Science is now recognising that most, around ninety percent, of all cancers are driven by lifestyle-environment factors, hence over the decades there has been much pure research investigating a holistic approach to cancer, however commercial and establishment medical science has continued to direct its research and application for ‘curing’ cancer by focusing treatment on cancer cells in isolation from the lifestyle/environment conditions that allowed the resultant cancer mass to form in the first place. Taking this simplistic approach of focusing only on a cancer mass and not on the environmental-lifestyle conditions that set the conditions for cancer to occur in the first place, as well as the more important variable which is the life-coping skills of the individual for the environmental conditions in which they live (self, social and physical), simply increases the chances that the cancer mass will reoccur at some later time in their life.
Each of us has a ‘zoo’ of microorganisms permanently living in our bodies, known as a microbiota. The population of these ‘bugs’ is currently estimated to be two to three times greater than the total number of cells that make up our bodies. The ‘zoo’ includes bacteria, viruses, fungi and cancer cells. The role of most resident microorganisms to the health of our bodies is not well understood. Some ‘bugs’ are necessary for our health; some just live in our bodies without harming us; and then there are those that cause us illness.
Your immune system is fighting on two fronts. It is preventing microorganisms from entering your body and it is managing the ‘zoo’ of established microorganisms living in your body, and this includes cancer cells. Cancer cells were once normal body ‘community’ cells that devolve into single-celled microorganisms and become members of the body ‘zoo’. They can be considered to be like harmless protozoa when they exist as individuals, but when they grow into a population mass, they can cause organ disruption and death, similar in a way to what happens when enough amoeba occur in our gut and cause amoebic dysentery. Thus cancer cells along with other dangerous microorganisms need to be managed and/or eliminated by the immune system, when it can find them.
When a cancer mass grows in an organ, it is simply a concentration of cancer microorganisms that are able to evade and avoid the immune system in a specific part of the body. While ever the immune system has some strength and efficiency it will manage this concentration as best it can, and in most cases if a mass cannot be eliminated, it will oscillate around a particular size over the years. Most people in the world have small micro-masses of cancer in their bodies that go nowhere. A reasonably efficient immune system can keep a micro-population of cancer cells stable for years or even decades with no increase of the mass.
It is only when the immune system falters that a ‘zoo’ mass can expand.
Following cancer operations, there is always a huge chance that a few million cancer cells escape into the body and join the microorganism ‘zoo’. The immune system hunts them but they can evade and avoid weakened immune system surveillance when lodged in certain areas of the body. Sometimes they get eliminated and sometimes they reform into a cancer mass in a part of the body where the immune system continually falters in its surveillance. This is what has occurred when someone gets a metastasised cancer in another part of their body.
Recently the media has reported that singer-actor Olivia Newton-John (68 years) has been diagnosed with metastasised breast cancer in her sacrum. The original cancer was removed in 1992 through a mastectomy and Olivia embraced changes in her lifestyle initially through dietary changes, yoga and supplementation among other things. Even though she loaned her support to breast cancer research and support through the ‘Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre’, I feel something was missing in her therapy and advice. Obviously some of the breast cancer cells had survived as part of her microbiota ‘zoo’ and when her immune system kept faltering over a period of time—some months to years, a mass of these single-celled organiams accumulated in her sacrum.
In my belief, to comprehensively treat cancer requires a multi-step approach, which involves firstly tipping the balance in favour of the immune system over the growth of the cancer mass through effective operations to remove the mass. Then there must be an alteration to the environmental-lifestyle influences that have been affecting the individual. Most importantly and most difficult, is to work with the person on redefining the specific limiting ‘life-coping’ skills that they have developed to deal with the environmental-lifestyle influences stressing their body-mind. These will be the rules and beliefs that a person has developed—normally over a lifetime—that drive their lives in a certain way, and their perception of their lives.
Of course, to work this way requires treating the whole person, their body and mind, and this requires working with each person as an individual and not with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach as is occurring in our medical systems. There will be many variables to address in such a multi-step approach—from childhood conditioning, to the rules and beliefs that are defining the person, along with the wants and needs they have developed to cope with social and physical environments in which they have been living, as well as their array of purposes for living.
Over tens of thousands of case studies I have tracked through my clinical practice, I have found that the most powerful modulator of the immune system is the changes to life quality. Every person’s understanding of life quality is different and unique to them and is based on many early life factors that form beliefs, likes, dislikes—our rules for survival. We all have life experiences that we want, need and desire to have. People who live a life with a certain quality, where they feel good about themselves in their social and physical environments, where they experience a passion and a pull in life because they have a connection between their desires and their rules for life, will be unknowingly keeping their immune system strong and efficient.
When your life has harmony, so too will your body.
When people find themselves in stressful life situations which make them feel depressed, if they resign themselves to never achieving the desires they believe they should be experiencing, they will have a loss to their life-momentum and life-quality. They will experience emotional stress and may not feel good about who they are in the situation in which they find themselves. Body tension will build, organ disruption will occur, infections and symptoms will then be heralding an immune system faltering.
Your emotional state can disrupt the harmony of the body’s ability to function.
Emotional stress over a long (ish) period is the most destructively powerful influence on immune communication efficiency. The real challenge once a cancer mass has been removed with an operation, is to shift a person’s rules and desires about their life, along with their wants and needs, so they can maintain a strong and efficient immune system over the rest of their life to prevent cancer masses re-growing.
It is impossible to fully know how individuals internally cope with emotional stress, even when they are members of your family or your long-term partner. Certainly Olivia Newton-John has had her fair share of emotional trauma. In the late 80s and early 90s, she lost her mother and father and was declared bankrupt, and who knows what other traumas (environmental-lifestyle) she was experiencing in her life in the lead-up to her breast cancer in 1992.
After the loss at sea of her partner, Patrick McDermott in 2005, she is reported as suffering depression for years. In 2013 Olivia unexpectedly lost her sister Rona Newton-John who suffered an aggressive brain tumour, and most likely like most parents she has worried for her daughter’s happiness in recent years.
As occurs with most sufferers of breast cancer, Olivia’s pre-diagnosis emotional environments for a few years have appeared to include intense emotional sadness around her family and life. Her perception of her life quality could have been faltering—who will ever know. However I have observed this in similar case studies through my clinic over the decades.
A comprehensive approach to treating cancer needs to include shifting the basic limiting beliefs, rules and concepts that instigate emotional distress and pull a person’s ‘Sense of Self’ down. The Three Pillars of Healing Program works to stabilise the immune system, refocus and strengthen the immune system and teach you how to uncover and remove your limiting beliefs and rules – that will cause disharmony in your immune system communication.
If you want to know more about how this Program can support you to heal your body of cancer: