What Causes Cancer?
Yes, we must address the elephant in the room: the dreaded ‘C’ word. Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally and is responsible for nine million deaths each year, with the common causes of death being lung, liver, colorectal, stomach and breast cancer. The number of people with cancer is projected to double by 2030. So, yes, we really need to talk about cancer, as it is a devastating disease that is growing exponentially.
Is Cancer Inherited?
Cancer is the result of an underlying cause. The genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger.
Genetic mutations mean that any cell in the body can become damaged and faulty and, as a result, the genes are not functioning properly. This doesn’t mean that it is inherited.
Some genetic traits will be inherited. However, inherited traits that lead to cancer only account for 5-10% of cases. The other 90-95% of causes are when we see the genetic mutations as a result of environment and lifestyle.
Therefore, cancer is a result of an underlying root cause. It is a symptom of a disease. The development of cancer is not random. A tumour dos not grow overnight.
What Causes Cancer?
There are many reasons why cancer is so prevalent and becoming more so. It’s not a mythical, enigmatic disease. It is clearly directly the result of lifestyle and environment. There is a HUGE correlation between higher risk of getting cancer and living in a developed country. This can’t be just a coincidence.
This highlights the role of diet, lifestyle, medications and pollutants in westernised population. This tells us that lifestyle and what we breathe, consume and absorb play a massive role in the development of cancer.
My job is to encourage people to create an environment in their bodies to make it incredibly difficult for cancer to develop and flourish. We know that there is an optimal environment for cancer to occur. We know that cancer and abnormal cells thrive in certain environments. Therefore, it is essential that we ensure that our body is a healthy environment.
Where Do Cancer Cells Flourish?
Acidic Environment
This includes consuming lots of red meats, processed food, dairy, sugar, high levels of salt and smoked foods (yep this includes smoked salmon). It is important to note that ALL diseases thrive in an acidic environment, and this environment is often misunderstood.
A lot of people think that dairy is alkaline, but in the body it is acidic and promotes the growth of cancerous cells. Add the amino acids from meats to the mix and you’re producing sulphur, and therefore, sulphuric acid. This is why I am NOT an advocate of the carnivore diet (I recently spoke about the carnivore diet in detail, so scroll back to read more on this). This acidic environment needs to be minimised.
You can test the acidity of your environment by measuring the pH of urine and saliva.
Anaerobic Environment
This means ‘lacking oxygen’ and comes down to your stress levels, breathing, diet and exercise routine. This is more related to your lifestyle. For example, if someone is stressed, they are constantly contracting their muscles, and using all the oxygen to do so. Plus, they’re unlikely to be breathing from their diaphragm, using their abdomen. Again, this causes a lack of oxygen. As a result, they will be in a very anaerobic state. This is another reason as to why I’m such a proponent of daily meditation, it teaches you HOW to breathe properly and in turn oxygenate your body.
Another cause of an anaerobic environment is lack of exercise. If you are sedentary you create more lactic acid (contributing to the acidic environment that you DON’T want) and do not have as good lung capacity as those more active.
Glucose Rich
Malignant cells need glucose to proliferate, because they are depended on glucose for their metabolism. Cancer cells have many more glucose receptors on their membrane than healthy cells.
So, what you don’t want to do is have an acidic and anaerobic environment that invites cancer cells to develop, and then continue to feed these tumours refined sugar as this will speed up their growth. Something that I find deeply concerning is that, often, cancer patients are fed diets that are high in refined sugars – this is complete madness to me as you are adding fuel to the fire.
It is essential to consider the environment in which we bathe our genes. Let’s not wait until we’re diagnosed with something as it might be too late then shall we?
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