Month: October 2014

Anita Moorjani  Speaker and bestselling author of ‘Dying to Be Me’

Posted: 10/23/2014 1:27 pm EDT Updated: 10/23/2014 1:59 pm EDT

Recently, someone approached me and reminded me that October is “breast cancer awareness” month. They asked me to support their efforts to launch a campaign in the fight against breast cancer, and when I politely declined, they were surprised. They had assumed that as a cancer survivor myself, I would be fervently supportive of their efforts to fight the war against cancer.

Mother Teresa once said, “I was asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there.”

She offered important insight, and in a similar vein, I support any effort to promote and advocate health-awareness programs!

Consider this. Think about all the money we spend on waging war: wars against drugs, wars against poverty, wars against terrorism, wars against heart disease, wars against cancer and so on. We are constantly being bombarded by advertisements and campaigns encouraging us to go for earlier and earlier detection tests of all kinds, which again only encourage us to focus on looking for illness! We are also continually being asked to donate to all these “wars against illness” and to the research associated with them. Now imagine if we were to put the same amount of money, energy and focus into “waging health awareness programs” instead. Think about what a different outcome we would have.

The problem is that our health care system, as it stands now, is much more focused on our illnesses than on our health, perhaps partly because there is much more money to be made from illness than wellness.

Most people don’t really know what true wellness is. Most people have no idea what it means to take care of their health, and have no idea that our physical well being has a LOT to do with our mental, emotional, and spiritual well being! It’s all tied together! Physical illness does not happen in a vacuum. There are reasons why your immune system becomes depleted, making you more susceptible to illness.

If it were up to me, I would want people to know that diseases and many other life-threatening ailments are not just medical issues. Their cause can be rooted in our emotional or mental wellbeing, or our environment. We are putting all our energy and research dollars into looking for medical cures. We are spending billions of dollars on making everyone aware of cancer, heart or kidney disease, diabetes, etc., by focusing our time, money and energy on finding such cures — which in and of itself has become an industry — yet the numbers of people getting these diseases do not seem to decrease. And I’m not just talking about age-related illnesses; I’m talking about illness in the young, as well. Until health caregivers start to focus on health, instead of illness, and until researchers look deeper into the connection between disease and our emotions and our lifestyle, we will not find a cure in medical research alone.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer or other life-threatening illness, the focus needs to be not just on his or her physical state, but on his or her emotional state as well. Perhaps even more so! Ideally, they need to be asked questions by their health care provider along the lines of:

• Do you love and value yourself?
  • Are you happy?
  • Are there people in your life who matter to you and to whom you matter?
  • Do you feel your life has purpose?
  • What are you passionate about?
  • What brings you joy?

Until we start to really take seriously the connection between our emotional and mental well-being with physical illnesses, we will still be poking around in the dark, looking for a cures. And until the medical industry changes its focus from one of purely searching for illness to one of promoting wellness instead, we will not see a significant decrease in the numbers of people being diagnosed with disease. Let’s wage health, not war!

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anita-moorjani/why-i-dont-support-breast_1_b_6029760.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

by Yeong Se;k Yee & Khadijah Shaari

In this segment, we reviewed a cancer textbook called “FUNDAMENTALS OF EPIDEMIOLOGY” written by Professor Philip Nasca, PhD, MPH and Professor Harris Pastides, PhD, MPH. Both are Professors of Epidemiology at different prominent Universities in the US.

Cancer Epidemiology, as you know, is the study of the factors affecting cancer, as a way to infer possible trends and causes. The study of cancer epidemiology uses epidemiological methods to find the cause of cancer and to identify and develop improved treatments.

In Chapter 11…Ionizing, Non-Ionizing and Solar Radiation and Cancer, Professor Harris Pastides elaborates on the source and dangers of ionizing radiation:

• Few causes of cancer are as verifiable as ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation is the most comprehensively understood cause of cancer. There is a vast body of experimental and epidemiological evidence documenting the carcinogenic potential of radiation exposure.

• Cancers caused by radiation are called It is widely agreed that the great majority of types of human cancer are capable of being caused by ionizing radiation given a sufficient exposure dose.

• Considering that medical radiation is the largest source of human-made radiation and that exposure to sources of medical radiation are increasing world-wide, it is understandable that there is interest in understanding the influence of medical radiation on cancer risk. Examples of patients developing cancer following the employment of X-rays for diagnostic purposes or irradiation treatment for various diseases have been known for a very long time..

• In 1955, The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, published a report by Court-Brown and Abbatt demonstrated that an increased incidence of leukemia following deep X-ray treatment for ankylosing spondylitis (a spinal deformity). In the mid-1970s, Smith and Doll reported a threefold excess risk of dying from leukemia among women treated with radiation for excessive menstrual or intermenstrual bleeding.

• Therapeutic radiation doses received by cancer patients are among the highest level received by humans. There is incontrovertible evidence from clinical follow-up studies that a wide range of organs can develop cancers caused by radiation used in the treatment of a primary cancer. 

• Overall, significant strides have been made in reducing the patient’s exposure to diagnostic and therapeutic ionizing radiation. Nevertheless, for most persons, diagnosis and therapy remain the most important source of exposure to ionizing radiation.

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

It is extremely tragic and incomprehensible that the medical (or cancer) establishment still uses ionizing radiation that is clearly proven and known to be carcinogenic (as established by the International Agency for Research on Cancer). 

It is also inconceivable that such conventional cancer treatments should cause so much pain, agony and money and then the patient has to suffer another form of cancer, heart disease or disorders to the bones, etc. Hence the cycle of treatment has to be repeated. 

Is this why conventional cancer treatment is referred to as “the Cancer Industry?”  

We welcome your opinion.

Review by Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

 If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with cancer, you want to do everything possible to beat the disease. But with so much conflicting advice and so many options available, how do you decide on the best treatment plan for you? In this new book (released May 2014), Professor Jane Plant and Professor Mustafa Djamgoz present a 10-step programme to help you beat cancer. At a time when you may be feeling helpless and confused, this book provides the essential guidance you need to take control of your life and regain your health.

The authors designed 10 simple steps to help cancer patients understand what cancer is, how to prevent it and how to manage it. Briefly, these are:

Step 1-Inform Yourself: reveals the latest findings about cancer cells and what they do.

Step 2-Find your balance: explains the importance of balance in body and mind, the need for an integrated approach and the levels of healing needed for recovery.

Step 3-Choose the right conventional therapies for you: details symptoms of cancer, information on screening, diagnosis, procedures and treatments including supportive and emerging therapies.

Step 4-Know which complementary therapies can help: separates and explains therapies that support treatment from those you should avoid.

Step 5-Eat to beat cancer: reveals the latest diet-linked research and details the Ten Essential Food Factors in the Beat Cancer diet that Prof Plant uses herself, which include eating an organic, alkaline, varied diet, cutting out dairy and reducing salt and sugar.

Step 6-Protect Yourself with exercise: how exercise protects against cancer and aids recovery if you are diagnosed.

Step 7-Be aware of your environment: how to limit your exposure to the Big 3 (pesticides, perfumes and plastics) plus simple measures to reduce your exposure, including advice on household and skincare brands, hair dyes and mobile phones.

Step 8-Manage stress: how to cope if you have a cancer diagnosis and how to find support.

Step 9-Broaden your awareness: why charities, doctors and the media are often constrained in the information they provide and why making decisions for yourself based on knowledge will enable you to take your life firmly into your own hands.

Step 10-Stay on course: how to stay in remission, keep healthy and alert, and live your life.

Of all the above Steps, we feel that Step 5—Eat to beat Cancer is the most important as this was the main factor that helped Prof Jane Plant survived breast cancer since 1987. In this chapter, the authors advocate 10 essential factors—these are: to eat real food, eat organic, to balance the diet, reduce intakes of acid generating foods, know good carbs and bad carbs, know the right fats, cut down on salt and sweeteners, know what to drink and lastly, to eat nutritious foods rather than supplements.

Professor Sir Graeme Catto, MD, FRCP, FRSE and President, College of Medicine and former President, General Medical Council and Vice Principal, King’s College, London wrote the forward and review of the book….these are his words:

“This is not a conventional cancer book. You will find many of the things you read illuminating, some of the information may be surprising and even, at times, shocking. However all of the information is backed up by scientific research and fully referenced” 

Here are some of the illuminating and shocking information:

• Doctors will never say that cancer is cured: only that it is in remission. If even a single cell remains after treatment, it can replicate and start the cancer growing again.
• Cancer cells have an extraordinary ability to transform themselves. This means that treatments like chemotherapy, which are aimed at killing them, may actually encourage the development of drug-resistant cells which survive treatment and form a new cancer.
• Aggressive chemotherapy aimed at destroying the cancer may not be the best treatment. In fact, it may be better to control the cancer and stop it from proliferating and spreading rather than trying to kill it outright.
• Radiotherapy uses radiation to kill cancer cells by damaging their DNA. It can also act indirectly by interacting with water molecules inside cells, creating highly reactive and unstable free radicals which further disrupt the cell.
• Hormone therapy is not a cure-all, as cancers can eventually become hormone resistant. Monoclonal antibodies (so-called “magic bullets”) may damage other tissues not connected to the original cancer.
• Cancer is now such big business! It is an industry…one that is vast and ever expanding, more concerned with the orthodox management of the disease than prevention and preoccupied with new therapies…etc
• Drugs mean big profits for manufacturers, distributors, lobbyists and PR agencies! When the stakes are so high it is hardly surprising that the voices of those who advocate prevention as well as cure are difficult to hear.
• Charities, research institutions and healthcare providers also have to work with whoever is the government of the day. So they have to be seen to ‘fit’ the established way of thinking, talk the right language, and be wary of rocking any boats. Otherwise, they may see their funding dry up….their focus is often on the economics of business, rather than public interest and safety.
• There are a lot of controversies over breast-cancer screening….for every life saved; three women had treatment for a cancer that would never have become life threatening. Likewise mass prostate screening results in over-diagnosis which could mean some men could face unnecessary treatment with drastic life-changing consequences.
• CT scans use more ionizing radiation than regular X-rays…repeated CT scans might eventually cause a second cancer.
• Vested interests in the food industry manipulate politicians and others in the cancer establishment. Evidence is clear that it is the Western diet, full of animal-based foods such as meat and dairy and refined and processed food that is a large part of the cancer problem.
• The biochemistry of how our bodies process the food we eat is complex, yet medical training contains little, if any, nutritional biochemistry. With such limited knowledge of expert science, perhaps it is not surprising that many doctors and experts and dietitians continue to reject the role of diet as part of cancer treatment. Worse, they (doctors and dietitians) even recommend foods that have been shown to promote cancer by leading researchers in the best universities in the world.

The above are just some of the “shocking information” found in Beat Cancer….there are a lot more shocking information waiting for you to discover. If you are interested, have a chat with us.

FURTHER REFERENCES 

• YOUTUBE INTERVIEW:

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFnoiDDibOw 

• YOUR LIFE IN YOUR HANDS …read the updated version by Professor Jane PlantOr

• Read our Book Review: Your Life in Your Hands at the following link….. https://cancercaremalaysia.com/category/book-research-report/page/2/