Standard Treatments for Cancer & Why They May Not Work

We’re continuing from last week. We talked about cancer, what it is, a little bit about cancer cells and the causes of cancer. If you didn’t see that post I urge you to go back and look at it.  It will be very informative.

Let’s talk about how standard medicine treats cancer and then we will move on to other possibilities next time. There are currently three ways to treat cancer: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Let me say this very loud and clear. If you are going to get a standard medical cure for your cancer it should probably be surgery. That is: if the cancer is singular, if it is still one single tumor, if it hasn’t spread yet, and if they can go in and do a good “no touch” technique and remove the whole thing. You notice there are a lot of “if’s” in there.  If they can do all that and get it out, then you do have a chance of a standard medical cure, and that would be surgery.

The caveat to that is if they don’t get it all or if they biopsy it and run a needle through it cutting across lymphatics and veins and go through that tumor and back out again. Or they might not do good surgical technique when removing it. In either case, they have just spread it. That would be a problem. The point stands, however, that surgery would be the best standard medical cure, given the right conditions.

The next standard way of treating cancer is radiation. Radiation, which are X-Rays as I mentioned last week, causes cancer. It’s interesting – I guess you could say we’re treating fire with fire there. Radiation is frequently used to kill cancer cells. We also know that it does increase the risk of cancer of whatever you are radiating later. If you don’t kill all the cancer it increases the chance of having multiple lines of cancer cells instead of just one. There are some definite downsides for radiation. It also damages the immune system locally and to some degree more broadly. But it certainly damages the immune system less dramatically than chemo does.  

What I used radiation for in my alternative cancer clinic was mainly to de-bulk tumors. I didn’t use it a whole lot of times, but there is a new form called IMRT which helps you get less radiation. Radiation therapy is getting a little better. If you have an IMRT machine locally available it can be of benefit.

Chemotherapy works by damaging cells that are in the state of division. Whatever cells in your body are dividing it’s going to damage those cells. The theory behind chemo is that your cancer cells are going to be the most rapidly dividing cells in your body so it’s going to do more damage to them than it does to any other organ system or any other cells. Unfortunately that is not true for a lot of tumors. A lot of them are fairly slow growing.  The slower growing the less true that would be.  

The other problem there is the most naturally occurring rapid division in your body is from your immune cells. Therein lies a huge problem. If you ask a chemo doctor, “Doctor, could this chemo possibly ever kill all of the cancer cells?”  the answer will always, absolutely, 100% of the time be no. Chemo can never kill 100% of the cancer cells. You kind of scratch you head and go, “Well, okay, if chemo isn’t going to kill 100% of the cancer cells then what’s going to kill the rest of them?” The answer is your immune system. Then you go, “Okay, I thought chemo damaged my immune system. Isn’t that why you check the white blood count every time I come in before you give me another dose?” Therein lies the catch 22 with chemo. It damages the only thing that can possibly save your life. Unless your immune system steps up and kills the last 10 or 20 or 30% of the cancer cells you will not survive.

There are a few cancers, usually leukemias, lymphomas and blood type system cancers, and testicular cancer that there are some very effective chemos for. You can count those on your fingers. The others are poorly responsive to chemo in general. Outside of the handful of cancers that are very responsive it may not be a good way to go.

Next week, we’ll talk about some natural means of preventing and treating cancer. Stay tuned.

Cancer & It's Causes: Part 2

Last week I started a multi-week talk about cancer. I began with defining exactly what cancer is: a cell that loses the knowledge of when to stop growing. I also talked a little about how emotional issues and wrong beliefs can be the primary causes of cancer because of the latent stress they cause to the body. This week I’ll talk more about phsysiological causes of cancer. 

First we’ll talk about hypoxia. Hypoxia is a scientific word for not enough oxygen in the tissues. Oxygen deficiency is a cause of cancer. We’ve known that for over 80 years. Dr. Otto Warburg described that in 1925 and won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1931 for discovering the cause of cancer was low oxygen at the tissue level. Some of you are also aware that an acid pH causes cancer. These are actually one and the same thing. The acid pH prevents the delivery, the unhooking of oxygen out on the tissue level. So the cells don’t get oxygen when you have an acid environment in your body. That’s why having enough oxygen in your tissues is so critical. There are medical tests that look for this. You put a probe on your finger and it tells you how saturated your blood is with oxygen. Unfortunately, you can have 100% oxygen saturation in the blood and have extremely poor delivery of oxygen out in the tissues because of that acid pH in the environment.  

Another cause of cancer are environmental toxins. I was reading an article in the paper here a couple years ago. It was talking about the annual meeting of all the water treatment plant people that treat water for people to drink. They said they knew that chlorine caused cancer. They just didn’t know what to do about it because they couldn’t treat enough water for everybody without the chlorine. There are known environmental toxins; lead, mercury, chlorine, the different chemicals, pesticides; all kinds of chemicals that we have, unfortunately, in our environment. We’re still putting a lot of these toxins that help facilitate cancer into our system.

We all know that radiation causes cancer. Madame Curie, the discoverer of X-rays, died of, you guessed it, cancer. She didn’t know to protect herself with lead shields and lead aprons because she’d just discovered X-rays and didn’t have a clue that they caused cancer. We get natural radiation from the sun and from space. It’s raining down on us all the time. The medical community is, oddly, pretty free with radiation. There was a period when we were much more careful with radiation. For example, my daughter was getting an X-ray taken a couple years ago and I asked for a shield to put over her ovaries. They looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Why would you do that?” Well, X-rays damage tissue and they cause cancer. Right? “Oh, this isn’t much radiation.” We kind of treat it cavalierly and with bravado. “Oh well, it’s just a little bit of radiation.” Sadly, our medical environment is a significant source of radiation. Woman are encouraged to get mammograms. That’s a lot of radiation, especially if you talk about having it every year.  It may be that you may not be able to not have cancer at some point in time if you get enough radiation.

Another potential cause out there is nutrition, or should I say the lack of nutrition. You’ve got to have the right nutritional things to provide for proper cell structure, proper materials to grow, to maintain health, and the proper detoxifiers or antioxidants.  Nutrition or lack thereof can be put in that list of potential causes for cancer.  

I’d probably list the last cause of cancer as viruses. Every cancer cell will have a virus in it. Viruses play two roles in cancer. One is as a direct causative agent in the cells, helping them lose control. On a broader scope, we all have viruses hanging around. You might’ve seen or heard of somebody having shingles when they’re 70 or 80 years old. Where has that virus been? Where did that come from? That came from when they were 8 or 10 years old and got chickenpox and now 7 decades later it’s popped out and bitten them. Where was it all that time? It was right there in the body. Viruses are tough critters. They live in our bodies and our immune system has to stay constantly vigilant to protect us from them. 

There are some of the causes of cancer. This is a really big subject. What I’m going to do is come back next week and share some more about current therapies and other ways to look at treating cancer. Come back next week and we’ll give you the rest of the story.

Cancer & Its Causes

Some of my first posts on this blog were talking about breast cancer. Now I’ll return to the subject but talk in a more general sense about cancer. Cancer is a huge subject.  There is a lot of material to cover so I’ll probably post for the next few weeks on cancer. It’s certainly of interest to all of us, and we all know someone that has had it. It’s not a pretty thing. There’s a real struggle to find a cure for cancer in the medical establishment but for most cancer there’s no good treatment.

Let me get right into the scope of the problem. Economically, billions are spend in research every decade and multi-billions of dollars are spent treating the disease every year. It’s a major industry. It's not fun to think of it in this way, but the financial outlay and costs to the U.S., and to the world is almost beyond comprehension. 

Since 1955 the incidence of cancer world wide has increased world-wide by over 40%.  That’s a big number. In 1971 President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer. At that time it was the 8^th leading cause of death in the nation. Today it is number two. There was a period in 2005-2006 where it was actually reported in the news media that it was the leading cause of death. So you’ve got to ask yourself, “Are we winning this war?”  Needless to say the answer to that is a really big, “NO”.  

There’s also a paradox here because the only treatments that a person can receive legally are those which are approved by the government. These are: surgery, radiation, and chemo-therapy. If a physician administers anything that is not approved by the government, they can end up loosing his license or even going to jail. It kind of puts a damper on anybody that might want to receive treatments other than what the government has approved.

So the question is, what is cancer? What on earth is this? Why is it what it is?  Cancer is your very own cells that are trying to escape their toxic environment. That toxic environment happens to be your body. I know that’s kind of a different way of looking at cancer cells, but it’s true. Cancer is normal cells trying to escape a toxic environment.  

Let’s get a little more specific. Cancer is when a cell loses the knowledge of when to stop growing. You know that if you cut yourself the skin starts growing together from each side. When those cells meet in the middle they stop growing. They “know” when they’ve met each other and they “know” that they’re supposed to stop and how the normal healing process is supposed to be. There is an innate “knowledge” there and they “know” to stop growing. Well, cancer cells has lost that knowledge of when to stop growing.  

There’s also another characteristic of cancer cells: they’ve lost the knowledge of what they are supposed to be. A liver cell forgets that it is a liver cell and starts growing out of control. The less knowledge they have of what they’re supposed to be the worse the cancer is. In medical terms that’s called “undifferentiated”, or less specific cells. The less specific they are the worse that tends to be.  

Another thing we know about cancer cells is they’re extremely inefficient users of energy.   Whereas a normal cell gets 38 units of energy out of a certain type sugar, cancer cells only get 2. And as I’ve mentioned in a previous post about sugar, cancer can only burn sugar for their nutrient supply. These are a few things that distinguish what makes a cancer cell different.

What causes it?  Later I’ll talk more about different causes of cancer. But for now, recall what I said about cancer as cells trying to escape a toxic environment. What causes that toxic environment? Well, I’d say the first issue that we have to look at is (as people close to me will know that I’ve said it for years) emotional and physiological stress. If you’re familiar with my work on the Healing Codes with Alex Loyd, you’ll know that stress equates to unhealthy cellular memory down deep inside, or wrong beliefs. That’s what ultimately causes physiological stress in the body. Emotional issues and wrong beliefs can be the primary causes of cancer from my perspective.  

You absolutely have to deal with those issues if you want to get well and stay well. I frequently use the analogy, “Where do cactuses grow?” Well, we don’t see them here in East Tennessee. We see oak trees and grass and briars and bushes. We don’t see cactuses because they grow out in the desert. That’s the environment that they grow in. On the other hand, in Arizona they don’t have many live oak trees because the soil, the sunshine, and the water isn’t environmentally friendly to them. So the inside environment is what you want to change if you want to get well. In other words, where we really want to be is working on prevention. Physiological stress is what we want to stay out of. You can go to The Healing Codes site and hear Dr. Loyd and I talk about physiological stress, cellular memory and what causes that, along with the emotional issues that lead to physiological stress that, to me, are the primary cause of cancer.

Next time I’ll talk more about causes of cancer that relate to our physical environment as opposed to our emotional environment. Stay tuned. 

Strokes Don't Just Happen To The Elderly

Strokes are not a good thing to have. It’s the third leading cause of death in North America. It’s the number one cause of long-term, serious disability. Three quarters of a million people will have a stroke this year and a third of those are going to die from that stroke. These are really big numbers.  

It’s not an old person’s disease necessarily either. A third of all the people that get a stroke will be under age 65. Those are numbers we best perk our eyebrows up and pay attention. The other thing that’s important to know is that if you’re African American those numbers go up even more dramatically. There is a three-fold increase if you have those genetics. Those are numbers that should get our attention.

What is a stroke? A stroke is when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. Within minutes brain cells begin to die. There are two kinds of stroke. You can have a blood loss in the brain where an artery starts bleeding from an aneurism or something like that. That produces a stroke. Then there is a clot-type stroke where you get a plugging. One way or the other a stroke is essentially loss of blood flow to an area of the brain. That’s why strokes can look so different. It’s whatever part of the brain that the blood is going to that gets stopped up or starts bleeding, that’s the area that is affected. That’s why some people can get numbness on a leg or arm or part of the face, or even have speech loss or vision or balance loss. 

Now if you’re having a heart attack, you can cognitively with your brain think about that.  “Okay, my chest feels tight. I’m sweating. I’m feeling anxious. I’ve got pain in my left arm.” You’ve read these symptoms and you can think about them and say, “I may be having a heart attack. Dial 911.” The problem with stroke is your thinking organ is being affected. You may not be able to reason about it. It is important for all of us to know the signs of stroke so that we can recognize it if it’s happening to someone else.  

If we do see it happening it’s really important that we do something about it. There’s a time for energy medicine and there’s a time for waiting on things. There’s a time for doing herbals and homeopathics and nutritionals, but this is the time to head for the hospital or dial 911 because of the long-term implications of letting this slide for just minutes.  

Remember I mentioned that there were two different kinds of stroke? There is the bleeding and then there’s the stoppage, the clot-type events. One of the problems from the medical side that doctors face with a stroke is after you get to the hospital they’ve still got to figure out which that is because you treat these two kinds of strokes two completely different ways.  

With the clot they are going to give you some medicine to help dissolve the clot. But if you’re bleeding, that would be the absolute worst thing you could do. You’re probably going to have to get an MRI or CT. They’ve got to wait for one of those to get empty and then do the scan, then get the results. That’s why it’s important not to let any time at all get by before you go to the hospital. If you get to the hospital and the symptoms resolve, hey, you can always go home! Regardless, this is a very time-critical issue.  

What does a stroke look like?  Sudden weakness or numbness any place in the body, face, arm, leg, the abdomen and chest. Dimness or loss of vision usually in one eye. It’s usually one-sided unless there’s a huge aneurism with a lot of blood loss or something. Then it can be both sides. Usually strokes are one sided. Loss of speech or trouble talking, articulating, getting your words out. That is a one-sided event but it takes both sides of the tongue working and the cheeks to get words out. Sudden or severe headache, dizziness or instability walking, falling. These are acute. These are things that happen quickly. I’m not talking about having a little trouble with your balance for the last few weeks and it may be a little worse this week. No, I’m talking about a sudden inability or sudden event.

Why do you get strokes? What are the risk factors? High blood pressure is way up top there. High cholesterol combined with high blood pressure leads to hardening of the arteries. Diabetes is a risk factor. Smoking is a risk factor. Heart disease is a risk factor.  You could throw a clot up to the brain if you have fibrillation or something like that. Arteriosclerosis can occur in the carotid artery and a piece of plaque could brat off there and go up to the brain. It’s all pretty much vascular related except for the smoking. Of course that causes arteriosclerosis so we’re back to the same idea of one cause with a lot of things that feed into that.  

What can you do to prevent strokes from happening? If you’re smoking that can be helped. You can stop that. Keep your blood pressure down. Eat healthy. Eat reasonable portions of meat. I only eat one portion of meat a day and I’ve tried to trim that down to about half the size I used to eat. I take fish oil every day. I take olive oil every day. Probably at least equal to vitamins, maybe even more important, are antioxidants. All of this damage occurs in a general form that we’ll call oxidative. Another way to say that is we’re rusting. Antioxidants help prevent that process. Those are some of the things we can do in a preventative fashion.  

Sugar Kills

Blood sugar is a fascinating topic.  It’s coming more and more into our public awareness all the time, especially as we become more aware of sugar and some of the bad side effects of that high fructose corn syrup can have.  We’ve all been aware of blood sugar for a long time.  It’s something you’re supposed to be aware of.  Doctors check for it.  Some of us even have trouble with low blood sugar even though most public awareness centers around high blood sugar.

There are a lot of people who have low blood sugar too.  In fact most people who drink a couple of cups of coffee in the morning get a message that triggers their brains to think that they have low blood sugar, so they mobilize blood.  I guess that’s why it’s such a popular thing to have the “mocha-chocha-chocolata-whatever” with your coffee these days for an extra $5.  When you drink that massive amount of caffeine it tells the brain that you don’t have enough blood sugar, even though your levels might be quite adequate.  So your liver starts mobilizing sugar to put it into the blood stream. 

Most of the focus these day is around high blood sugar.  That’s what’s normally called diabetes.  Most of the focus is particularly on Type 2, because that is the one we can do the most about.  We can’t do a lot to cure Type 2, but we can certainly mitigate it’s effects with standard medicine.  Too much blood sugar for too long has some really horrific symptoms.  You can loose toes, get kidney damage, lose kidneys, heart disease, heart attacks.  All disease across the board goes up when your blood sugar goes up.  Your life expectancy goes down.  Even cancer risk goes up.  Research papers are coming out about that any given week.  All of those things are harmful effects of increased blood sugar.  

Where is this coming from?  Well we’ve got, as I mentioned previously, high fructose corn syrup in everything these days.  There’s plenty of information online that you can find about high fructose corn syrup, what’s in it, and some of its damaging properties.  Plain old refined sugar isn’t a healthy thing to eat either.  

Interestingly, the brain has to have sugar to run on.  In fact, that’s all the brain can burn.  It doesn’t have any protein or fat stores.  That’s why it is so important that your blood is kept in a fairly range of blood sugar.  Your brain doesn’t work without it.  

There is another interesting caveat and that is cancer cells also can only burn sugar.  They can’t mobilize protein or fat either for their energy resources.  Muscle cells, liver cells, other cells in the body can all break down protein and fat to locally generate sugar inside of the cell for its use as an energy source.  But brain cells, and interestingly enough, cancer cells can’t do that.  They have to get their supply of sugar directly from the bloodstream.  That’s their basic energy.  That’s the gasoline.  That’s what we run on.

How do you keep it at a good level? We’ve tried to substitute insulin and drugs for good old exercise and diet.  Those are the cornerstones of maintaining a good blood glucose level.  Even diabetics can lower their blood sugar without using any extra insulin or drugs just by exercising.  It’s the magic key that opens the door to get sugar out of the blood and into the cells without anything else.  Just good old wholesome exercise and eating right…  by eating right I mean protein, healthy fats, lots of vegetables and fruit and staying away from the sugars as much as we can.

Hypertension and You.

This week we’re going to change the focus from breast health on to other areas that affect your health, specifically hypertension (or high blood pressure). 

Obviously, high blood pressure is not a good thing.

Let me help you understand why.  Think of your blood vessels as a garden hose.  When your heart pumps, there is a bolus (a large ball of fluid) that comes through your arteries every second or so. That whole big volume of blood that’s in the ventricle goes out almost at one time.  It’s kind of like the Tom and Jerry cartoons that you see where the mouse gets caught in the hose and there’s a bulge in the hose where he's hiding from the cat. That happens every time your heart pumps.  That bulge of fluid goes out through the arteries and it stretches them in the process.

It doesn’t take much of a thought process to figure out that as you increase the pressure it increases the stretching of the artery walls.  They are made of little elastic fibers.  As you stretch them too much those elastic fibers begin to break.  Then the body repairs it with a patch that we call cholesterol or plaque.  Cholesterol, calcium and other substances such as fibrin, are part of that patch.  That’s how that whole process of hardening of the arteries occurs.  You get too much stress, you get damage, and then you get the patch.  Now that patch doesn’t flex and the rest of the arterial wall has to flex even more.  It becomes a vicious cycle.  You can see how that creates a perpetual damage problem ongoing. 

So, we can see that keeping your blood pressure under control is important in order not to damage the arteries so that the arteries can function with their natural stretch properties every time that bolus of blood comes out of the ventricle.  It’s also important in order to not damage organs like your kidneys, your brain, etc. 

There are some natural things you can do to keep blood pressure under control.  The simplest one is stay out of stress.  I’ve already mentioned briefly that stress causes disease, and in fact chronic stress is a major cause of hypertension.  If you’re interested in supplements, magnesium has been shown to reduce blood pressure significantly.  There are a number of other natural things that have benefit.  Garlic is another supplement that can help prevent or treat hypertension. Even though garlic will make you smell, it could save your life.

The bottom line: keeping our blood pressure low is very important, especially for the cardiovascular system. I’ll be talking more about cardiovascular health in the coming weeks on this blog and on my podcasts, so stay tuned! 

5 Unusual (And Easy) Ways To Prevent Breast Cancer

1. Don’t wear a bra.

No, that doesn’t mean you need to go outside and burn your bras. But you should probably wear it less than you think. Bras tend to raise the temperature of the breasts, and cancer thrives in higher temperatures than normal. Bras also restrict the natural flow of oxygen and nutrients to the tissues, and don’t allow the normal lymph-pumping action of natural breast movement. (See number 4). 

2. Breathe

Well, you’re probably already doing this. But take a few minutes to breathe differently every day, and you’ll notice a world of difference. Deep, slow breaths from your abdomen will oxygenate your system, keeping your cells happy and avoiding the oxygen-starved environment that fosters the growth of cancer cells. Learn more about breathing techniques here. 

3. Don’t wear antiperspirants

“Eww gross”, you’re probably saying to yourself. Not wearing antiperspirants doesn’t automatically mean smelling like a horse, but it does mean staying away from the potentially cancer-causing aluminum that’s an ingredient in most products. (See here for my previous post on this). 

4. Exercise

Remember when I mentioned the “lymph-pumping action” your breasts have in natural movement? If you don’t move a lot, they won’t do their job. The lymphatic system is a crucial component in the body’s immune response, and lymph (the disease fighting fluid in the system) isn’t pumped through your body like blood, but rather by the movement of your muscles.  Some lymph nodes reside in your armpits (where a good deal of women end up having breast cancer) and when you “bounce” you’re naturally pumping lymph from there into the rest of your body. And, of course, exercise will generally increase quality of life and allow you to live longer. 

5. Stop being so stressed out!

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 85% of all illness is caused by stress. Stop and think about that... then think about how often you live with that stress. Unfortunately, it’s next to impossible to live in today’s world without stress, but it is possible to find ways to deflect it or release it. One way is simply to find the time to do whatever it takes to get some rest and quiet (two essential ingredients to stress relief). Another way is to just say NO to all the commitments that clamor for your time. Be wise about how you manage your time, and you’ll find your stress levels will decrease. 

So there you have it, five easy ways to prevent yourself from getting breast cancer that don’t cost you a penny, and might even save you some money! 

Drugs & chemo: not always the right choice.

This summer, the New York Times wrote an article about the drug Avastin, a drug sold by the company Genentech and used by many doctors to treat breast cancer. In the article, however, the New York Times notes that the drug “promotes life only by a few months, if that,” and that “some new studies suggest the drug might be less effective against cancer than the Food and Drug Administration had understood when the agency approved its uses.” 

Unfortunately, the sad truth is that drug companies usually know those things long in advance before it is disclosed. It’s about the money. I hate to be that honest and simplistic, but that’s the bottom line.  

I went to a breast cancer seminar probably 5-6 years ago.  Of course there were a lot of drug companies there. They had set up the booths and they were sponsoring it.  But the statistics at that time were that, if women who had recurrent breast cancer took chemo and radiation (in other words, traditional treatment provided by pharmaceutical companies) they lived 22 months on the average.  If they didn’t take these drugs they lived 20 months.  That is not statistically significant.  If you ask a statistician, there is no difference in those two, 20 or 22 months.  So you’re talking about women being damaged and nauseated, sick with hair falling out and all kinds of horrible side effects, all the while getting no increase in life that is of statistical significance.

I asked the drug company reps at this seminar, “So why are we giving this?”  They told me, “Oh, well, two months!”  But that’s two months of misery for these poor women. Medicine is supposed to be very scientific and about the patient, but unfortunately the sad truth is that many times it’s not in the best interest of patients.  

That doesn't mean that there isn't hope for a longer life for those who suffer from breast cancer. With a healthy lifestyle, careful decisions about your diet, and some alternative treatments and preventative measures, I've seen many women live far longer than the doctors had given them, with some even experiencing remission.  If you want to learn more, I'll shamelessly plug my book here, but you can also stay tuned to this blog to learn more about different ways to stay healthy without padding the pockets of drug companies. 

One thing you can do for breast health.

I've done a few seminars about breast health and one of the most common questions I get is, "Dr. Ben, if there's one step I could take to keep my breasts healthy, what would it be?" 

The answer is simple: when you go home, take your bra off and massage your breast. Put your hands on your chest and rotate in a circular motion a few times with the tips of your fingers. Then go the other direction.  Even while the bra is on you can do this. Find a private place while you’re at work or while you’re out of the home and do this three or four times a day, because you’re creating circulation. You’re not changing the heating factor of the breast, but you’re creating blood circulation.  Remember, circulation is what gets oxygen to the tissues. Low oxygen is a cause of cancer on that physiological level.  So take your bra off when you get home and massage your breasts. That’s probably the easiest, simplest way to keep your breasts healthy and it doesn’t cost a nickel for you to do.

For more tips on how to massage your breasts, check out this step-by-step eHow article that walks you through it. 

Antiperspirants and your health.

If you're a women and you use antiperspirants, your health may be in danger. There
 has 
long
 been 
concern 
that
 aluminum
 in products
 like 
cookware 
and
 antiperspirant
 deodorants 
might
 contribute 
to
 Alzheimer’s
 disease, 
but
 newer
 research 
connects 
antiperspirants
 with
 breast
 cancer
 as
 well.


The
 primary 
lymph 
nodes 
in 
the
 armpits 
carry 
toxins
 out
 of
 your
 body
 by
 several
 methods,
 including
 perspiration.
 One
 theory
 about
 the
 association 
between 
breast
 cancer 
and 
antiperspirant
 use 
is 
that 
the 
lymph
 nodes
 are
 not
 allowed 
to
 do
 their 
job 
properly.
 Another 
theory 
is 
that
 the aluminum in
 the 
antiperspirants interferes
 with 
estrogen
 action
 and 
possibly
 even
 changes
 the 
cellular
 matrix
 of
 breast
 cells.
 It is 
certainly 
telling 
that
 the
 majority
 of
 breast 
cancers
 occur 
in 
the
 upper 
outer
 quadrants
 of 
the breast.
 Since 
that’s
 the
 place
 closest 
to
 the
 armpit, 
it’s
 enough 
for
 us 
to
 recommend
 that
 you
 change
 your
 deodorant
 if
 you’re
 using 
antiperspirants.

Take 
a
 good
 look 
at 
the label
 and 
reject
 anything
 with
 aluminum
chlorhydrate.
 There 
are
 many
 natural
 deodorants
 on the
 market
 that 
work
 very
 well
 without 
aluminum. One particular quality brand is Crystal Body Deodorant®. If you want to learn more about breast health, check out my new book on breast health at my website, where you can read a free chapter and find links to buy it.

A New Paradigm in Health

Welcome to The Secret of Health blog. Here, you'll find regularly posted entries by me, Dr. Ben Johnson, as well as other doctors, writers, and specialists from time to time. If you're interested in staying healthy in natural, common sense, inexpensive ways then you'll want to subscribe to this blog. In the meantime, please take a look at my new book, The Secret of Health: Breast Wisdom at www.breasthealthsecrets.com. You'll find a free sample and more information about me and my co-writer, Kathleen Barnes, as well as Podcasts and more. Then when you're done, come back here and let me know what you think! I look forward to talking more.