The Definition of “Cancer” May Be Narrowed to Prevent Overtreatment
of Harmless Tumors
August 20, 2013
Story at-a-glance
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The National Cancer Institute has suggested narrowing the
definition of “cancer,” as mounting research shows that many
harmless tumors are being overtreated, thereby causing more harm
than good
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About one-third of women currently diagnosed with breast cancer
have harmless tumors that pose no threat to their life
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Only ONE out of 2,000 women screened regularly for 10 years will
benefit from screening due to early detection of breast cancer
while 10 healthy women will be misdiagnosed and treated
unnecessarily
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Research into the health of our ancient ancestors suggests that
cancer is a manmade disease—a byproduct of a variety of harmful
environmental- and lifestyle factors
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Preventing breast cancer is far more important and powerful than
simply trying to detect it after it has already formed. My top
tips on how to help prevent breast cancer are included
By Dr. Mercola
Nearly two million Americans are diagnosed with cancer every
year, and one in three will face a cancer diagnosis at some time
in their lives. Yet despite massive technological advances over
the past half-century, Western medicine is still at a loss for
how to rein in its prevalence.
At this point, it’s becoming increasingly clear that many of
the conventional strategies, from diagnosis to treatment are
riddled with flawed assumptions and approaches that, in many
cases, do more harm than good.
What’s worse, virtually none of the conventional strategies
actually address the root of the problem.
Cancer to Be Redefined?
NPR recently interviewed Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical
officer for the American Cancer Society about the National
Cancer Institute’s suggestion to change the definition of
“cancer.” The reason for this is because mounting research shows
that many harmless tumors are being overtreated, thereby causing
far more harm than good.
As reported by NPR:1
“[S]ometimes no treatment is needed at all, and
that's why the National Cancer Institute recently
recommended that the definition of cancer be changed...
Their new definition of cancer would be narrower than
current standards.
The Institute hopes that keeping the word cancer out
of some diagnoses would minimize unnecessary treatments and
help calm patient anxiety.
'...Essentially, what has happened is our
technologies have gotten so good that we can find some early
cancers, or things that look like cancer, that we now know,
if left alone, would never grow, spread and harm the
patient.
So we're actually treating some lesions that look
like cancer unnecessarily,' [Dr. Brawley says.] 'What we're
trying to do is spare some people the harms associated with
unnecessary treatment...'”
According to Dr. Brawley, thoughts on cancer have started to
change as a result of new information. For example, about 50-60
percent of prostate cancer cases would likely be better off
being watched instead of treated. Ditto for thyroid- and lung
cancer, where 20-30 percent and about 10 percent respectively,
should be watched rather than treated.
In the case of breast cancer, about one-third of women
currently diagnosed with breast cancer have harmless tumors that
pose no threat to their life. As described by New York Times
writer Peggy Orenstein:2
“[C]ancer in your breast doesn’t kill you; the
disease becomes deadly when it metastasizes, spreading to
other organs or the bones. Early detection is based on the
theory, dating back to the late 19th century,
That the disease progresses consistently, beginning
with a single rogue cell, growing sequentially and at some
invariable point making a lethal leap. Curing it, then, was
assumed to be a matter of finding and cutting out a tumor
before that metastasis happens.
The thing is, there was no evidence that the size of
a tumor necessarily predicted whether it had spread.
According to Robert Aronowitz, a professor of history and
sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania and
the author of 'Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American
Society,'
Physicians endorsed the idea anyway, partly out of
wishful thinking, desperate to “do something” to stop a
scourge against which they felt helpless.”
Although More Cancers are Detected, Mortality Rates Remain
Stable
Mammography was heralded as the answer, as it could detect
tumors at a much earlier stage, and as annual mammograms became
the norm in the US, more cancers were indeed detected—yet the
rates of women dying from the disease remained virtually
unchanged.
As Orenstein points out, “that should have been a sign that some
aspect of the early-detection theory was amiss.” But no..
Instead, flawed assumptions were tacked onto flawed theories,
and the general thinking remained that detecting cancer
earlier-still was the key to saving lives.
Hence, much of the focus on cancer “prevention” has been
diverted into early-detection, more or less ignoring the most
obvious question, which is: How do we prevent the
formation of lethal tumors in the first place?
For all its flaws, cancer research has determined that the
disease is more complex than previously thought. For example, it
does not necessarily progress in a consistently uniform
manner. They’ve also discovered that there are a number of
genetically distinct types of breast cancer—each of which may
have different triggers and respond differently to current
treatments. These include but are not limited to:
- Estrogen-dependent luminal A and luminal B
- HER2-positive, which over-produces a protein called
human epidermal growth factor receptor 2
- Basal-like or “triple negative,” which is the most
aggressive form of breast cancer. Its growth is unrelated to
the most common biomarkers for breast cancer (estrogen,
progesterone and HER2); hence the “triple negative”
designation
Analysis of 30 Years of Breast Screening Shows Mammograms Do
More Harm than Good
Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine3
published an analysis of the effects of breast cancer screening
in the US over the past 30 years, which found that 1.3 million
women were misdiagnosed and mistreated
as a result of regular mammogram screenings over that timeframe.
Moreover, while the detection of early-stage breast cancers
doubled since the advent of mammography, late-stage cancer
incidence decreased by just eight percent in the same time
frame, suggesting that catching and treating tumors early does
not automatically eliminate more serious cases of
cancer.
According to the authors of the study:
“...the imbalance suggests that there is substantial
overdiagnosis, accounting for nearly a third of all newly
diagnosed breast cancers, and that screening is having, at
best, only a small effect on the rate of death from breast
cancer.”
As you can see, there’s a crucial difference between a
non-malignant lesions/tumor and invasive cancer. Yet at present,
little distinction is made between the two. Either is typically
delivered and received as a death sentence. It is this that the
National Cancer Institute’s proposed redesignation of “cancer”
is aiming to address. I for one believe it can be quite helpful.
At present, an estimated 50,000 American women4
are transformed from healthy women with non-lethal lesions into
pink-ribboned “cancer survivors”—thinking they survived a brush
with death, when in fact they may have just went through hell
for no reason...
Mammography May Harm 10 Times More Women Than It Helps
According to recent
findings by the Nordic Cochrane Center,5
only ONE out of 2,000 women screened regularly for 10 years
will actually benefit from screening due to early detection of
breast cancer. Meanwhile, 10 healthy women (out of those 2,000
screened for a decade) will be misdiagnosed, turned into cancer
patients, and will be treated unnecessarily.
These women will have either a part of their breast or the
whole breast removed, and will typically receive radiotherapy
and/or chemotherapy. This treatment (for a cancer that was
non-existent) subsequently increases their risk of dying from
complications from the therapy and/or from other diseases
associated with radiation and chemo, such as heart disease and
cancer. In all, routine mammography led to 30 percent
over-diagnosis and overtreatment, which equates to an
absolute risk increase of 0.5 percent. So, to recap, in
order for mammographic breast screening to save ONE woman's
life:
- 2,000 women must be screened for 10 years
- 200 women will get false positives, and
- 10 will receive surgery and/or chemotherapy even though
they do not actually have cancer
What these statistics overwhelmingly show us is that just
because you were treated for cancer does not mean you’re a
cancer survivor. If you really didn’t have cancer to begin with,
then you’re really just a “cancer treatment survivor.”
Yet all women treated for cancer who survive become
part of the official “cancer survivor” statistic that is then
used to justify the effectiveness of the current system of
diagnosis and treatment!
More carefully distinguishing between harmless lumps and
malignant tumors would go a long way toward preventing needless
emotional and physical trauma associated with over-diagnosis and
overtreatment. It would probably also aid in determining the
actual effectiveness of various treatments.
Women Need to Become Better Informed
The conundrum now lies in convincing a petrified public,
thoroughly saturated with “awareness” of the lethal consequences
of cancer, that it may be in your best interest to forsake some
of the diagnostic tests and treatments. This is likely to be a
challenge, because few dare to take a less aggressive route when
their life might be at stake. As stated by Orenstein:
“The fear of cancer is legitimate: how we manage that
fear, I realized — our responses to it, our emotions around
it — can be manipulated, packaged, marketed and sold,
sometimes by the very forces that claim to support us. That
can color everything from our perceptions of screening to
our understanding of personal risk to our choices in
treatment.”
Again, to give you some more data to chew on, Orenstein
discusses the results of other studies as follows:6
“As improbable as it sounds, studies have suggested
that about a quarter of screening-detected cancers might
have gone away on their own. For an individual woman
in her 50s, then, annual mammograms may catch
breast cancer, but they reduce the risk of dying of
the disease over the next 10 years by only 0.07 percentage
points — from 0.53 percent to 0.46 percent.
Reductions for women in their 40s are even smaller, from
0.35 percent to 0.3 percent.” [Emphasis mine]
In order to not only make better informed decisions, but also
make decisions that are less colored by fear, women need to be
provided with all of their screening options, including their
strengths and weaknesses; benefits and risks. Today, women are
rarely informed about the fact that ionizing radiation is a
major contributor to cancer for example, i.e. that
routine testing itself can increase their risk of lethal breast
cancer.
This is an extremely important point considering the
introduction of 3D mammograms, which exponentially increase your
exposure to harmful radiation that might lead to cancer later
on. To learn more about this, please see my previous article,
New 3D Mammography Significantly Increases Radiation Exposure,
and Your Risk of Radiation-Induced Cancer.
Results from Other Studies Evaluating Effectiveness of
Mammography
- Archives of Internal Medicine7
published a meta-analysis of 117 randomized, controlled
mammogram trials. Among its findings: Rates of
false-positive results are high (20% to 56% after 10
mammograms), and “although few women 50 years of age or
older have risks from mammography that outweigh the
benefits, the evidence suggests that more women 40 to 49
years of age have such risks.”
- A study published in the British Medical Journal8
in December 2011, confirmed that breast cancer
screening may cause women harm, especially during the early
years after they start screening. This harm is largely due
to surgeries, such as lumpectomies and mastectomies, and
other (often unnecessary) interventions. The study
highlights losses in quality of life from false positive
results and unnecessary treatment.
- In September 2010, theNew England Journal of
Medicine published the first study9
in years to examine the effectiveness of mammograms. Their
findings are a far cry from what most public health
officials would have you believe. The bottom line is that
mammograms seem to have reduced cancer death rates by only
0.4 deaths per 1,000 women—an amount so small it might as
well be zero. Put another way, 2,500 women would have to be
screened over 10 years for a single breast cancer death to
be avoided.
What Causes of Cancer are Currently Ignored?
So what are some of the root causes of cancer that the
industry is failing to address? Well, for one, I believe it
would behoove us if researchers spent less time and money
searching for genetic factors and more on evaluating the
carcinogenic impact of various lifestyle- and environmental
factors. Because while some cancers may be highly influenced by
inherited genetic defects, the emerging science of
epigenetics proves that your genetic code is not nearly as
predeterministic as previously thought.
You actually have a tremendous amount of control over how
your genetic traits are expressed. Your genes will express
or suppress genetic data depending on the environment in which
it finds itself, meaning the presence or absence of appropriate
nutrients, toxins, and even your thoughts and feelings, which
unleash hormones and other chemicals in your body. Dr. Susan
Love, a breast cancer surgeon and president of the Dr. Susan
Love Research Foundation commented on such research back in
2009, saying:10
“It’s exciting. What it means, if all this
environmental stuff is right, is that we should be able to
reverse cancer without having to kill cells. This could open
up a whole new way of thinking about cancer that would be
much less assaultive.”
Research into the health of our ancient ancestors11
also suggests that cancer is indeed a
manmade disease. Increasingly, environmental and
lifestyle factors are being pinpointed as the culprits, and
it is my personal belief that our cancer problem is the result
of too many people being regularly exposed to too many of these
toxic factors, which include:
Pesticide and other synthetic chemical exposures |
A predominance of sugars and grains which causes the
body to burn sugar rather than fat as its primary fuel |
Wireless technologies, dirty electricity, and medical
diagnostic radiation exposure |
Pharmaceutical drugs |
Obesity, stress, and poor sleeping habits |
Lack of sunshine exposure and use of sunscreens |
It’s highly unlikely that any one of these is solely
responsible. Rather it’s probably a combination of several. This
means that what needs to be done is a complete overhaul of most
industries that provide us with everything from food and clothes
to personal care products, furnishings and more. Yes, what I’m
suggesting is dramatic, and perhaps that’s why no one really
wants to take that bull by the horn, but it’s necessary if we
want to truly address the meteoric rise of not just
cancer, but many other modern diseases as well. Virtually every
single thing you put into your mouth, on your body, and in your
home and business, needs to be evaluated for its toxic
potential.
All-Natural Cancer Prevention Strategies
My recommendation to you is to not wait for the system to
change, but to take matters into your own hands—now.
It’s important to realize that cancer screening does NOT in any
way equate to cancer prevention, and that while early detection
is important, a number of popular screening methods have been
shown to cause more harm than good—mammography in particular.
In the largest review of research into lifestyle and breast
cancer, the American Institute of Cancer Research estimated that
about 40 percent of US breast cancer cases could be prevented if
people made wiser lifestyle choices.12,
13 I believe these estimates are far too low, and it
is more likely that 75 percent to 90 percent of breast cancers
could be avoided by strictly applying the recommendations below.
- Improve your insulin receptor sensitivity.
The best way to do this is by avoiding sugar and grains and
making sure you are
exercising, especially with
Peak Fitness.
- Address your food preparation. Eat at
least one-third of your food
raw. Avoid
frying or charbroiling; boil, poach or steam your foods
instead. Consider adding cancer-fighting whole foods, herbs,
spices and supplements to your diet, such as
broccoli,
curcumin and resveratrol. To learn more about how these
anti-angiogenetic foods fight cancer, please see our
previous article:
Dramatically Effective New Natural Way to Starve Cancer and
Obesity.
- Avoid carbohydrates and sugar. Reduce
or eliminate processed foods,
sugar/fructose and grain-based foods from your diet.
This applies to whole unprocessed organic grains as well, as
they tend to rapidly break down and drive up your insulin
level. The evidence is quite clear that if you want to avoid
cancer, or you currently have cancer, you absolutely MUST
avoid all forms of sugar, especially fructose, which feeds
cancer cells and promotes their growth.
- Reduce protein and increase fat.
Consider reducing your protein levels to one gram per
kilogram of lean body weight. It would be unusual for most
adults to need more than 100 grams of protein and most
likely close to half of that amount. Replace excess protein
with
high quality fats, such as organic eggs from pastured
hens, high quality meats, avocados, and coconut oil.
- Drink a half to whole quart of organic green
vegetable juice daily. Please review
my juicing instructions for more detailed information.
- Avoid GMOs. Avoid
genetically engineered foods as they are typically
treated with herbicides such as Roundup (glyphosate), which
are likely to be carcinogenic. A French research team that
has extensively studied Roundup concluded it’s toxic to
human cells, and likely carcinogenic to humans. Choose
fresh, organic, preferably locally growth foods.
- Avoid unfermented soy products.
Unfermented soy is high in plant estrogens, or
phytoestrogens, also known as isoflavones. In some studies,
soy appears to work in concert with human estrogen to
increase breast cell proliferation, which increases the
chances for mutations and cancerous cells.
- Normalize your omega-3 to omega-6 fats ratio.
Normalize your ratio of
omega-3 to omega-6 fats by taking a high-quality krill
oil and reducing your intake of processed vegetable oils.
- Optimize your gut flora. Optimizing
your
gut flora will reduce inflammation and strengthen your
immune response. Researchers have found a microbe-dependent
mechanism through which some cancers mount an inflammatory
response that fuels their development and growth. They
suggest that inhibiting inflammatory cytokines might slow
cancer progression and improve the response to chemotherapy.
Adding
naturally fermented food to your daily diet is an easy
way to prevent cancer or speed recovery. You can always add
a high quality probiotic supplement as well, but naturally
fermented foods are the best.
- Exercise regularly. Exercise lowers
insulin levels, which creates a low sugar environment that
discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells. In a
three-month study,
exercise was found to alter immune cells into a more
potent disease-fighting form in cancer survivors who had
just completed chemotherapy.
Researchers and cancer organizations increasingly
recommend making regular exercise a priority in order to
reduce your risk of cancer, and help improve cancer
outcomes. Research has also found evidence suggesting
exercise can help trigger apoptosis (programmed cell death)
in cancer cells. Ideally, your exercise program should
include balance, strength, flexibility, high intensity
interval training (HIIT). For help getting started, refer to
my Peak Fitness Program.
- Optimize your vitamin D level. There is
scientific evidence you can decrease your risk of cancer
by more than half simply by optimizing your
vitamin D levels with appropriate sun exposure. Your
serum level should hold steady at 50-70 ng/ml, but if you
are being treated for cancer, it should be closer to 80-90
ng/ml for optimal benefit.
If you take oral vitamin D and have cancer, it would be
very prudent to monitor your vitamin D blood levels
regularly, as well as supplementing your vitamin K2, as K2
deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin
D toxicity. To learn more, please see my previous article:
What You Need to Know About Vitamin K2, D and Calcium.
- Get plenty of natural vitamin A. There
is evidence that vitamin A also plays a role in helping
prevent breast cancer.14
It's best to obtain it from vitamin A-rich foods, rather
than a supplement. Your best sources are organic egg yolks,15
raw butter, raw whole milk, and beef or chicken liver.
- Consider curcumin. This is the active
ingredient in turmeric and in high concentrations can be
very useful adjunct in the
treatment of breast cancer. It shows immense therapeutic
potential in preventing breast cancer metastasis.16
It's important to know that curcumin is generally not
absorbed that well, so I've provided several
absorption tips here.
- Optimize your sleep. Make sure you are
getting enough restorative
sleep. Poor sleep can interfere with your melatonin
production, which is associated with an increased risk of
insulin resistance and weight gain, both of which contribute
to cancer’s virility.
- Limit your exposure to toxins. Reduce
your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides,
herbicides, household chemical cleaners, synthetic air
fresheners and
toxic cosmetics. Avoid BPA, phthalates and other
xenoestrogens. These are estrogen-like compounds
that have been linked to increased breast cancer risk.
- Limit your exposure to radiation. Limit
your exposure and protect yourself from
radiation produced by cell phones, towers, base
stations, and Wi-Fi stations, as well as minimizing your
exposure from radiation-based medical scans, including
dental x-rays, CT scans, and
mammograms.
- Avoid synthetic hormone replacement therapy.
Breast cancer is an estrogen-related cancer, and according
to a study published in the Journal of the National
Cancer Institute, breast cancer rates for women dropped
in tandem with decreased use of
hormone replacement therapy. (There are similar risks
for younger women who use oral contraceptives. Birth control
pills, which are also comprised of synthetic hormones, have
been linked to cervical and breast cancers.)
- Make sure you're not iodine deficient,
as there's compelling evidence linking iodine deficiency
with breast cancer. Dr. David Brownstein,17
author of the book Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You
Can't Live Without It, is a proponent of iodine for
breast cancer. It actually has potent anticancer properties
and has been shown to cause cell death in breast and thyroid
cancer cells.
For more information, I recommend reading Dr.
Brownstein's book. I have been researching iodine for some
time ever since I interviewed
Dr. Brownstein as I do believe that the bulk of what he
states is spot on. However, I am not convinced that his
dosage recommendations are correct. I believe they are too
high.
- Stress Management. Stress from all
causes is a major contributor to disease. Even the CDC
states that 85 percent of disease is driven by emotional
factors. It is likely that stress and unresolved emotional
issues may be more important than the physical ones, so make
sure this is addressed. My favorite tool for resolving
emotional challenges is
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).
What to Do if You Already Have Cancer
Without a doubt the most powerful essential strategy I know
of to treat cancer is to starve the cells by depriving them of
their food source. Unlike your body cells, which can burn carbs
or fat for fuel, cancer cells have lost that metabolic
flexibility. Dr. Otto Warburg was actually given a Nobel Prize
over 75 years ago for figuring this out but virtually no
oncologist actually uses this information.
You can review my recent interview with Dr. D’Agostino below
for more details but integrating a ketogenic diet with
hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is deadly to cancer cells by
starving them of their fuel source, would be the strategy I
would recommend to my family if they were diagnosed with cancer.
© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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