How foods can play a role in healing
The foods that you choose to eat and drink are digested and become the composition of your blood. That blood will circulate throughout your body bringing raw materials that will determine the function of all your organs and replenish and rebuild all of the cells of your body.
As you lose cells, you are continually building new ones to replace them. This means that the composition of your blood will become your physical body. If you’re eating junk food and toxins, then everything that makes up your physical body will also become toxic. This idea has not been recognized by modern medicine. With all it’s claimed advances, with all the billions of dollars that are funneled to the cancer research industry, they still cannot grasp the simple concept that you literally are what you eat.
Hippocrates, born 460 BC, is often regarded as the father of modern medicine. His practice was based on the study of the human body, and he believed that all illness and disease had a physical cause as well as a physical explanation. He also believed in the natural healing properties that the body possessed, and that with rest and a good diet that the body had the ability to heal itself. He wrote the first Oath of Medical Ethics that physicians still take a modified version of before beginning their practice. A well known quote which you may be familiar with is: “let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” Taken literally, he is telling us that proper nutrition can sustain and heal the body. However, this is something that modern medicine seems to have forgotten or ignored, and yet it creates the foundation for overall good health. Most doctors who practice medicine in the U.S. are not trained in nutrition at all, yet over half of all cancers are directly related to diet and lifestyle choices.
Nutritionist and author Cheri Calbom argues in her book Nutrition and Cancer; Is nutrition the missing piece in the cancer treatment puzzle? that doctors are not providing critical nutritional information that would assist their patients in fighting illnesses. She writes that when prominent cancer centers were asked about what types of nutritional plans they were recommending for their patients, many of them had nothing to offer. In some cases, doctors were even telling their patients, “Don’t bother with nutrition- it won’t help anyways.”
Why is it that oncologists are telling their patients that nutrition doesn’t matter?
Patients routinely seek their physicians’ guidance about diet, and the relation of nutrition to the prevention and treatment of disease. However, practicing physicians continually rate their nutrition knowledge and skills regarding nutrition as inadequate. This is no surprise as more than one-half of graduating medical students report that the time dedicated to nutrition instruction is inadequate. In a survey of medical schools, the National Academy of Sciences reported that students received an average of 23.9 contact hours of nutrition instruction during medical school. Only 40 schools required that students take the minimum 25 hours recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. Most instructors (88%) expressed the need for additional nutrition instruction at their institutions. The NAS report concluded that “Nutrition education programs in US medical schools are largely inadequate to meet the present and future demands of the medical profession.”
And yet, by incorporating fresh fruits and vegetables along with their juices, as well as staying away from foods which can harm you like processed and fast foods, refined sugars, growth hormones and antibiotics in milk / meat products, and switching from toxic fats to healthy fats, you will be providing your body with an arsenal of nutrients to help with the healing process. Sometimes the need to add calories of any kind seems to override the need for optimal nutrition, while foods known to promote cancer (like sugar and unhealthy fats) are actually being encouraged just for the sake of upping caloric intakes in those who are ill. Cheri’s book was published in 1990, and although you may think that things have changed since then, they have not.
A pamphlet recently released by the American Cancer Society advises that “patients should eat angel food cake and chocolate chip cookies in order to regain weight.” And it is still a common practice for cancer centers to offer cakes and donuts while patients are receiving chemotherapy and for doctors to tell their patients to eat whatever they want as if all calories are equal.
For too many years, the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute have held fast to the idea that diet had nothing to do with the development of cancer, therefore diet will have nothing to do with healing it….. It is time to change that message. But here are two incredible examples of people who used the amazing powers of food / nutrients and did heal their bodies of cancer.
Chris Wark heals from stage 3 colon cancer with a raw vegan diet.
Dr Marilyn Joyce heals from stage 4 cancer by eating a diet of whole foods
Diet can play a multitude of roles in the development, growth, and subsequent healing of cancer as the chart above indicates.
The first role comes from exposure to carcinogenic substances that are found in food that can initiate the development of cancerous cells.
The second role is the exposure to substances that are found in food that will fuel the growth and spread of tumors.
The third role comes from the beneficial compounds that are found in food that have the ability to stimulate the immune system so that it can begin to destroy those cancerous cells.
You Are What You Eat- We are energy beings. Our bodies are designed to run on smooth flowing systems that send signals from one part of our body to another. Our cells communicate with each other to fight illness and disease and to support healthy body function. Roughly one third of our bodies’ 60 trillion cells work as immune factors that are responsible for finding and destroying bacteria, viruses, yeast growth, cancer cells, eliminate dead cells and breaking down toxins. Many variables will affect the ability of the immune system to recognize and destroy rogue cancer cells within the body, and this job is especially difficult if we are feeding ourselves toxic food-stuff.
Change the terrain that allowed cancer to flourish -In a recent article on breast cancer, Dr Susan Love MD, founder of the Susan Love Research Foundation, said this about breast cancer re-occurrence. “Mutated cells need the right neighborhood to grow, the way to prevent re- growth could be to just change the neighborhood.” Another way to phrase this would be to “change the soil” or “the terrain” so that the seed of cancer may not take root. One of the most effective ways to change your internal environment would be to make adjustments to your diet and your lifestyle, by eliminating as many toxins from the products that you use and in the food that you eat, and then moving towards a whole foods diet.
Eliminating all of the processed foodstuff is an essential first step for someone with cancer- processed foods and fast foods have very little to offer your body in nutrition but they are high in sugars, unhealthy fats, sodium, genetically modified organisms, additives and preservatives. Switch to a whole foods diet that is rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, healthy fats, and a limited amount wild-caught fish and pastured eggs if animal proteins are needed. You can read more an anticancer diet here.
Dr William Li’s lecture – Can We Eat to Starve Cancer
Find these products online
Chris Beat Cancer: A Comprehensive Plan for Healing Naturally
Organic Amla Powder (Amalaki),1 Pound (16 Ounce)
The Complete Cancer Cleanse by Cheri Calbom