health care information

In an attempt to keep anyone from wasting their time reading an article that does not apply to them we need to clearly define the subject of this article. If you are comfortable with waiting for a miracle drug to cure cancer, expecting that early detection through any number of exams at your physicians’ office followed by chemotherapy in an attempt to kill the now detectable cancer cells, then this article is not for you. If however, you would prefer to avoid cancer totally by preventing it before it starts, then please read on.
When addressing nutrition and the prevention of cancer one of the hottest topics in this arena at this time are antioxidants. The primary reason that antioxidants have received increasing attention is based on the very nature of cancer cells themselves, how they are started and more importantly how they can be eliminated before becoming detectable. For most forms of cancer, they get their start when your cell’s DNA becomes damage in some form. Keep in mind that your body is generating new cells on a daily basis and that these new cells are being created based on the blue print of how they should be constructed. That blue print is your DNA. When your DNA has become damaged or during the creation process of these new cells they come in contact with free radicals they are damaged. Unchecked that damage begins going through an uncontrolled growth and at some point this once damaged cells has now become a tumor.
While there is a lot of talk about antioxidants we really need to define what they are. Antioxidants are substances that protect cells from the damage caused by molecules known as free radicals. Antioxidants are capable of stabilizing free radicals and therefore prevent some of the damage free radicals otherwise might cause. Free radicals are unstable molecules caused by incomplete electron shells which make them more chemically reactive than those with complete electron shells. There are a number of environmental factors, including tobacco smoke, over exposure to the sun, pollution, toxins in our water, pesticides used in the growing of our vegetables and various other factors can also lead to free radical formation. The most common form of free radicals is oxygen – that’s correct the simple act of breathing that is required to keep us alive is the most common cause of free radical production in our bodies. When oxygen molecules become electrically charged or “radicalized” it tries to steal electrons from other molecules, causing damage to the DNA and other molecules. Over time, such damage may become irreversible and lead to various diseases including cancer. Antioxidants are often described as “mopping up” free radicals, meaning they neutralize the electrical charge and prevent the free radical from taking electrons from other molecules. Some examples of common antioxidants include beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamins C, E, and A, just to name a few. While not an antioxidant another very important mineral is Selenium, which is actually a component of antioxidant enzymes.
While diet and nutrition are beginning to get more attention we still have a long way to go, based on a number of statistics surrounding the average diet of more Americans. A simple search of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition will provide clinical research based on Diet, Nutrition and Cancer. While that may not be a big shock to you, you may be surprised to find that this particular entry has a copyright date from 1976. As a leading cause of death in the United States, one that is very preventable, one would expect to hear more about the impact of Diet, Nutrition and Exercise as it relates to the prevention of cancer. More often than not, if you pick up a newspaper or catch the news you are going to hear about the latest advances in chemotherapy, the newest drug for the treatment of cancer, the latest technology for improved mammograms and the list goes on. If you truly want to do something about the prevention of cancer you can’t wait on the news media and unfortunately not even your family physician to educate you on adopting a healthy lifestyle. Please don’t misunderstand that last comment as being a slam on doctors, because it is not. Every doctor that I know works extremely hard and puts in some very long hours.
Unfortunately, the way that our healthcare system is structured they do not get paid to educate you on a healthy lifestyle, nutrition, exercise or any of the things that you need to adopt as a comprehensive wellness program. The sad truth is that our healthcare system is setup to fix you after you’re broke, not to prevent you from getting to that point. It is truly up to YOU to take a proactive approach to learning what you need to know in order to adopt a overall healthy lifestyle/wellness program. It is important to note that a comprehensive wellness program leading to an overall healthy lifestyle is not something that you get to do for a week, a month or even just over the next year and then you’re done. This is a life long endeavor.
For those of you that are more of the do it yourself type people there are a large number of resources available to help you. From the internet to a staggering number of books that are published each year on the subject of healthy living, diet, nutrition, anti-aging. A very comprehensive guide to an overall healthy lifestyle that is very practical, pack with references to clinical research and an overall easy read is “The Metabolic Plan”, by Stephen Cherniske. The good news is that there is something for everyone. If you would prefer not to wade through mountains of information there are an increasing number of centers dedicated to Wellness, Healthy Lifestyles, and many of these facilities provide life coaches to help keep their clients accountable and on track. Even for the most dedicated person having an accountability partner of some type is a good idea to help during those stages of life where the motivation level just is not where it should be. Lastly, there are an increasing number of physicians that take a holistic approach to healing that includes a balanced approach which is one of the best approaches. In a perfect world our health would always be controllable through a balanced diet, good supplementation and exercise. However, the stark reality is that there are times that even our best efforts are not enough and we are forced to turn to a pharmaceutical to keep us in the game of life. In short all forms of healing have their place – there is not a one shoe fits all solution that will work for everyone, all the time.
Lastly, there are some well documented things that we can do to help prevent cancer.
- If you smoke – STOP
- Eating foods prepared with HIGH heat especially fried foods should be eliminated or reduced as much as possible.
- Increase the number of fruits and vegetables in your diet. Ideally 70% or more of your daily caloric intake should come from fruits and vegetables. If possible organically grown.
- Find a reputable supplements company grounded in science with products proven through strict clinical trials such as Univera LifeSciences. Even the best diet in the world is going to short on the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that we need in a comprehensive wellness/anti-aging program.
- Exercise – We were built by our maker to move. Keep moving and stay active. Does the term use it or loose it mean anything to you? The American Cancer Society has a great section on their website titled “The Complete Guide to Nutrition and Physical Activity”
- Reduce your exposure to chemicals and toxins. Use biodegradable products when cleaning as they are much less harmful to you and the environment.
- Reduce the fat in your diets, but increase the essential fatty acids that are required by each of us – especially your brain and your joints.
- If you are overweight and/or obese reduce your weight as this is a very well documented cause of accelerated free-radical activity.
References:
1) Diet, nutrition, and cancer: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 29, 1035-1047, Copyright © 1976 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc, EN Alcantara and EW Speckmann
2) Nutrition and Cancer Prevention: New Insights into the Role of Phytochemicals: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 76, No. 1, 259, July 2002 © 2002 American Society for Clinical Nutrition
3) Nutrition and Activity Quiz: Are you living smart?: American Cancer Society
4) The Complete Guide- Nutrition and Physical Activity, American Cancer Society
5) Stephen Cherniske, M.S., The Metabolic Plan, The Random House Publishing Company, 2003, ISBN: 0-345-44102-8

You may also read this article on my Blog at http://MissSunrider.Blogspot.com
Cancer is an epidemic.
Everywhere I turn nowadays there are friends and family members telling me about someone they know that is going through it.
It is scary, but we must take all precautions, and if we are already going through it, it’s important to know and use these important facts:
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body.
These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few
billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person’s lifetime.
3. When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies.
These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size.
However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.
CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be stevia. (We have the best called Sunny Dew or Sunectar) Available at http://opp.sunrider.com/SunGirl
Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg’s aminos or sea salt.
b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soya milk cancer cells are being starved.
c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment.
About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells.
To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day.
Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine.
Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. (Calli and Fortune Delight is concentrated green tea, without the tanic acids). Available at http://opp.sunrider.com/SunGirl
Water – best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy
metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.
12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become petrified and leads to more toxic buildup.
13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
14. Some supplements build up the immune system ( VitaFruit, Quinary, Alpha 20c ( Available at http://opp.sunrider.com/SunGirl)all great anti-oxidants, etc.) to enable the body’s own killer cells to destroy cancer cells.
Other supplements like vitamin E (Energy Plus) are known to cause apoptosis, or
programmed cell death, the body’s normal method of disposing of damaged,
unwanted, or unneeded cells.
15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor.
Anger, resentment and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life!
16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment.
Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
CANCER UPDATE FROM JOHN HOPKINS HOSPITAL , U.S. :
1. No plastic containers in micro.
2. No water bottles in freezer.
3. No plastic wrap in microwave.
Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well.
Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies.
Don’t freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic.
Recently, Dr. Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital was on aTV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are
for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body.
Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin.
So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else.
Paper isn’t bad but you don’t know what is in the paper. It’s just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded usthat a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper.
The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.
Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food.
Cover food with a paper towel instead.
Learn and pass it forward.
Please share this link with people you care about!

According to the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Facts & Figures, 2008, 1,437,180 Americans will have developed some form of cancer. Of those cancer victims, approximately 565,650 will succumb to the disease. Cancer may remain undiagnosed in its early stages when there may be virtually few or no symptoms. Another complicating factor to diagnosis of cancer is that, because it can involve any area of the body, symptoms can vary widely. A third complication is symptoms of cancer can mimic an assortment of other diseases or conditions causing a physician to fail to diagnose the cancer or misdiagnose cancer as another condition.Tests and interpretation of the results are another area where failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis of cancer may occur. If the physician does not order tests to investigate symptoms there is the possibility the cancer will progress to a later stage and, therefore, reduce the patient’s chances of survival. Misinterpretation of test results can result in non-treatment of the cancer or, in the alternative, treatments for a cancer that does not exist. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery may be performed unnecessarily and cause the patient untold suffering. The American Cancer Society lists approximately 40 different types of cancer in its Cancer Facts & Figures, 2008. These are the more commonly found cancers and do not include rare forms. With this many types of cancer, many health care providers are not sufficiently knowledgeable to recognize and test symptoms. Nonetheless, there are incidences where symptoms of even the most common forms of cancer, bladder, breast, colon and rectal, endometrial, kidney, leukemia, lung, melanoma and non-melanoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, pancreatic, prostrate and thyroid, are overlooked. For the rare form of cancers, there exists a higher risk it will not be diagnosed properly.A patient whose symptoms fall into a category of cancer for which they are not particularly at risk, such as breast cancer in men (less than 1% of males will develop breast cancer or approximately 2,030 cases in 2007), a failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis of cancer possibility increases. Another group at risk are children. Children may not be able to articulate their symptoms and health care providers may dismiss them as childhood growing pains.The the top ten types of cancers for men and women of all races in the United States for the year 2005 (the latest year statistics are available from the National Program of Cancer Registries) are: lung and bronchus; prostate; female breast; colon and rectum; pancreas; ovary; leukemias; non- Hodgkin lymphoma; liver and IBD; and esophagus.The the top ten death rate of cancers are for: prostate; female breast; lung and bronchus; colon and rectum; corpus and uterus, NOS; urinary bladder; non- Hodgkin lymphoma; melanomas of the skin; kidney and renal pelvis; and ovary. This data illustrates the urgency and importance of a proper diagnosis of cancer to ensure the best survival prognosis possible.The most common malpractice lawsuits are for failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis of breast, lung and colon cancers. If you suspect your health care provider has failed to diagnose or misdiagnosed your cancer, firstly, get a second medical opinion immediately and, secondly, contact a qualified malpractice lawyer for advice.Attorney Richard Hastings, for the past two and one half decades, has been helping injured clients and families collect millions of dollars in losses ranging from motor vehicle accidents to wrongful death, to medical malpractice. He is the founder of Selectcounsel, LLC, a free service that helps you find one of the best lawyers in your area and is the author of the books “How To Find A Great Lawyer” and “Understanding And Improving The Value Of Your Personal Injury Case.”