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wlfk
Veteran
Location: uk
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| 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.
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Cell mutation happens all the time. Most mutations get mopped up pretty quickly by the immune system. Often you need several mutations before a cell actually becomes dangerous. It's sort-of-true, but misleading.
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| 3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
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The converse is certainly true - people with HIV or who are on immunosuppression for organ transplants, are at increased risk of getting CA.
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| 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.
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False - poor nutrition can increase the risk of some cancers, but people with good nutrition can still get CA.
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| 5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
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Debatable... People on poor diets could probably benefit. But for most people it probably won't make a big difference.
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| 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.
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True. Put bluntly, the hope is that the cancer cells die before the patient. Oncology is all about optimising treatment to minimise the ill effects on the patient. Everything has a + and a -. If you break your leg you will get an X-ray which involves a reasonable dose of radiation - but would you rather hobble about the rest of your life?
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| 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.
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False - Some cancers can be completely cured through chemotherapy and radiotherapy. But sometimes the object of chemo/radiotherapy is to reduce the size of the tumours and increase lifespan or comfort, rather than to 'cure'.
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| 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.
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Treatment of cancer is largely about balancing all these different factors. For cancers of the immune system, sometimes you actually have to destroy the patient's immune system then replace it.
Radiation will presumably make cancer cells mutate faster - and this may make them more difficult to destroy. But the hope is that the radiation will also kill many of them. All of the statements above are true, but the dose of radiation should be judged so that the benefits outweigh the risks.
If you take chemotherapy to kill testicular cancer, there's a slightly increased risk of getting colon cancer. If chemotherapy had never been invented, the patients wouldn't have lived long enough for us to find this out.
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| 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:
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| a. Sugar. 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 Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.
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| 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.
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Doubtful.
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| 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.
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Vegetarians pee is more alkaline. I have no idea whether cancer cells like acid, but as far as I'm aware there is no difference in the normal range for blood ph for vegetarians/carnivores. We regulate our blood ph, in part by peeing extra alkali out.
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| Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
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Parasites! Don't you people cook your food?
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| 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).
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Enzymes are proteins and almost all of them are digested in our guts.
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| e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.
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Generally doubtful. The amount of acidity in distilled h2o should be very quickly neutralised. If I get CA and want to eat chocolate, then I will.
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| 12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines becomes pucrified and leads to more toxic buildup.
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Meat protein is easy to digest. Apparently opening your bowels regularly reduces the incidence of bowel cancer, because concentrated stool does include many toxins. Diet is important in predicting bowel cancer and people who eat too much meat are at increased risk. My understanding was that this was thought to be due to carcinogens generated during the cooking process.
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| 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.
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Doubtful.
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| 14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
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Some trials of vitamin E actually suggested it increased the number of cancers.
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| 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, unforgiveness 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.
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Not all bad advice, but to some extent this puts the responsibility and blame on the person with cancer. Nice people get cancer too, and 'fighters' often succumb.
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| 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.
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Cancer cells need oxygen, just like any others. In fact, many cancers cause blood vessels to grow, in order to bring them the O2 they need. Medicine is often complicated and counterintuitive, but taking antioxidants and breathing in pure O2 at the same time, seems counterintuitive.
Exercise is good though - and fat/obese people are considerably more likely to get several types of cancer.
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| IN ADDITION
1. No water bottles in freezer.
2. No plastic containers in microwave.
3. No plastic wrap in microwave.
Dioxin chemicals causes 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.
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I don't know a lot about these.
A lot of the above is true or half true. Where it goes wrong is in emphasis. If you eat and live healthily then there is considerable evidence that you reduce - but don't eliminate - your chances of getting cancer. If you already have cancer, then your best chances lie with conventional medical treatment. I can understand that people want to 'try anything' and will look elsewhere - and who knows, maybe there are things that obscure herbs can cure that Western medicine cannot.
On the other hand, I had a patient the other day who had been given an infusion of vitamins that theoretically should have been harmless (and ineffectual), but nearly killed him. Firstly his family was bankrupting itsself to pay for this treatment. Secondly, he could have got an equivalent benefit from eating a few oranges. Thirdly, he was dying and should have been spending his last few months enjoying them as best he could, not connected to a drip at home, then spending a few days in hospital when it all went wrong. The whole thing made me quite angry.
K
A bit like a kite, but 500 times more expensive |
| 03-20-2008 04:01 PM | | | |
