About cancer: What is Cancer

1. About cancer: What is Cancer?

I can honestly say, that after reading this article, I understood the answer to the question, What is cancer? for the first time and I could immediately start to build a cancer treatment programme that gave me real hope and purpose. Thank you CANCERactive. John, Tonbridge, England

Below you will find an excerpt from The ACTIVE8 Programme - the first section,about cancer, will tell you the answer to the question, What is cancer?

To increase your personal odds of survival, to beat cancer, we believe it is essential first to understand what cancer is all about. And that it is not a single disease, a cockroach to be trofdden on, but a multi-step process as individual as you are! And your cancer treatment programme needs to reflect this.

 i) Cancer Maintenance:

Firstly, we try to think what may have caused the cancer. The cause may still be maintaining it. This is especially important when the patient is under 60 years of age. Over 80 per cent of cancers occur in the over 65 age group. If you are younger than this it is very likely some toxin, something in your lifestyle etc is causing and may well still be maintaining the cancer. This is one of the reasons we have so much on CANCER PREVENTION our web site much more than all the other major UK cancer charities.

CANCERactive adopts the Precautionary Principle namely, that where there is expert research alerting us to a possible cause, we pass those concerns on. It is your right to know, so that you can adjust your personal lifestyle accordingly. Consequently, we have significant sections on our web site on the threat of, for example, certain chemicals, pesticides, EMF’s and so on, which are barely covered by the other charities.

ii) Cancer Understanding:

Next, in answer to the question about cancer, What is cancer?, we like to ensure people understand the nature of the disease they have, so they can better understand how to tackle it. All people with cancer need to appreciate the following points :

1. Your cancer is as individual as you are. Modern medicine historically has not recognised this because it preferred one-size-fits-all treatments, for simplicity, if nothing else. This led in the UK to the concept of ’Best Practice’. You get this disease; we treat you like this. Chris Woollams has suggested since his daughter became ill in 2001 that "your cancer is as individual as you are". You can develop cancer in many ways. For example:

• Your cells might be subject to radiation, thus structurally changing the DNA

• Your cells might be subject to chemical toxins, which might alter the DNA in a different way with different toxins

• Your cells may be subject to the female hormone ’oestrogen’ (either naturally occurring or introduced into the body synthetically. Oestrogen was declared a known cause of cancer in the early 1990’s by the National Cancer Institute in the USA . It fuels the fire of cancer. * One way it can do this is to increase the levels of sodium in your cells, reducing the levels of potassium and increasing their acidity. This ultimately results in lowered oxygen and energy inside the cell. This prevents repair genes working, whilst allowing the multiplication genes free-rein.

• Oestrogen can also stop stem cells becoming normal healthy cells, and keeping them in a rapidly dividing state.

• Excess sodium (salt) consumption, accompanied by too low a magnesium consumption (low consumption of greens, seeds, nuts, certain fruits) will also cause acidity, lowered oxygen and energy in cells. 

Etc etc etc. So now, do you think your cancer is the same as the person’s who is sitting opposite you?

While Doctors might not agree, scientists now do. For example, if you have breast cancer the scientists now have half a dozen different drugs depending upon whether you are oestrogen positive (Tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors), HER-2 positive (Herceptin), then one for stem cell cancers on the way and so on. The problem is that this work on segmented drugs has barely started for other cancers.

Already though, scientists are seeing ’traits’. Through their work on the genome, they observe that they will be able to do more accurate tests for what sort of cancer you have, and then be able to more accurately target a treatment, rather than throw the wrong drugs at you. They also believe they will see some people with breast, or colon, or prostate with the same background cause, and therefore the same possibility of one drug having an effect across cancers.

2. Cancer is rarely, if ever, caused by a single factor, anyway. Occasionally some DIRECT factor causes your DNA to copy itself incorrectly (e.g. nuclear radiation) and you produce a full blown cancer cell. But this theory is old hat, and the likely hood rare.

Every day each of us makes about 200 pre-cancerous or rogue cells, simply through the process of living. Of course you can make matters worse by smoking or drinking excessively and so on. But in a healthy, young individual, with a fully active immune system these rogue cells are simply mopped up before they get going.

More often some direct factor stops messages from your DNA being sent out correctly, or at all. This is a bigger problem for the body, as it can result in deficiencies of essential enzymes or proteins and then things can go very wrong.

This is then all compounded if your immune system is weak. The fact is more often than not, a cancer is the result of an INDIRECT effect weakening the immune system and allowing a rogue cell through the defences, or the natural order to be incapacitated and unable to repair itself.

Again, this is why at CANCERactive, we don’t just stop at looking at known ’carcinogens’ as ’causes’. We look at the factors that might seriously compromise your immune system and allow a rogue cell to take hold For example, lack of sleep and lowered melatonin production.

3. Next, it is important to understand that cancer is a Multi-step process. Chris covers 17 in his book The Rainbow Diet (e.g. formation of a rogue cell, formation of blood vessels to tumours, the firing off of cells round the body etc etc). John Boik of MD Anderson says there are 20 stages. He has put certain foods, natural compounds and vitamins against each stage depending upon exactly what they are known to do in research. Both Chris and John believe that it is simply naive to believe that cancer can be cured by a single factor. A multi-step process demands a multi-step cancer treatment package of activities to defeat it.

Chris says, ’Cancer is not a Cockroach to be trodden on, in one action. There will never be a single drug, a single vitamin, shark cartilage, whatever that can ’cure’ a cancer. To believe so is simply naive’.

So, you need to build an effective all-embracing programme to tackle the various stages of cancer that you might have in your body. You may have 5, you may have 10, you may have 20. Obviously, if you catch a cancer early with your cancer treatment programme you may ’get away with’ a lesser package of activities. But to be safe, you need to assume the worse and to tackle them all.

4. Finally, it is important to understand too that cancer is a disease a weakening of the whole body it merely manifests itself in a certain area. For example, in cancer patients a blood sample usually shows signs of lowered oxygen (cancer cells thrive when oxygen levels fall. In fact, oxygen can kill cancer cells) and lowered levels of white cells (immune cells). Having an operation to cut out a cancerous lump does not remove the process of cancer and US research with colon cancer has recently proven this previously controversial theory to be true.

Thoroughness and cutting out the options is key to increasing survival. Some American experts believe that by building an Integrated Treatment Programme in this way, you can increase your personal odds of survival by 60 per cent. Chris thinks more. ’We have had people who had a parasite, people who had played with mercury when children, people who were living next to phone masts, people who just ate terribly, and they are all ’survivors’ now, despite only being given a few months to live several years ago. It’s hard work but, after all, it is your life we are talking about!’

So, now you have a better answer to the question, What is cancer? and you can really start to plan your personal cancer treatment programme. You need to think about the possible ’drivers’ of your cancer and do things to clean up and ’refresh’ your whole body, nourishing it boosting your immune system and getting oxygen and energy back where it really matters.

We will leave you with this one thought: If you simply appreciate the multi-dimensional nature of cancer, you will also appreciate that you are more likely to increase your personal odds of beating the disease by adopting a multi-dimensional package of natural compounds and therapies to fight a cancer in your body. Whether you are going to take a couple of drugs or not, what do you think could provide the necessary width to fight the cancer process more than twenty foods each with proven cancer-fighting powers?

OTHER ARTICLES OF INTEREST:

The Rainbow Diet and how it can help you beat cancer - Click on the picture to read about this amazing book

Build your own ACTIVE8 Integrated Cancer Programme - click here.