A cancer diagnosis scares all of us. I have no more vivid memory than seeing my former wife's body after it had been wracked by four years of cancer, chemotherapy, operations and painkilling drugs when she died on November 1st, 1994.
Her bout with cancer started me on my search for answers. How can we cure it gently? How can we prevent it? To do either, we must first understand it.Some Cancer Numbers
First, let me give you a few numbers. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. About 22% of all deaths each year are blamed on cancer.
Notice the word "about". As I mentioned above, my former wife, Marjorie, died on November 1, 1994 after a four-year bout with cancer. On her death certificate, her doctor wrote "heart failure" as the cause of death. Obviously, any statistics on death rates need to be taken with a grain of salt. My doctor friends tell me that the law requires them to enter the final cause of death, not the precursor, whatever that means.
More than a million Americans are diagnosed with cancer each year and more than half a million death certificates cite cancer as the cause of death.Another 800,000 develop small, "non-invading" cancers and various mild kinds of skin cancer. Both types generally do not spread and can be easily removed. These "non-invasive" cancers are not counted in the annual cancer statistics.
For women 35 to 74, cancer is the leading cause of death. For men of the same age range, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death.
Despite the high incidence of cancer and our federal government's "War on Cancer", begun in the early 1970's and supported by over $50 billion dollars of research, virtually no progress has been made in curing the most common forms of cancer.
According to the World Health Organization, there were 10 million new cases of cancer in 1996, and in 2001 they predict a yearly total of 14.7 million. These numbers are so huge that the suffering they imply is incomprehensible.
In the United States, the death rate from cancer had risen 6% by 1994 from 1970, just before the "War on Cancer" was launched. There has been a slight downturn since 1994, but it can all probably be attributed to people stopping smoking.
To put it another way, every other man and every third woman in the United States will get cancer -- unless we understand it better and make the lifestyle changes I will show you.
If a tumor is found early and can be removed, it will not regrow or appear elsewhere about 50% of the time. Once a cancer has metastasized (spread to other sites in the body), chemotherapy and/or radiation will stop it only about 10% of the time.
Most cancers arise from our interaction with the world around us. Almost onethird of all cancers diagnosed in Europe and in the United States can be linked to tobacco use. These account for more than 150,000 deaths in the United States each year.
Food choices contribute to another one-third of the cancers, especially stomach and colon cancers.Thinner people are at lower risk of breast, prostate and uterine cancer. This is probably because these cancers are linked to high exposure to the sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone. These hormones are stored in fat.
People who drink alcohol excessively have higher levels of mouth and liver cancer.
People who have spent too much time in the sun, particularly before the age of 30, are more likely to develop skin cancer.
The key words in cancer treatment today are "avoidance" and "early detection." Without a doubt, the best way to fight cancer is to avoid getting it in the first place.
What Exactly Is Cancer?What follows is information available in more detail in a book called REAL AGE by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. Dr. Roizen's book and the related website and daily "tips" are one of the many resources I will recommend to you (see Appendix A).
Cancer means the growth of tumors. It’s a category that includes a broad range of diseases.About 5 to 10% of all cancers stem from inherited genes. The other 90 to 95% are caused by genetic “mistakes” which develop over your lifetime. Mutations in your DNA after you are born are these mistakes. We accumulate them.
Cancer is a disease of our DNA. This is the substance that regulates the growth of the body. It is contained in every cell we have. It is the “instruction book” for your body. It determines the color of our eyes, how tall we are, that we have an arm instead of a wing…
If you have a computer and I give you two manuals, each three inches thick, you’ll never learn to use your computer. But if I tell you to read pages 10 through 15 and you will learn how to use your computer, you will do that.
When your body needs a cell, at the last minute it decides if it needs a kidney, eye or fingernail cell. The body then tells that cell which pages of the DNA to read. When it takes the place of a dying cell, it begins to function in that capacity.
This DNA is duplicated with every cell division. Average adults have 75 trillion cells in their body. Once again – 75,000,000,000,000 cells. 99% of the cells in our bodies are called “somatic” cells. All of them except brain and nerve cells get replaced thousands or hundreds of thousands of times during our lifetime. In seven years this process of cell division and death replaces virtually every cell in our bodies.
Another way to look at this is that every day about 205 billion cells get replaced in our body. Why is this important? Because cancer is caused by mutations that occur during this process.
When a cell divides, the DNA in that cell is copied and passed on to the new cell. But the DNA in any one cell can become damaged. Pieces of the instructions on the genes can get knocked out or changed – mutated.
If this mutation occurs in the wrong place – in an active gene, for instance – it can disrupt the function of the cell, causing it to die.Your beautiful body includes a regulatory system that is mind-boggling. For example, when you get a simple cut on your hand, your cells go to work to repair the damage. When enough cells have gathered around the cut to heal it, the cells stop dividing. Ever wonder why? Because there is a “suicide gene” in the DNA which says “Enough, already.”
Not only is the total number of cells kept in check, but also “proofreader” genes in the DNA look for mutations. When they find one, they either fix it or kill the cell. They are on duty 24/7. Isn’t this stuff amazing?
Your immune system also kills off these damaged cells by the millions every day. It is your second line of defense against mutated cells. We’ll discuss this in much more detail in Chapter 2.
If the mutation happens, however, in a portion of the cell’s DNA that controls cell growth, i.e. an “oncogene,” the result is a rapidly growing and dividing cell – out of control – or what we call “cancer.”
The cell has lost its “suicide” function. The “proofreader” gene missed the mistake. Your immune system is too weak to provide its normal second line of defense. Result: The Big C.
The mutated cells usually travel to the weakest and most highly stressed organ in your body (in a process that is poorly understood) and you have a tumor. The cancer tumor grows because the “daughter” cells inherit the same mutation.
How do these mutations occur? Two ways: One is a random mistake in the DNA duplication process. Not much chance for you to control this. But not much reason for concern, either. The cell cycle controllers (proofreaders and suicide genes) and your immune system kill these “mistakes” as soon as they happen.
The second way is damage to the DNA caused by “free radicals” or other irritants like radiation.What Are Free Radicals?
Free radicals, the most common cause of cancerous DNA damage, are under your control. What are free radicals? Every day, we produce or take in millions of them. They are compounds that have one unpaired electron in their atomic makeup.
Try as you might, you cannot avoid free radicals. They are in your body and in the atmosphere. They result from the process your body uses to break down food, among many other causes. But they are also caused, and can be controlled, by the lifestyle decisions we make every day. What lifestyle decisions? Want a few examples?
Cigarette smoking causes the largest number of free radicals of any lifestyle activity. Eventually, the number of free radicals it produces overcomes your body’s elaborate defenses and you, the smoker, get lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and many more maladies.
The more fat you take in, the more free radicals you produce.Food and vitamins and other supplements provide “anti-oxidants” which can kill off the free radicals by the millions.
All of these lifestyle choices are cumulative – for better or worse.
In addition to cancer, free radical damage also causes senility, arthritis, hardening of the arteries, and the declining function of your immune system as you age.
Helping Your Immune SystemA multitude of studies in recent months confirm the immune system’s function in both preventing and curing cancer. Almost every day a new study is published in the search for drugs and vaccines that boost the immune system’s ability to fight off cancer.
As we will see in Chapter 2, these drugs are not necessary. At least one substance that is non-toxic and harmless to take has been proven to boost your immune system’s ability to “mop up” mutated cancerous cells.
"As you age, your second line of defense, your immune system, tends to be less vigilant and does not as readily detect and destroy these abnormalities. The weaker your immune system, the more likely that it will not provide the necessary backup. The longer you live, the more likely that you will get improper cell divisions, the more likely that the DNA in a specific cell will contain a mutation, and the more likely that your immune system won't be there to catch a mistake.
The most important thing to remember is this: You can slow, and even reverse, the rate of aging of your immune system." [Emphasis added].Dr. Roizen goes on to explain causes and prevention measures for various types of cancer. If you would like to read more of his work, his book is called REAL AGE --Are You as Young as You Can Be? copyright 1999 by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. Also, check out his website: http://www.realage.com/
My wife Terry and I took Dr. Roizen's quiz to determine our "Real Age". The quiz covers a wide variety of lifestyle questions, each of which either adds to or subtracts from your chronological age. Mine came out to minus 16 (making my "Real Age" 52). My wife's came out to minus 14 (making her "Real Age" 32). To take this quiz, just go to his website by clicking on the link above.
Dr. Roizen has an extended discussion on antioxidants (Vitamin C, E, etc.) and their role in controlling the "free radicals" which damage the genes in your cells.It is pretty clear from all the research I have done that most cancers can be prevented by proper diet, supplements and exercise. Each of these three can be visualized as a leg on a three-legged stool. If any one is neglected, the stool collapses – your body degenerates and you get sick. We will cover supplements in this chapter. Diet and exercise are the subjects of “booklets” which accompany this book.
Treating Your CancerThe succeeding chapters in this book will deal in detail with specific options available to every cancer patient. Many of these are supported by major research efforts. Many of them are supported by groups of survivors that have formed to get the information to other cancer sufferers.
In Appendix A, Resources Summary, is a complete list of the resources you can use to find more detail than I can include in this book. You can even locate doctors in your area who specialize in “alternative” or “integrative” medicine. Also, the websites will allow you to keep up-to-date on new developments as they occur, as will my newsletter.