Cancer, Clearly

This is the second installment of the Cancer discussion. This time the focus is more on how Chinese Medicine views the process of cancer and what can be done to change it. If you haven’t read the previous blog entry, “Cancer, Generally”, please read that first. Lets jump in.

When you have what most people will call “poor circulation”, evidenced almost always by cold hands and feet, this leads to an accumulation of stagnant fluid in your body, eventually becoming an environment that cancer cells thrive in. Often times the failure to eliminate waste from your body, by not having regular or complete bowel movements you will accumulate “garbage” in your system that allows toxicity to seep into your blood and body fluid. This provides the perfect condition to allow otherwise healthy cells to replace themselves with slightly mutated cells, eventually becoming cancerous. Of course the foods you are putting in your body play a major role in what type of internal environment you are harboring as well.

I’ll make a separate blog dedicated to diet to go into more detail; I just have to touch on it here.

One of the major, and most controversial aspects of diet in our culture is the MEGAVITAMIN the MULTIVITAMIN, SUPERFOOD PILLS… let me explain what I was taught on this topic, and what I’ve seen. These supplements are generally synthetic versions (meaning man-made chemicals) of the vitamins and minerals that would be found in foods naturally. Your body knows the difference. As a general rule, any type of chemical is metabolized as a strong acid. Part of what we are trying to achieve is regulating the Ph balance of your internal environment. This means being more alkaline than acidic. Natural, unrefined, unprocessed foods help to make your body more alkaline. There are diets out there that pick and choose based on the initial Ph of the foods themselves, but Dr. Ni has found that natural foods, even acidic ones such as lemons and vinegar, help to bring the body to an alkaline state when ingested. It is the refining process, the synthetic drugs, and chemicals that make our bodies acidic. Not only are vitamin supplements acidic, they are also FAR too nutrient dense, and in a person with cancer, the cancerous cells are consuming nutrients, multiplying and overpowering the healthy cells in order to survive. The body’s healthy cells have to work very hard to break down and digest these densely concentrated vitamin supplements, but when the healthy cells are already undernourished and weak, they spend all of their energy on breaking the supplements down, become further drained of energy, and the cancer cells, with their high metabolism, use all of these nutrients to feed themselves.  Basically, vitamin supplements function to make your body acidic, are a burden to your healthy cells, and feed your cancer cells. This same principle applies to refined sugars, chemical sweeteners, food additives, basically anything man-made or tampered with by some sort of “processing”. Even the supplements that claim to be “from foods” are refined (you cannot put 10,000 blueberries into a pill without processing it and altering it somehow, I don’t care how good your intentions may be), and cause the same sort of problems to a certain degree. It is better to avoid, especially when you are dealing with cancer cells.

I’ve always been taught that very simply- the more whole the diet, the more whole the person. A largely plant based diet chocked full of whole grains, fresh, lightly cooked (steamed or quick stir-fried) veggies, NO DAIRY, minimal meat, and when you do eat meat it should be organic and fresh as possible, is best for maintaining health. Lately though, I’ve been noticing a trend in cancer patients being treated with Chinese Medicine, and I went back to look at a few old files of previous patients that had had very successful treatments with us. Of those patients the ones that made the choice to eliminate all animal proteins (all meat and dairy) from their diets, seemed to respond most quickly to their Chinese Herbal Medicine regime. That was interesting, because I am not an advocate, nor is Dr. Ni, of complete veganism in most people. It’s held true that people in certain situations need animal products to heal, but there are also some who don’t, and there are certain states that the body can be in that require a lack animal protein in the diet all together.

I found a study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell that was documented in his book The China Study, which showed just that. His findings were essentially that- carcinogens such as pesticides, preservatives, flavoring agents in foods, cigarettes, exhaust fumes, pharmaceutical drugs, whatever you want to name off that infinite list- act as the seeds for cancer. When you expose yourself to these things, you plant the seed for cancer to be produced, but very rarely is this enough to actually produce and reproduce cancer cells at a detrimental rate. Your body needs a catalyst to activate this process. He was able to determine that this catalyst is strikingly often animal protein, AND the most aggressive “fertilizer” to these cancer seeds, the strongest and most consistent catalyst is casein- which is a protein found in milk and other dairy products. Essentially, his conclusion was that you CAN, in fact, reverse the process of cancer (we knew that), but not until you stop producing it, and in order to do that you have to eliminate the cancer’s fertilizer- animal protein. This is what Dr. Ni has been saying for years, but wrapped up in a nice published study and written in English, and perhaps taken one step further to emphasize meats nearly as much as dairy.

That’s not Chinese Medicine, but I find it relevant, and interesting.

So now we are discussing the environment of the body. Basically the approach we are taking is to change the environment of the body in such a way that you make it uninhabitable to anything but the healthy cells that should be there. We accomplish this through the use of diet, of course, but also by including the use of Chinese herbal medicine. This is very important because most often by the time your cancer has become predominant enough to show up on lab or imaging tests your body has already been reproducing cancer cells for years. Diet change alone, is generally not enough to reverse the negative effects of cancer and restore your body’s balance, though it is absolutely necessary too.

As I explained in “Here’s to Your Health!” the heart function is one of the most vital processes in the body, for obvious reasons, but also because it is largely responsible for keeping the internal environment such that cancer is not able to survive. As long as the heart is working in top condition and is in balance (against the criteria of Chinese medicine, not your Cardiologist) you will not have cold hands or feet. This is the key sign that your body’s circulation is adequate and the heart’s fire is warming the furthest tips of your body, and you can be sure that there is no stagnant cold lake breeding cancer cells anywhere in your system. Of course the other health criteria I mentioned are necessary signs to follow as well.

Chinese medicine calls cancer Yin Excess. This means yin (being structure and form, cold and dense) is in excess. In other words, there is more of it than there should be, and so it accumulates where it shouldn’t.  Yang (opposite of yin, for purposes of this example) should be the driving force behind the structures of the body. Yang is the energy, movement, strength and function of it all. Yang should be strong enough in the body to generate the constant movement of the heart and other vital organs preventing any type of cold stagnation. A lack of movement and temperature allows fluid to accumulate, over time becoming a thick, nutrient dense substance that can congeal to form cysts, tumors, or- if all other factors are there, cancer. Adequate Yang should prevent Yin from ever becoming excessive and accumulating, but in this type of situation Yin excess generally follows a long term Yang deficiency, which happens to be a very common problem in our society.

One of the most important principles in Classical Chinese Medicine, as opposed to the modern version of Chinese Medicine that is primarily taught today, is that Yang needs to be supported above all else. To treat cancer, this is certainly a key. We will, generally speaking use a combination of herbs (specific herbs will vary depending on the exact symptoms of each person) to achieve the following:

1) Support Yang, Strengthen heart function (increase circulation)

2) Eliminate old, stagnant fluid (change the environment & cut off nutrition supply to cancer cells)

3) Break up Yin accumulation (break up and eliminate tumor)

4) Strengthen, harmonize, or tonify the organs that have been affected (rebuild the weakened body)

From here I think I need to focus on specific types of cancer, I’m not sure how to explain in more detail the Chinese Medicine approach to treatment while staying on such a broad topic. In my next blog I’ll begin to discuss Breast Cancer as it seems to be the most common concern amongst people I’m working with right now. I really hope you are finding this helpful in some way.

Cancer, Generally

This entry is going to start a series of blogs on the topic of Cancer. I think this is as good a place to start as any.

“Cancer” is one of the most feared words in America. Rightfully so, when you look at the frightening statistics published by the American Medical Association and the toxic, hellish mainstream treatment options pushed by our doctors. Most of us have known someone who has suffered from some type of Cancer, and many of us have lost loved ones to the disease. We are taught to view Cancer as an enemy to be feared, a kind of elusive monster lingering in the shadows, waiting to choose us, to destroy us. I don’t mean to be morbid or dramatic, but this is the type of imagery most people I talk to and work with have in mind when discussing the disease.

In the media today, in this country, you hear that almost ANYTHING is a carcinogen. Don’t eat too much of this or too little of that, followed the next week by the opposite story in light of “new discoveries”. Don’t take this drug, or that supplement, and stay out of the sun, but make sure to get enough. Don’t drink tap water, don’t drink bottled water. And that doesn’t even begin to touch the rotating cast of “super cancer fighting foods” we hear about that feel more like a trend than nutritional advice…It’s no wonder people are so afraid of Cancer, it is natural to fear what you don’t understand, and there is a very big, deliberate misunderstanding going on. Western medicine uses that fear to push their largely ineffective and highly toxic treatments on vulnerable patients. In 2007 the American Cancer Society said, “Surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy seldom produce a cure.” Yet when treating cancer in patients, 60% get radiation, 67% get surgery, and 80% get chemotherapy. Interesting.

What it all comes down to (without getting into the money aspect of these expensive treatments, that’s a whole other story) is that the western medical world understands the process of cancer once its begun, can sometimes predict how it will affect a person based on a general pattern, and has an arsenal of weapons to attack and destroy it, that they are all too happy to unleash.  The human body is turned into a war zone upon treatment, and if and when the enemy is destroyed, if the land this war was fought on is still strong enough to recuperate, then you will have won the battle- but not the war.

Chinese Medicine, as I have been taught, has a VERY different take on cancer treatment. And it begins with an explanation of WHY. Of course western medicine can offer certain risk factors that will increase your likelihood of being labeled with cancer, and many of them are in line with Chinese medical thought, but there is a lot left to guess work with their system. Let’s work on eliminating the guess work and take our health, both current and future, into our own hands. The key to that power lies in understanding how and why one person, for example, who has smoked cigarettes for 40 years doesn’t “get” lung cancer, but the guy down the street who jogs every morning and takes his daily vitamins just started his first round of Chemotherapy for that very disease.  It’s not guess work, and I’m not going to chalk it up to fate.

I am not a western trained Medical Doctor. I am a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, and of course in that training we undergo the similar anatomy and physiology courses as a MD, but only in so far as we are working with the human body, and no one can really argue about where your liver is. The way I was trained to understand the vital processes of the body is vastly different than the way an MD would be  trained, and though I understand their thinking to a certain degree, I largely disagree with their approach to medicine. You will need to find another website if you want someone to tell you in detail about the cellular process of cancer. You’re not going to get much of that here.

Essentially with the type of medicine I practice, you are first and foremost taught to look at the person as a whole. Take in to consideration the internal environment of their body. For the sake of getting us on the same page I’m going to highlight some key things to keep in mind .

1) Cancer cells are nothing more than mutated cells that have become ineffective in performing the function in your body that the original healthy version of that cell was in charge of. They reproduce rapidly, which can cause them to outnumber your healthy cells at varying speeds but most commonly over spans of YEARS.

2) Cancer cells are constantly developing in every healthy human, but your immune system destroys them as they come- before they have a chance to reproduce to a large enough number to affect you.

3) Cells need a catalyst to trigger this mutation and development of cancer cells.

4) Once developed, cancer cells need a constant, specific nutrition supply to allow them to continue to reproduce at such a rapid rate.

5) Cancer cells survive in a very specific environment, and even if you succeed in killing those cells, if the body’s environment is left the same, they WILL return in time.

The body needs to have a very particular environment over a long enough period of time to allow cancer cells to be produced, and to reproduce quickly enough to affect you. Most often this environment is cold, damp and stagnant. And with that I’m going to break into analogy:

You’ve got a small lake of cool, still water near your home. It’s beautiful and peaceful. It’s been the home of all sorts of plant, algae, and marine life for as long as you’ve known it to exist. Birds come to feed in it, small canoes paddle around in it, children swim in it, and trees grow around it. One day the city starts dumping garbage and waste nearby and it seeps into the lake, it’s not obvious at first, but soon flies start to populate the air so much that it’s unpleasant to visit. Foreign bacteria and parasites dominate the once delicate ecosystem essentially turning it into a wet, smelly wasteland. The fish start to float belly up, some of the ones that survive are being found to have deformities, and the birds stop coming to feed. The water smells rotten. Let me ask you what you would do to clean up this lake if you were given the choice. Complete control over the fate of this beloved lake is yours- what is your first step?

Option 1: You can choose to pour radioactive substances or toxic chemical poisons into the water in an effort to destroy these bacteria and parasites that are feeding on the garbage. Or maybe scoop out as many of the parasites as you can and hope that you didn’t miss any that might start repopulating the lake once you’ve finished and just hope the fish and plants start to come back after a while.

Option 2: You can petition your government to stop dumping waste here and start a clean-up effort to eliminate the existing garbage that is feeding the bacteria and parasites. When they have no more nutrition, they will stop reproducing. Everything needs food to thrive, even these guys. The next step would be to restore the balance of the naturally occurring algae and plant life- change the environment of the water back to its original, healthy state. (Ok, I’m not an environmental scientist either, but you see where I’m going with this) Maybe test the water, make sure the Ph balance and temperature of the water is appropriate for the native fish to survive. Slowly introduce the fish back to their lake and let them reproduce on their own. Watch the birds come back once they see the lake is healthy and reinhabited by their favorite fishies.

So this is sort of the difference in the viewpoints of western vs. eastern medicine. The first option being your conventional chemo, radiation, surgery and cross your fingers approach and the second as a more holistic cause and effect approach.

Next: more explanation of how to approach cancer with Chinese Medicine.