After my up close and personal experience with cancer in
2007, I became intimately aware of the reality of this disease. Based on
my family history and my low personal "risk" factor, I never
concerned myself with the possibility that I would ever have to deal with cancer in
any form. But, as they say, life happens. When the surgery was over
and the dust settled, I decided it was time to give something to the cause of
others. My recovery was complete (more or less), but many are not so
fortunate. Their battle with cancer is long and rocky, and many never
recover. It was then I began to make donations to organizations like the
Susan B. Koman Foundation and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.
No
more.
Next month I will have my last appointment with my Oncologist. It will have been five years since the gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) was removed from my small intestine. My semi-annual visits since that event have shown no signs of recurrence, and I am cutting the proverbial umbilical cord to the cancer doctor.
GIST is a rare cancer affecting the digestive tract -- typically in the small or large intestines, stomach, or esophagus. How rare? Out of 1.4 million new cases of cancer that occur each year, only 4,000 are diagnosed as gastrointenstinal stromal tumors. A stromal tumor is a sarcoma, which is different than a carcinoma. Carcinomas derive from cells in the skin, whereas sarcomas grow from cells of the body's connective tissues such as bone, tendons, fat, nerves, muscle, or blood vessels. Sarcomas do not respond to chemotherapy or other standard cancer treatments. The only way out is courtesy of a surgeon's knife.
According to GSI Support International, there are no known environmental or behavioral risk factors that contribute to GIST. "Therefore patients should not worry that their diet or lifestyle choices contributed to GIST." Instead, they believe that GISTs are caused by random genetic mutations, which they attribute to identified mutations in cell-surface proteins called tyrosine kinase receptors that are found in the majority of stromal tumors.
At first, I accepted this assumption without question. After all, it's quite self-assuring to be told that "it's not your fault." I couldn't have changed the outcome by living a lifestyle any different than the one I chose. Clean conscience prevails.
Then
I began to read. I read information by doctors such as Dr.
Christine Horner, an MD and surgeon who after losing her own mother
to cancer, discovered a tremendous amount of little know research proving that
nutrition and lifestyle can lower one's risk of cancer and other chronic
diseases. I read about the work of Dr. Weston Price (the dentist) who
discovered that primitive people groups who ate no modern (processed) foods had
little or no incidence of dental disease, cancer, heart disease, or
tuberculosis (which was prevalent during the 1940s when he was
doing his research). I read about the alterations in our food supply
through genetic modification by scientists bought and paid for
by chemical companies -- the biggest culprit being Monsanto. I learned
about the gross irresponsibility of the meat industry that raises farm animals in a most cruel
and unusual way in order to get the most meat, milk, or eggs for the
money--shoving them full of food they're not designed to eat and unnatural
growth hormones, and then solving the resulting sickness problem with antibiotics.
I read about the chemicals that are routinely sprayed on our fruit and
vegetable food supply and the chemical fertilizer that permeates the ground and
water. I read about chemicals added to processed foods we buy
at the grocery store to make them palatable-- chemical flavors, chemical colors, chemical sweeteners.
I read about how we've been led to believe (and I sure did) that oil
extruded from vegetables is healthier than naturally occurring fats in meat
and butter (which, by the way, people have been eating for millenia), when in
fact those vegetable and nut oils turn into carcinogens the minute you heat
them up. In short, I learned that for the last eighty to a hundred years,
our food supply has been slowly poisoning us.
So, with all that going on, how do they KNOW that all that garbage we're eating isn't interfering with
tyrosine kinase receptors, causing cell disruptions or mutations? Hmmm?
Now,
back to the cancer research. Strangely, the only research they're willing
to do is that which involves drug development. Not only are they not interested
in researching the food factor, but they boldly denounce any possibility that
food would have an impact, as though such an idea were somehow backward and
uncivilized.
The Susan B.
Koman Foundation, when discussing diet, implicates fats, especially
from red meat, without any differentiation regarding the quality of the food.
In typical fashion, they state that "woman who live
in countries like the United States where people tend to eat a high-fat diet
with more meat tend to have higher rates of breast cancer" and say nothing of the other
foods eaten by these same women that are more likely to be the culprits-- like
white flour, trans fats and vegetable oils, processed foods sterilized of any
nutritional value, and large amounts of sugar.
The American Cancer Society's shopping list for a
"healthy kitchen" may as well be the shopping list of the average
American. No changes required. The only thing missing is a sack of
candy bars. What are the cancer treatments available to you and me? At the
top of the list: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. You won't find
"healthy eating" anywhere in the treatment plan. And yet there
is clear evidence that in some cases (perhaps many cases) it works.
Take the case of young Jacob Stieler, a Michigan child whose parents are
currently battling the system because they have refused to follow the
"standard of care" treatment for his bone cancer, without which he
will surely die... except his past three PET scans have shown no sign whatever
of cancer. The Pediatric Oncology Tumor Board at Children's Hospital
have decided that Jacob needs six more months of chemo and six weeks of
radiation, even though he has no cancer. Chemotherapy and
radiation treatment are poisonous to the body. Why would a group of doctors
insist upon poisoning a boy with no cancer?
This
one tops them all. From the National Cancer Institute, a government
organization, the following "have been proven not to be risk factors"
(or the risk is unknown) for breast cancer: Abortion, oral contraceptive,
environment, diet, cigarette smoking, statin drugs. In other words, don't
worry about your lifestyle. It certainly can't be THAT.
Even
organizations that promote diet as a key component to cancer prevention and
treatment, such as the Cancer
Nutrition Center of America, rely upon the “conventional
wisdom” that touts a low-fat diet, tells us soy is wonderful, and neglects to
address the impact of carbohydrates on cancer.
Cancer
research organizations -- every last one of them -- have lost their way.
They are no longer honestly looking for a cure to cancer. Instead,
they seem to be working hand-in-hand with pharmaceutical companies to
help fund drug research. And drug companies aren't looking for cures
either. They seek only to mediate our health and keep us from dying long
enough to buy as many of their products as possible.
So
can food really cure cancer? Probably not. Food cannot cure.
That's not its job. Food feeds our bodies and provides the
necessary building blocks the body needs to cure itself. God designed us to be self-healing, and food is the body's
enabler. When we keep that food as pure as possible, we will be healthier.
When we continually saturate the body with things it can't metabolize, we
get sick and we stay sick...and sometimes we die before we should. Dr. Max Gerson,
long a proponent of natural healing, has demonstrated the power of the body to
heal when it is properly cared for. Recently his methods were highlighted
in a documentary called, The Beautiful Truth. Dr. Gerson can cite thousands of examples of persons healed of their cancer and heart disease through diet. Can't be proved? What, exactly, constitutes "proof?"
The
establishment cancer machine will suppress any doctor or organization that
goes against its doctrine of drug therapy in order to perpetuate its own survival.
It will make examples of parents who seek another way and charge them
with child neglect and endangerment. The truth cannot be allowed to
surface. If people discover there are natural cancer fighting solutions, before you know it, all that funding for cancer research will dry up. That's no good! For them.
So... until
cancer organizations return to an honest search for the cure, they won't see
another dime of my money.
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