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.
