The Five Amazing but Little-Known Ways Your Body Fights Back Against Cancer

And how you can help it.

There’s tons of content online and in books – much good, some bleh, some harmful – telling you what causes cancer and how to treat or cure it.

This report brings good news.

Your body already knows how to cure cancer!

If it didn’t, you’d already be dead from it. You’ve blocked its growth thousands of times already – probably millions.

 

There’re just two problems:

Your body’s cancer-blocking power declines with age.

Your lifestyle is probably further weakening that power.

 

Here’s how to strengthen it, no matter what your age.

If you have already been diagnosed, these lifestyle changes will help you too, though I obviously can’t make guarantees.

 

NOTE: Nothing in this report is meant to substitute for professional medical advice. When it comes to your particular cancer, and you, your doctors are the experts.

However, much scientific evidence supports the large role lifestyle factors play in both cancer prevention and treatment.

Therefore, the suggestions in this report support whatever conventional treatments you may now be receiving.

 

The Figures Behind Our Fear

First, let’s admit it: we’re all afraid of cancer.

And with good reason. 

It kills over 500,000 Americans every year. For decades, it’s been the Number 2 cause of death in the U.S., just behind heart disease. 

That’s true of much of the rest of the developed world. Where it’s not the Number 2 killer, it’s probably Number 1.

The National Cancer Institute said that as of 2022, 18.6 million Americans were living with a history of cancer (past as well as present). They estimate around 2 million Americans will be diagnosed with it in 2025.

One out of three of us will hear a doctor give us that diagnosis.

In the West, one out of four of us will die from that diagnosis.

The rate of new cases has trended down slightly since the mid-1990s. But, unfortunately, that’s after a rise that began in 1975 – right after President Richard Nixon declared “War on Cancer.” In fact, the rate of new cases is still higher than it was in 1975.

But the numbers aren’t all bad. The death rate did remain stable from 1975 through around 2000, and has slowly declined since then. 

Most encouraging, the 5-year survival rate has increased from 50% in 1975 to 69% now.

 

The Role of Smoking Can’t Be Minimized

But we also have to factor in the biggest single “success” in the War on Cancer – reducing our risk from smoking tobacco.

 

In 1964, when the Surgeon General began posting health warnings on cigarette packs, around 40% of American adults smoked. What’s more significant, everybody – including nonsmokers – thought that was just plain fine and dandy. Everybody kept ashtrays in their homes for guests to use. There were no restrictions on where you could smoke. Smokers lit up everyplace and anyplace. The swimming club where I spent my summers as a child sold cigarettes from a vending machine right next to the one dispensing candy bars. 

I opted for the candy bars, but nobody would have stopped me from the smokes.

If you didn’t inhale your own smoke, you got exposed to secondhand smoke. You couldn’t avoid it.

 

Today, only 10% of American adults smoke, and strict rules about workplace smoking have greatly reduced nonsmokers’ exposure to the dangerous, noxious fumes and smells.

Given that lung cancer kills the most people, and smoking causes 90% of lung cancer – that’s important.

Yet, 10% of Americans still smoke. They pay high taxes to give themselves a horrible disease. I don’t understand why anybody who came of age after 1964 even began to smoke.

 

Hollywood has long been guilty of accepting money from tobacco companies to make smoking appear glamorous. Director David Lynch loved to show beautiful young women smoking cigarettes in a sexy way. But, despite practicing Transcendental Meditation for many years, he smoked himself – and recently died from emphysema. 

Not cancer, but not sexy either.

If you still smoke tobacco, please take the advice Lynch finally gave just before he died – quit.

 

My Goal

Cancer is a serious disease that’s often – but not always – deadly.

If you want to reduce your risk of ever hearing a doctor speak those dreaded words – “You have cancer” – you have to act, and act now.

See, cancer is not a monster that comes out of nowhere for no reason and strikes randomly. We don’t understand all the mechanisms involved and can’t predict it, but it’s still a natural phenomenon. It obeys the laws of biology.

We know it’s correlated with many different factors – and you can control a lot of those.

Smoking tobacco is the most well-known factor, but only one.

But most of us who aren’t oncologists don’t really know much about cancer, except it strikes different organs in our bodies.

Therefore, we don’t really understand how some of the health advice we get connects with our chances of getting cancer.

Therefore, we ignore much of the good advice – or follow bad, unscientific advice.

My goal here is to guide you to understand the underlying basis and progression of cancer, and how we can reduce our risk by strengthening our bodies in their fight to control the disease.

 

DISCLAIMERS:

1. 

Most adult cancers take a long time to develop, which is useful to know if you have not (yet) been diagnosed with cancer. Tumors take around eight years to form, from ten to twelve years to full growth. 

That means you have time to modify your lifestyle to reduce your risk. 

But that doesn’t explain childhood cancer cases.

 

Therefore, there must be some differences. We obviously need a lot more research into pediatric cancers and how to cure them. 

A lot of what’s in this report on healthy lifestyles applies just as much to children.

If you have or know a child with cancer or leukemia, consult with your doctor.

 

2. 

There are no one-sized-fits-all magic bullets, pills or treatments.

The world is full of marketers exploiting our fears to sell us junk we don’t need, and this goes double in the arena of “alternative” health. 

This area is complicated because ordinary oncologists focus only on their conventional treatments. They ignore how much lifestyle factors can support us, except to tell patients to eat whatever they like, including highly processed “nutritional” drinks such as Boost. They also don’t get paid to PREVENT cancer. And they often dismiss as quackery ALL other healing modalities, even many that have scientific backing.

There’s a wide gulf between the scientific knowledge revealed in the most recent medical journal articles and what doctors actually practice.

Plus, until recently, modern medicine itself hoped for its own magic bullet anti-cancer medicine.

But be aware that scammers are still making billions of dollars through selling quack cures. 

Don’t trust anybody who tries to make you believe THEIR product is a sure-cure for cancer (or any other disease).

 

NOTE: Some products are healthful. Just don’t believe any ONE supplement or superfood is a magic solution.

You need a solid, health-oriented lifestyle, and even then you have no guarantees. (But the odds will be higher in your favor.)

 

3.

There are no guarantees.

Frankly, cancer is part of life. Anybody who tells you sharks or other animals don’t get cancer is either lying to scam you or ignorant. Dinosaurs got cancer! Few animals in the wild die from cancer simply because any weakness gets them eaten before a tumor can kill them.

Once you understand cancer’s life cycle, you can use scientifically valid lifestyle and health strategies to lower your risk of ever getting it and increasing your odds of surviving, and prolonging your life.

But there’re no guarantees. Don’t trust anybody who gives you one. They feel free to lie to you because it’s a win-win for them. If you feel better and don’t die, you give them the credit. If the cancer kills you anyway, you can’t demand your money back.

Everything valid works for somebody, but not for all. We’re all individuals, and our bodies react differently.

Some of even the worst cases beat tremendous odds and survive. Doctors call that “spontaneous remission” because they can’t duplicate it or explain it. They just know it happens – sometimes. 

 

4.

Always hope.

I can’t promise you or yours will undergo a spontaneous remission because, if we understood why a few of even the most advanced cases become “cured,” we’d duplicate it for everyone. We don’t, and we can’t.

We don’t understand everything, but we now know a lot more than we used to.

And we do understand many factors we can actively control.

 

Science Confirms Importance of Lifestyle Factors

Yes, conventional oncologists focus on what they’ve been taught: orthodox chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. The use of immunology is growing.

Nothing in this report replaces the latest medical treatments.

But how you live your life may help determine when – and whether – you need to see that oncologist.

In 2007, the World Cancer Research Fund published a report synthesizing the findings from several thousand research studies. Their conclusion: at least 40% of cancers can be prevented by simple changes in diet and physical activity.

A report by the French National Cancer Institute agreed with that conclusion.

Two large-scale epidemiology studies conducted in Europe and the United Kingdom over 12 and 11 years respectively found that people with a healthier lifestyle had a 60% reduction in cancer mortality.

But isn’t cancer caused by your genes? In 2008, Professor Dean Ornish of the University of California found that people eating a more nutritional diet, exercising and managing their stress MODIFIED their gene expression. So, don’t use your genes as an excuse to do nothing.

According to a study published in 2024 by the American Institute for Cancer Research, 42% of cancer in the United States and 45% of cancer deaths are linked to lifestyle factors. 

 

What if you’ve already been diagnosed?

Scientific studies on this subject have mainly focussed on breast and colon cancer. We need a lot more research in this area, but what we know is that many lifestyle factors improve treatment outcomes and survivability. In other words, the healthier your lifestyle, the more likely the conventional treatments will help you, and prolong your life – and prevent recurrences.

I suspect there’d be a lot more data if practicing physicians got behind this.

 

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, her oncologist gave her no advice at all. Chemotherapy, yes – supportive lifestyle suggestions, no. Her primary care doctor told her to eat as much as she could of . . . whatever. Including Boost.

Every Tumor Starts with One . . . Cell

Our bodies contain around 40 trillion cells. 

Every day, a small percentage of these cells – mere billions – suffer DNA damage or other issues that somehow may trigger cells to go rogue – cancerous.

 

That’s just one – one single – cell that goes from being just like all the others of its type to “proliferating abnormally,” according to one book quoted by the National Library of Medicine.

One cancer cell doesn’t kill you. If it survives your body’s defense mechanisms, that cell will multiply, becoming two cancer cells.

If they survive, the two become four, the four become eight, and so on.

But medical science cannot detect such tiny clumps of cancer cells. And, while they’re so small, they don’t hurt you. According to one Japanese study, we all have about 75 million cancer cells in our bodies every day. 

 

Of course, the danger lies in that tiny clump doubling so often, and so fast, it grows into a detectable tumor.

Only when medical science can detect such a tumor, do you get a diagnosis. That’s why medicine places so much emphasis on early detection. The sooner a tumor is discovered, the smaller it is, and the easier to treat.

And One Becomes Two . . . But How Quickly?

Therefore, one important measure of a tumor’s aggressiveness is called “Time to Double.”

If this hypothetical tumor contains 100 cells today, how long before it doubles to 200? 

The longer it takes for this tumor to double, the more time will pass before it grows dangerous.

That’s what we want.

 

In many cases, though we can’t know the exact figure, people die of other causes without ever being diagnosed with cancer. 

They die with cancer, NOT from cancer.

You’ve Got Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

So just face it: cancer is an inevitable risk of life itself.

That’s because life requires growth – and cancer is basically out-of-control growth.

 

We take growth for granted, but, if you think about it, how we go from tiny fetus to full-grown adult is quite amazing.

It’s not just our head getting larger. It’s all our organs growing in tiny, daily increments, in COORDINATION – while remaining totally functional.

Your heart can’t stop or even slow down while it grows. Our skulls and brains must expand together so they still fit together.

When you consider how many things are happening – not only all at once – but all at once TOGETHER, it’s incredible more doesn’t go wrong than does for most kids.

And we hardly notice it until adults comment on how much we’ve grown.

 

Once we’ve reached our peak, we must still grow new parts of our bodies to repair damage. Break or damage a bone, and you grow new bone cells to replace it. Cut yourself, and you grow new skin. 

Plus, athletes of all kinds work hard to grow bigger muscles.

Growth implies cell division. Every time a cell divides to turn into two cells, its genetic blueprint – its unique DNA – must be reproduced and made into an EXACT copy for the second cell.

 

As we all know, the more you copy and paste something, the more chances there are of errors being introduced. 

Errors in the copy and pasting of DNA are, technically, each microscopic cancers.

Most are caught and destroyed by your immune system. Some errors are repaired. Some errors don’t cause harm.

But, the more errors . . . eventually you wind up with the cell turning precancerous.

 

What Causes Cancer?

The mechanisms are complex. Although tumors start with just one cell, that initial cell is not exactly “cancer.” 

It’s a multistep process. Tumors become malignant through a series of progressive alterations. Their abnormalities accumulate over years. Most people don’t realize how long it takes for most tumors to grow to a detectable stage.

This is grounds for hope. Until and unless you’ve reached the most final, irrevocable stage of disease progression, you may be able to influence – stop, slow or maybe even reverse – those abnormalities.

 

No, I Mean, What CAUSES Cancer?

This became a common – and controversial – question back in 1981 when the United States banned the artificial sweetener saccharin. As other common substances were also banned, people who didn’t want to think in detail often said, “Everything causes cancer.” I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that. It annoyed me because I do want medical science and the government in particular to research the risks of the many unnatural substances currently in our environment – and so fatalistic attitudes about this annoy me.

They’re just an excuse to not change your behavior.

Yes, I do know that not everything that’s “natural” is good. My first case of poison ivy taught me that, thank you very much.

 

However, in the past 100 years, science has created at least 300,000 chemicals. Most are limited to industrial workplaces and so only a risk to the exposed employees, but many thousands are in our food, water, air, soil, clothes and personal care products.

Because they’re new, our bodies have not evolved to adapt to exposure to them.

How many have been adequately tested? You know the answer.

We are the guinea pigs.

 

Therefore, there’s no simple solution.

As a general rule, many known carcinogens are in our environment. That includes various chemicals (both natural and unnatural), plus atomic radiation, the ultraviolet range of sunlight and some viruses.

It includes substances we consciously ingest, including: tobacco, processed meats, and adult beverages.

Most carcinogens damage cell DNA, creating mutations that grow and multiply out of whack with your body’s needs.

Some are called nongenotoxins. They promote cancer by pushing growth. That includes hormones and some organic compounds.

Hormones that promote growth include estrogen, androgens and growth hormones. Of course, we need those hormones, but just enough, not too much.

That’s why the use of anabolic steroids by athletes can cause cancer – among many other health problems.

 

Conditions Within Our Bodies Often Encourage Cancer Growth

Almost everybody these days suffers from chronic inflammation. This may not directly “cause” cancer, but it fuels its growth and spread.

The same goes for hormone imbalances as mentioned. Too much estrogen and various growth hormones, including Insulinlike Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1), drive tumor progression.

 

The Flip Side of the Cancer Coin

If so many things we can’t avoid cause cancer, why aren’t we all dying of cancer?

Our bodies have evolved mechanisms to protect us from rogue cancer cells. Immune cells track them down and destroy them. We make antioxidants to protect our cells from DNA and other damage by free radicals. Other mechanisms repair damaged DNA.

 

Our Internal Defenses Include:

1. Immune system

When one of your cells turns to the dark side (cancer), your immune cells should detect that, and destroy it.

Generally, this works well. But cancer cells have numerous ways to trick immune system cells. Any lifestyle activity that weakens your immune system shreds this vital line of defense.

 

2. Inflammation management

Cancer cells not only thrive on ordinary chronic inflammation, they create their own inflammation by excreting harmful biochemicals.

The more your body can keep inflammation low, the better for your health.

 

3. Antioxidants

Your body makes its own, and our bodies have evolved to assume we will consume many antioxidants from plants we eat.

 

4. Tumor Suppressor and DNA Repair Genes

We all have a mix of healthy and unhealthy genes – and our lifestyle helps determine which kind dominate.

 

5. Angiogenesis Defense – the management of blood vessel growth

This is not often mentioned in either conventional or alternative health circles, but it’s critical.

Without their own blood supply, tumors cannot grow past the size of the tip of a pen.

Tumors that small cannot hurt you.

They have to grow larger. To do that, they need to hijack your blood vessels for nutrients. 

 

Fortunately, your body prefers to send blood vessels only to healthy tissue. Some foods encourage this. 

That is how to “starve” cancer. Eat the foods that allow your body to control where blood vessels are – preventing blood vessels from growing to where the tumor is.

The *Five* Stages of Cancer

You’ve heard of the stages of cancer. What are they?

Understanding this will help you see the importance of strengthening your body’s defenses against cancer sooner rather than later.

 

Stage 0

Cancer cells are present somewhere in your body, but they have not moved beyond their original location.

If someone has precancerous cells – those still in the earliest stages of excess growth and proliferation – you could also call that Stage 0.

Unless you’ve got a diagnosis, assume you’re in Stage 0.

 

Stage I

There’s a tumor, but it’s still small. It’s still in its original location.

Maybe it’s spread to nearby lymph nodes.

 

Stage II

Tumor has grown larger, and may have spread to more lymph nodes.

At this stage, it may have already spread to nearby tissues.

 

Stage III

Tumor has grown larger, and has spread to more distant lymph nodes.

It may also grow out more into surrounding tissues.

 

Stage IV

The cancer is now metastatic. It’s spreading widely through the body.

Not long ago, metastasis was measured as either Yes or No.

Now, however, doctors look at it more closely. They evaluate it based on how many organs in the body contain the metastatic cancer.

It’s Helpful to Understand There is a Gradual Progression

Nobody gets Stage IV cancer overnight.

These descriptions are fairly general and unspecific. The exact progression varies by type of cancer.

 

Obviously, the further along any given tumor has progressed, the greater the risk to the patient.

That’s why experts place great emphasis on early detection. 

The sooner a tumor is detected, the easier it is to treat.

The farther along a tumor becomes, the less likely the patient will survive the next five years.

 

What are the A B C D Letters

Sometimes you might see that someone has Stage IIA cancer.

Those letters are a measure of tumor aggressiveness. A means least aggressive, D means most aggressive.

Therefore, a Stage IIA tumor is preferable to Stage IIB.

Aggressiveness essentially means rate of growth. The more aggressive a tumor is, the shorter its time to double.

The more often it doubles, the more likely – and the sooner – it becomes fatal.

 

Your Immune System –  On a Search and Destroy Mission

When a cell has damaged DNA, it ignores commands to kill itself (apoptosis) and is excreting inflammatory compounds. Therefore, it is no longer a welcome member of the “community” of cells in your body.

It’s an outlaw – and nothing like Robin Hood or other romanticized thieves.

It’s a danger to you. As such, it’s the job of your immune system to form a “Superposse” like the one sent after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Just as your immune system guards you against dangers from the outside: bacteria, viruses and parasites.

Some of your white blood cells specifically target cancerous cells. Natural Killer (NK) cells are also important because they don’t need to be “taught” how to destroy cancer cells. They just do it.

 

However, like most of us, with age our immune systems grow weaker, more tired and – therefore – less effective.

Yet, this is a critical line of defense against cancer.

Cancer cells are tricky. They come up with ways to fool immune system cells into overlooking them.

 

To operate at peak fitness and alertness, your immune system needs:

1. A healthy, anti-inflammatory diet

2. Regular moderate exercise

3. A well-balanced gut biome (so eating plenty of fiber is part of an anti-inflammatory diet)

4. Emotional peace/stress management

 

The recently formed field of psychoneuroimmuninology studies the direct link between our mental and emotional states – and our physical health. This link is direct and scientifically validated. The concept is no longer “woo woo” or “New Age.”

When you feel helpless or overwhelmed by life or that life isn’t worth living, that’s stressful. If you are experiencing that, your body releases the stress hormones of adrenaline and cortisol. They activate the fight or flight response. That signals an emergency, so your body delays working on long-term health functions, including tissue repair and maintaining your immune system at full strength.

To prepare to fight a perceived immediate threat, your heart rate is elevated, raising your blood pressure. White blood cells release cytokines, increasing inflammation. Noradrenaline and cortisol block NK cells.

Many studies conclude that feelings of helplessness in the face of the disease decreases NK activity, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course, all of us have other sources of stress. Do all you can to keep yourself calm and centered – and in fighting spirit.

 

5. Social support from family and friends

This last is more important than generally recognized. Decades ago, medicine failed to acknowledge the deep connection between our bodies and minds. We are now beginning to realize our minds and bodies are intrinsically related. If you think about it, given that our minds exist within our bodies, that should be obvious.

Years ago, Dr. David Spiegel and Dr. Irvin Yalom tested this concept by running weekly support groups for women with metastatic breast cancer. Groups of eight to ten women met every week for a year, and helped each other through the understandably difficult times and feelings they went through. Some of them died during the year the groups met.

Compared to a control group of similar women who did not participate in a support group, by the end of the year those women in the support groups demonstrated highly improved emotional states. They had less depression, anxiety and even less physical pain.

 

However, Dr. Spiegel firmly believed that this would NOT affect their disease.

Ten years after their original diagnoses, Dr. Spiegel began calling their families to find out how long the participants had survived.

Three out of the fifty answered the phone. That’s three women who had originally been predicted to live at most just a few more years. None of the women in the control group survived for ten additional years.

The rest of the support group women, Spiegel learned from their families, lived TWICE as long as the control group.

 

Therefore, if you are now facing a diagnosis of cancer, I urge you to seek out support groups in your local area. If you can’t find them, look for them online.

If you’re going through a lot of stress in some other area of your life, join relevant support groups.

 

Inflammation Management Should Calm You Down

Quick Review:

Emergency inflammation is a great thing. It protected us from death by injury and illness hundreds of thousands of years before we invented antibiotics, antiseptics and surgery.

That inflammation is when your flesh turns red and swells because blood is rushing to the site to bring white blood cells and other substances to fight off infection and begin the healing process. Fevers kill infecting bacteria and viruses. Inflammation includes pain, but that goes down as your swelling does, relieving pressure on your nerves.

Once the infection is killed off you begin healing, and this inflammation gradually subsides, so your body returns to normal.

Unfortunately, due to the many unrelenting, ongoing, never-ceasing stresses of our lives, our bodies never hit a baseline of zero inflammation.

This nonstop inflammation is at the root of pretty much every chronic disease, including cancer.

 

The Cancer/Inflammation Connection Goes Way Back

In 1863, the founder of pathology Dr. Rudolf Virchow saw several patients who developed tumors at the site of stressed tissues. Some had received blows there, others suffered repeated friction, due to their jobs. 

In 1993, Dr. Harold Dvorak, Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, said one out of six of every cancer case is directly linked to an inflammatory site. Tobacco smoking causing lung cancer is the most obvious example, but not the only one.

Years later, a report by the National Cancer Institute described how cancer cells manage to hijack our natural healing mechanisms because they need inflammation to continue to grow.

Cancer cells therefore increase inflammation by producing their own cytokines, leukotrienes and postglandins. These are substances your body produces to repair injury and recover. They trigger lots of cell growth. That’s great when you need to repair an injury. But cancer uses them as fertilizer to feed its own growth.

Because of this inflammation, tumors can grow into neighboring tissues. They can also send cells into the blood, which carries them to other parts of your body.

This metastasis is the most dangerous phase, Stage IV, of cancer. 

 

Cancer-Caused Inflammation Also Blocks Apoptosis

Apoptosis is when your cells kill themselves on command. This occurs naturally when they’re older, weaker, no longer needed and a drag upon your health. Apoptosis is a normal process that’s useful to avoid the overproduction of cells in our bodies (the very definition of cancer). In other words, apoptosis is supposed to PREVENT cancer.

Chronic inflammation makes that more difficult.

Cancer-Caused Inflammation Also Neutralizes Immune Cells

Our white blood cells and, especially, our Natural Killer cells are supposed to detect cancerous cells and destroy them.

 

However, the overproduction of inflammatory factors such as cytokines throws the white blood cells into a tizzy. They and NK cells don’t do their jobs. They ignore the tumor they should be destroying.

An article in SCIENCE proved that the more a tumor can trigger such localized inflammation, the more aggressive it is – and the more effective it is at spreading itself through metastasis.

 

Degree of Inflammation Predicts Patient Survival Time

At Glasgow Hospital in Scotland, doctors have been measuring markers of inflammation in their cancer patients since the 1990’s. They now can say that the patients with the least inflammation are the most likely to survive the next few years.

In fact, these markers are a more accurate predictor of cancer survival than the patient’s overall health at the time of their diagnosis.

 

What About Anti-Inflammatory Medications?

Studies have found that cancer patients who take such over the counter substances as Advil and Ibuprofen are less likely to be diagnosed with cancer than those who don’t.

However, that’s NOT a recommendation. They also come with unhealthy side effects such as gastritis and ulcers.

Vioxx and Celebrex block the enzyme COX-2, which tumors love. But they come with dangerous risks to your heart.

 

Mental and Emotional Inflammation

Do you have issues with anger? Are you often irritated? Anxious? Grumpy? Impatient? Do you feel scared? Stressed out? Helpless? Overwhelmed?

 

Are you socially isolated? Forgotten?

Although usually ignored by oncologists and other doctors dealing with cancer patients, these negative emotions cause real health problems in your physical body. 

How much they actually “cause” or influence cancer is debatable, but many cancer patients have benefited from dealing with their issues.

If your mind and emotional heart are inflamed, then so is your physical body.

Maybe managing your stress with yoga or meditation or tai chi or something similar will be all you need.

Maybe you need deeper help from a qualified professional.

But, one way or another, learn to relax, and deal with your past traumas – and any current problems getting along with your friends and family.

 

The King of Proinflammatory Factors

That’s nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappa B).

This single factor is the most important for enabling the growth and spread of cancerous tumors.

Without NF-kappa B, cancer cells become more fragile, once again “mortal.” It also prevents metastasis.

 

Professor Albert Baldwin, PhD, of the University of North Carolina wrote in an article in SCIENCE: “. . . almost every cancer preventative is an inhibitor of NF-kappa B.”

The entire pharmaceutical industry is looking to inhibit NF-kappa B, but that same article listed two you can find at your local supermarket: the catechins found in green tea and reservatrol, found in the skin of red grapes.

In fact, the produce aisle contains many thousands of NF-kappa B inhibitors. 

That’s why eating at least 9 servings of fruits and vegetables every day is one of the most important things you can do to lower inflammation.

 

Lower Your Chronic Inflammation

1. 

Eat an anti-inflammatory diet.

That means: 

* Eating as many whole plant foods as possible.

* Limiting pro-inflammatory foods such as animal protein and saturated fat.

* Limiting adult beverages.

* Stopping smoking.

 

2.

Physical activity is also anti-inflammatory.

That means:

* Moving as frequently as possible instead of sitting for long periods, even to just stretch your legs.

* Getting regular moderate exercise. Walking, bicycling, pickle ball – whatever you enjoy so you will do it often. Get an indoors exercise bike, place it in front of your TV and pedal while you watch movies.

Exercise enough to make sure that at night you’re ready to . . .

 

3.

Get 7-9 hours of sleep every night.

Loss of sleep is associated with lower immune system function and higher inflammation.

It’s also tied directly to a higher risk of many cancers. 

 

4. 

Manage your stress, including long-term emotional problems.

According to Dr. Maxwell Maltz of Psychocybernetics fame, happiness is having pleasant and productive thoughts most of the time.

Yes, you will face problems and frustrations, but learn to compartmentalize them from the rest of your life.

Listen to music, practice yoga, meditate, carry out coherence breathing 20 minutes plus every day . . .

You may also need to find a way to become useful to somebody else. That’s especially true if you’re lonely and feeling unloved. Find someone who has more problems than you do, then help them. Even nursing home patients live longer when they take care of a house plant by their bed.

It’s your choice, but do it.

Antioxidants are Your Natural Defenses Against Free Radicals

One undisputed “cause” of cancer is damaged DNA. 

DNA is the double helix structure of our genes. It’s the code for the proteins which form our bodies. 

We inherit physical characteristics from each of our parents. Although all human beings share a huge amount of DNA (that which makes us all human), our precise DNA is unique to each of us, unless we’re identical twins or triplets.

For cells to reproduce and still be you, the original cell’s DNA must be duplicated EXACTLY. That sounds simple, but maintaining the exact order of millions of lines of code is not easy.

It doesn’t happen so much anymore, but in the olden days of computers a few decades ago, uploading, downloading and transferring files sometimes resulted in corrupted files. Somewhere in the process, the file you wanted to send to someone else did not get duplicated exactly right, so you had to send it again.

You have cells dividing every second of every day. For an exact Copy and Paste operation to succeed, the original DNA must be accurate. And the process must duplicate the DNA in the new cell exactly.

If the DNA of the original cell has been damaged, the new cell will have inaccurate DNA too. It won’t be the perfect new breast cell or new lung cell or new liver cell – it will in effect be a breast cancer cell or lung cancer cell or liver cancer cell.

It’s like you have a picture stored on your hard drive, but somehow the jpg code has been damaged. The file is corrupted. You cannot see that picture or copy it.

Only, in the case of our bodies, the corrupted file CAN reproduce, and even damage more files, and grow to destroy your hard drive.

 

One of the Prime Dangers to Cellular DNA is Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS)

ROS are often also called free radicals. They’re unstable molecules missing an electron. Electrons normally come in pairs, so free radicals are like single people desperately seeking a boyfriend or girlfriend.

In their loneliness, these unpaired electrons think nothing of stealing boyfriends and girlfriends from molecules in your healthy cells.

Naturally, this stresses out the cells of your body, which are damaged by the loss of their partner electrons.

That is oxidative stress. In your body, of course, the stress is biochemical, not romantic, but it is destructive to your health.

This theft of electrons from their rightful molecules can hurt your cells in many ways – including damaging their DNA.

And, of course, damaged DNA leads to higher cancer risk.

Antioxidants Protect DNA With Their Own Electrons

In effect, because they are stable molecules, they can find partners for the ROS so the free radicals are no longer lonely. 

That stretches the analogy a bit. But antioxidants do reduce the damage the ROS can inflict, protecting your tissues, including your cellular DNA.

 

Where Do Antioxidants Come From?

1.

Your body makes some of its own. The most well-known is glutathione. They also include Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD).

Your body makes these itself. However, to do so, it needs certain nutritional building blocks.

 

These include:

* Sulfur

You get this from certain proteins in meat. There’s also a lot of sulfur in cruciferous vegetables such as kale and mustard greens.

There’s also a lot in allium vegetables such as garlic and onions.

* Vitamin C

Almost all fruits and vegetables contain Vitamin C.

* Dietary glutathione

You can find it in spinach, okra and avocados.

 

2.

You consume antioxidants when you eat most plant-based foods. The more color in them, the more antioxidants. Thus, purple potatoes contain more antioxidants than white potatoes. Oranges contain more antioxidants than bananas.

Lack of Sleep Reduces Your Levels of Glutathione

Your body needs plenty of sleep. One of many reasons is to make its own glutathione.

One study compared people who slept normally with people who suffered from chronic insomnia. 

The insomnia patients had significantly lower levels of glutathione.

 

Therefore, to keep your body well-supplied with antioxidants:

1. Make more of your own glutathione by eating foods rich in sulfur, Vitamin C and glutathione.

2. Eat at least 9 servings per day of fruits and vegetables, as well as other whole plant foods – for the antioxidants in them.

3. Get 7-9 hours of sleep every night.

 

Genetics Don’t Determine Your Cancer Risk, but Do Affect It

After James Watson and Thomas Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, modern medical science wanted to apply this fancy, revolutionary tool of genetics to everything.

Genes and our heredity are extremely important, but don’t explain our entire lives, including most of our health and mortality risks.

Many scientists believe “bad” genes cause cancer. They are undoubtedly a factor, but we don’t want that to make us feel helpless.

Too many people smoke, drink too much, eat terrible diets of processed foods, don’t try to avoid exposure to carcinogens and . . . you know the type.

If you ask them why they aren’t scared of cancer, they’ll . . . pause – take a drag on their cigarette – then shrug. “My mother died of this, my father died of that – I’ve just got bad genes.” Another shrug, another puff. “What can I do?”

This is nonproductive learned helplessness. Probably caused by a fear of change and, possibly, deeply rooted psychological and emotional issues.

Obviously, you’re better than that.

 

You can’t change who your parents are and what they have already or will die from.

You can choose your own behavior and lifestyle.

We all have a mix of both beneficial and unhealthy genes. As we know from the developing science of epigenetics, your lifestyle habits influence whether you express the beneficial genes or the unhealthy ones.

Adopted People Do NOT Get Cancer as Their Biological Parents Did

Their cancer risk is similar to their ADOPTIVE parents. 

This was proven by a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Denmark maintains a detailed genetic registry. This enabled researchers to track down the parents of a 1,000 people adopted as children. 

Some of those biological parents died of cancer before age 50 – but that had NO correlation to the cancer risk of their children who were raised by adoptive parents.

Instead, the adoptees faced a 5X risk of cancer if one of their ADOPTIVE parents died of cancer prior to age 50.

 

Tumor Suppressor Genes

Many of our genes help our bodies repair damaged DNA, reducing risk of cancer.

However, some of us have genes that should be helpful, but, instead, come with harmful mutations. 

When normal, those genes help protect us from tumor growth. But if someone inherits mutated genes that can’t do their job, that raises their risk of cancer.

Angelina Jolie is the Best Known Example

The BReast CAncer BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes play important roles in protecting us from cancer cells by repairing damaged DNA and maintaining cell stability. When they work, they suppress tumors.

Clearly, that’s good – and protects us from the cancer that can result from damaged DNA.

 

However, some people, including Angelina Jolie, have mutations to those genes, causing them to fail to perform their jobs of suppressing tumors and repairing DNA.

Around 55% to 65% of women with the harmful mutation to BRCA1 will develop breast cancer before age 70. 45% of women with BRCA2 will develop it before age 70. 

Those rates are higher than for women with functioning BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

 

Genes are Not a Fixed Blueprint of Your Fate

If you learn you have damaged tumor suppressor genes, or you suspect it from your family history, it’s all the more important for you to live a healthy, anti-cancer lifestyle.

 

Remember: many women with those harmful mutations never develop breast or any other form of cancer.

Most breast cancer patients have functioning BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

Researchers have studied how to help women with the malfunctioning BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes lower their risk.

Dr. Parviz Ghadirian at the University of Montreal investigated. He found the more fruits and vegetables these women ate, the lower their risk of developing cancer despite their defective genes. Those women who ate up to 27 different fruits and vegetables in a week cut their risk by 73%.

 

Be grateful for your good genes, but don’t depend on them.

Don’t give up if you have “bad” genes. Your lifestyle is more important.

Medical science estimates a genetic component accounts for 5% to 10% of all cancer cases.

That’s significant, but not Fate.

 

Only One Kind of People are Almost 100% Genetically Protected From Cancer

Many live in a remote village in Ecuador.

They have a genetic condition called Laron Syndrome, a form of dwarfism. They rarely grow any taller than four feet.

Unlike other dwarves, people with Laron Syndrome produce growth hormone. However, they lack the liver receptor that binds growth hormone, producing IGF-1.

Without IGF-1, their height is stunted.

But their bodies also do not encourage the production of cancer cells.

Dr. Jaime Guevara-Aguirre has studied them for over 30 years, and knows of only one person with Laron Syndrome dying from cancer.

Dr. Dean Ornish Modified Expression of Over 500 Genes

 

He ran a study of 93 men with early-stage prostate cancer who had chosen not to undergo surgery.

The control group had their prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels measured on a regular basis, as doctors would have done anyway, but that’s all.

The other half of the men went on a vegetarian diet, walked 30 minutes a day six days a week, engaged in stress management programs such as yoga and met for an hour a week with the others in a support group.

The study lasted one year. By the end of it, six men in the control group experienced progression of their cancer so they had to undergo conventional treatment. On average, the PSA levels of the control group rose by 6%.

The group who changed their diet and exercised experienced an average 4% drop in PSA. NONE of them required additional treatment. When tested in a lab, their blood was 7X more capable of inhibiting cancer cell growth than the control group’s.

Based on before and after RNA samples, over 500 genes had been modified. Their new lifestyle activated genes helped guard their bodies against cancer – and inhibited bad genes that favored it.

 

Cancer is Like Many Card Games

You have to play the hand you’re originally dealt.

But there’re ways to play stupidly and ways to play smart, to win.

A healthy lifestyle gives you the chance to “discard” unhealthy genes, and draw new ones.

As any professional card player will tell you, you have to play every angle, turn everything you can to your benefit. 

They take advantage of putting the odds as much in their favor as possible – though of course without guarantees. 

 

Your Angiogenesis Defense System Protects Your Biological Supply Lines from Takeover by Tumors

 

Adults have around 60,000 miles of vessels carrying blood throughout every part of our bodies.

That includes not only arteries and veins, but also tiny capillaries – 19 billion of them.

Angiogenesis is the process of forming new blood vessels. 

Obviously, while we’re still children we need lots of angiogenesis. We also need to form new blood vessels to reach muscle fibers when we exercise and increase muscle size. We also form new blood vessels in reaction to injury.

However, once we’re our adult size, we generally have all the blood vessels we need. That’s our baseline. If we form new ones – for instance, to grow new skin after we cut ourselves – when they’re no longer required, our bodies prune the system back to baseline.

However, some illnesses promote excess blood vessel growth. That means angiogenesis is out of balance.

Excessive angiogenesis is what allows cancer tumors to grow to become dangerous. Excessive angiogenesis is a hallmark of all types of cancer.

 

But, remember, cancer starts out as one cell, not a large tumor with its own blood vessels. These cells multiply, growing more numerous . . .

Until they reach microscopic tumor size – .05 mm to the 3rd power. A cubic millimeter. That’s about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.

If all tumors stopped growing at that point, cancer would simply be a biological curiosity.

At that point, on its own, the tumor must stop growing. Because it doesn’t have a blood supply, it doesn’t receive sugar or fat or nutrients or oxygen.

When your body’s angiogenesis processes are balanced, angiogenesis is blocked. With no “supply lines” delivering nutrients, sugar and oxygen, these microscopic tumors remain tiny. Too small to pose any danger. 

This is probably one of our body’s most important internal defenses against cancer – and yet it’s rarely talked about by conventional or unconventional doctors.

Some call it “cancer without disease.”

It’s definitely Cancer Stage 0.

 

Unfortunately, sometimes these tumors manage to unblock angiogenesis. Once they have their own blood supply – so they receive oxygen, glucose, ketones and nutrients just as all healthy cells need – they grow exponentially.

That’s the danger.

Once the tumor grows large enough, it can release cancer cells into those same blood vessels, and that’s how metastasis – the most dangerous aspect of cancer – spreads cancer cell throughout the human body.

Therefore, with angiogenesis the turning point separating a harmless microscopic clump of cancer cells from a potentially deadly tumor, we want to block angiogenesis to cancer clumps. That’s antiangiogenic therapy. 

Its goal is to cut off the blood supply of these tumors. That’s what really “starves” cancer.

There are antiangiogenic therapy medicines. If you or someone you know has already been diagnosed, they’re worth asking your doctor about.

 

Dr. William Li is an expert on angiogenesis. As he tells the story, although antiangiogenic medicines can help many cancer victims survive for longer periods, they don’t help everyone.

But what if the angiogenesis could be blocked long BEFORE the tumor grows larger than the tip of a pen? So it NEVER grows large enough to be found by a doctor. So you die with cancer, not from it.

Obviously, medication is not the answer. We all have such tiny clumps of malignant cells. Doctors don’t look for them. They’re too small to find and diagnose. They don’t cause symptoms. 

So we can’t all constantly take such medicines, even if they did exist.

But . . . what if we could EAT to block angiogenesis?

 

Richard Beliveau, PhD, professor at the University of Montreal, pioneered using food to block tumor angiogenesis. 

One of the most powerful is green tea, which contains epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). EGCG is destroyed during the fermentation making black tea, so to get it you must drink green tea. The popularity of green tea in East Asia is probably one reason many fewer Asians die from cancer than do Americans. They have the same number of microtumors, but those fail to grow because the continual drinking of green tea blocks angiogenesis.

 

Dr. Li tests food nutrients, and found a famous polyphenol in the skin of red grapes – resveratrol – inhibited abnormal angiogenesis by 60%.

Ellagic acid in strawberries and genistein in soy – even more potent than resveratrol.

His laboratory has tested many foods. The general finding: whole plant foods powerfully inhibit excess angiogenesis. That includes soy, fruits, vegetables and spices.

 

Yes, some are stronger than others. 

Also, many polyphenols are stronger in combination than alone. That is, eating a diversity of plant foods is probably more effective than eating just a few. 

 

Other Ways Whole Plant Foods Help You Fight Cancer

1. They help you control your weight. 

Obesity is highly correlated with cancer.

 

2. They contain lots of fiber. 

Fiber encourages the growth of beneficial microorganisms in your gut biome. This is a critical part of your immune system.

 

3. They contain lots of antioxidants.

This helps protect you from free radical damage.

 

4. They are anti-inflammatory.

Cancer is highly associated with chronic inflammation.

 

5. They help protect us from DNA damage. 

Many polyphenols also repair damaged DNA or at least support your body’s ability to do so.

Conclusion

In my book, the best cure is always prevention.

Cancer is frightening. We’ve made progress in treating it, but not much compared to the money and effort expended over the past 50+ years.

It’s still our Number 2 killer.

Research shows we all “have” it to a degree. That is, everybody alive has DNA damage. We’ve all had cells become cancerous, and even grow . . . to a point.

Yet, unless you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, that means you have ALREADY defeated cancer. Or you’d already be dead, in treatment or diagnosed. You’ve squashed it every day since you were born.

 

Your body has numerous defense mechanisms against unrestrained growth – and they WORK.

But you can’t take for granted they will continue to work, because they do decline in strength based on your age and your lifestyle.

Many things, from stress to PCBs to pesticides to tobacco smoke to plutonium, “cause” cancer.

The media and most public discussion focuses on how to avoid these causes. 

And that’s totally valid. I strongly agree you should do whatever you can to avoid the known causes of cancer. Do not get unnecessary x-rays. Don’t eat processed meat. Filter your drinking water. Quit smoking tobacco.

All that’s great.

 

Unfortunately, we live in a world where you can’t escape all the hundreds of thousands of chemicals invented in the past 100 years. Polar bears live in the Arctic wilderness but they’re some of the most polluted animals on Earth.

We also can’t escape stress and emotional problems and so on.

Therefore, it’s also critical to strengthen your natural defenses against cancer.

 

Fight back. 

The more you improve the effectiveness of your natural defenses against cancer, the less likely you are to ever hear those dreaded words from a doctor: “You have cancer.”

The stronger you make your natural defenses, the more years you delay ever hearing that diagnosis. Delay long enough, make your cancer’s time to double long enough, and you may well die with cancer instead of from it. (That is, of some other cause.)

And that means without ever suffering from the emotional anguish and the physical stress of cancer treatments.

And medical science is still moving forward despite current problems. Just today, I saw headlines about doctors learning to destroy tumors with ultrasound and by creating “stealth” immune cells that tumors cannot evade.

But, even if medical science does one day come up with a simple and easy “wonder medicine” cure for cancer (not likely), I still say:

Prevention is the best cure.

 

Relevant Subjects:

The Metabolic Theory of Cancer 

Resonance or Coherence Breathing Can Help You Relax and Strengthen Your Immune System

 

References:

https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44276-025-00141-6

https://www.aicr.org/news/new-study-links-cancer-and-cancer-deaths-to-lifestyle-factors/

https://www.purewatergazette.net/blog/300000-new-chemicals-since-the-early-twentieth-century/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10925935/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9963/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3185898/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinogen

The Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer: A guide to Cancer and its Treatments (Second ed.). p. 137.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1383574209000428

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5922407/

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-keto-an-effective-cancer-fighting-diet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_hypothesis

https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2023/08/does-the-immune-system-fight-cancer

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6704802/

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/22607-cancer-stages-grades-system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwCBEgjUluU

https://www.facingourrisk.org/hereditary-cancer-genes-and-risk/BRCA1-risks-prevention-treatment

https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/what-is-brca/

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/aging/little-people-ecuador-laron-syndrome-may-unlock-cancer-diabetes-cure-n511266

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjkzfeJz66o

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3799895/

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/lack-of-sleep-and-cancer-is-there-a-connection