Cancer is a process that begins with one or a series of risk factors that set you up to get the disease. At least that's how a naturopath sees it.
24 May 2015
Newsletter #502
Lee Euler, Editor
If these are not dealt with, over a number of years they can lead to the formation of cancerous cells that are able to escape the immune system and grow into a tumor.
It follows that if you want to prevent cancer, you need to tackle these predisposing factors head on and eliminate them one by one. In this way you greatly increase the probability of staying cancer free.
In her book Vital Signs for Cancer, Xandria Williams, Ph.D., M.Sc., DIC, ND, DBM, MRN, discusses 15 predisposing factors that may trigger the cancer process and shows how they can be identified.
Let’s take a look at some of those factors that relate to diet . . .
Eat to suit your unique metabolism
If you know much about natural health, it seems obvious that one should avoid sugar, refined carbohydrates and processed foods and eat nutritious whole foods, organic where possible.
But Dr. Williams – who has been a naturopath for 35 years and has a practice in Harley Street, London – feels it’s most important to discover foods that suit your own unique metabolism.
Although there are methods that try to do this based on your blood type, or by determining your best protein, carbohydrate and fat ratios, she believes these approaches are inadequate or too generalized.
Her own preference is a method called
metabolic typing. The idea is to discover whether you are sympathetic- or parasympathetic-dominant and whether you are a fast or slow oxidizer. We covered metabolic typing in Issue
#172.
She writes, “…my experience with countless patients is that many of them find that once they eat their correct diet, on this basis, they start to feel wonderful. Minor aches and pains, small problems, general feelings of malaise, all these start to disappear.”
Macronutrient errors
Deficiencies or excess amounts of dietary proteins, fats and carbohydrates are all considered to be predisposing factors.
Protein: Although most people tend to eat more than enough protein to meet their daily requirements, that doesn’t mean you can’t be deficient in one or more amino acids. This can happen because of some malfunction in the liver or some other aspect of the digestive system.
The only way to determine your amino acid status is by testing. Dr. Williams recommends the Optimal Nutritional Evaluation (ONE) Test carried out by Genova Diagnostics of Asheville, North Carolina. They also have divisions worldwide.
This test assesses your fundamental cellular function, how well it is working and where there may be shortfalls. It will tell you how well your body responds to your chosen diet. All it requires is a first-morning urine sample.
After you get the test results, Dr. Williams says, “You may well find that you are currently deficient in a number of amino acids.”
If you are deficient the report your doctor or natural therapist will receive from the lab will indicate the dietary changes and supplementation needed to correct the deficiency. Details at
https://www.gdx.net/
Carbohydrates: Consuming too many sugars and refined carbohydrates and not enough vegetables is commonplace in most of the population.
Because almost all carbohydrates enter the bloodstream as glucose, excess and inappropriate carbohydrates can play havoc with your glucose metabolism.
Maintaining a high blood glucose level increases the risk of developing cancer. Not only is cancer hungry for sugar, but sugar also reduces the function of the immune system, encourages the growth of yeasts and increases insulin output which is itself a risk factor for cancer.
For Dr Williams sugar is public enemy number one. “If you do nothing else. If you decide there is only one lifestyle change you will make to avoid cancer and improve your health, make it this: give up sugar in all its forms, in anything.”
To see how well your body handles glucose she recommends having a glucose tolerance test as this will indicate both low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) as well as high blood sugar (diabetes).
This test was routinely carried out by the late Dr. Atkins who popularized the low carbohydrate diet. He found that out of many thousands of overweight people tested, three quarters of them had blood sugar irregularities. He felt this test was so important it should be given routinely to all patients.
All the test involves is drinking a sugar-rich solution and then monitoring blood glucose levels over a period of four to six hours.
If problems are discovered, your doctor will probably suggest a low carbohydrate diet together with blood-sugar-controlling nutrients, although many natural therapists do not approve of this solution and will have their own favored remedy.
Fats: Most people are consuming too many denatured fats and refined oils and not enough essential fatty acids from nuts, seeds, plants and organic, grass-fed meats.
Although the medical authorities are obsessed with the dangers of saturated fats, Dr. Williams reminds us that “the saturated fatty acids are not all bad, some of them are important for your health.”
Getting the right fatty acids in the correct ratios is important. They are crucial to maintaining healthy cell membranes so that they can fulfill their functions. These membranes are vital for cell signaling and communication, clearing the cell of wastes, and pulling oxygen and nutrients into the cell. Fatty acids are important in maintaining a high oxygen environment in the cell. This is believed to be highly protective against cancer.
The ONE test provides indirect evidence of fatty acid status, or you can ask for a separate fatty acid profile available from Genova.
Vitamin and phytonutrient deficiencies
Medical authorities issue recommended daily requirements for vitamins, but Dr. Williams feels these are wholly inadequate, and in any case individual needs can vary up to ten-fold.
She believes it’s necessary to take nutritional supplements because foods today are grown in mineral-depleted soils, harvested before they’re ripe, may be stored for long periods and are often transported over long distances. Each step of the way there is a significant loss of nutrients.
Low levels of vitamins and phytonutrients are a predisposing factor for cancer because they are essential for immune functioning, mopping up free radicals, neutralizing toxins and maintaining energy production, to name just a few of their functions.
She describes vitamin deficiencies as “dangerous.” Testing is very important. Don’t assume your needs are taken care of even if you eat mostly organic foods and already take supplements. You may still be deficient.
The ONE test provides a report that indicates which vitamins you need based on an analysis of how your body is functioning at a cellular level. A separate test for D3 is also considered valuable. This is available from many laboratories.
Mineral deficiencies
As with vitamins, mineral deficiencies can trigger a process that leads to cancer.
Of particular importance is selenium, followed by zinc and manganese. However, all mineral deficiencies need to be addressed as they impair cellular metabolism in ways that increase the risk of developing cancer.
There are various methods of testing for mineral status. One of these is hair mineral analysis.
Although this test has been denounced in orthodox medical circles, a recent medical paper has a different take: “A growing amount of data supports the theory that biochemical analysis of trace elements in hair may be useful in identifying the possible risk of cancer development or progression.
This test is available from many labs including Analytical Research Laboratories, Arizona, Trace Elements, Texas, and Doctors Data, Illinois.
Minerals can also be tested using blood, urine and sweat samples. However, there are limitations and restrictions in all these methods.
Get tested
For over three decades Dr. Williams has been urging people to prevent health problems by checking out and acting on any nagging symptom, no matter how small. She advises doing this by finding the underlying cause, not taking a symptom-blocking drug.
Since cancer and many other health problems can progress symptom-free for a long time, she believes it’s essential to have a regular check-up.
“How do you know you are fully healthy at the cellular level without doing check-ups and without testing for the Vital Signs that can warn you of possible trouble? How do you know what subterranean rumblings there may be that have not yet caused an eruption on the surface?”
Her message is simple: do the tests, and work with a naturopath or an integrative or holistic physician.
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Continued below…
Can You Survive Without Antibiotics?
The Golden Age of Antibiotics is over. For 60 years we have lived protected by these AMAZING drugs. Lives have been saved…
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Heliotherapy – or sun therapy – uses direct, full-spectrum sunlight to heal and strengthen your body.
According to Alexander Wunsch, a German physician of holistic medicine and photobiology, we are “perfectly adapted to the radiation of the sun.”
But we don’t use this free, natural “radiation” nearly enough.
Sunlight wards off cancer – and other
health problems, too
Getting enough sunlight reduces your risk of getting cancer by more than half.
Researchers estimate that the sun could prevent 30% of cancer deaths … if we actually used it. That’s incredible – nearly one-third of cancer deaths could be prevented by something free.
Doctors scare you away from the sun by warning you about skin cancer. But dangerously low levels of vitamin D are just as destructive … and maybe more so. Meanwhile the risk of death by skin cancer is low (plus it’s by no means certain that sun exposure causes dangerous melanoma, as opposed to the nearly-harmless basal cell carcinomas.)
Normally, you get 90% of your vitamin D through sunlight and 10% through your diet, according to Dr. Ernest Severn of the Zenith Medical Clinic in Utah.
Sunbathing keeps you healthy – just be sensible about it and don’t roast yourself to a crisp.
Sunlight reduces your risk of prostate cancer. Plus, it increases your survival rate for prostate, breast, and other types of cancer.
Sunbathing also reduces your risk of heart attack, stroke, depression, and osteoporosis.
It lowers your blood pressure, regulates your blood sugar, normalizes your cholesterol, and boosts your white blood cell count, which helps you ward off disease and infection, according to Certified Nutritional Therapist Carla Hernandez.
Heliotherapy also helps heal acne, reduces body odor, kills bad bacteria, decontaminates blood transfusions, repairs your DNA, irradiates cancer patients’ blood, and cures neonatal jaundice.
How it works. . .
Among other things, sunlight boosts your immune system and reduces inflammation throughout your body.
Dr. Wunsch says sunlight gives your body the perfect combination of essential ingredients for optimal growth.
When ultraviolet B rays hit your skin, they prompt your body to produce vitamin D, which scientists have come to realize, in just the last few years, is a superlative disease fighter. Sunlight-generated vitamin D attaches to receptors throughout your entire body. It also influences 3,000 or more of your genes.
Vitamin D fights cancer in five unique ways:
1. Regulates genetic expression
2. Kills mutated cells
3. Keeps cancer cells from reproducing and spreading
4. Causes cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
5. Prevents dormant tumors from becoming cancerous
Heliotherapy helped these patients
get rid of cancer
In the 1970s, Dr. Zane Kime, an American physician, encouraged one of his breast cancer patients to sunbathe.
The 41-year-old woman had already undergone a mastectomy and chemotherapy. Still, her breast cancer had spread to her lungs and bones. She started sunbathing at Dr. Kime’s suggestion and within a few months she resumed work with no apparent symptoms of metastasized cancer.
During the summer of 1959, 15 cancer patients at Bellevue Medical Centre in New York spent as much time as they could outdoors without glasses or sunglasses. According to Dr. John Ott’s report, sunlight improved the patients’ conditions. He requested a more detailed research program, but it never materialized.
The Swiss specialist Dr. Auguste Rollier reported success treating Hodgkin’s disease (cancer of the lymph nodes, liver, and spleen) with heliotherapy.
Today, alternative health centers in the Swiss Alps and in Israel near the Dead Sea specialize in heliotherapy. Yet few American doctors use it.
Doctors at Baylor University Medical Center, Cancer Research Institutes, the University of Texas Health Science Center, and Heartland Healing Center in Nebraska take advantage of the healing power of sunlight. Yet, as far as we can learn, no prominent medical center in the United States puts heliotherapy at front and center of their protocol.
How much vitamin D do you actually need?
The Food and Drug Administration says you need 400 IUs of vitamin D every day. This recommendation is idiotic and misinformed. It is based on the false premise that vitamin D may be toxic at higher levels.
This tiny dose does nothing to protect you from cancer, heart disease, or infections.
The optimal amount of vitamin D is in dispute, but it’s most certainly in the thousands of IUs. No one concerned about his health should supplement with less than 2,000 IU per day, in my opinion, and I’m now taking 5,000 IU per day myself at the recommendation of my integrative M.D. Some doctors recommend as much as 8,000 IU per day!
The amount of vitamin D you can get from sun exposure depends on many factors: your skin color, where you live, the time of year, and the amount of time you spend in the sun. These variables make your vitamin D level unique to you. North of, say Georgia, it’s almost impossible to get enough vitamin D from sun exposure during the winter. Supplementation is essential.
On the other hand, at noon in July you need very little sun. As little as ten or fifteen minutes exposure a day will generate all the D you need.
To know exactly how much vitamin D you need, take a blood test. Healthy vitamin D blood levels are between 50 and 70 ng/ml, or even 70 to 100, important for fighting cancer or other diseases if they’ve conquered a beachhead in your body.
Don’t want to take a blood test? It’s not very accurate, but you can multiply your body weight by 35 IUs. This will give you a close rough estimate of your daily need. But still, individual differences make it impossible to predict exactly how much you need, unless you test and gauge by that. If you’re getting adequate sun, you may be able to cut down on the supplements. The blood test is the only way to know for sure.
Don’t worry about overdosing if you’re getting your Vitamin D directly from the sun. UV-B rays trigger your body to produce vitamin D. UV-A rays destroy any excess vitamin D circulating in your body. So full-spectrum sunlight automatically regulates your vitamin D levels.
It’s only with oral vitamin D supplements that there may be some risk of an overdose – and it’s my well-informed opinion that the risk is very slight. I’ve been observing the vitamin D research for years, and the safe amount to take orally keeps getting revised upward as enlightened doctors learn —contra the FDA — that the stuff is not some kind of poison.
Why you MUST get full-spectrum sunlight
On their own, UV-B and UV-A rays can damage your cells. But according to Dr. Rollier, other parts of the sun’s spectrum naturally compensate for these negatives.
The near-infrared and red light in natural sunlight powers your cells to protect themselves — and you.
The full blend of wavelengths in unfiltered sunlight allows your body to reap all the benefits while naturally combatting the negative side effects, according to Dr. Rollier.
That said, sunburns and even deep suntans age your skin. At the minimum, they cause fairly-harmless basal cell carcinomas and may (the jury is still out) cause deadly melanoma. Aim for a few minutes of sun per day, NOT a deep tan.
By the way, UV rays do not penetrate windows. You don’t benefit from sunlight that’s filtered through a window.
Direct sunlight at solar noon benefits you the most.
Ideally, spend 10 or 15 minutes in the sun around lunchtime every day, in the summer. You can stay in the sun much longer during other seasons — winter, late autumn, early spring. The amount of time you can spend also depends on your skin type.
Start slow and see how your skin reacts. If you get a pink glow, you’ve damaged your skin. And if you have fair skin, it will get pink really fast. Start slow, be careful.
If you spend several hours in the sun — at the beach or on a picnic — apply natural or organic sunscreen after the first few minutes of sun exposure. Don’t use conventional sunscreens, because they contain a myriad of chemicals that have NOT been tested for long-term safety. Wear a hat with a large rim to protect your face from overexposure.
With enough unfiltered sunlight, your body proactively fights and protects you from cancer. And for that, you should be very thankful, indeed.
