 |
David Servan-Schreiber,
Author of "Anti Cancer: A New
Way of Life" |
The problem with chemotherapy is that most people don't have the right diet to go along with the treatment. Most commonly it is the
Western diet that's the problem. A neurologist and a victim of a brain tumor himself, David Servan-Schreiber complies with this statement and says: "Those who eat low-sugar Asian diets tend to have five to ten times fewer hormonally driven cancers than those with diets high in sugar and refined foods, as is typical in most industrial nations" (63). Our usual diets that consist of a plenty of sugar, a ton of high fructose corn syrup, and a plethora of processed foods all contribute to the spread of cancer. What is the main ingredient in all these foods that make them so harmful? It's stated that "[t]oday we know that peaks of insulin and the secretion of IGF directly stimulate not only the growth of cancer cells, but also their capacity to invade neighboring tissue" (Servan-Schreiber, 61). Each of these ingredients contains a high level of IGFs, or
insulin-like growth factors, which enhances the growth of cancer cells. IGFs are produced alongside insulin, which spreads when people feed on sugar. The result of the process is the inflammation of body tissue and cells. This applies to any kind of cells, especially malignant cancer cells. How can the chemo successfully get rid of all those malignant cancer cells when they keep growing in numbers and continue to spread? It can't, and it will only be decreasing the number of cells defending the body and diminish the patient's strength. Not only does sugar fuel IGFs, but so does it's destructive counterpart called high fructose corn syrup. "This concentrate is to sugar a little like what opium is to poppies. Removed from its natural matrix (there is fructose in all fruits) and mixed with glucose, it can no longer be handled by the insulin our bodies produce, at least not with collateral damage. It then becomes toxic" (Servan-Schreiber, 62). These ingredients which are so prevalent in Western foods are the advocates to spreading all kinds of cancer. To add chemotherapy to that mixture is disastrous, and can only do more harm than help.
Normally, chemotherapy stands as the one and only choice of cancer patients and natural methods are considered ineffective or not as safe. However, chemotherapy is not natural for the body, so it hesitantly absorbs the medicine and produces undesirable side effects. To us, a side effect sounds like mere problem that needs no real attention. However, when the number of them keeps growing, then it becomes a severe problem. Even though the study of
oncology continues to expand and evolve, it's hard to predetermine what challenges each individual patient faces. "In spite of the best efforts of well-trained conventional oncologists, over one-half million Americans die of cancer each year" (Gordon, xviii). For example, here's Tom; a healthy, however slightly older individual. All the sudden, a little checkup turned into a recommendation for a colonoscopy, which then revealed colorectal cancer. What will he do now? What will his family say? What will the future hold? So Tom chose to use the conventional methods of healing. It seemed simple enough. However for Tom, "[c]hemotherapy was another story; Tom's experience began badly. He suffered from nausea,vomiting, and a terrible headache after the first treatment and both before and after the second treatment...[h]e was rapidly losing weight, his color was bad, and he kept imagining his odds getting worse" (Gordon, 52). Tom obviously isn't the only one who feels this way. Another patient named Sarah, a busy mom, tried to find ways around the conventional methods of chemotherapy. In Sarah's eyes, "[t]he specialists worked above, enlightened by science and technology, focusing solely on eradicating cancer cells. Sarah was in a tunnel by herself, searching for ways to defend and protect and nurture herself, struggling to survive the cancer and the cancer treatment" (Gordon, 5). Both Tom and Sarah felt crushed by all the physical and emotional side effects that came along with a treatment said to prolong life. While chemo can be effective, it makes life that much more difficult and does more harm than help.
