Breast Cancer – Women’s Health Issues

Breast cancer are two words that send fear through the hearts of most women today. How do we stop this fear? First, we need to understand the processes that lead up to the diagnosis rather than focus on the disease process alone after the diagnosis. A large and growing body of research points to environmental factors — including toxic exposure to things such as herbicides, pesticides, steroids, antibiotics and food preservatives — as meaningful contributors to cancer risk. So what’s the good news? The good news is that means there is a great deal we can influence.

It also means that inherited genetic factors make a smaller contribution to susceptibility than many people assume. Twin and population studies consistently suggest that for most common cancers, heritable factors account for a minority of overall risk. That again points toward the things we can actually act on.

Two things that can be found with every type of cancer include the loss of the body’s ability to control alkaline/acidic balance within the cell and a default in a major metabolic hormone. Other problems include toxicity and a low oxygenated environment in the diseased tissue. It is my view, shared by many practitioners who work with natural, non-toxic methods, that supporting the body’s own natural defenses is an important part of reducing risk and of supporting a person through whatever treatment their oncology team recommends. Nothing here is a substitute for that medical care. One main determining factor for the risk of breast cancer is your body’s overall lifetime exposure to estrogen.

Please note that not all estrogens are bad. The ones that the body produces are good. These estrogens protect you from osteoporosis, heart disease, and even cancer itself. The bad estrogens are the synthetic, man-made hormones we are exposed to everyday, such as plastic, herbicides and pesticides to name a few. Some synthetic estrogens that we knowingly take include birth control, synthetic hormone replacement and horse estrogen. One of my philosophies is, whether you take them, make them or are unknowingly intoxicated with them, you need to detox them everyday in a healthy way.

There is so much information on the role of food as medicine for our bodies. However, what I have found is that we can eat enough to maintain our current status, but it’s impossible to eat enough good foods for it to be therapeutic. This means that if we are experiencing a health problem, such as cancer, we need to turn to nutraceuticals that are concentrated high dose forms of foods, vitamins, mineral, enzymes, etc. Eating a good diet alone will not fix the problem. Functional medicine will focus on the terrain or soil that you have created in your body. We will not focus on the cancer itself. You have all heard of the great farmer who treats the soil and not the plant. Good soil, healthy plant; bad soil, sick plant. This is the same for the human body, and it matters both alongside treatment and afterwards. Recurrence is a real and understandable worry for many people who have had cancer once — which is why the underlying terrain deserves attention, not just the diagnosis.

Chronic Stress

What exactly is stress? Stress can come in many forms, it could be emotional stress, chemical stress (toxicity), electromagnetic stress, physical stress, or anything else that elicits a stress response in the body. It doesn’t matter what kind of stress you have, your body perceives them as all the same. Stress has many effects on the body. It can lower your immune system, increase your cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure. It can contribute to sexual dysfunction, arthritis, heart disease, weight gain, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, as well as low thyroid function and decreased metabolism.

When you’re under stress your body switches into a fight or flight mode. When this takes place there are several physiological responses. You have a decrease of all non-critical processes. Your energy will be mobilized to your muscle. Digestion will be turned off (digestive complaints are extremely common), detoxification will be impaired, you have a decrease in cellular repair, and you will be placed in a catabolic (breaking down) state. This catabolic state will weaken all your systems.

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