How efficient is chemotherapy for colon, lung, breast, and prostate cancers?
“Over the last several decades…medicine has waged a major war against cancer, concentrating on earlier diagnosis and improved therapy. The war is not being won. Nevertheless, medicine shows few signs of admitting that its strategy may be flawed. In this it resembles a World War I general who stated: ‘Casualties: huge. Ground gained: negligible. Conclusion: press on.’”
If you look on the contribution of cancer-killing chemotherapy to five-year survival in most cancers sufferers, it’s on the order of solely about 2 p.c. As you’ll be able to see beneath and at 0:50 in my video How to Win the War on Cancer, we’ve gotten fairly good at treating some pediatric cancers, testicular most cancers, and Hodgkin’s illness.
But, in the event you have a look at our most typical cancers—that’s, of the colon, lung, breast, and prostate—the success charge is simply about 1 p.c. That means out of practically 14,000 colon most cancers sufferers, for instance, solely 146 lived out 5 years, because of chemotherapy. The likelihood of survival advantage of chemo is about one in 100, however docs don’t inform sufferers that. “Any new chemotherapy drug is still promoted as a major breakthrough in the fight against cancer, only to be quietly rejected without the fanfare that accompanied its arrival.” Indeed, the “minimal impact on survival in the more common cancers conflicts with the perceptions of many patients who feel they are receiving a treatment that will significantly enhance their chances of cure…In view of the minimal impact of cytotoxic chemotherapy on 5-year survival, and the lack of any major progress over the last 20 years, it follows that the main role of cytotoxic chemotherapy is in palliation.” It can shrink tumors, relieving ache and strain, however that doesn’t are inclined to translate into residing any longer. “The failure of therapy, coupled with the realization that the overwhelming majority of cancer is related to environmental, particularly lifestyle factors, dictates that prevention should be our foremost aim.”
Cancer is basically a preventable illness, but it surely does require main way of life adjustments. Of the tens of millions of most cancers diagnoses yearly, as many as 90 to 95 p.c of the cancers are attributable to way of life components, with solely 5 to 10 p.c attributable to unhealthy genes. We know this due to “enormous differences in the incidence of particular forms of cancer in differing geographical and socio-economic situations” all over the world, which then change when individuals transfer from one place to a different. For instance, as you’ll be able to see beneath and at 2:40 in my video, breast most cancers charges differ by an order of magnitude, with the bottom charges in elements of Africa and Asia, till these Africans and Asians transfer and begin consuming and residing like Americans, Argentinians, Europeans, or Australians.
So, “there is need for a major reappraisal of how the problem of cancer is approached.” The key to successful the struggle on most cancers is prevention, which not solely works higher, however “has the great advantage that it entails nothing worse than nicotine [or jellybean] withdrawal symptoms. On the other hand, cancer treatment, even when successful, often exposes the patient to much suffering, both physical and psychological. Indeed, some cancer treatments are considered worse than the disease.”
Most importantly, a wholesome way of life can nip most cancers within the bud, whereas, by definition, early analysis and remedy don’t change the most cancers charge or the variety of individuals getting most cancers within the first place. In phrases of most cancers prevention and remedy with vitamin, the “consumption of nutrients of animal-based foods were associated with increased cancer risk while nutrients of plant-based food were associated with decreasing risk.” It’s not sufficient simply to keep away from the unhealthy stuff, although. Eating is just about “a zero-sum game.” Everything we put in our mouth is a misplaced alternative to place one thing much more healthful in our mouth. It’s not nearly avoiding meals with cancer-promoting properties. We have to eat meals with energetic cancer-suppressing mechanisms. By “wholistic nutrition,” we’re speaking about entire meals, and we must always get their vitamins not from extracts or capsules, however from the entire meals themselves.
Ultimately, “cancer development is primarily a nutrition-responsive disease rather than a genetic disease,” however, once more, we aren’t speaking about dietary dietary supplements; we’re speaking about “whole, intact food.”
I’m very excited to share a few of Professor Emeritus Colin Cambell’s six new papers on redefining the function of vitamin in medication.
For an outline on the facility of food plan, see my How Not to Die from Cancer and The Best Advice on Diet and Cancer movies. I’ve produced tons of of movies in regards to the function of various meals and meals consumption patterns on totally different cancers. Browse the entire titles by way of the search bar on my web site NutritionFacts.org.