Some Evidence for the Hypothesis of the “Alkaline” Remedy
For me, my sister and my brother, seeing our dear mother wasting away, as the passing of each hour brought her closer to the inevitable embrace of death, was a source of well-nigh unbearable emotional pain.
In those weeks, I naturally did everything I could to care for her, and when she slept, I spent my time searching the Internet for possible alternative remedies. I learned that there are some doctors who believe that a radical change in diet does indeed offer a possibility for fighting cancer: a high-alkaline, sugar-free diet can, according to them, rid the body of cancer cells.
I told my sister of this possibility, and a week or so later, she told me that she had talked to a number of friends about this. She said that two of them knew people who had indeed recovered from stage IV cancer using special diets. One of them (the father of a friend of my sister's) used what she called "the blueberry diet": after being diagnosed with cancer, he ate as many blueberries as he could (and I imagine he also made other dietary changes as well). In the second case, a man with stage IV prostate cancer, which had spread to the bones, had been given a maximum of four weeks to live. At this late stage, according to the doctors, neither radiation, nor chemotherapy would do any good whatsoever. Understandably desperate, this man searched the Internet for any glimmer of hope he might find. He happened across the "Baking Soda Cure".
Don't misread my intentions here. I am not trying to push any one alternative remedy, nor am I suggesting that you, or anyone else, not use the "standard" form of cancer treatment in favor of some supposed remedy that hasn't received the official "stamp of approval" from the FDA, or official medical organizations. In addition, let me say that I am not trying to "sell" you anything at all. I was motivated to write this work, as I stated at the beginning, due to my anger at reading the results of a medical study, and of all that that study both revealed and implied.
Let's return to the man with prostate/bone cancer. Figuring that he was doomed anyway, this gentleman decided to "go for broke" with the "baking soda" treatment. Sure, he had read that drinking too much baking soda water can lead to indigestion, and even alkalosis: a pernicious condition marked by nausea and vomiting, numbness or tingling in the face and extremities, muscle spasms, and even stupor or coma. Thus, taking in too much sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is not something you would normally want to do.
But his was no normal situation. He had stage IV prostate and bone cancer. The doctors had told him that nothing would help him, not even chemotherapy. (At least they were honest! I say this because I know for a fact that there are doctors that do recommend chemo even in situations where it could not possibly help at all, and would kill the patient even sooner than doing nothing.)
After reading that − just maybe − the high-alkaline method could help him, and having been told by the doctors that he had only 3-4 weeks to live, what did he have to lose? Would it be wise to not try out the baking soda treatment, just because he might get an upset stomach, or end up in a stupor? What did it matter? He was almost dead anyway!
Such being his thoughts, he decided to go for it. Several times a day, he drank glasses of water containing a specific amount of baking soda, as recommended in the sites he had read. In addition, he changed his diet to include only the foods recommended.
He later reported that on some days, he had drunk so much baking soda water that yes, he did get sick, and even vomit. But the next day, he continued drinking it.
Well over a month later, he returned to his physician, who was quite surprised to see the man alive. He requested that the doctor do a test to see if he still had cancer. To his astonishment, the physician found that the cancer had disappeared entirely.
I learned of this case in 2013, about five years after it had occurred, and at that time, the man was still alive, a full five years after he had been given the "death sentence" by his doctors.
A miracle, you say? Well, for me it is a lot easier to believe that the cure was brought about by the extreme change in diet that the man adopted, together with the intake of baking soda, since these measures will definitely raise your body's pH level. For as even "modern medicine" is gradually discovering, an alkaline environment hinders the proliferation of cancer cells.
True, you will find many sites on the Internet that say that this is not true. Yet why, then, have a number of scientific studies shown clearly that sodium bicarbonate does indeed have a clear effect on cancer development? Just this morning, a found several studies that have been, or are going to be, done whose hypothesis is that baking soda can help people with cancer. It is true that those studies which have already been completed were done with cancer cell development in mice, but these studies have shown that sodium bicarbonate definitely plays a role in inhibiting the spread of cancer. Here’s an example of study, entitled: “Bicarbonate increases Tumor pH and Inhibits spontaneous Metastases.” (If you aren’t up to wading through all the technical jargon, skip to “Conclusions” near the end.)
No, this study (and a number of others that have shown similar positive results) were not done on humans, but on animals. Nonetheless, I also found that a number of hospitals and universities are planning to do studies based on the hypothesis that baking soda can help cancer patients. One may hope that those experiments are welldesigned, and that the scientists involved are really searching for the truth, and are not being financed by the Medical-Pharmaceutical Industry. Of course, that industry has more than enough funds to do such studies, and in other portions of this book I have stated that they should sponsor such research. Yet on the other hand, the danger is that they may somehow “rig” the study to get the results they want. Lest you think that I am some sort of “conspiracy theorist”, allow me to say that this has happened before when that industry tested drugs that they produce, and wished to convey the impression that those substances really helped people, when in fact, the drug produced next to no effect at all. (See Doctor Ben Goldacre’s book: “Bad Pharma − How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients”-for chilling tales of precisely this sort of deceit.)
Yet from what I can tell today, there is a growing interest among medical researchers – who have obviously been intrigued by what many alternative physicians have been saying for years – in planning and carrying out scientific studies in the area of the effect of sodium bicarbonate on cancer cells. Or perhaps I should say the effect of raising the body’s pH level (and once again: the blood always has a constant pH level, though if the rest of the body is acidic, the immune system will be weakened). This can be done simply by a total change in diet, i.e., adopting a sugar-free, vegetarian diet. Mainstream physician William Li talks about the use of diet to inhibit cancerous tumor growth in an extremely interesting “ted.com” talk. View it here. Doctor Li is the President and Medical Director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, whose site you can see here.
Yes, I can understand if you are skeptical about all this. After all, even if I do tell you of cases I personally know of, you might think I am "making them up", i.e., that I am simply lying to you. But let's use reason here...
If indeed you do get cancer, then even if you choose to receive an aggressive treatment such as radiation or chemo, would it not be wise to take other measures as well, in order to maximize the probability of recovering? Read that last sentence again, and think about it for a moment.
1) If you have cancer, your immune system is not functioning properly.
2) Having a strong immune system would help you fight off cancer.
3) Ergo, you should do everything possible to strengthen your immune system.
Logical, isn't it? And as any health care professional, traditional or alternative, will tell you, having a very healthy diet is always a good idea, for indeed, it is conducive to bolstering the immune system.
In this context, please note that a "healthy diet" is not at all like the typical American diet. If you do decide to change your eating habits because you have cancer (and in my view, you would be a fool if you didn't), then make sure you choose a diet that is recommended by alternative physicians for people with cancer. That is, make sure that is a high-alkaline diet, with no sugar, and all but meatfree. What's that you say? You do have cancer, but you're so used to eating the foods you like that you might not have the willpower to make such a radical change? If you're thinking that, then...
Wake up, my friend! You have cancer, for God's sake! You could well die of this sickness! Do you really not want to do everything possible in order to achieve a cure?
I apologize for my somewhat crude tone here. I assure you it is not a sign of contempt. It is precisely because I feel for you, and for anyone who has cancer, that I sensed the need to get emotionally "abusive" for a moment, to shake you out of your stubborn mindset.
Do you want to get healthy again, or would you prefer to waste away and die? If you choose the path of health, then by God, do everything you can to help yourself!
Yes, I do know it's hard (and yes, I freely admit it would be hard for me too); that precisely if you do have a serious disease, you "need" the comfort of your favorite foods all the more. It's easy for someone to direct you towards the right kind of diet, but much harder for you to make the nutritional changes suggested.
For this reason, you may want to design some “mental exercises” that will help you to change your eating habits. Read the chapter “ Exploring how our M inds work ” for details on those exercises. Using the principles explained there, you can create exercises for the specific purpose of training your mind to (even gladly!) give up your present diet, and to adopt one that is optimally healthy − a diet that could well greatly extend your life, and even lead to a complete cure.