Radio Australia Today Editorial

Cancer. How to Beat the Epidemic

22 August 2008

Everywhere I turn at the moment, I meet someone who has cancer.

My sister had it. My nephew has it. Close friends have it.

You really have to ask why it is becoming so prevalent these days.

One person who says he knows is French-American cancer doctor David Servan-Schreiber. While testing out a brain scan machine one day, the machine showed that he had a cancer in his brain the size of a walnut. You don’t need to tell you that it was a shock to him. He was used to dealing with people who hadcancer. Now he was on the other side of the fence. The discovery started him on a campaign to find out what caused his cancer, and what he found out was hardly news to people in the cancer field, but will be a big surprise to the general population.

Here’s what he found:

1/.. Sugar. Cancer feeds on it. He says 100 years ago we had only 5 kilos of sugar per person. No need for me to tell you that we have a lot more than that these days.

2/.. Factory Farming. Animals no longer feed just on grass. They are fed supplements and soy and other products that are not natural for their systems. He says this denies them the nutrients they need that are cancer preventative. This is passed on to people who eat the meat.

3/.. Chemicals. Pesticides have been used a lot since the second world war to stop bug attacks on crops. Preservatives are added to food. Colourings. Flavourings. MSG. But Organic food does away with the chemicals. Organic food is produced using the concept of ‘companion planting’ where the plant is grown with other plants that pests don’t like. Organics taste better, and they aren’t soaked in chemicals.

4/.. Cut out the dairy. He says cheese and milk and eggs are produced in many places in a way that they are no longer the sources of health and goodness that they were when our parents were children.

5/.. Slow down. Meditate. Do yoga. The evidence, he says is that cancer patients who do this live two or three times longer than those who don’t.

Dr Servan-Schreiber still has the cancer he developed sixteen years ago, but he is healthy. He changed his life and has defied all the prognoses of his impending doom. There has to be something in it. Think about that next time you go out for that fast food or donut.

– Phil