Cancer Self Care

Purpose: provide dietary & energetic nutrients, activate inner physician, detox, build immune system, reduce tumor

Following is a list of the key things I’ve learned about cancer prevention and healing, followed by brief explanations and references for them. The first 16 have strong scientific evidence. For a comprehensive, yet simple program of self care for general health, see ABCD’S of Self-Care.

1, 2, 3, 7,8, 11 below are absolutely essential, remaining 1st 16 are proven to be highly beneficial

THOUGHTS & EMOTIONS: turn off stress response, turn on inner physician
1. Attitude: believe/know that you want to, can, will, and will do what’s necessary to live.
2. Visualize vividly the cancer leaving or dying or gone. Then visualize yourself healthy.
3. Reduce stressful conditions: change or accept stressful work, relationships, activities.
4. Joy, laughter and appreciation: create and maintain this healing emotion throughout the day with videos, jokes, books, friends, nature, yourself.
5. Forgive (others and yourself): grudges keep body acid, prevent joy.
6. Support: maintain positive relationships for connection and grounding.

DIETARY: turn body alkaline, provide antioxidants & immune system enhancers
7. Avoid sugar (feeds cancer & slows immune system for 5 hours) & all foods that turn your system acid: any processed or high-acid foods, superheated fats, or browned proteins.
8. 10-12 servings of vegetables/fruits a day, especially raw except cruciferous veggies.
9. Digestive enzymes, especially pancreatic (also in raw foods, cultured foods, and juices).
10. Supplements. Antioxidants: key vitamins/minerals: A, C, E, selenium, zinc. Other choices: L-glutathione (nasal spray and/or nebulized), resveratrol, grape seed, red wine extract, pycnogenol, green tea, green food powder, Poly MVA or Oncolyn. Immune enhancers: cool-processed whey with immunoglobulins, hyperimmune egg. Fish oil: assure mercury-free, use cod liver oil for wasting. Medicinal mushrooms: maitake, coriolus. Detox: Essiac Tea (blood cleanser), work with a professional for other detox routines.

ENERGY, LIGHT & SOUND: provide nutritive energy, turn on inner physician
11. Prayer or tapping into the universal energy field, especially by LOTS of others.
12. Provide lots of and varied bioenergy, called chi (informational energy): acupressure, acupuncture, healing touch, Reiki, qigong and qigong masters, cranial-sacral, visceral manipulation. Integrate this with intentional healing techniques (like detailed prayer).
13. Provide sunlight/full spectrum lights & light therapies: photofrin (light-activated chemo) or herbal equivalents and red light (LED) devices.
14. Sound: listen to Mozart and brainwave music, find and listen to your individual “note”.

THERAPIES eliminate “toxic” conditions
15. Breath like a baby, naturally into your belly: “low and slow”. Don’t over-breathe (hyper-ventilate).
16. Remove root canals and cavitations: a biological dentist using a rubber dam and oxygen.

DEVICES: good logic & anecdotal evidence, but few solid scientific studies.
17. Oxygen therapies: hyperbaric chambers, hydrogen peroxide, etc. Work with your doc.
18. Thermo unit: heats body to get the immune system to create more white blood cells

EXPLANATIONS
See also http://www.alternative-treatments.com

“I feel that cancer is a systemic and a cellular problem and if you neglect to address the issues that allowed it to grow in the first place it is going to be harder to treat and it is more likely to come back. Cancer is kind of like nature’s wake-up call that something is out of balance in your body and you can't just poison it away and go on doing the same things that brought it in the first place.”—Dr. Paul Reilly (see p.5). “The patient always has more power to treat their own cancer than anybody usually gives them credit for. With cancer...we need to look at ways to support the body, reduce any of the side effects of treatments that may be necessary, potentiate the effects of the immune system, reduce metastatic spread and its potential, and encourage the patient to use other mental/emotional/psycho-spiritual avenues.” —Dr. Mark Gignac (see p.5).

THOUGHTS & EMOTIONS & PSYCHOSOCIAL SUPPORT reaching inside yourself
1. Attitude is #1: there are hundreds of studies in medicine, sports, education and families documenting the effects of expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies for good or ill. Stress and negative thoughts turn the system acid as much as acid-producing foods: cancer can only grow in an acid environment. There are techniques to stop those thoughts, especially those at a subconscious level. ThoughtField/Emotional Freedom Technique is a powerful method used by many psychologists. It is fast and easy to do. See Instant Emotional Healing by Lambrou and Pratt, PhDs or Tapping the Healer Within by R. Callahan, PhD. If you cannot believe you will live, have someone who knows ThoughtField treat you for “want to, can, will, and will do what’s necessary to live.” It is critical to work only with health care providers and supporters who believe you can live. “Fire” and avoid all others.

2. A wealth of research from Psychoneuroimmunology (in medical research treatment centers) shows that 95% of stage 4 cancer patients live if they can vividly visualize their cancers dying (by pac-man eating it up, guns blasting, clouds floating away, faucets draining, whatever). But those who cannot visualize at all, 100% die. See J. Achterberg's Imagery in Healing: Shamanism & Modern Medicine or Rituals in Healing.

3. Stressful situations create the internal environment that allows cancer to grow. Cancer is a wake-up call that something, often several things, need to be changed. If life stress is one, then heed the famous prayer to “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”. Reassess priorities. Get happy or get out…or accept it with grace and humor—this attitude adjustment precedes any behavioral changes. Be irreverent: it helps you laugh.

4. Joy heals. Laughter IS medicine. The simplest ways to create joy is to laugh and to spend time appreciating whatever brings you joy. See Anatomy of Illness by Norman Cousins, MD, or Laughter Clubs www.worldlaughtertour.com.

5. Every disease has a primary negative emotional component. The major emotion associated with cancer is lack of forgiveness, of others or oneself or God. One cannot feel joy when feeling unforgiving. Check out HeartMath at www.heartmath.com for a powerful method to generate both appreciation and forgiveness. Or do ThoughtField. Or honor the grudge.

6. And there is incontrovertible evidence that those who feel supported and cared for have greatly enhanced survival rates: as little as 1 hour a week in a support group will double survival rates. Solid relationships do much, much more.

DIETARY providing the biochemical basis for healing and health
7. No sugar is also #1: Cancer is caused by an acid internal environment. The body needs a primarily alkaline environment to be healthy and a very alkaline diet to heal. Alkaline foods are primarily vegetables and whole fruits. Acid producing foods are sugar, processed foods, meats, grains. Sugar is the worst for three reasons: it feeds the cancer cells directly (radioactive sugar is injected to activate cancer cells in PET scans), it creates a very acid body and it reduces the ability of macrophages to engulf any invader (bacteria, virus, cancer cells) for 5 hours. So those who eat sugar throughout the day have an impaired immune system to fight cancer or any disease. See my sugar chart on my web site.

8. Veggies: Hundreds of governmental studies from the 1930’s and current institutional ones document that phytochemicals in veggies and fruits can prevent and even reverse cancers. Early studies were ignored with discovery of oncology drugs. See Dr. Potter’s tape, p.5.

9. Research from the early 1900's found proteolytic digestive enzymes could "dissolve" tumors: Dr. John Beard noted that cancer is metabolic disease, similar to placenta in that it grows fast, then stops. He discovered that placenta stops growing when the fetus first develops its own enzymes. So he injected digestive enzymes and turned off tumor growth. This work was rediscovered by a dentist, William Kelley and later Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., in the 1990’s using diet (mostly raw foods), nutritional supplements, detox, and 25 to 40 g of porcine lyophilized pancreatic enzymes (on an empty stomach).

10. Ultimately cancer is a failure of the immune system to keep cancer cells in check. Most important immune system enhancers are attitudes (#1 above) and Antioxidants: in addition to the listed supplemental vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, the best green powder is Greens First www.greensfirst.com, with 1 scoop equal to 10 servings of veggies and fruits. Check out “designer” antioxidants www.polymva.com or www.oncolyn.net. Immune Enhancers: the best whey is BioPure Protein by Metagenics www.metagenics.com. Info for hyperimmune egg is at http://www.hyperimmuneegg.org. Fish oil: Omega 3 oils are essential for cell membranes to hold nutrients and cellular communication, and inhibit cancer. Medicinal mushrooms: inhibit cancer, reduce tumors. Detox: Work with a professional for any detox routine. Try Essiac tea, a blood purifier, from by a Canadian nurse with an ancient Indian formula at Flor-Essence at 800-446-2110. Check out PCA-ES, CN-ES at www.maxamlabs.com. See How to Prevent and Treat Cancer with Natural Medicine by Drs M. Murray, P. Reilly, et al. for their full dietary recommendations.

ENERGY, LIGHT & SOUND reaching outside yourself
11. Prayer: There is such a solid and growing body of research about the efficacy of prayer that many physicians are embracing it as a treatment modality. The evidence is incontrovertible that those who are prayed for do better and live longer by every measure, even if they do not know they are being prayed for, and no matter what religion or belief (voodoo, universal energy fields, etc.) is invoked. Prayer denotes a connection to the universe, a sense of spirituality, a focusing of cosmic energy, and may or may not be associated with organized religion. The scientists call this “distal healing”. Droll.

12. Energy: this is the future of medicine. There are several books written by MD's, the best being Vibrational Medicine by Richard Gerber, MD. Energy medicine uses ancient methods like acupuncture or adapts them into 21st century methods or technology.
According to Chinese Medicine, cancer is a result of stagnated energy so that essential energy and nutrients do not get to the tissues and organs. All alternative therapies believe that the body can heal itself if energy channels are opened.
• Acupressure: simply hold or tap key points on the body for a few minutes to open up
channels, easy to do oneself or for family/friends. You can use this by yourself or adjunctive to going to an acupuncturist.
• Applied kinesiology uses acupressure or tapping protocols to correct specific imbalances that cause or encourage the growth of cancers: the direction of spin in our molecules, geopathic and electromagnetic stress, tissue blockages and many other physiological processes. This is a contemporary version of intentional healing.
• Qigong: Thousands of studies in China document that energy is emitted from the healing hands of Qigong masters, known for thousands of years to cure cancers. Individual qigong is quite helpful.
• Healing Touch/Reiki: a sort of qigong, performed on others: brings in and moves energy

13. Light: see the following books on phototherapy and/or call David Olszewski at 1-800-544-4826 at Light Energy Co.: Jacob Liberman's Light: Medicine of the Future; Light Years Ahead (David Olszewski, editor); John Ott’s Health & Light or Light Radiation.
Dr. Ott writes about the vastly increased risk of cancer by working in an environment with fluorescent lights and CRT computer screens: they give off radiation causing cells to become toxic and then ultraviolet light triggers these toxic cells into cancer--which is why sunlight can be both preventative yet bad for you. Working outdoors or under full spectrum lights and using computers with liquid crystal display screens reduces the risk.
In phototherapy, photofrin, a light-sensitive chemical, is injected into the body, deposits in cancer cells and then is triggered by a red LED (light emitting diode) with a frequency of 660 nanometers. Photofrin (or equivalent light-activated herbs) absorb red light, keeping light in the tissue, forcing the cancer cells to vibrate at 660 nanometers, a healthy frequency. Call Light Energy Co. for articles on uses of LED’s to activate cellular tissue and increase wound healing; or type “photofrin” on web search engines.

14. Sound: certain sounds resonant within the body to entrain brainwaves with other oscillators (heart rate, pulse, temperature, etc.) and thus bring balance, enhance the immune response, and activate one’s internal healer. Mozart (try the Mozart Effect series) and nature’s sounds evoke this potential, and it is speculated that ancient mantras were actually the chanting of one’s personal musical note that resonated throughout one’s body. Perhaps most effective is Dr. Jeffrey Thompson who identifies the particular musical note that brings balance to an person, and then adds a variety of nature sounds, music, and brainwave frequencies to an individualized CD. www.neuroacoustic.com. Used simultaneously, such sounds can greatly enhance the visualization experience.

THERAPIES dealing with effects of outside forces on you
15. Dr. Peter Litchfield has accumulated a great deal of scientific evidence demonstrating the harm in hyperventilating (he calls this over-breathing), which alters the oxygen-carbon dioxide ratio in our bodies. See (http://www.bp.edu, especially http://www.bp.edu/AboutBr%20What%20is.htm). He believes that the rapid, shallow breathing is primary source of incorrect breathing, not mouth breathing as others propose. For example, Dr. Buteyko studied respiration for 20 years in early 1900’s, concluding that mouth breathing is a major cause of all degenerative diseases. The nose warms, moistens, and filters dirty air, maintains proper oxygen-carbon dioxide ratios and thus proper pH. In Radical Healing, Dr. Rudolph Ballentine reached the same conclusion working with Swami Rami. See www.buyteko.com or www.kickasthma.com.

16. German dentists estimate that 80% of cancers correlate with dental foci, 88% of breast cancers. Root canals are markers for illness: 1 can lead to cancer, 3 assure heart disease.

DEVICES: good logic, not a lot of solid evidence

17. Cancer grows only in an oxygen-deficient environment. There is a lot of hype, but not a lot of solid evidence for various therapies, so it’s best to get professional guidance even for self care approaches.

18. The Thermo Unit heats the body internally, imitating a fever. Our immune system responds to a fever by generating more white blood cells which are always deficient in those with cancer. See Light Energy Company, above.

PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE: INTEGRATED MEDICAL CARE REFERENCES
The Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center (others are in Zion, IL and Tulsa, OK) combines MD oncologists with alternative providers (naturopaths, Chinese Medical Doctor/Acupuncturist, Mind-Body Specialist) who can prescribe natural products that greatly reduce the probability of metastases, enhance the effectiveness of the chemo and radiation, reduce side effects and enhance the immune system. Dr. Reilly says “there are 500 things you could be doing. My job is to help prioritize to get the most effective ones for your particular cancer at this particular stage.” Dr. Chue pioneered low-dose chemo, which does not destroy the immune system and results in vastly reduced side effects. 206-292-2277, 800-321-9272, or 800-615-3055 for oncology specialist, www.cancercenter.com. The Burzynski Institute in Houston (713-335-5697 www.cancermed.com) provides non-toxic chemo that simply turns on the suppressor gene that tells cancer cells to die. There are a dozen superb audio tapes on alternative and more effective ways to treat cancer from a conference on Integrative Medicine in 1999. Get copies from AVEN (Audio-Visual Education Network) at 1-800-810-8273, or paper copies from me of 1st two. My favorites:
IM993 Your Mother was Right- Eat Your Vegetables by John Potter, MD (Fred Hutch)
IM921 Successfully Integrating Naturopathic Medicine with Conventional Cancer Care by Mark Gignac, Paul Reilly, NDs (Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center)
IM987 Making Integration Work: Balancing Philosophy and Science in Oncology Care by Birdsall, Reilly, Chue, NDs (Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center)
IM955 Phase II Trial of Antineoplaston Al0 and AS2-1 by Stanislaw Burzynski, MD. Or see the book: The Burzynski Breakthrough by Thomas D. Elias