Not bad luck

A new study doing the virtual rounds of the world wide web wants us to believe that most cancers are caused by bad luck! I guess this is the easiest answer a doctor can provide a patient when he has nothing else to proffer. All patients want to know what caused their cancer and the doctors do not have any answer in spite of the gazillions spent on cancer research. So the medical fraternity must be thrilled and relieved at now having a study emanating from none other than John Hopkins giving them an answer that fits all, satisfies all and needs no further explanation. Come on if you have bad luck mutations then what can anyone day, bar God I guess! That makes the big C beyond any ones control and bad luck a scientific phenomenon. I wonder whose agendas are being met by such a study.

In an interesting rebuttal cancer survivor Chris Wark makes some interesting remarks. This study seems to suggest that if you have cancer, you drew the bad lot and lost the lottery. Simplistic? Not quite as if we were to accept this rather absurd view then changing your lifestyle and eating habits may not help; the only thing that will help is to find out as early as possible whether you are in the lucky lot or the unlucky one. And how do you do that? By early detection and more research. And whose pockets are filled: research and conventional and expensive investigations and treatment. Luck cannot be changed by eating broccoli or giving up sugar. Accepting this study would actually push you to eat, drink and be merry as if you are lucky nothing will happen to you, but if you are unlucky then why not live recklessly. This study, if it were to be believed, sweeps all other options away.

I have had cancer in my life since 1958 when I was just 6. My grandma died of liver cancer. Then four decades later it took my mom and pa away. At that time I knew nothing of alternative therapies and other options. In 1993 when I net to Paris a month after my father's demise and had to visit a doctor for some minor problem, I was asked my medical history and when the doctor realised that both my parents had cancer, it was suggested that I have a detection test every year. Mercifully for me, I never do anything without thinking and I decided I did not want to live a life of yearly remission. I would wait for my body to send me a signal and then decide. When I came back to India I met my Tibetan doctor and since have been taking Tibetan medicine.

I however also took the decision of finding out more about cancer and even though the Internet had not arrived in our lived I did find books and articles that talked of diets, and life style and alternative therapies. I made some radical lifestyle and dietary changes and am still going strong.

Two years ago Cancer came into my like in the worst way possible. My husband wad diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. But I was ready and bad luck was not one of the things on my check list. As the Internet has arrived in our lives, I spend days and nights looking for information and making informed choices to prepare my own protocol. I only agreed to chemotherapy because my Tibetan doctor told me that Hodgkin's was one of the three cancers that responded well to chemotherapy. She gave medication to keep the immune system going and also to soften the side effects of the lethal and legal poisoning. My husband had no side effects. When I felt that he as saturated I bullied the oncologist to agree to stop the chemos.

I have shared my battle with Hodgkin's in this blog. My protocol for Ranjan was a mix of dietary changes, supplements, cannabis leaves, soursop tea, and more. Even today, he follows that protocol. Ranjan is golfing, and even jet setting and is off to Helsinki in a few days and then to a gourmet weekend in Paris with his best friend. I do not know where luck stands in all this.

Coming back to the study and to Chris Wark's rebuttal, I agree with him when he states: Bad luck is perhaps the most dangerous idea to permeate the cancer community because it renders the patient powerless.  Nothing you did caused cancer, therefore nothing you can do will make any difference in healing it. Now you are completely dependent on early detection to prevent cancer, and if that doesn’t work, your only hope is surgery, chemo and radiation to save you. There’s no use in changing your diet or lifestyle. This is absurd. Only by changing your like style and even jumping on a trampoline you can beat the big C!

There are innumerable studies that show that you can reverse your cancer. Chris Wark mentions some in his article should you be interested in knowing more and as he also says: There are 21 African nations with less than 1/3 of the cancer rates of the United States. Niger has 1/5th, but their starchy plant-based diet and physical activity has nothing to do with it. They are just 80% luckier.

Changing your life style, exercising and thinking positive can reverse your cancer. I speak from experience.