What is Cancer??

What is Cancer?

During the past 40 years, rates of cancer have gone up so drastically that nearly one in two people will develop cancer. It is now the number one killer in developed countries. Each year, more people die from cancer, despite the billions of dollars spent on treatments that have had no real success. The major reasons for this failure are our lack of understanding of what cancer is the predominance of the pharmaceutical medical model, which treats the cancer only after it has developed and progressed. In most cases, the cancer has been growing in the body for 10 or more years. The pharmaceutical model also relies on highly toxic chemicals—chemotherapy—with serious side effects.

Fortunately, with the latest research we now have a much beter understanding of what cancer is and how to treat and even prevent it.

The traditional model for cancer was based on the notion that mutations occurred in the DNA of cells as a result of the natural background mutation rate (somatic mutations) or from exposure to some toxic substance such as asbestos. However, the existing evidence is inconsistent with this explanation and at best explains only a small number of rare cancers. More than a century ago, researchers suggested that chronic inflammation contributed to the development of cancer. More recently, overwhelming scientific evidence has shown inflammation to be a major contributor to cancer. There is now convincing scientific evidence of the “inflammon genesis of cancer.”

The evolution of cancer proceeds through a continuum of steps; the first is mutagenesis, the development of dysplasia when normal cells undergo changes of the nucleus and cytoplasm. The next step is the beginning of the invasive process, mitogenesis, in which the cells continue to grow and reproduce. Next is angiogenesis, with the formation of blood vessels to supply the cancer. Then comes metastasis, during which cancer spreads throughout the body and, finally, suppression of cell death (apoptosis) and immunosuppression so it can grow and spread virtually undetected by the immune system.

While the first step, mutagenesis, is linked with exposure to a cancer-causing agent—a carcinogen—it is now believed that the cancer needs support to go through the remaining stages of development. Inflammation is not only linked with the expression of cancer genes and mutagenesis but also can contribute to every single step in the formation of cancers, from mutagenesis to metastasis and immunosuppression. There is now an overwhelming body of evidence from both animal and human studies to show that anti-inflammatory nutrients and medication can contribute significantly to the reduction in cancers. We now recognise that inflammation is the single most important factor in the development of most cancers.