Can Cancer be prevented? Can it be reversed? Apparently so.
Cancer has probably touched you directly. Either you have lost a friend or loved one to this menace, or perhaps your doctor has said those dreaded words to you: “You have cancer.” Fortunately, a new way of thinking about cancer offers hope.
As the leading cause of death in Canada, cancer statistics are startling. The Canadian Cancer Society says 40 percent of Canadian women and 45 percent of men will develop cancer during their lifetimes, and an estimated one out of every four Canadians is expected to die from cancer.
Most of us live in fear of cancer, as if it were a thug lurking in a dark alley ready to pounce on whatever hapless victim passes by. There’s a new book that says it doesn’t have to be this way—Never Fear Cancer Again. Its author, Raymond Francis, has been described as “one of the few scientists who has achieved a breakthrough understanding of health and disease.” He paints a very different picture of how and why cancer strikes, taking the mystery out of cancer and empowering the reader to prevent and reverse this dread disease.
According to the author, the increasing incidence of cancer in industrialized nations is a direct, predictable result of lifestyle choices. The standard Western diet of processed foods loaded with sugar, salt, wheat, milk products and processed oils, is a cancer-promoting diet. Psychological stresses, prescription drugs, x-rays, vaccinations, antibiotics, pesticides, and lack of sleep and physical activity, all conspire to increase the odds of getting cancer.
“Almost all of these factors are under your control,” Francis says, “so with the right knowledge, you can prevent or reverse cancer.”
Francis, a scientist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, nearly died 27 years ago from liver failure at the height of an international consulting career. He brought himself back to health using his knowledge of biochemistry. Since then, he has been spreading the message that health is a choice, and he has taught tens of thousands how to choose it. Now 75 and in perfect health, he takes no drugs, has boundless energy, a sharp mind, no aches or pains, and has had only one cold in the last 25 years.
The book’s breakthrough idea is to look at cancer in a new way—as a biological process that can be turned on or off, not as a tumor.
“Conventional medicine views cancer as a tumor,” Francis says, “and they ask how it can be killed or removed. But cancer isn't something that can be cut, poisoned or burned out of the body. It is a biological process that needs to be shut down. If you remove the tumor but do not address the conditions that allowed the cancer to grow, the cancer process will continue and new tumors will form.”
On the other hand, he says, if you remove the conditions that allow cancer to thrive, the tumors will shrink and then disappear entirely on their own.
The book outlines a revolutionary approach that recognizes tumors as side effects of a systemic, biological process that can be switched on or off. Many foods, toxins, and behaviors are identified that tend to switch this process on. Other foods, supplements, and lifestyle choices are identified that help to switch the cancer process off.
Specific recommendations in the book Never Fear Cancer Again include:
· Foods to avoid, others to include more of in the diet
· Nutritional supplements that shut down cancer processes and promote health
· Ways to reduce exposure to toxins, eliminate toxins stored in the body, and support the body’s natural detoxifying processes
· Managing stress
· Controlling inflammation
· Alkalizing the body
A unique feature of the book is what Francis calls the Beyond Health Model, originally introduced in his first book, Never Be Sick Again, published in 2002.
“Many people who consider themselves healthy,” Francis says, “get several colds a year, suffer from allergies, regularly use various over-the-counter medications, and may even take one or more prescription drugs for chronic conditions like high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol levels. While this concept of health may be common and therefore considered normal, it is not true health. To get beyond health as we know it, a new understanding of health and disease is needed. If every cell in your body is operating as it was designed, you cannot possibly be sick.”
Francis says that regardless of the symptoms that are present, there is only one disease. Cellular malfunction is the one disease, which causes all symptoms. There are only two causes of cellular malfunction: deficiency and toxicity. Therefore, there are only two causes of disease. Either cells are getting too little of what they need or too much of something they don’t need. The one treatment for any disease is restoring cells to normal function, which eliminates all symptoms.
The Beyond Health Model, summed up in the phrase, “One Disease - Two Causes - Six Pathways,” identifies six pathways to health or disease that are largely under our control. These are Nutrition, Toxins, Mental, Physical, Genetic, and Medical.
“Many people think that our genes are in charge, and there’s nothing we can do about them,” Francis says. “The field of epigenetics has proved this thinking wrong. Genes are like software programs that do whatever we tell them to do, and the way we talk to our genes is through the environment we create in our bodies based on our thoughts and lifestyle choices.”
The chapter on the medical pathway is particularly disturbing. Conventional medicine’s arsenal of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation are all focused on eradicating tumors, at a tremendous cost to the body’s overall health. None of these shut down the cancer process, so the process continues and the patient still has cancer. Despite more optimistic pronouncements from the cancer industry, the book explains that true survival rates have not improved since the 1950s. Chemotherapy has a dismal two percent success rate. Although the statistics Francis cites are for the United States, Canadian cancer incidence and survival rates are not fundamentally different.
“It is well known that cancer survival is directly dependent on the strength of your immune defenses,” Francis says. “A fully functional immune system is critical to preventing and reversing cancer. Unfortunately, conventional treatments actually weaken the immune system, and drastically so.”
Francis sums up the book this way: “The human body is a truly magnificent self-regulating, self-repairing, and self-healing machine. It knows how to get well and stay well—if only we would provide the support it needs. Rather than attacking symptoms, we must provide assistance to the body by supplying cells with all the nutrients they need and keeping them free of toxins that can interfere with their proper functions. Tearing into its flesh, bombarding it with radiation, and assaulting it with poisons are not the kinds of assistance the body is looking for!”
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Never Fear Cancer Again: How to Prevent and Reverse Cancer, by Raymond Francis.
Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL.
Raymond Francis, M.Sc., is an internationally recognized leader in the field of optimal health maintenance. He is president of Beyond Health International and chairman of The Project to End Disease. www.beyondhealth.com
As read in Silver and Gold magazine, 2012
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