Why You Might Want to Think Twice Before Donating to Anti-Cancer Charities
By: Dr Mercola October 15, 2011 full article at:
A lot of people put their faith in charity organizations like the American Cancer Society (ACS), dutifully donating money to help in the “war on cancer.” But in the report titled American Cancer Society—More Interested In Accumulating Wealth Than Saving Lives, Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, plainly lays to bare the many conflicts of interest that hamper the effectiveness of this organization.
For example, the ACS has close financial ties to both makers of mammography equipment and cancer drugs. But that’s just for starters. Other conflicts of interest include ties to, and financial support from, the pesticide-, petrochemical-, biotech-, cosmetics-, and junk food industries—the very industries whose products are the primary contributors to cancer!
The ACS, along with the National Cancer Institute, virtually exclusively focus on cancer research and the diagnosis and chemical treatment of cancer. Preventive strategies, such as avoiding chemical exposures, receive virtually no consideration at all.
“Giant corporations, which profited handsomely while they polluted air, water, the workplace, and food with a wide range of carcinogens, remain greatly comforted by the silence of the ACS. This silence reflected a complex of mindsets fixated on diagnosis, treatment, and basic genetic research, together with ignorance, indifference, and even hostility to prevention. Not surprisingly, the incidence of cancer over past decades has escalated, approximately parallel to its increased funding,” Dr. Epstein writes.
Many also do not realize that when you donate money to the American Cancer Society, the majority of it may never go further than the bank accounts of its numerous well-paid executives.
Meanwhile, global cancer rates have doubled in the last three decades, and their “war on cancer” strategy completely ignores, and oftentimes denies, the obvious links between cancer and toxic exposures through pesticide-laden foods, toxic personal care products, cancer-causing medical treatments and drugs, and industrial pollution. We CAN turn this trend around, but to do so the medical and research communities must stop focusing on drug treatments and overlooking the methods that can actually have a significant impact on preventing this disease.
My Top 12 Tips for Cancer Prevention
Rather than put your health in the hands of cancer researchers willing to do just about anything to discover the next cancer drug breakthrough, take control of your health by following the cancer-preventive lifestyle changes below.
- Avoid Fructose and Sugar
It’s quite clear that if you want to avoid cancer, or are currently undergoing cancer treatment, you absolutely MUST avoid all forms of sugar — especially fructose — and this is largely due to its relation to insulin resistance. According to Lewis Cantley, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, as much as 80 percent of all cancers are “driven by either mutations or environmental factors that work to enhance or mimic the effect of insulin on the incipient tumor cells,” Gary Taubes reports.
Some cancer centers, such as the Cancer Centers of America, have fully embraced this knowledge and place their patients on strict low-sugar, low-grain diets. But conventional medicine in general has been woefully lax when it comes to highlighting the health dangers of this additive.
As a standard recommendation, I strongly advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day including fruits. But for most people it would also be wise to limit your fructose from fruit to 15 grams or less, as you’re virtually guaranteed to consume “hidden” sources of fructose if you drink beverages other than water and eat processed food.
- Optimize Your Vitamin D Level
There’s overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that vitamin D deficiency plays a crucial role in cancer development. Researchers within this field have estimated that about 30 percent of cancer deaths — which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States — could be prevented each year simply by optimizing the vitamin D levels in the general population.
On a personal level, you can decrease your risk of cancer by MORE THAN HALF simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with sun exposure. And if you are being treated for cancer it is likely that higher blood levels—probably around 80-90 ng/ml—would be beneficial.
If the notion that sun exposure actually prevents cancer is still new to you, I highly recommend you watch my one-hour vitamin D lecture to clear up any confusion. It’s important to understand that the risk of skin cancer from the sun comes onlyfrom excessive exposure.
- Exercise
If you are like most people, when you think of reducing your risk of cancer, exercise doesn’t immediately come to mind. However, there is some fairly compelling evidence that exercise can slash your risk of cancer. One of the primary ways exercise lowers your risk for cancer is by reducing elevated insulin levels, which creates a low sugar environment that discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells.
For example, physically active adults experience about half the incidence of colon cancer as their sedentary counterparts, and women who exercise regularly may reduce their breast cancer risk by 20 to 30 percent compared to those who are inactive.It’s important to include a large variety of techniques in your exercise routine, such as strength training, aerobics, core-building activities, and stretching. Most important of all, however, is to make sure you include high-intensity, burst-type exercise, such as those described in my Peak Fitness program.
These exercises activate your super-fast twitch muscle fibers, which can increase your body’s natural production of human growth hormone. For detailed instructions, please see this previous article.
- Get appropriate amounts of high quality animal-based omega-3 fats.
- Eat according to your nutritional type. The potent anti-cancer effects of this principle are very much underappreciated. When we treat cancer patients in our clinic this is one of the most powerful anti-cancer strategies we have.
- Engage in activities that help you reduce your stress levels, such as exercise, meditation, journaling, music, gardening, etc. Even the CDC states that 85 percent of disease is caused by emotions. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here, so make sure this is addressed.
- Only 25 percent of people eat enough vegetables, so by all means eat as many vegetables as you are comfortable with. Ideally, they should be fresh and organic. Cruciferous vegetables in particular have been identified as having potent anti-cancer properties. Remember that carb nutritional types may need up to 300 percent more vegetables than protein nutritional types.
- Maintain an ideal body weight.
- Get appropriate amounts of high-quality sleep.
- Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, household chemical cleaners, synthetic air fresheners and air pollution.
- Reduce your use of cell phones and other wireless technologies, and implement as many safety strategies as possibleif/when you cannot avoid their use.
- Boil, poach or steam your foods, rather than frying or charbroiling them. Better yet eat as many of your foods raw as you can.
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