World Cancer Day

Yesterday. You read all abot it in the newspapers, saw the press releases. No? Surprisingly badly supported day.

I was at the Chemo Daycare yesterday, and nary a mention of this. Janet tells me the CBC morning show mentioned it o Wednesday, but I saw nothing in the rest of news stories. Follow this link to the WHO website and its abundant amount of cancer news.

The number of people dying from cancer ins increasing even as new control measures are discovered. Also on the horizon are discoveries as to where cancer starts and what causes to become active. We know several things already, as in food, stress, environment, all play major parts in the growth of cancer. What we do not seem to have a grip on is the relationship between all these factors.

Will cutting out red meat, eating organic foods, increasing the intake of vegetables, increasing exercise, reducing stress, reducing the intake of white sugar and white flour, reduce the risks of getting cancer? All signs point to a resounding yes. But in what combination remains to be seen. How do you reduce stress to a level that would thwart the cancer cell? Not eating red meat unless organic and grass fed is reasonably easy. Just don’t eat it. White flour and white sugar is a much harder restriction to enforce. How much fruit is enough, what levels of what? The book AntiCancer provides a guide to what foods are beneficial to stopping different forms of cancer. The trouble is you don’t know if you are going to get cancer or what type of cancer you are going to get. So what to eat? This information is worthwhile once you have cancer, but not as a preventative measure.

The WHO also prescribe getting vaccinated against cancer. This is a new discovery. Cervical cancer is the first major breakthrough. They have just finished giving vaccines to 20 million teenagers in an effort to prevent them from getting cervical cancer. Will it be successful? We will only know in about 40 to 50 years when these tenagers are of an age to get the cancer.

Research is also making inroads in showing that breast cancer might also be caused by a virus. Different that the one for cervical cancer. Not that the viruses cause the cancer, but absence of the virus means no cancer. Does this mean we will be giving 2 vaccines to women? What about all the other forms of cancer afflicting both men and women? A vaccine for each? Will someone come up with a test that will determine which viruses are lurking in your body requiring a regimen of vaccines? They better, or we will see a plethora of vaccines and their requisite side effects flooding the market.

We had our piano fixed the other day. The keys were unresponsive. The piano fixer was blind. He had cancer of the eye at the age of three. Cancer of the eye? Who knew. The age of three would be pre-vaccine. Probably his diet caused it. Seriously, this is the sort of news that throws a wrench in the best of intentions. Yet, the research must go on, and preventative measures put in place.

In my very short experience, I have discovered that cancer is not curable, but controllable, It is a chronic condition that is better prevented than dealt with after the fact. Much of the emphasis of the documents on the WHO site.

Too bad it is not better publicized.