I’ve had kids home the last couple of weeks almost every day for one reason or another so it’s taken me time to get this post out to you.

Before I get into the topic, since it’s the first day of Chanuka and every year people ask me for my recipe for doughnuts, I’m linking it here for you so you don’t need to search. It’s heartwarming to know that some of you have been making this recipe since I first posted my recipe here thirteen years ago!

****************

I’m going to continue to respond to questions asked about doing screenings for cancer. I’d like to start by addressing an underlying attitude towards screenings that you may not have considered.

The thought behind the need to do screenings, is that there are all of these scary things that can happen to us, to any of us, any time, randomly, and we need to take every precaution to catch them before they bring us down. Inherently, that leads you to think of yourself as a potential problem waiting to happen.

For me, thinking in this way would lead me to living in a perpetual state of low grade anxiety and fear, worrying that something could be wrong with me and running to get tested to reassure myself that I’m okay. Instead, I choose the baseline position that I’m a healthy person. This is not from a place of denial, but I actively choose to view myself as strong, healthy and capable; it’s empowering and psychologically healthy .

>> sometimes it is important to do preventive testing. My 40-year-old sister-in-law decided to go for a mammogram only because her close friend was diagnosed with breast cancer and it scared her. My SIL had no symptoms whatsoever and was healthy and energetic. Sadly, she was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Boruch Hashem after chemo and double mastectomy and oophorectomy, she is in remission, but had she not done that mammogram, things could have been very different. <<

I am so glad to hear that your sister-in-law is doing well, and I’m not questioning in any way if this was the right decision for her to make.

I’m going to share some thoughts for you to consider – I’m asking you to not reflexively respond but to let the points sit with you for a moment.

I’ll begin with briefly referencing a summary by the American Cancer Society of concerns with the effectiveness and accuracy of mammograms that include false negatives, false positives, overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

You can read the link, but I’ll sum it up more briefly here: One in eight breast cancers aren’t picked up by the mammogram, leading to a false negative. That means there are women who have done the testing who think they’re fine who actually have cancer.

Over a ten year period, half of women having mammograms will get a false positive – they will be told they have abnormal results when they don’t have any cancer whatsoever. That leads to further testing and treatment, as well as stress and anxiety.

Finding a cancer that wouldn’t cause problems is referred to as ‘overdiagnosis’. There are cancers that wouldn’t be found and wouldn’t grow or spread if there hadn’t been a screening for them; they will not become life-threatening. It is possible to be completely unaware of the presence of the cancer, and live a long and healthy life, untreated.

Treating cancers that wouldn’t cause any problems is called ‘overtreatment’. When a cancer is found, a doctor can’t know which will cause problems and which won’t, so he will advise treatment for all of them. That means that a lot of women will unnecessarily undergo cancer treatment.

And finally, just because they find a cancer when it’s small doesn’t mean it can be treated successfully.

Mammograms also expose women to radiation. While the phrasing that is consistently used for all sorts of medical procedure is ‘the benefits far outweigh any risks’, there are a number of reasons for a woman may question if this is a screening that is actually to her benefit to participate in.

If you’re interested, here’s an article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine: Mammography is dangerous and should be abandoned.

————————-

Let’s say that you do testing that shows you have cancer, and now you have to do something about it. Now what?

The standard of care is chemotherapy and radiation, and this is what doctors are obligated to recommend. It’s considered malpractice for them not to suggest that.

Chemotherapy is poison. The goal is for the chemotherapy to be more toxic to the cancer cells than the human receiving it, and kill the cancer cells before it kills the human. That’s how it works. It’s brutal, and the person who is ‘cured’ is one who can survive chemo. One day we’ll look back with horror on this barbaric treatment but currently this is our standard of care.

Another aspect of standard care is radiation therapy. According to the American Cancer Society, radiation therapy used to treat cancer is linked to the further development of cancer. So it’s a treatment that contributes in the long term to what it’s supposed to be eliminating in the short term.

Here’s an emotionally charged point to consider: When a person is diagnosed, treated for cancer and then dies, we make the presumption that it’s the cancer that killed them. We don’t question if the treatment contributed to their death, and if they would have lived longer and with less suffering without the chemo and radiation.

According to the genetic disease model, there’s not much to do in the way of prevention other than screening and preemptively removing body parts. People do what they feel they need to do to save their lives, and if this is the best option presented to them, then of course they’re going to do that.

Are the only ways to treat cancer with chemotherapy, radiation and the removal of affected body parts? Is there anything more effective and less toxic that can be done? Are there any preventative steps that can be taken?

Cancer researcher Dr. Thomas Seyfried has written extensively about cancer being a metabolic disease. This is counter to the prevailing view of cancer as a genetic disease. Metabolic therapies that lower blood glucose and elevate ketones will quickly reduce tumor growth, extend lifespan and in some cases cause complete remission.

Several years ago I was on a group hike with a bunch of women, and got to chatting with someone I hadn’t met before, who mentioned she doesn’t give her children sugar. Naturally, I asked her why. She told me as a lab researcher she’s seen what happens to cancer cells in a petri dish when they are given sugar- the cancer explodes. And she just can’t give that to her children to eat.

What fuels cancer cells? Glucose and glutamine. That’s sugar. Glucose immediately goes into blood stream and into the tumor cell. A tumor cell is one that has out of control division. The only way to shut down growth of these cells is to get rid of their fuel and transition the body to a fuel that the cancer cells can’t use to grow. Starve the cell and the cancer can’t continue to grow.

Unfortunately, cancer patients are generally told they can eat anything they want, and cancer wards tend to be filled with sugary foods. It’s interesting to consider the ethics of giving a patient chemo to kill the cancer cells, giving them no dietary guidance to reduce or eliminate sugar, and then following up their treatment with a hospital tray of sugary foods.

The highest risk factor for cancer are processed carbohydrates in your diet; the constant barrage of these foods is the highest risk factor for all of the most common diseases. Elevated blood sugar leads to systemic inflammation. Yet not only is that the standard diet, the dietary pyramid recommends high carbohydrate consumption as the foundation of a healthy diet.

Massive amounts of money have been spent on the ‘war on cancer’ but it doesn’t seem to me that it’s doing much good. Cancer rates are steadily rising – right now it’s predicted that one of every two people will develop cancer by the time he is 85. That’s downright scary, and if you believe it’s screening that will save your life, those statistics will probably send you running to do some testing to be assured you’re not one of those two people.

Though previous generations of my family had a high cancer rate and that would seemingly dictate that genetically I’m at high risk, I take a different approach. We live in a world of toxins and eating well won’t eliminate the poisons in our foods, air, and all the products that are part of our every day lives (for example, microplastics in just about everything). However, if I can change my diet and eliminate the highest risk factor, it makes sense to me to do that.

I’m not a passive victim waiting for cancer to strike me. There are things I can do to make myself less of a likely target, and I’d rather do them than participate in screenings and the follow-up treatments with all of the risks they entail.

Avivah