans suffer from at least one diagnosable chronic disease.
To make sense of our unprecedented epidemic of chronic and degenerative disease, you have to understand that, in a relatively short period of time, we have fundamentally changed the parameters of human existence—our diet, environment, and lifestyle. These changes are having a catastrophic impact on our ability to maintain health. The reality is this: We are now eating a diet, functioning in an environment, and living a lifestyle that promotes cancer. Cancer has become normal given the way we live! Fortunately, all we need to do is remove the conditions that allow it to develop in the first place.
Problems get solved when you address the cause. If you want to end cancer, at least in your own body, you have to reverse the conditions that allowed your cancer to develop by making differ-ent choices. You must change your internal environment into one that supports health rather than one that promotes cancer. You must learn how to give your cells the nutrients they need, how to reduce your toxic load, and how to live a lifestyle that supports health rather than disease.
Nobody knows everything there is to know about cancer, and most likely, a lot of what we think we know is wrong. However, we don't need to know everything to prevent cancer or make it go away. What we already know is sufficient. Science has already provided a good understanding of what makes cancer grow and metastasize, so you can learn how to make choices in your daily living that prevent cancer from growing and metastasizing. We really don't need to spend billions more trying to find a cure for cancer.
To help you make the right choices, I have created a simple model of health, which I call the Beyond Health Model, based on the concept of One Disease, Two Causes, and Six Pathways. I also use a simple analogy between driving your car and driving cancer. Take your foot off the accelerator, apply the brake, turn the ignition switch off, and your car stops. In much the same way, you can stop cancer.
Martha's ExperienceIn 2006, Martha was diagnosed with a malignant lump growing in her neck that was affecting her facial nerves. Doctors surgically removed the lump and deemed the operation a success, but as usual with conventional treatment, the patient wasn't cured. A little more than a year later, Martha was diagnosed with five lesions in her lungs and a lesion on one arm. Her cancer had metastasized. She knew how much trouble she was in. Martha had already learned enough on her own to know that she would not survive if she continued to pursue conventional treatments with her metastasized cancer. She decided to help herself by choosing to get well. She took personal responsibility for her health, and learned how to turn her cancer switches off and to stop driving her cancer.
After reading Never Be Sick Again, Martha contacted me for help to get on the best diet and supplement program. She eliminated sugars, grains, processed oils, dairy, and animal pro-tein. She added fresh organic fruits as well as large quantities of vegetables in the form of juices. She also started on a program of high-quality, anticancer supplements. After only a few weeks, Martha went for her scheduled surgery to have her lung removed, but after repeated scans on her lungs, the doctors couldn't find any lesions. They thought there was something wrong with the machine. In disbelief, they sent her home. The doctor who was supposed to remove the cancer on her arm kept calling, wanting to schedule surgery to remove the lesion that was no longer there, even though he had been told it was gone.
Martha is far from alone with such an experience. Her cure was not miraculous, nor was it an isolated, random incident without a cause. Martha's experience has been shared by countless other individuals who have had more faith in the body's ability to heal itself than in conventional medicine's toxic treatments. Cancer can be prevented and reversed by addressing the underlying causes. Martha now understands that the changes she made to reverse her cancer were the very same ones that could have prevented it in the first place. She has now permanently changed her diet and lifestyle to make sure the cancer never returns—she is choosing health instead of disease.
Even better than reversing cancer is preventing it. Prevention is the ultimate answer to cancer. It is far easier to prevent cancer than to fix it after it happens. Dr. Samuel Broder, former director of the National Cancer Institute, once said, 'Each time a patient comes in and needs cancer therapy, you could say it was a failure of prevention.' The most promising approach to controlling our cancer epidemic is a commitment to prevention—anyone can make this commitment.
©2011. RAYMOND FRANCIS, M.Sc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from NEVER FEAR CANCER AGAIN. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442
