Building a Personal cancer-fighting programme tailored to you and your cancer
So you have cancer. What can you do to help yourself right now? We asked Chris Woollams, former Oxford University Biochemist and founder of CANCERactive, to give us just the key places to start, whether you are newly diagnosed, or the cancer has recurred, you just need some sort of treatment breakthrough, or simple guidance through the minefield of confusion found on the Internet!
And these were the core areas for him - and the basis of his Personal Prescriptions, where he helps people from all over the world build their own Personal cancer treatment programmes.
“People build a body conducive to cancer over 6-10 years. And, if they want to give themselves the best personal odds of survival, they need to build a body conducive to health. This is not rocket science. I liken it to having a bucket with holes in it. First step for anyone with a cancer – PLUG THE HOLES. Too many people rush off to find a Mexican or German Clinic for some ’alternative treatment’ like immunotherapy, hyperthermia, ozone therapy, or IPT at great expense, when they have not fixed the core fundamental issues and plugged the holes!", says Chris.
(All the references and research are on this, CANCERactive, website. And you can find more detail and links if you read ’the Ultimate Cancer Detox’ after reading this article! Click the link further down the page.)
1. Sort out your blood oxygen:
Cancers thrive if your oxygen levels are low. The start point without any doubt is that you need to do ’Light to Moderate exercise’ every day for about 45 - 60 minutes. What does that mean? You need to get out of breath. You need to get puffed. So a meander through the woods with the dog doesn’t cut it, nor does 30 minutes gardening.
A brisk ’speed walk’ would be good. It might look a bit silly, but you’ll be pumping those lungs, and that’s what gets oxygen into you.
You can also add a few green vegetable juices. Freshly ground flaxseed is a good addition.
You blood oxygen levels should be 98, 99 or 100 (out of 100). If you have lowered levels or you have a poor record with exercise consider finding the nearest Hyperbaric Oxygen centre to your home, (in the UK contact the Multiple Sclerosis Society - they use them) and look into having a few sessions. It improves the success of chemo- and radiotherapy, reduces side-effects, and is very healing after an operation. Two lady Professors in the USA did a meta-analysis of HBO, and concluded the same four benefits as I did. In the USA some oncologists even tell patients to go and use it.
Go To: Find out about a Personal Prescription from Chris Woollams
2. Fix your vitamin D levels:
The Rainbow Diet is a ’Lifestyle diet’. Exercise and vitamin D are important ingredients. Low plasma levels of vitamin D result in more chronic illness, especially cancer. And if your levels stay low when you have cancer, your survival will be reduced for sure. (82% of women with breast cancer have levels of 20 ng/ml on diagnosis and the NHS says the correct level should be 35-40 ng/ml). Boston Medical School are the experts and they believe levels should be above 75 ng/ml. They advise everybody with cancer to take 5,000IUs a day. It’s the equivalent of 4 hours on the beach. BUT. Three studies show chemotherapy damages your plasma vitamin D levels. So take a double dose while on chemo. Having said all that – nothing beats the real thing: Sunshine. Because it gives you nitric oxide for your heart and blood pressure and serotonin too to make you feel good.
3. Clean your liver:
Cancer patients regularly suffer from fatty livers as the organ struggle to cope with denaturing the toxins your cancer cells produce, or the toxins from your chemo. The fat build up can make gallstones common and worsen possible bile duct blockages. This causes fat levels to increase further in the liver and, in turn, in the lymph and blood, resulting in depressed immune response and, research has shown, more metastases and shorter survival times.
The last thing you want is that your liver - the largest organ in your body - becomes inefficient in the thousands of daily jobs it needs to perform.
Worse, a build up of fat also causes the pancreas to become fatty, as Professor Roy Taylor of Newcastle University has shown, and that starts to slow down. His diet to reverse the fatty liver and pancreas has been highly successful and involves vegetable juicing and eating only non-starchy vegetables. Of course you could just eat artichokes, take magnesium supplements and milk thistle, drink dandelion tea and avoid all alcohol and saturated fats, for a while like the French would with a ’crise de foie’. Epsom salts (one tablespoon in water, once a month, 45 minutes before retiring) also has its fans. Take about 45 minutes after having a salad covered with lots of olive oil, and then go to bed.
4. Heal your gut:
It is simply frightening how many patients have had prolonged spells on antibiotics in their life (women with breast cancer who had two years of antibiotics for acne in their teens; men with colorectal cancer who had recurrent tonsillitis). Then people go abroad to somewhere exotic and have a bad stomach for a few days. They forget about it (and assume the pathogen or parasite has gone). The American Human Microbiome Project was quite clear. Your gut gets ill first and then you do. And you can’t get better until your gut gets better. This is a major part of a healthy body and healthy mind. You must fix your gut microbiome – it controls 85 per cent of your immune system and immune memory, it defends you against yeasts and pathogens, it makes B vitamins, vitamin K, melatonin, glutathione, short chain esters that stop bad fats building up in your body, and others that control chronic inflammation. Fix it!
5. Combat Chronic Inflammation:
Lack of good gut bacteria, the presence of bad bacteria, the presence of environmental chemicals, too much stress, steroids and even big meals, can each and all cause chronic inflammation in the body. And cancer loves chronic inflammation – it is how it spreads. You have to calm your body. UCLA are the experts. Over the last 15 years they have been consistent. People who actively manage their stress, survive longer. And they talk of counselling, eating a colourful Mediterranean diet, taking fish oils, and practising yoga and meditation. There are supplements you can use too. My favourites are curcumin (with black pepper and olive oil), ashwagandha, boswelia, melatonin, green tea, and even a small aspirin. And foods like ginger and chicken soup are also good.
Stress Management is the most ignored element in cancer therapy. Start with a colourful Rainbow Diet Diet.
Go to: The Mediterranean Diet to beat cancer
And add stress management techniques into your exercise programme in point 1 - do yoga two or three times a week, dropping the speed walk those days. Find somewhere that will teach you to meditate properly.
"At last the definitive book on a diet to fight cancer"
Click here to find out more...
Go to: Exercise is a powerful anti-cancer drug
6. Understand you are not doomed:
The Science of Epigenetics holds that only incredibly rarely do people have a real mutation (correctly defined as a sequence change) inside their DNA. Of course, some people are born with BRCA1 or 2, but this is 7 per cent of all people, maximum. Epigenetics is concerned with message blockages. It is known that 6 things – poor diet, environmental toxins, stress, lack of commensal gut bacteria, lack of exercise and hormones like oestrogen can each and all cause metabolic changes in your blood and then around your DNA (epi=around). Histones build up. They are linked to the DNA by methyl bonds, which normally break and reform all day long. Expert scientists believe 90 per cent of cancers form this way – too much homocysteine in the blood, too many methyl bonds, too much histone blocking essential messages leaving your DNA and reaching the rest of your body. The good news. It’s not a mutation. It’s a blockage. It’s reversible. You are not doomed.
Go to: Your Ultimate Cancer Detox
You need to change your mind-set. You can survive longer; you can even beat this. But, you need to cut all the things (and people) from your life that are negative, frustrating, irritating, annoying, or, belittle you, steal your body energy, are debilitating etc. And live your life in a world where you enjoy what you do and are surrounded by positive people.
Forget the idiots who say ’YOU must be positive’. This word is only used by people who don’t understand cancer. You need to be THOROUGH in your programme. And then DETERMINED to stick to it. Positivity is for those around you.
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Of course there are other things you should do – like reducing blood sugar levels, losing weight, building an anti-oestrogen programme, the correct diet, core supplements, cutting environmental toxins and so on. And that’s why one size cannot fit all. Your cancer is personal to you. A study of 1470 DCIS breast cancer patients in America showed that no two were histologically the same. Your personal anti-cancer programme has to be specific to you”, adds Chris.
"This is why I believe a personal cancer treatment programme has to be tailored to the individual, their cancer, their personal lifestyle and so on. That’s what gets results.".
Go To: Ask about Personal Prescriptions with Chris Woollams