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A Natural Perspective on Cancer
As you may or may not know, we all have ‘cancerous’ cells in our bodies – all of us. So how then is that different from being diagnosed with cancer? What is Cancer?
In this discussion I try to look at cancer in a simple way; in a way that hopefully makes sense. I’ll leave the sophisticated complexities to others. When it comes down to it, I believe most things are simple in nature even though the intricacies of that simplicity may be mind-boggling and miraculous to contemplate.
Cancer is, like everything else, about balance. This is the wisdom of the Chinese yin-yang philosophy. In Western medicine it is referred to physiologically as homeostasis – the effort to maintain balance in body systems. As mentioned previously, we all have ‘cancerous’ cells in our body. For those of us without actively proliferating cancer – or cancer that is winning the battle – our bodies are functioning to remove these cells and replace them with new, vibrant, correctly functioning cells that are acting in harmony with the rest of the body. Cancerous cells that are proliferating are essentially more dominant against the ordering influence of the body, or against its underlying intelligent, self-ordering, living vital forces. From a conventional medical standpoint this can be described as a weakened immune system; an immune system that is deficient for some or many different reasons and that has reached the point where it is not doing what healthy immune systems do, which is to deal with aberrant cancer cells in a dynamic, ongoing, healthy process of maintaining equilibrium.
The question that then needs to be asked is – Why? What is it about a healthy immune system that keeps cancer cells from proliferating? There are lots of different possibilities, and I will attempt to talk about a few, but with all of them, there is the issue of one’s energy state; which will impact energy balance and energy flow. The human body is an intricate network of flowing energies. The Chinese have known this for thousands of years. Those who recognize a spiritual component to mankind recognize this too. Without addressing one’s energetic state, which includes energy flow and energy balance, when it is impeded, the immune system – which is nothing more than intricate energies manifesting themselves through scientifically named molecules, growth factors, globulins, cell-types, etc. – cannot and will not function as it should.
Traditional Chinese doctors, and those who recognize the energetic side of living systems, will therefore address energy flow within the body. Additionally, blood flow is another critical factor. The reason for this is that blood is rich with growth and repair energies – you could say yang energies – these physical components have been given names like platelets, leukocytes (white blood cells), numerous growth factors, anabolic hormones, etc. All of these components require adequate and abundant nutrition in order to be produced (truly nutritious sources are only derived from other living systems – plants, fish, animals, etc. – living energies giving life to other living energies), and delivery of these components to where they are needed in the body is essential. If adequate blood flow with adequate nutrition to needed sites does not occur there will be continued imbalance and disease at that site and then others too. This is why blood flow is an essential component to treatment. This is why exercise is so beneficial. It moves growth factors and healing and rejuvenating factors found within the blood to where it is needed. Quality and quantity of blood flow is needed for health. And, quality and quantity of energy flow (Qi is what the Chinese call it) is also needed for health.
We put different names on cancer and differentiate it into various types based upon where it occurs, what cells are involved, how fast they are growing, and a host of other characteristics. Commonalities among cancers are that they are generally fast-growing (just like hair, skin and nail cells – chemotherapy targets fast-growing cells indiscriminately in an attempt to kill cancer cells and thus in the process patients often lose their hair), and cancer cells’ cellular death mechanism (known as apoptosis) is turned off. Cancer cells are trying to stay alive forever; they’re trying to become immortal – but at the expense of the other cells in the body. There are some other interesting things to note about cancer. There is also a commonality among many of the well-known cancer markers. Cancer markers are for the most part molecular proteins whose elevated presence in the body signals the presence of abnormal levels of cancer cells. Some of these markers include CEA, AFP, hCG, etc. Cancer cells, for some reason, put out large quantities of these substances. It is interesting to note that many of these substances are additionally found in large quantities in embryonic and fetal development and are also significantly high in newborn infants.
We know a few things about some of these substances. CEA or CarcinoEmbryonicAntigen is normally found in fetal gut tissue, but when high in adults is suggestive of cancer, and usually colon cancer. AFP or Alpha-fetoprotein is normally made in the liver, yolk sac (of the embryo – used to aid in embryonic development) and gastrointestinal tract, and when abnormally high can suggest some neural tube defects and various cancers. hCG or Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin is produced by the chorionic part (the chorion is the membrane enclosing the fetus) of the placenta (it is used to confirm pregnancy since increasing levels exist to preserve the placenta and growing infant). hCG stimulates the gonads and ovaries to produce anabolic hormones (primarily testosterone and progesterone).
All of these substances in the early embryo and fetus are involved in normal, yet rapid growth. They stimulate growth and anabolic (anabolic means to build up) hormone production for the purpose of growth, strength, repair, good immune development, mass-building, etc. Interestingly, each of these substances plays a unique role in development for specific tissues within the embryo and fetus which each later develop into specific organs like the GI tract, the gonads, the liver, each of which shows a rise in those same corresponding substances, in cancerous states, which was originally used to promote its fetal development.
So why are these substances associated with cancer? I will attempt to answer this in a moment, but first, here is some other interesting information to note about cancer. Patients with active cancer generally have blood levels of anabolic hormones on the low side, and often on the very low side. This often includes testosterone, progesterone and growth hormone. Studies have shown that women on progesterone supplementation have an average of 50% decreased incidence of colon cancer.
There are some known causes for declining or low anabolic hormone levels. One is stress. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is that part of our nervous system that functions automatically or unconsciously as it were. It takes care of things like keeping the heart beating, digestion, breathing, etc. There are two divisions to the ANS: the sympathetic nervous system (which is the fight–or–flight system – when adrenaline gets pumping in you, you either fight the threat or you run from it) and the parasympathetic nervous system (used for digestion, rest and repair, anabolic hormone production, etc.). Stress puts the body into a sympathetic nervous system dominant mode. The perception of a threat (stress) causes the adrenal glands to produce stress hormones such as adrenaline (or epinephrine) and cortisol. The whole purpose of these hormones is to get glucose to the muscle cells so that we can use our muscles to fight, or run from, the threat. When the sympathetic nervous system awakens, the parasympathetic nervous system slows down significantly. So if you’re in a chronic and constant state of stress your body is not digesting well, it’s not producing enough anabolic hormones, it has trouble sleeping, and it’s unable to adequately rest and repair.
Immune function is directly related to the health of the parasympathetic nervous system. People with cancer often say that they were basically healthy and then ‘suddenly’ got cancer. They often report that they almost never got colds or flu and then they ‘got’ cancer. In actuality, colds and flu are most times evidence of an immune system that is healthy enough to mount a response (in the form of fever, sweating, chills, inflammation, etc) to try and rid the body of the offending pathogen (bacteria or virus).
Another cause of declining anabolic hormones is increased estrogen levels. Estrogen is beneficial and useful for many things in the body, but in excess it crowds out testosterone and progesterone. Unless you’re eating natural, organic meat you’re eating meat that is saturated with estrogen (it’s administered to fatten cows up). It’s in meat. It’s in dairy. It’s even in plastics and lotions and hand creams in the form of one type or another of parabens. These estrogens are known as xenoestrogens or foreign estrogens. Add to estrogen dominance the lack of adequate nutritive value in our Standard American Diets (SAD: fast food, high fat, high sugar foods) and the body is then depleted of co-factors needed for the production of growth and repair substances. Do you know that sugar (whether plain sugar or high fructose corn syrup – super sugar as it should be known) is converted and stored in the body as fat? Do you know that adipose tissue produces estrogen? Our high fat, high sugar lifestyle is killing our immune systems by causing conditions of excess estrogen. Alcohol is super sugar too, and it has a double whammy effect in that it also compromises the proper functioning of the liver, which is responsible for estrogen breakdown and recycling.
An additional cause of declining anabolic hormones is old age. Our anabolic hormones begin their decline in our twenties. Could it be coincidental that the incidence of cancer increases with old age? And for that matter, so does heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and other auto-immune diseases. Did you catch that? Auto-Immune diseases; wherein the immune system is not functioning properly. Do you remember what helps the immune system function well? All those yang influences we’ve been talking about – growth factors, anabolic hormones, growth and repair mechanisms; all those things that especially in the healthy fetus (but also in healthy, balanced levels in children and adults) are abundant, yet balanced. The interplay of yin and yang should again be noted.
Now let’s get back to why cancer cells produce these substances. Could it be that cancer cells are a futile attempt by the body to push certain anabolic hormone production pathways in an effort to produce those things it is lacking as a result of stress, poor diet, poor nutrition, excessive alcohol consumption, estrogen assault (and for that matter the lack of fresh, unpolluted air and adequate sleep and rest) on top of already declining levels as a result of old age?
In summary; energy flow, blood flow, adequate nutrition, the elimination of causative factors (sugar, high fat, excessive estrogen, stress), stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system and the increasing and balancing of yang factors (hormones, growth factors) are the basis for helping the body to function the way it should to eliminate cancerous conditions.
There are numerous and various ways in which these can be accomplished, including acupuncture, neural injection therapy, mesotherapy, autologous stem cell transplants (high in growth factors), massage, consistent and varied exercise (both cardiovascular and weight-bearing), light therapy, oxygen therapy, nutritional (high antioxidants and micronutrients) and tumor–necrosing IV therapy, nutritional supplements, anti-carcinogen botanicals, consumption of the right living foods, hormonal analysis and intervention, and many other equally valid life-building therapies like love, forgiveness, resolution of significant emotional issues, human contact, discovering purpose for living and spirituality.
I often have patients come to me trying to decide whether to undergo conventional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation, or whether to turn to alternative treatments. I tell them two things. Firstly, it’s a personal choice since each case is unique (though I am happy to help them understand their options). Secondly, it’s not always an ‘either–or’ situation – I sometimes have patients who choose to do both and find that natural alternative treatments make conventional treatments easier to go through, and more effective. The key to this synergistic approach lies in finding doctors, conventional and otherwise, who will work together with you as a cohesive, nurturing team.
– Dr. David W. Cramer, NMD, MBA.
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