“A full and meaningful life must involve some risks or there can be no growth.”
—KATHLEEN TURNER
Survive Cancer!
A Natural Approach to Healing and Prevention
SUSAN MOSS
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2009 Susan Moss
All rights reserved. Permission in writing must be given for all quotations or reproductions. This book is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for a trained physician. The reader is advised to see a doctor for any physical problem. The author and publisher cannot assume responsibility from the use and application of any information presented herein. There is no guarantee of Cancer prevention or survival.
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To my father, Ben Moss, who lived to be 94,and who taught me that there are natural ways to get well.
F O R E W O R D
by James R. Privitera, M.D.
I FEEL HONORED to have been asked to write the foreword for Susan Moss’ second book. I wrote the foreword for her fi rst book, Keep Your Breasts! Preventing Breast Cancer the Natural Way, that was so beautifully written. I wasn’t certain that another book could possibly be as informativeand captivating. However, Survive Cancer! Overcoming and Preventing Cancer the Natural Way, once again shows the same passion in the writing of experiences in her own remarkable journey to overcoming and preventing any recurrence of Cancer. It is also a detailed compilation of data to help the reader expand his or her knowledge of Cancer and aid the readers on their own quest for better health. Other inspirational pioneer Cancer survivors’ stories are also included. Because of the importance of her fi rst book, I show a slide of the book cover in my lectures, and I also make the book available to my patients. Over the last thirty years I have treated hundreds of people with Cancer. Many were women with Breast Cancer and I am always proud of those who are willing to seek the information on expanding their understanding of the treatments and modalities that are available.
Susan Moss is one of those people who didn’t settle for the standard treatments; instead she set out on her own personal journey, experiencing her amazing victory over breast and uterine Cancer using only Alternative treatments. Today we fi nd more large medical centers are opening Alternative Medicine departments to meet the public demand for an alternative to the standard drugs, surgery, and radiation. I have often told my patients that what is called “Alternative” should really be the standard, as natural therapies have been around long before any drug companies were built. Can any of us argue with the therapies that naturally support the body to bring it back to full and glowing health without destructive “side effects”? Not me! Susan’s book is not only for people with Cancer, but extremely important for those who are in remission and also for prevention. In fact, any person seeking a healthier and longer life can benefi t from this book. I am certain that she will have the gratitude of all who read it. I am personally grateful that she wrote it.
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
THANK YOU TO THE Cancer Survivors who pioneered the way to Natural Healing and inspired this book. You will meet them in the forthcoming chapters. Thank you Dr. James Privitera, Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, John Robbins, Nancy Brinker of the Susan B.Koman Foundation, Lorraine Rosenthal of the Cancer Control Society, Dr. Lorraine Day, Suzanne Somers, Dr. Vicki Hufnagel, John Finnegan, Dr.Wayne C Furr, and Meryl Streep who offered much encouragement and endorsements. Thank you Gary Null for participation in the PBS special and putting my story in several of your books. Thank you David J.Hess for allowing my story to be told in your book, Women Confront Cancer. Thanks to the Canadians for allowing me to participate and speak at two of their World Conferences on Breast Cancer. I couldn’t have gotten the word out without my hard-working PR agent, Irwin Zucker. My German publisher, Axel Berendes at Flamingosmand my Dutch publisher, Judice at Triangel, I owe much gratitude. No book could have been written and presented to the public without the generous help of my parents, Ben and Amy
S u r v i v e C a n c e r !
Thank you also to encouragement from my niece and nephew, Bridget and Cameron Moss for their enthusiasm. My friend Robin Quinn and my agent Margret McBride have offered invaluable advice and support. Thank you Marion Philadelphia for her encouragement and help in translating my fi rst book into German. Thank you Petra Bierman, a fi ne friend, for continually supporting this effort. To close the curtain, thank you Steve Martin for fi nding new and original ways to make me laugh through any pain and hardship I’ve experienced in the last twenty years.
I N T R O D U C T I O N
A REVOLUTION in the treatment of Cancer is looming just ahead. We have exhausted ourselves running, walking, fundraising and expended endless patience waiting for “them” to find the magic CURE. The paradigm that this fairy-tale wish is based upon is that the handsome Prince of a doctor will save us with his magic sword, cutting out the Cancer and offering his magic potions that will “eradicate” any wicked Cancer cells while also burning them out with magic X-rays. Unfortunately, too often, the “side-effect” of all this gruesome and brutal treatment is the death of the patient.
The theme of this book is the body’s amazing ability to heal itself. While it is impossible to cut any disease out of the human body and absurd to assume that poisoning and burning the patient will bring him or her back to good health, the body’s own complex healing systems can do the job very well. Cancer is a disease, not just a tumor or cells acting badly. This book is based on the paradigm that Cancer is an immune deficiency disease that can be healed by the body’s own defenses we were all inherently born with. We can learn to harness these systems in order to get well. Only the person afflicted with Cancer can do the hard but gratifying and rewarding work that will bring back good health. What is the plan, where is the route one must take? What are the character traits of people who heal themselves, either from scratch or after the medical treatment fails them? This book offers a program, a guideline for help in regaining health from any Cancer. It offers my story and other people’s story who took charge of their disease and found a path back to glowing health. What strengths did these people fi nd that they had? How did they do it? And what valuable tips can they offer us? You will fi nd many inspirational stories in the following chapters.
MY NATURAL HEALING JOURNEY
Eighteen years ago, in the early nineties, I conquered my own Breast and Uterine Cancer utilizing an all-natural health Program I named MOTEP—Marathon Olympic Tumor Eradication and Prevention Program. I chose to use myself as a Human Guinea Pig to see if the body itself could heal Cancer, if supported by a strong emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical program with lots of good nutrition and exercise. I compiled this program, utilizing my own experience of what I call “Self-Lumpectomy,” with additional help from Alternative authors on the subject. Still, to take charge of my ill health alone based mostly on my own theories and experience took a lot of guts. To tell the truth, I was terrified! Yet at the same time, my strong intuition told me that I could do it.
My fi rst experience performing “Self-Lumpectomy” was ridding myself of a lump in my neck in the area where the Introduction lymph nodes filter out toxins. In the seventies, I had been using toxic acrylic paints with barrels of Rhoplex for my canvases that sold around the world. I used great quantities of this material which, I was later to learn, is carcinogenic, to produce paintings for large commissions. One public commission was for a quartet of ten-foot paintings for a new hotel tower in downtown Los Angeles, the city where I reside. I completed this commission; at the same time knowing the material was adversely affecting my health. Over many years of using this material, my health slowly declined. By 1979, toward the end of the “Black Forest” series of paintings I dedicated to my Grandparents, Edith and Richard Hecht, I was totally losing my health. Not only had a lump formed inthe right side of my neck, but I had trouble breathing, fatigue, and began to lose a lot of weight, seemingly in chunks, off my normally slim body. I looked emaciated. I had to choose to either stop using this material or continue to become extremely ill. I stopped using Rhoplex and acrylic paint before doing number eighteen of the series.
The Hebrew sign for eighteen is the same as “Life”; I chose to live. It was terribly difficult to give up this material that gave me unbelievably beautiful, transparent, yet hard glazes resembling stained glass. It was the perfect painting material, drying overnight so that it could be worked over the next day. I could sand it to get a view through all the transparent layers. The result was spectacular. One wealthy collector, who had become my patron, told me he loved these paintings so much that he would “buy everything I did with Rhoplex.” There were so many reasons I fi ercely wanted to continue using this carcinogenic material. I had found the perfect painting medium. Not only did it yield beautiful, durable paintings that sold and thus provided me with an economic base to continue painting, it created Museum interest in my work as well. My career seemed to depend on this incredible, but toxic material. It was a tortuous decision. I knew I could no longer paint with it.
At UCLA Medical Center, they performed a biopsy. They told me the cells in my lump were “right on the verge of Cancer” and that if I continued using the material, I would develop Cancer. The Doctor also told me that if I did not get,rid of the lump in one year, he would operate and take it out.
EARNING VISUALIZATION
With that deadline, I compiled a simplified health program I did not name. I discovered Visualization from an article in the L.A. Times about O. Carl Simonton who found his Cancer patients did well when he taught them to visualize Pac-men eating their Cancer cells and use other imagery they would devise themselves. The visualization exercise I did every morning consisted of the following steps: first, I would turn on the stereo, finding some loud rock music. I would then visualize a line-up of miniature men in white coats with a large rope. These men would proceed to march down my neck with this strong rope and tie it around the lump in my neck. I would then pull the rope out, with the men and the tumor to the beat of the music. Up and out, I pulled and pulled. I had to pull very hard to get all these men out, their strong rope, and the tumor! I would actually “see” this happening and I would “view” the lump that was pulled out.
I also devised topical, natural treatments, rubbing the lump with a half-cut lemon for the direct application of Vitamin C. Weakened and losing weight rapidly, my health deteriorating to an alarming degree, I talked an architect friend into running on the beach with me. He urged me on, asI was easily fatigued. My Dad, into alternative health before it was trendy, bought me a juicer, and I began to make carrot juice every evening. Along with giving up all paint and turning to crayon drawings, and giving up an emotionally turbulent relationship with a handsome, emotionally disturbed young man, this comprised my total health program. My personal life was gone, my economic base had vanished, my health had deteriorated and my weight was also going down the tubes, as pound after pound left me for outer space! My roommate, who had experience working with Cancer patients, got scared and moved out. I later read in the newspaper that fifty-five employees of Rohm and Haas, the manufacturer of the barrels of Rhoplex I used, had contracted Cancer.
What kept me going? I was terrified yet I steadfastly kept to my schedule: juicing, practicing visualization, running on the beach, and doing crayon drawings—that was my whole life. And yet there was one other characteristic that this yellow-green, toxic, sickly looking, beyond skinny and sinking fast lady had. I had the determination to get well! I had the tenacity to stick to this schedule, as I very slowly began to revive, come back to life as I knew it before my system became inundated with toxic materials and weakened by emotional turmoil.
REGAINING HEALTH
Health came back very slowly. But persistence paid off! My health very slowly, but steadily, returned. Within theyear allotted to me by the Doctor, I was rid of the lump in my neck to his complete astonishment. He was expecting and ready to perform surgery. I had learned this crucial fact: when the body is detoxified and de-stressed, when the immune system is supported with good nutrition and exercise, supportive relationships, and the will to live, health will begin slowly, but surely, returning. When the body reaches a certain stage of health, it will discard the tumor as unneeded, often in a most dramatic performance! Thus I had learned “Self-Lumpectomy,” that is getting rid of lumps in the body without invasive surgery or any Medical treatments other than diagnosis. After this “self-lumpectomy,” I was able to rebuild my health, slowly regaining my proper weight.
After a year of doing large-scale crayon drawings, I was asked to show the work at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York. This is one of the foremost museums in the country. The show was a success, and after selling five drawings, I rented a car to tour the East and Toronto, Canada. In Toronto I met a new man, Mark, who was emotionally healthy. We had a wonderful time together. I thoroughly enjoyed my regained well-being. I felt fortunate and blessed.
ANOTHER BOUT WITH TUMORS
For the next eight or nine years, I took better care of my physical health. I switched to oil paints, discovering how to use non-toxic linseed oil made by a health-food company in Canada to make mediums, and using Citrus-based thinners instead of strong turpentine or mineral spirits to thin my paints and clean my brushes. Slowly, my collectors came, around to my new techniques and began acquiring the oils.
By 1988, I was again prospering. However, in 1989, a recession hit the country and I was unable to sell my art. As a result, I became depressed and again neglected to take care of myself. I also found myself, once again, attracted to a man who was not loyal to me. He often talked about his other girlfriends and even his ex-wife whom he still visited. Finally he, decided to marry the girlfriend who had waited twenty years for him to commit to her The resulting emotional turmoil combined with the financial tension began, once again, taking a big toll on my health, although I was too depressed to pay much attention.
By December 1990, I once again found my health jeopardized. My gynecologist, on a routine check-up, found a tumor in my left breast and one in my uterus. He diagnosed me with Breast and Uterine Cancer and told me in no uncertain terms to see a surgeon.
I said “No.”
He repeatedly called me at the studio, insisting that I see a surgeon, in no uncertain terms, in a most forceful way. I gave him the same answer over the phone. “No.” After several tries, he finally relented enough to tell me to come back for another check-up in two months. It was then that I developed my formal program that I called “MOTEP.” When the doctor found the tumors, a wake-up call was issued to my depressed trance. Reality startled me into awareness. I decided, then and there, that I was willing to do ANYTHING to regain my health.
DECIDING TO GET WELL
I first decided I wanted to get well. This is the crucial first step. Decide why you want to get well and the body will begin its healing journey right then and there! Devising and then going on my own program, MOTEP was the next step to start to reverse my deteriorating health. I was able to begin to fight for and slowly, but surely, to rebuild my health. To my doctor’s astonishment, I was rid of both tumors within the “deadline” he had given me— only two months! To him, this was just a “watch and wait” period, and would only result in him having to straightjacket me, if necessary, to get me to the surgeon! He had no idea that “self-lumpectomy” was a viable option. And why should he? The Medical Establishment considers “spontaneous remission” of tumors and Cancer a freak occurrence. Certainly, tumors and Cancer that disappear without medical treatment are considered rare and magical, an event that would be entered in “Ripley’s Believe it or Not!” Definitely, they would never think of recommending this to a patient!
My Doctor, however, was open-minded enough to urge me to share my information with others. He suggested a video. First, however, I decided to write a book. During the next seven months it took me to rebuild my health back to normal, I also began to write, Keep Your Breasts! Preventing Breast Cancer the Natural Way describing my healing from Breast and Uterine Cancer.
THE TUMOR IS NOT THE DISEASE
I kept up my MOTEP program while writing, as I found that ridding one’s body of tumors was not the whole health story. The tumors are only a symptom of a mind-body disease, not the disease itself. This is very important because it is a medical misconception that must be cleared up before any progress can be made against this dreaded disease. Cancer is not only about Cancer cells that form a tumor, but also about a weakened, debilitated, toxic body condition and depressed emotional state that allowed these cells to grow and begin to take over. Even after the tumors disappear or are surgically removed, one has to patiently and persistently work to rebuild one’s health back to normal. If this is not attended to, the Cancer may return. This leads to the Medical Establishment’s use of the terms “remission and recurrence” instead of healed or “cured.
THE MOTEP PROGRAM CAN HELP YOU
Over the last eight years, many Cancer patients have benefi ted from my program. Many women with suspicious Mammograms have been able to change the results from problem to clear in an astonishingly short time: only ten days-to-four months. People all over the world have recovered their health using my MOTEP program with or without any Medical treatment. A woman with Stage IV Cancer, considered the last stage, with not just Breast, but also Colon, and Lung Cancer was “supposed to die” within three months even with extensive surgery including the removal of her breast, one of her lungs and part of her colon thus needing a colostomy bag.
She said, “No, thank you,” got my book from the bookstore, and called me. Fourteen years later she is fully alive, working and traveling. The Doctors are incredulous. Her story will be included in this volume. My fi rst book has been, from the first printing, in all the bookstores and many libraries and has been translated into German and Dutch. It seemed time to write another book for anyone fighting any Cancer or with the prescient curiosity to want to try to prevent it. This book is especially important to people in “remission,” those who do not want to experience a recurrence. I believe the MOTEP program that so helped me and so many others worldwide, can benefit anyone facing any form of Cancer. It is my hope that this book will benefit and inspire you, your relatives, friends and co-workers and anyone whose health you care about. The life you save may be your own!
C H A P T E R 1
Staying Alive—The Will to Live
A DIAGNOSIS OF CANCER is the most terrifying news anyone can receive about the state of his or her health. Yet 1.4 million of us in the U.S. will receive this horrifying report this year. Worldwide there are ten million Cancer cases diagnosed yearly, and six million deaths from Cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that every twenty-fi ve minutes someone is diagnosed with Cancer in the U.S. As treatment now stands, fifty-to-sixty percent of people contracting Cancer will die within five years of their diagnosis. Over ten thousand Americans die each week of Cancer—fifteen hundred a day! I don’t believe this is necessary I don’t believe Cancer has to be a “terminal” disease.
YOU CAN LIVE THROUGH CANCER
It is a proven fact that you can live through Cancer. The body itself is well equipped to deal with this disease. This book is different than others you might find because it is based on empowerment of the ill person, and discusses natural means of getting well. In other words, your health is all in your own hands. Does this surprise you? It is my personal opinion, after attending too many funerals, that Medical Treatments for Cancer, which have essentially remained unchanged in fifty years, are archaic and outmoded. Chemotherapy is often ineffective, destructive, and temporary in reducing Cancer cells, and radiotherapy is only temporarily effective, and often even more destructive. In fact, radiation is carcinogenic, causing more Cancer down the line.
According to “Cancer Treatment Reviews”, June 2001,1 the majority of Prostate Cancer patients relapse within two-to-three years after the initiation of treatment. There is a high mortality rate in Prostate Cancer because of bone metastases. Of the ten million worldwide cases, the World Health Organization states that only one-third can be effectively treated. In a review of Breast Cancer patients treated with chemotherapy and radiation, reported in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. July 16, 2002 showed that evidence from two randomized clinical trials of radiation following chemotherapy, whether delayed or not showed no impact on either local or distant control of the disease or survival.
Medical Treatments for Cancer have become a multi-billion dollar enterprise, a gigantic machinery, disconnected from the purpose of healing sick people. This profit-driven industry, a dinosaur of greed and billion-dollar profits, will soon, I predict, die out as the understanding of Cancer expands from its primitive, barbaric stage into the realm of enlightened, Mind-body, “Alternative” medicine. We are presently witnessing an amazing Consumer-driven overhaul
(Homby, F.E., “ Prognostic and Predictive Factors in Prostate Cancer” Cancer Treatment Reviews, Vol. 27, #3, June 200l 2 “Delay in Adjuvant Radiation Treatment and Outcomes in Breast Cancer”)
THREE STEPS TO GETTING WELL
From my experience, there are essentially three steps anyone with any form of Cancer must go through to get well. In my opinion they are not surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, treatments that debilitate the body and usually are only a temporary solution.” They are:
Detoxifying the body
De-stressing the mind
Bolstering the Will to Live
This chapter addresses the most important of these three, the basis for all good health: The Will to Live. Without this core of strength, no amount of Medical Treatment or Alternative Treatments can succeed either alone or in combination. So let’s look at the disease we may be facing.
WHAT IS CANCER?
Cancer is a cellular disorder. Normally cells divide in an orderly way. They do their job in replicating the tissue they coincide with such as skin tissue, breast tissue, or colon tissue, whatever tissue it is their job to replicate. This job is accomplished through messengers: molecules called hormones, growth factors, and cytokines (cells that move). The cells actually communicate with each other as well as with the brain through neurotransmitters—neuro-receptors and neuro-receivers. They are polite and have a tail that has a sensor to alert them to other oncoming cells that they politely go around. They are orderly.
Suddenly, in the disease we call Cancer, cells multiply without control, wildly only reproducing themselves. Cancer cells are deformed, immature, rude, selfish, asocial cells that use the nutrition of other cells, rampage over normal cells, and franchise themselves out, metastasizing to other parts of the body in their single-minded goal of destruction.
Instead of replicating local tissue, they form their own tumor or “neoplasm” (new growth) that the healthy body normally has no need for. A protein coating is then formed over the Cancer cells to cordon them off to protect the body from these malignant, damaged cells. However, this tumor soon sets up a life of its own, creating its own blood supply to feed itself regardless of the body’s needs. If it is able to proceed, it will soon erode the energy of the host and use up the nutrition of the healthy cells, leaving the person emaciated. Patients often die of Cachexia, or wasting away. The patient’s normal cells have been robbed of the nutrition they need. Cancer cells are parasitical users, intent on a selfish mission of destruction, and are only “looking out for number one.” They are sneaky, underhanded robbers of life.
Medical treatment currently focuses on cutting out and destroying these cells. But too often they only return eading to the terms “remission” and “recurrence.” “Curerate” is a misleading term used to sell Cancer treatments. There is no outside “cure” for Cancer. Only the body itself can heal it.
CANCER CANNOT BE CUT OUT OF THE BODY
Can Measles, Mumps, Chicken pox lumps, the Flu, Colds, Arthritis or any other disease be cut out of the body? The answer, of course, is no. No disease can be cut out of the body. Cancer is a whole-body-mind-spirit illness, but because it often forms a tumor, the prevailing modus operandi is to cut out the tumor calling it a “local” disease according to where that tumor was found. But the tumor is only one symptom of a whole-body, mind, and soul degeneration. The tumor is only a messenger. The message it announces is that the whole person is extremely ill, not just in that one specific area. In my opinion and most Alternative Healers, Cancer is NEVER a “localized disease.” When health is rebuilt, the body will have no more use for a tumor, and the immune and healing systems will destroy it, sometimes in a most dramatic manner. But Cancer is not considered in light of a person’s illness by mainstream medicine. It is looked upon as a tumor or an abnormally high white-blood cell count, an enemy that has to be mechanically cut out, destroyed with toxic drugs, or zapped with dangerous, carcinogenic radiation! But Cancer can only happen when an individual’s total health has deteriorated. We are not robots with a tumor. Take it out and we are robots without a tumor? We are not robots; we are desperately ill people. The tumor is only one important clue, a symptom, for our extremely deteriorated health. It is a messenger bringing to us this very urgent warning: “You can’t keep destroying this body or you will lose it
WHY DO WE GET CANCER?
Why does a person get Cancer? The cells are only a reflection of our Life Condition. WE ARE OUR CELLS. Our cells become chaotic and out-of-control when our lives are chaotic and out-of-control. If you are working with carcinogenic materials, the Will to Live must be strong enough for you to find other materials to work with, or another job that does not endanger your life. If you live around nuclear radiation, the Will to Live must motivate you to move. If you are in emotional turmoil, the Will to Live will help you give up or turn around the relationship that is making you miserable. If you have experienced a major emotional loss in your life, the Will to Live will guide you to seek therapy or counseling to help you through your grief. If you have given up your dreams in order to sacrifice your life to others, it’s time to begin a new life, one directed toward fulfilling your life-long ambitions. If you have gotten out-of-shape and overweight, the Will to Live will help you to choose organic fruits, vegetables and whole grains, beans, fish, nuts and seeds for your meals. It will further induce you to join a gym or incorporate one into your home, start a walking program with neighbors or on your own, and get into marvelous shape.
EXPERIMENTS TO INJECT CANCER CELLS INTO A HEALTHY PERSON COMPLETELY FAIL
When health is restored, Cancer will NATURALLY disappear. Cancer cells abhor and will die in a happy, clean, oxygenated, vitamin enriched environment. They thrive in a sluggish, fat-and sugar filled, alcohol and tobacco laden, drug-fi lled, overweight, toxic, depressed, distressed and frustrated body/mind condition.
As an example of this, it was shown by Nobel Prize winner Otto Warburg that normal cells deprived of Oxygen could become Cancer cells. Cancer cells multiply by fermentation using glucose (sugar), while healthy cells use Oxygen. Simply put, eating lots of fats and sweets and sitting around a lot encourages Cancer, while doing plenty of exercise and going off sugar, meat, and dairy products, discourages it. When people worked on a farm, doing hard, physical labor, and ate fresh fruits and vegetables without a lot of chemical pesticides, Cancer rates were very low.
Is it a surprise then that anorexic women have a low Breast Cancer rate? While I am not recommending starvation, calorie restriction and keeping slender has proven Cancer prevention powers.
Here is another Classic Maxim: HAPPY PEOPLE DON’T GET CANCER.
When I lecture on Cancer, I ask, “Does the Doctor upon finding a tumor in your body ask, ‘Are you happy?’ ”
This always gets a laugh. The Doctor most likely will say the same exact thing my Doctor said to me, only three little words, “See a surgeon!” He is not concerned with your emotional state or your stress level, or any of your lifestyle problems. He will not suggest a career change, a divorce, group therapy, or even exercise or weight loss. He will not ask you how you are sleeping or if you are sleeping.
He will, most likely, strongly urge mechanical procedures: cutting the tumor out, burning with radiation, and poisoning you with Chemotherapy drugs. In contrast, in other older and wiser cultures such as India and China, the whole person is considered, not just the symptoms of disease. The ancients believed that dream interpretation should be included in Cancer treatment. What is the disease trying to tell you about your life?
ROSEMARY CLOONEY’S CANCER
In the Los Angeles Times it was reported that “Rosemary Clooney’s publicist has confirmed that the seventy-four year old singer’s Cancer has returned. She was said to be in serious condition, undergoing treatment at home. Doctors at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic removed the upper lobe of Clooney’s left lung in January (reported in the June 28, 2002 issue).“The surgery was considered successful.”
“We got it all.” Isn’t that what they say? However, the next day she died of Cancer. Why is surgery considered a treatment for a disease? What illness can be cut out of the body?
That wonderful songbird I loved to listen to as a teenager— Rosemary Clooney. Let’s look at her life. Obituaries can teach us a lot about Cancer. The seeds of Cancer may actually start an unhappy childhood that many creative people have experienced. Rosemary’s parents separated frequently. Her father was a heavy drinker and rarely around. Clooney and her siblings were farmed out to various relatives.
We see that she grew up surrounded by the insecurity of emotional turmoil and not knowing with whom or where she would live next. This may have affected her Will to Live. However, like many who shine in life as bright as stars, she compensated for this miserable childhood with her voice and singing talents. She used her vocal talents as a form of therapy
However, she repeated this pattern of emotionally disruptive family relationships when she married Jose Ferrar, had fi ve children with him, and then divorced him. That same year she remarried him. Then six years later she divorced him again. He was continually unfaithful to her.
When her friend Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, she was staying at the hotel. During a subsequent engagement in Reno, she broke down, walked off the stage and took a dangerous drive. On a two-lane mountain highway, she drove on the wrong side of the road, playing a form of Russian roulette with oncoming cars and saying, “That’s one for you God,” as she barely missed hitting them.
Cells cannot function in a healthy, normal fashion when their environment is emotional chaos, and the brain in sending signals that indicate a “death wish.” They will mirror this turmoil. Our cells are us. We are our cells.
DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?
Whenever someone calls me or approaches me about Cancer, the fi rst thing I ask them is, “Do you want to live?” If there is ambivalence in their hesitation, I know their Will to Live is not strong.
This question is not self-evident. It is extremely pertinent because even though they called me, an unconscious wish to die may have been present for some time, perhaps years.
The second question I ask is, “Have you had a major stress in the last year-and-a-half to two years or more?” Or I might even be so bold as to add, “When do you think your Cancer started?” Over the fourteen years that I have asked this question, I have never failed to get a swift reply
John, an entertainment writer, walked into the art gallery where I was viewing paintings with a well-bandaged hand. When I asked him what happened, he told me he had just undergone an operation for Skin Cancer. They had taken off quite a large section of skin. “What happened to you two years ago?” I asked. I had never met John in my life yet I knew he would have an answer.
“My Dad died,” he said without a moment’s hesitation.
I explained to him how the white blood cells that patrol the body looking for Cancer cells to destroy actually stop moving when a person is deeply depressed. This can be seen under a microscope. Without this patrol, the Cancer cells we all carry in our body, which are usually caught by the white blood cells and destroyed, have free reign to multiply unchecked.
I also talked to him about his diet and exercise habits. He said he liked to eat pastries and didn’t exercise. When I told him that Cancer cells replicate by fermentation using glucose (sugar) instead of oxygen that the normal cells use that exercise would supply, he began to understand his Cancer.
Would he give up eating pastries regularly? Would he incorporate an exercise program? Perhaps this new knowledge will help him to understand his Skin Cancer—how his own behavior contributed to it. Cutting out the Cancer might work temporarily. However, no permanent “cure” will happen until he changes his habits and his body begins the healing process. He has to discover the cause. Without this investigation and fundamental life-change, odds are the Cancer may grow back.
YOU DETERMINE YOUR HEALTH
When you review your life and begin to understand how you have participated in your deteriorating health, it is easier to reclaim it. And it can be reclaimed, but not usually without vigorous effort or vigilant change. Your health can be rebuilt. If you are willing to do the work, incorporating new, healthy habits and taking a hard look at the direction of your life, you will see the results. When I was diagnosed with Breast and Uterine Cancer, I made the determination that I was willing to do anything in order to reclaim my health!
You can return to full health. But a diet, exercise, mental and spiritual program will only help if the Will to Live is strong.
Here is another noteworthy obituary. The headline is “Silas Trim Bissell, Age sixty; Spent Years as a Fugitive After Bombing Attempt.” He died of Brain Cancer.
Silas inherited a carpet-cleaning fortune but chose to live a life of destruction at war with his environment. He was an award-winning poet, and a tenure-track professor who gave up his teaching job and began a life as a Radical with his wife. The “Weatherman” was a group he joined to protest the Viet Nam War. He and his wife placed a paper bag containing a homemade bomb on the steps of the ROTC building at the University of Washington. The explosive failed to go off. However, the marriage bombed! After the divorce, Silas’ wife was apprehended and spent three years in jail.
Alone and on the run, Bissell was desperately unhappy. He moved anonymously from city to city, walking for miles every day because “I did not know what to do with myself.”
Finally he moved to Eugene, Oregon where he managed to build a new life as a Nurse’s aid and went back to school to earn physical therapy. However, the FBI caught up with him after seventeen years and arrested him on evidence from one of his friends who betrayed him. Silas served seventeen months in jail. He was diagnosed with Brain Cancer four years after his release. How did his lifestyle, his everyday War with his environment, contribute to his disease?
Cells cannot exist peacefully within our body when we are constantly at war with our surroundings. They are only a reflection of ourselves. They are mirrors of how we treat ourselves and others. When we are in a constant state of turmoil, our cells will be chaotic, leading to Disease.
ANOTHER LIFE CUT SHORT
Here is another life cut short: Daniel Case III, age forty-four, who fueled the Wall Street Internet boom. A photo shows a very handsome, robust, extremely vigorous looking man, who spent more than twenty years putting his heart into the building up, financing and investing of computer companies. Case became one of the most influential bankers during the bull market decade in the nineties. He was an important part of the youth-driven Internet boom. But his efforts and company were taken over by Chase in 1999, when many of these companies began to bottom out and fail. Although Chase made him the head of this division, two years later, he stepped down from his day-to-day responsibilities after he was diagnosed with Brain Cancer
Was the distress of losing his battle to maintain the company he had put his heart and soul into building up over two decades, a major factor in his losing his health?
LOOK FOR CAUSES OF CANCER IN YOUR LIFE
I believe in looking for causes for Cancer and clues from these obituaries and the interviews I have done over the past fifteen years with people with Cancer. They always point to distress as one of the major factors.
A group of people with Cancer ranging from problem mammograms to stage four Cancer met in my studio every Wednesday evening. It was surprising to me that the worst case, the stage four Cancer that Orlan had with a survival expectation of only three months with extensive surgery, turned out to be a long-term, fourteen year, so far and still working, survival story with NO surgery. Five of her close relatives had died within two years including her Mother whom she was taking care of. She subsequently developed Breast, Colon, and Lung Cancer. Her Doctors advised her to remove a breast, part of her colon and one of her lungs. She would have to carry a Colostomy bag. She then could live for three more months! Her quality of life, during that short period, would be close to zero.
She said “No thank you”, went to the bookstore and discovered my book on self-healing.
With no surgery, but with a strong Will to Live, Orlan not only took responsibility for her own health, she helped everyone in the group. She not only followed my MOTEP program, but also read everything she could about what she could do for herself Alternatively. Her strong Will to Live was reflected in her voice that reverberated with determination. Her force of will helped her to change her diet. She had relied on fast foods such as French fries and Cokes. Changing to vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, adding exercise, participating in our group, helping others, communicating Her feelings, and doing things she always wanted to do, such as travel, but had put off because of her self-sacrifi ce in caring for her sick Mother, has paid off in astounding longevity. Her Doctors are stunned! Without any Medical treatment other than diagnosis, this Stage IV Cancer “victim” is alive and working!
THE WILL TO LIVE WILL HELP YOU TO SURVIVE
The Will to Live involves tapping our inner strength. It means finding and appreciating the gift of life we have been given. It needs reasons to live. It needs appreciation for the wonderful things we have in our life. It means having hope that tomorrow will bring us what we want and need. It requires us to visualize a happy life, giving us the rich rewards and pleasures that are there for the taking if only we have the courage to pluck them. It requires that we get back up from our failures and defeats, and try again in a new or modified direction. It means tackling obstacles, emotional difficulties, failed relationships and financial defeats, with new ideas, new energy, new relationships or renewing old ones on a new path of love. It means going back home after the funeral of a loved one with enriched memories instead of only feelings of loss and futility. It means finding new materials to work with or moving to a healthier environment. It means expressing your feelings, standing up for yourself, expressing your needs and wants, and especially, finding the ability to get angry when necessary. It means accepting responsibility, opening up, moving on, finding new avenues for your talents, maturing and growing. It means finding hope for the future and finding the motivation to live it. This all takes tremendous courage.
In England in 1972, Researcher Steven Greer and his colleagues investigated characteristics of Cancer patients and how they accepted their diagnosis compared with their outcomes. He grouped people into four categories: .
Fighting Spirit: These people accepted their diagnosis but saw a challenge that they would bring optimism to get them through it. They sought out information and began to actively get involved in treatment decisions. They saw a problem that would be solved and took up the challenge. Natural fighters, they were highly motivated and immediately got involved in every way they could.
Denial: These people refused to accept their diagnosis or minimized its threat. They didn’t want to talk or even think about their disease. Yet they were positive and not unaware; they simply didn’t wallow in self-pity and knew they would get through whatever faced them.
Stoic acceptance: These patients accepted their diagnosis, but didn’t want to know any more about their disease. They were resigned to whatever fate handed them. They either didn’t believe there was anything they could do for themselves or they refused to do anything to help themselves. They were used to bad news and greeted it with silence and a belief in endurance. They didn’t complain or ask questions, but stoically accepted their fate.
Helplessness, hopelessness: These people were overwhelmed by their diagnosis. Their lives were disrupted and they were anxious and fearful. They were exhausted. Worried and panicked, they thought in circles. They felt they could control nothing in their lives including their actions and needs. They took on the role of helpless, hopeless victim.
Greer followed these groups of people for fifteen years. Those who were able to regain their health and remain recurrence-free were significantly more in the fighting spirit or denial groups. These people fared much better than those with either the stoic acceptance or the helplessness/ hopelessness attitude. After fifteen years, forty-five percent of the fighters and deniers were alive compared to seventeen percent of more negative, “give-in” or “endure misery” attitudes.
PASSIVE PATIENTS DO THE WORST
Here is a Classic Maxim in the Medical literature: PASSIVE PATIENTS FARE THE WORST.
Bolster the Will to Live through your own decisions and you immediately activate your immune and healing systems that will hear the message loud and clear. Now is the time to take charge!
Now take a clean sheet of paper and a pen and answer these questions as honestly as you can:
Do you want to live? Now write down ten reasons you want to continue your life. Start with the phrase, “I’m lucky I have…” and fi ll in each blank.
Are you willing to do anything, change your life in any way, in order to get well and/or stay well? List any self-destructive habits you might have such as smoking, drinking, drug addiction, junk food diet, overeating, overweight, high animal fat diet, sugar addiction, repressing your anger, continual confl icts with others, being selfi sh, being rude, harboring resentment, holding grudges, being stuck in some areas of your life, not living your purpose in life, etc.
What image would you draw to sum up your current life-condition? For instance, if you are a fi ghter, by nature, you could draw a lion. Have some fun with this one. •
If you have been grieving over lost relationships or lost love ones, write ways you can taper off the grieving process and get on with your life. How can you regain your happiness, perhaps by increasing your social activity, taking a trip, making new friends, helping others?
If you have been diagnosed with Cancer, it is time to heal. If you took the time to answer this questionnaire, you already have taken the first step back to health.
C H A P T E R 2
Overcoming the Causes of Cancer
IN HIS BOOK Speak from the Heart, Steve Adubato Ph.D. quotes Dr. Elisa Santora, an oncology surgeon and founder and owner of The Breast Care Treatment Center in Livingston, New Jersey. Santora says, “I have spent eighteen years at the bedside of people newly diagnosed with Cancer, being treated, and dying, and they taught me that what they wanted was inner peace. The ‘cure’ was not the issue—it’s the whole person that wants to be healed.”
To me, “cure” is a fund-raising, fantasy word. No cure exists for the common cold, yet we can get well. Few people die of the common cold, because after a few days of rest and drinking a lot of liquids, the body successfully fights it off. Although it takes longer and involves more effort, this should be the same, I believe, for Cancer. We may spend billions trying to find an elusive Cure for Cancer, while what we really are looking for is ways to get well again, to support our body in its own heroic efforts to heal our disease. The magic bullet we are looking for resides within ourselves.
A new paradigm for Cancer needs to evolve. Destruction of Cancer cells instituted in a war-like, toxic and mutilating fashion while the elusive “cure” is searched for in the aboratory by a scientist in a white coat looking into a microscope, needs to be replaced by learning the causes of Cancer and how to overcome them, heal the body, and continue building health in a natural, nurturing way.
KNOWN CAUSES OF CANCER
So let’s go over some of the causes of Cancer that we have pinpointed to date:
Smoking: The World Health Organization’s survey links deaths in the industrialized countries to cigarette smoking at a rate of l.8 million per year. According to the American Cancer Society, tobacco is the single largest preventable cause of Cancer. Tobacco smoke is a much deadlier carcinogen and triggers a broader variety of Cancers than researchers had previously believed according to the most comprehensive study of smoking ever undertaken. The new study firmly links smoking to stomach, liver, cervical, and kidney Cancer as well to myeloid leukemia.
A study of Breast Cancer and how it increases with number of years of smoking was reported in the August 9, 2002 issue of the British Medical Journal. According to researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, women who smoked forty years or longer increased their risk of Breast Cancer by sixty percent compared to women who never smoked. If they used twenty cigarettes or more a day, the risk increased eighty-three percent.
A United Nations team examined more than three thousand studies involving millions of smokers. (Reported in L.A Times, June 20, 2002.) Smoking destroys the self-cleaning mechanisms of the lungs, paralyzing the small cilia that clean them. This paralysis is the major cause of Lung Cancer. Cigarettes contain one hundred fifty known carcinogens including tar. Carbon monoxide produced in cigarette smoke robs the cells of oxygen. As we have already discussed, Cancer cells thrive in an oxygen-deprived environment.
The Medical System sees Lung Cancer as incurable, using surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy to sometimes postpone death for six months to a year while destroying the quality of life for the patient. Yet Orlan, my star student, has lived on for over fourteen years, despite her Lung, Colon, and Breast Cancer. Still Lung Cancer is one of the hardest to fight. I hope this and other information will help you give up this destructive habit if you smoke.
Use of Alcohol and Drugs: Alcohol is positively associated with a Cancer of the skin called Melanoma, considered a deadly Cancer. For Breast Cancer, the association was highest with women who drank one glass of beer daily, and lowest for women who drank one glass of wine daily. In a study of 90,000 nurses, excess risks often were apparent in low levels of consumption— three to nine glasses a week. ("Cancer Research" April 1, 1992). In African-American women, one alcoholic drink per week was associated with a 2.7% increased risk of death.
Drugs suppress the immune system. The body is well equipped to deal with disease and infection without added chemicals. We need a strong immune system to fi ght off Cancer. Why take chances?
Excess Fats in the Diet: High-fat diets, especially saturated fats from meat and dairy products, promote the growth of mammary tumors in laboratory animals. An ancient Indian seven-volume medical reference, some four thousand years old, lists the cause of Cancer as “overeating dairy foods.” Countries with low-fat diets such as Japan, Singapore, and Romania have the lowest Cancer rates. Japan leads with one-eighth the Breast Cancer rate when the Oriental diet is consumed. Soy is substituted for dairy products in Oriental cultures. Countries with the highest fat diets have the biggest Cancer rate: the U.S., Great Britain, and the Netherlands.
Overweight (even the usual five pounds) The Cable News Network reports in 2002 that the American Institute of Cancer Research Study sought to see how much Americans knew about this link. Although most people knew about overweight and its connection to heart disease and diabetes, only 25% knew about the Cancer risk. “Gaining half a pound per year or five pounds
1 “Cancer Causes and Control” July 15, 2002 Overcoming the Causes of Cancer x 37 per decade can contribute to Cancer risk,” said Dr. George Bray, professor of medicine at Louisiana State University Medical Center. Sixty-one percent of Americans are either overweight or obese, according to 2002 reports from the Center for Disease Control and prevention. Risks for postmenopausal Breast Cancer, Colon Cancer, Prostate, Esophageal, Endometrial and Kidney Cancer increase among non-smoking, overweight and obese adults according to this report. “It’s gaining weight over a long period of time that causes health problems,” Bray said.
Refined white flour, sugar, and their products: Consuming empty calories in foods that have been stripped of all nutritional value can lead to nutritional deficiencies. Vitamin deficiencies have been linked to various Cancers such as Beta- carotene in Breast Cancer. Other vitamins especially important which are linked to Cancer by important scientists such as Linus Pauling and Ernest Krebs include: Vitamin A in the form of Beta-Carotene, The B Vitamins, especially Vitamin B-17, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Vitamin E. These vitamins, available in vegetables, fruits, flaxseed and olive oil, and the seeds and kernels of various fruits such as apricots and apples, are stripped in processed foods or thrown or bred out as in seedless varieties of fruits. Eating whole, organic foods has been associated with Cancer healing. Adding seeds and nuts to our dishes will increase our arsenal of Cancer preventing vitamins.
Caffeine (chocolate, coffee, cola): Caffeine has been found by researchers at Occidental College to damage the repair mechanisms of the DNA. It also damages the immune system, according to the late nutritionist, John Finnegan. When I called the Breast Center in Van Nuys, California, the one substance they could point to as damaging to the breasts, causing cysts and influencing Breast Cancer, was caffeine.
Birth Control Pills: Hormonal pills alter the delicate balance of the endocrine system. In order to create the headline, “Study Debunks Added Cancer Risk with the Pill,” (Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2002), the journalist had to save the last paragraphs for the most important information. “The sole exception to the findings (young women who don’t smoke showed no increased risks) was women between the ages of 45-64. These women who are taking the pill to alleviate symptoms of menopause, or ‘reduce their risk’ of Ovarian, and Endometrial Cancer, and benign Breast disease, showed an increased risk of Breast Cancer.” In other words, birth control pills seemingly did not affect the Breast Cancer risk of younger woman, most who do not get Breast Cancer, but did affect the woman most at risk (ages 45-64), which is the general age when Breast Cancer strikes.
My earlier research indicated a fourfold increase in Breast Cancer in young women due to birth-control pills according to Pike, et al. 1981-
83.2 Hormone related Cancers account for more than forty percent of all newly diagnosed female Cancers in the United States according to Malcolm C. Pike, noted researcher in the field.
Estrogen Replacement and Hormone- Replacement Therapy: Back in 1991, The Los Angeles Times, April 17, reported that estrogen replacement therapy caused nearly five thousand cases of Breast Cancer per year. In July 2002, it reported an NIH study of sixteen thousand women was halted when it found a whopping 80 percent increase in Ovarian Cancer for women using it for ten years, and 220 percent in women using HRT for twenty years. The Women’s Health Initiative study was halted when it found an increased risk of Breast Cancer, heart attacks, blood clots in legs and lungs, and strokes. All these “side effects” can be fatal. The “gold standard” was a pill derived from pregnant mare’s urine, called Premarin. Horses are kept in stalls continually pregnant to derive this “estrogen.” The stalls are so small they cannot lie down or move around. It is a cruelty to horses and an insult to women that they need as much estrogen ( Pike, M.C; Chilvers, C. “Oral Contraceptives and Breast Cancer: the Current Controversy” Journal of the Royal Society of Health, 1985:) as a pregnant horse!
Menopausal women are producing less estrogen for a reason; they no longer need it to reproduce. The ovaries still produce some estrogen after menopause, so we are never completely deprived unless they have been surgically removed. You wouldn’t drink horse urine, why take it in a pill? Phytoestrogens are called “bio-available” because the body can actually use them, and include soy, cucumbers, black cohosh, ginseng, and dong quai, and phytosterols as in string beans and sweet potatoes. These foods and herbs plus my exercise program, got me through menopause without one hot fl ash or night sweat. Using natural plants that the body can assimilate protects us, while synthetic drugs from chemicals or animal waste products that toxify and confuse the body can make us ill.
DES: This synthetic estrogenic hormone (Diestillbestrol) was invented in 1938. Tested in mice, it was found to cause Breast Cancer. Nevertheless, like many drugs actually known to be hazardous to health, it was sent out to the marketplace where it caused considerable and terrible damage. Doctors prescribed the drug to pregnant women to be used as a “preventative” for possible miscarriage. These women sometimes developed Breast Cancer and their yet unborn daughters might ater develop Vaginal Cancer as well as being born with deformed genital organs.
Despite the horrific effects of this synthetic hormone, a further use for it was found to fatten up livestock and chickens and is still used today for this purpose. That is why it is not safe to eat non-organic, hormone-treated meat in the United States. Twenty-one nations currently have a ban on the use of this chemical in food and fifteen countries refuse to import American meat because of it. (Paavlo Airola, Cancer the Total Approach).
Interestingly, Tamoxifen, a drug prescribed to women to attempt to prevent Breast Cancer and to prevent recurrence in Breast Cancer patients, is a synthetic hormone derived from DES. Side effects of this drug are Endometrial Cancer, Uterine Cancer, Liver Cancer, and blood clots to the lungs that can be fatal. Some studies have shown damage to the eyesight as well. The National Toxicology Program found both conjugated estrogens (Premarin) and Tamoxifen to be known human carcinogens in a report they compiled in 2000. They found these hormonal chemicals caused Endometrial Cancer as well as other Cancers.
Chemicals, and additives in the food supply: Sales of chemicals in the U.S. take precedent over health. The FDA allows twenty-eight hundred chemicals to be used on food in their ingredients, and ten thousand more in their processing. Many of these are known to be carcinogenic.