Avoiding cancer is one of the main motivations to be crunchy. Cancer pisses me off. I get all in a tizzy by the pushing of chemo-drugs as the only answer. I am furious that people with real answers about cancer are shut up by the medical community. It upsets me that there was this hype about what we call cancer might not even be cancer at all. You think? And, this guy. THIS GUY. This guy who decided to scam insurance companies by telling people they had cancer when they did not. THIS GUY is why you always get a second and third opinion.
It angers me, because, from what all I've learned about food and the
human body, I believe that we do this to ourselves. The way we alter
our food and the land, we do this to ourselves, and I believe that it's possible to fix it.
Let me tell you a little bit about the some of my crunchy thoughts on cancer:
1. I do believe that we create an environment for cancer to thrive by what we put into our bodies and what we surround our bodies with. From the chemicals in our beds, in our body products, and in our food, we bombard our bodies with radicals that negatively affect us. We are surrounded by dead things and we eat things that have no living quality and do not resemble food all of the time.
2. I believe that there is a life-giving quality to food that 99% of American food is missing. And, I believe that life-giving food holds a lot of the key towards preventing and curing cancer. Even in the organic world, this life-giving quality isn't always there. We need whole food, food that is alive (even if cooked), and food that nourishes us. This real food is often very hard to find.
3. I do not believe that chemotherapy and surgery are the most effective methods for dealing with cancer. The body has the amazing ability to heal itself if we give it the right tools to work with.
4. I do believe that doctors and companies make a lot of money from cancer treatment and research, so they would like to keep the system as it is.
5. I believe that once you actually have cancer, it can be cured with food. However, it takes a monumental effort for a person living the average American life to go from zero to cancer curing. This lady, Christina Pirello, is my hero and living testament to the power of food. She went from dead-in-a-few-months to cancer-free a year later. And there are many stories like this guy, who was told he had "incurable" cancer and went on to get a cancer-free bill of health after using food to cure it.
6. At this point, I think that some radical forms of veganism, such as macrobiotics, are necessary to treat cancer, but it is not the answer to prevent cancer. I do believe there are many vitamins in animal foods that we need.
The capitalistic nature of the world creates this environment where we
have to be so aware of everything going on around us. We have to watch
everything from our food, our make up, our sunscreen to our bug spray, our bubbles, and everything else we touch.
It's hard, and sometimes it hurts, because you can't think about
everything all of the time, and things slip through the cracks. I
sometimes get upset that I find something about a product I use all of
the time is bad and I have to find something else. Just today, we were
reading about how fake olive oil is just as profitable as the cocaine industry. We can't win them all. We just have to do it all over again tomorrow. This time, with feeling.
And, I hope that we can pass some of this happy natural living onto Lily without being
militant or pushy about it. With being a happy, healthy family. Giving her the best chance that we could possibly give her to have a happy and healthy life.
The big challenge is that when people say "cancer", it is like saying "bird"--it gives you some idea of what you're talking about, but certainly you can't have all cancers treated the same, just as there's a world of difference between the needs of a penguin, an ostrich, a vulture, and a goldfinch. People pushing any treatment as one-size-fits-all is a huge danger, which is why if I end up with the big C (a likelihood given family history, but something that is very easy to clear up among family members), I'll use the surgery that has worked for my family to take out the tumor (in the same way I'd get a splinter removed) and then heal up the area to prevent recurrence with alternative treatments. Some people do well with diet adjustments. Some people need surgery. Some people need chemo. Some people need reiki and Eastern treatments. And some people are going to die no matter what you do. But one thing is for certain... comparing the rates of cancer incidence and cancer deaths for the U.S., the first step to avoiding cancer that I'm taking is to get out of this area! :P
ReplyDeleteJulia, valid point. We all pick and choose what disease-reducing methods will work best for us. I cannot imagine how the families who were exposed to Agent Orange around Fort Detrick and got cancer feel. No matter what folks would have done, if you picked that area to live in, I don't think much else would have mattered. What do you do, then? How can you protect your family then? This is just my plan to hope that I don't get cancer. That the prospect of cancer affects many of my choices in life. I know that chemo was killing my grandfather, but he started to improve a lot after switching to a natural remedy, though he was too weak from the chemo to survive.
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