Simply put, conventional medicine tends to name diseases based on body location and specialty, instead of the cause and mechanism involved.
Doctors say that you have brain, liver, kidney, or heart disease, but this conventional approach to naming disease has nothing to do with the cause. Therefore, instead of asking what drugs should be taken to treat the disease, we should ask what the underlying cause of the disease itself is.
Conventional medicine approaches illness like a mechanic trying to determine what`s wrong with the car by listening to the noises without liking inside the car. On the other hand, Functional Medicine allows us to identify the condition in which the disease thrives and thus helps us reverse it.
A Functional Medicine Approach to Cancer
Functional medicine allows both patients and practitioners to achieve the peak of health by working to address the root cause of the disease. In brief, it is a personalized model of diagnosis and treatment that addresses the need to prevent and manage chronic disease.
Instead of dividing the body into organs, Functional Medicine looks at disease as a systematic problem. This means that we should treat the system, not the symptom; the cause, not the disease.
Classifying tumors by location, lung, liver, colon, brain, etc, basically misses the causes, mechanisms, and pathways included in a particular cancer. Additionally, it doesn’t tell us anything about its manifestation in a given patient. In other words, two people with cancer affecting different parts of the body can have developed it for the same reason. On the other hand, two people with cancer affecting the same body part may have developed it for different reasons.
Cultivating a Healthy Soil
Many different things can contribute to cancer. It has been scientifically shown that diet, exercise, environmental toxins, and feelings all have an impact on the initiation, growth, and progression of cancer.
Consequently, we cannot but ask whether if a nutrient-poor diet full of sugar, chronic stress, lack of exercise, and heavy metals can cause cancer, can a nutrient-dense diet combined with physical activity and detoxification change the garden in which cancer thrives?
Simply put, we should treat the soil instead of the plant. This is the basic principle of both sustainable agriculture and sustainable health.
Dietary and lifestyle changes can boost immunity, eliminating carcinogenic compounds can facilitate our body`s own detoxification system, and reducing the carcinogenic effects of too much insulin from sugar and refined carbohydrate diet can boost hormone metabolism.
5 Strategies to Reduce Cancer Formation and Growth
1. Ditch Sugar
Sugar creates diabesity and feeds cancer. An average American citizen eats about 152 pounds of sugar annually and about 146 pounds of flour. Diabesity prevalence is constantly on the rice and scientists estimate it will affect one in two Americans by 2020. To prevent and control cancer, one must keep insulin levels in check by eating whole and fresh food and eliminating sugar and processed foods.
As shown by Dr. Dean Ornish, after three months on an intensive lifestyle program including plant-based diet and whole foods, positively affected more than 500 genes that regulate cancer. In either turned off the cancer-causing genes or turned on the cancer-protective ones.
2. Eliminate Food Sensitivities
According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, hidden gluten sensitivity increases risk of death by 35-75%, mostly by causing cancer and heart disease. This means that over 20 million Americans are at risk for heart disease, cancer, obesity, and death. Gluten and dairy are the major triggers of food allergies which are associated with insulin resistance. Eliminating them from your diet helps heal the inflamed gut and inflamed body.
3. Reduce Inflammation
Inflammation is the cause of most chronic diseases and cancer is not an exception. As a matter of fact, uncontrolled inflammation causes insulin resistance, which in turn leads to all diseases apart from allergy and autoimmunity. Consequently, insulin resistance creates even more inflammation and leads to further complications. Besides eliminating food sensitivities like gluten and dairy, it is important to include anti-inflammatory foods in your diet, such as fish, flaxseeds and other foods rich in omega-3 fats.
4. Improve Gut Health
Besides colon cancer, many cancers originate in the gut. Therefore, besides avoiding inflammatory foods, it is recommended to add probiotics, prebiotics, and phytonutrients in your diet to reduce gut-inflammation.
5. Reduce Toxic Exposure
The average newborn has up to 287 chemicals in her umbilical cord blood, including pesticides, phthalates, flame retardants, bispohenol A, and heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and mercury. All of these chemicals negatively affect the human biology: damage the nervous system, contribute to obesity, and increase the risk of cancer.
Last but not least, change your thoughts to change your immune system. This strategy is often neglected but it is as important as the ones mentioned earlier in this post. There are many strategies to prevent or fight off cancer, such as controlling cancer levels, exercising on a regular basis, and getting enough sleep.
source: http://drhyman.com
