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Chapter 5

Cancer

Understanding Is Your Best Defense

This Article In Summary: Whether it’s breast cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, or whatever cancer, there are vital principles that must be understood. There is a cure for cancer, and cancer prevention is possible, but without a right understanding of the nature of cancer, our hopes are unlikely to reach fruition - regardless of whether we turn to natural health therapy, orthodox cancer cures, naturopathic cancer cures, or other alternative cancer cures.

Having a right understanding of cancer, therefore, is the first step toward overcoming cancer, and it is most certainly the first step in cancer prevention. This being the case, here is some vital knowledge for those aiming at cancer prevention - as well as for cancer sufferers who have their hearts set on beating cancer.

Whatever the reason for your visit to this website, whether you are fearful of cancer, whether you are considering chemotherapy (and all of its discomforts) or any other cancer therapy, the following information will lay the foundation for your cancer prevention programme or your recovery from cancer.

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For many decades, articles in the printed media have spoken of impending breakthroughs in the treatment of cancer. Yet, sadly, no significant breakthrough has yet materialized. In fact, the situation is only becoming more and more serious with the passage of time. In the overall, the incidence of cancer has risen by 60% in the past 50 years. Breast cancer has doubled. Prostate cancer has doubled, and testicular cancer has trebled in young men. Cancer also rose in children under 15 by over 10 percent between 1974 and 1991. Leukemia has been shown to be rising at the rate of 1 per cent a year and brain tumors by 2 per cent a year . . .

Despite all the hype, it is obvious that medical science is not winning in the battle against cancer.

The following article by Dr Max Warmbrand was written some years ago, - yet truth never becomes outdated. The viewpoints expressed by Dr Warmbrand are as valid today as they ever were. Having read this article, you will appreciate that an entirely different approach could well be our best tactic in the battle against cancer.

Are We Ever Going to
Find a Cure for Cancer?

By Dr Max Warmbrand

The fact that the spread of cancer is not lessening is now well-known. Actually, the picture keeps growing worse with each year. The latest figures show that the United States alone has reached a point where more than 300 000 American lives are now being lost yearly from this tragic body and life-destroying disease. And the end is not in sight.

In short, in spite of the vast sums of money that have been spent in the search for a cure, very little, if anything, has been accomplished so far in finding the answer to this frightening affliction. And it is because of this that many of our leading scientists are now beginning to wonder whether a cure for cancer will ever be found, and whether it would not be best if our major efforts could be directed towards prevention.

A Cancer Cell a Mutant

If we are to understand what can really be done to solve this problem, it would be well to get to know what the disease is, how it originates, and what we must do to check its development. To begin with, let's remember that a cancer cell, not of its own volition [choice], has been forced to adapt itself to certain stimuli or irritants. These stimuli or irritants may develop in the body as by-products of an abnormal or disordered metabolism, or may be taken into the system from outside in the form of drugs, chemicals, unsuitable foods, or other toxic substances.

When these stimuli or irritants threaten the life of the cell, the cell either dies, or succeeds in remaining alive by adapting itself to the changes in its environment.

However, while in adapting itself to its environment, its whole character and nature changes. It is no longer a normal cell, a member of the community of cells to which it originally belonged, but an abnormal cell, a deranged cell, a cancer cell.

Similar changes in nature can be observed everywhere. Benign or innocuous bacteria become virulent [deadly] when the soil in which they live changes from a healthy condition to an unhealthy condition. We notice similar changes when bacteria become drug-resistant. And the same happens when the use of pesticides leads to the development of pests that become resistant to the chemicals that are used to destroy them.

These and other examples could be cited to illustrate how living entities adapt themselves to their environment in an effort to save their lives. And this is part of the defense mechanism of the living organism.

Cancer Cells Need Not Lead to Cancer

And yet, while certain cells, in their effort to adapt themselves to a change in their environment, become abnormal cells (cancer cells), this does not mean that they need be a threat to our life. It is well known that practically every human being at one time or another develops cancer cells in the body, but when the body is in a healthy condition, it usually destroys these cells and no cancer develops.

In my book `Living Without Pain' in the chapter `Vital Facts About Cancer', I quote many of our noted cancer authorities who observed what actually takes place in the healthy body when cancer cells are present. Dr Cornelius P. Rhoads, one of the most renowned cancer authorities, some years ago appearing before the Royal College of Surgeons in London, pointed out that `persons in normal health appear to have a natural defense against cancer and can throw off the disease after it attacks body tissue.'

The Journal of the American Medical Association, some time later, also explained that the body possesses the power to destroy cancer cells. Reporting what happens when, after an operation, cancer cells start floating freely in the blood stream it states that `there is . . .

(1) a time when they (the cancer cells) do appear and are killed by the patient's natural defenses, and . . .

(2) a time when the patient's resistance is low and these cells grow, metastasize and kill the patient.'

Dr Kasper Blond, a noted authority on cancer, . . . presents another thought which explains what enables the body to protect itself against cancer, when he emphasizes that the liver is the key organ that protects our body against the onset of the disease, and then states that as long as the liver is in a healthy condition, it can protect itself against the cancer.

All this clearly proves where the real answer to the problem of cancer lies; it is not in the discovery of an elusive cure, but in prevention, in the adoption of a way of living that keeps the body in a healthy condition.

This shows where the responsibility of our present-day physician lies. He should begin to re-evaluate his approach to his patient's health problems and make sure that he takes care of them in conformity with the more fundamental concepts of health-restoration. He must take care of the whole person, the whole human being, discontinue his dependence on symptom-relieving drugs, and again become the teacher, the doctor who teaches his patients how they can protect themselves against the onset of these dangerous ills.

How Can This Be Accomplished?

Very simply, our efforts to induce people to discontinue smoking is a step in the right direction. We must discourage the use of all toxic and carcinogenic drugs and chemicals. We must do everything possible to clean up the pollutants that poison the environment we live in. And we must adopt a way of living that will keep our body strong and healthy, since this is the only way we can make certain that it will be able to defend itself against any of the influences that threaten its existence. And this means not only against the foreign and health-threatening substances that find their way into our body from without, but also against the toxins that develop as end-products of our body metabolism.

Going into a discussion of our foods, this means avoiding all refined and processed foods, discontinuing the use of [sugar-rich] biscuits, cakes, pastries, ice-cream, all kinds of denatured sweets, eliminating coffee, tea, chocolate, omitting heavily seasoned foods, and controlling the intake of the rich and heavily concentrated foods. It also means keeping the body fit by providing it with sufficient rest and sleep, adhering to a well-planned programme of physical exercises, healthful outdoor activities, the development of emotional control and peace of mind, and a discontinuance of all senseless and health-undermining practices such as the use of drugs, chemicals, alcohol, tobacco, etc.

Next to the diseases of the heart and the circulatory system, cancer is one of the major life-destroying ills. This is why a statement recently issued by a team of internationally renowned scientists is of special significance. This team was composed of such scientists as Sir Julian Huxley, first director-general of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization; Sir Rudolph Peters, former president of the International Council of Scientific Unions; Dr Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine and the new director of the Pasteur Institute of Paris; Dr Jacques Trefouel, the outgoing head of the Pasteur Institute; Dr Hugo Theorell, another Nobel Laureate in Medicine, director of biochemistry at the Nobel Institute in Stockholm; Dr Raymond Paul, president of the French Medical Society; Dr Rebecca Rainsbury, assistant editor of the British Medical Journal, and Dr Peter Beaconsfield of the Royal Free Hospital in London. All warned against the effects of our present-day unhealthful practices. They stressed the harm that results from the `internal pollution' brought on by drugs, chemicals, the wrong kinds of food and wrong living habits, and warned that an entirely new approach is needed if mankind is to be saved from continuous deterioration and maybe even total extinction.

The findings of these scientists were published in the June 15, 1971, issue of Experientia, a scientific journal published in Switzerland, and as I kept thinking about their conclusion, I could not help realizing how close this comes to what the natural health movement has been stressing all these years. It reiterates that the only way we can save ourselves from cancer or any of the other serious or life-threatening disorders is by changing from our present-day unhealthful living habits to a healthful way of living. It also reiterates what some of the most noted authorities in health education have constantly been emphasizing, namely, that internal cleanliness is the basis of all health.

The seriousness of this disease cannot be minimized, and it may take some time before we get to understand all the facts that contribute to its onset. It should be apparent, however, that the best protection against its development is a way of living and care that keeps the body in a healthy condition. But even where the disease has already made its inroads, our best hope for its remission or control lies in the adoption of the regimen that I advocate to prevent its onset, provided the body's healing powers have not yet broken down to the point where a reversal is no longer possible. This has been demonstrated in my own practice as well as in the practice of other physicians who are using this approach in the management of this disease.

Dr Max Warmbrand, Prevention Magazine,
Volume 15, Number 1, p. 28, emphasis my own

Proceed To Chapter 6: In the next chapter we will be considering the "fundamental concepts of health restoration" in the light of Dr Warmbrand's article.

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