Monday, July 26, 2010

Cancer Update, Part 1

After years of telling people chemotherapy is the only way to try ("try,” being the key word) to eliminate cancer, Johns Hopkins is finally starting to tell you there is an alternative way.

Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins:


1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between six to more than 10 times in a person’s lifetime.

3. When the person’s immune system is strong, the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer, it indicates the person has nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, but also to environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet to eat more adequately and healthy, four to five times per day and by including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6, Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroying rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract, etc., and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, etc.

7. Radiation, while destroying cancer cells, also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However, prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation, the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with foods it needs to multiply.

(Note: J. Padua would like to acknowledge reader Jo Vidal for contributing to this posting, “Cancer Update,” including the main source of information, Johns Hopkins.
Part 2 of the above article will appear next week) .

Monday, July 19, 2010

Attaining Physical Fitness

Good health does not mean the absence of disease—although you may settle for that—it means fitness and vigor.

The U.S. President’s Council on Physical Fitness defines physical fitness as “a measure of the body’s strength, stamina and flexibility.”

In more meaningful personal terms, it is “a reflection of your ability to work with vigor and pleasure, without undue fatigue, with energy left for enjoying hobbies and recreational activities, and for meeting unforeseen emergencies…and, because the body is not a compartment separate from the mind, it relates to how you feel mentally and physically.”

A basic element of fitness is physical activity. Whether you are fat or lean, daily exercise is vitally important to your health—it is the single crucial factor for survival.

Physical fitness, actually cardiovascular fitness, is an observable and predictable benefit of exercise training. It is a state of body efficiency enabling a person to exercise vigorously for a long time period without fatigue and to respond to sudden physical and emotional demands with an economy of heartbeats and only a modest rise in blood pressure.

The fit individual has endurance or stamina—he is able to supply more energy to his muscles for them to work harder and longer, and with less effort, than when he was not physically fit. Thus, when fit, the exercise puts less strain on his cardiovascular system. He feels better, sleeps better, and has better digestion and disposition.

In a very enlightening book, “Beyond Diet…Exercise Your Way to Fitness and Heart Health,” published by the American Heart Association and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, its foreword asserts that “…principally, invention of the elevator and the motor car have reduced the population to a sedentary lifestyle accompanied by over-indulgence in fatty foods, cigarettes and candy bars. Overweight, deconditioning (getting out of shape) and tooth decay are major but not necessarily lethal resulting health problems. Of far greater importance…is the established certainty that this lifestyle has a great deal to do with the development of atherosclerosis—the clogging up of arteries of the heart, brain and kidneys—the disease process that kills and cripples more people than all other disease entities combined.”

Monday, July 12, 2010

Discipline and a Healthy Life

Discipline is an unpopular word for most of us. But we need to take charge of our life if we expect to enjoy good health.

The irony is that some people only think about health when they are already sick. That’s the time they become conscious and careful about their diet and all.

But isn’t the time to be health-conscious now that we are alive and well? Certainly, not afterwards—it might be too late by then.

Consider exercise. Regularity is the key to maximize its benefits. This is one of the secrets of physical fitness. Other factors, which are just as important, also come into play: kind of exercises, number of hours per session, and so on.

The last consideration is one’s age. For those over forty, it is a good idea to see a doctor (a sports medicine specialist is best) before embarking on an exercise routine.

It is good to take from two to six glasses of pure water upon awakening in the morning before doing your exercises. This will flush your internal organs clean. Make it a habit and feel the difference.

Another good practice is drinking at least a half glass of pure water while exercising. Drink every twenty minutes or so to prevent dehydration. This is a must especially for those who perspire profusely.

Those who are suffering from gastritis or ulcer may postpone their exercise. Instead, they may drink raw cabbage (by washing the cabbage well and blanch it). Researchers say that the Vitamin C and U (the latter, an anti-ulcer vitamin) in cabbage have powerful healing qualities.

Better yet, drink cabbage juice if you have an electric juicer.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Adequate Sleep and Organ Regeneration

Research suggests that adequate sleep promotes organ regeneration. This means that we have to sleep and wake up at regular hours.

As we know, the average sleeping hours for optimum health is between seven to eight hours. However, recent findings have confirmed that people sleeping six to seven hours a night live the longest.

Ideally, we should sleep as early as nine to ten in the evening. And the reasons are:
  • Evening (9-11pm): is the time for eliminating toxic chemicals (detoxification) from the antibody system (lymph nodes). This time duration could be spent by relaxing and listening to soothing music. If during this time one is still in an unrelaxed state, it will have a negative effect on the individual’s health.
  • Evening (11pm-1am): is the detoxification process in the liver, and ideally done in a deep sleep state.
  • Early morning (1-3am): detoxification process in the gall, also ideally done in a deep sleep state.
  • Early morning (3-5am): detoxification in the lungs. There will sometimes be severe coughing for cough sufferers during this time. Since the detoxification process had reached the respiratory tract, there is no need to take cough medicines so as not to interfere with toxin removal process.
  • Morning (5-7am): detoxification in the colon; you should empty your bowel.
  • Morning (7-9am): absorption of nutrients in the small intestines. You should be having your breakfast. Breakfast for the sick should be earlier, before 6:30am. Those wanting to stay fit should have their breakfast before 7:30am. And those who always skip breakfast should change their habits; it is still better to take breakfast late until 9-10am, rather than no meal at all.
Sleeping very late and waking up late will disrupt the removal of unnecessary chemicals from our body, especially in the organs where the concentration of chemicals and toxins is at its highest. Most important, 12mn-4am is the time when the bone marrow produces blood.

Lastly, a friendly reminder: Have a good, restful sleep—and stay healthy!