Worn-out jeans are comfortable.
Worn-out genes are not.
We wonder why cancer is a raging epidemic.
It’s not because of “cancer genes” or living longer.
Cancer is the leading cause of death world-wide because our bodies are worn-out.
I’ve learned this the hard way, inside-out, fighting ovarian cancer without any of the ~650 known cancer genes around which western medical treatments are designed. My story is not unusual. 90-95% of people with cancer do not have identified, inherited cancer genes, and many cancers are striking younger than ever before. So, what’s going on? How can we fight if we don’t understand WHAT we are fighting?
Here’s what I’ve learned, looking at the science differently.
The amazing thing about the Human Genome Project is our ability to overlay our own human blueprint on average human DNA. In so doing, we see where and how our DNA base pairs (the two parts which make up each rung of the DNA ladder) vary from “normal.” Differences are not all bad, of course. Variety is the spice of life, and some of these variants confer characteristics that serve us well. Certain flavors of intelligence. Humor. Even empathy! Yes, there is a gene associated with empathy (OXTR – rs53576), and yes (!), I have a double variant there (GG). There we have it.
But functional genomic analysis shows that my body is also clearly vulnerable in 3 ways:
- Detoxing molds and the mycotoxins they release
- Detoxing heavy metals
- Clearing environmental toxins and pharmaceutical metabolites
I was not surprised; the results were validating. Also, these are predispositions, not inevitabilities. As they say, genetics loads the gun; the environment pulls the trigger. If I lived in a Blue Zone, would I have gotten cancer? Probably not. Knowing as much as I did for the last several years, I worked to clear a lifetime (conception to age 45) of accumulated toxins from my body. I didn’t have extraordinary exposure. Just that of a normal, modern American. I was functional, but I didn’t always feel well. I was getting to healthy…just not fast enough. I had learned a lot about how to protect our family from physical and emotional toxicity…just not in time to avoid a cancer journey myself. The best thing I can do now is to make some meaning out of it all. So, here goes…
First of all, even if your body can clear molds/metals/toxins better than mine, do we think human bodies should be processing all that $&#t?! That would be a big Hell No. At the very least, fighting toxins takes time and energy away from all our bodies need to do to thrive in the natural world. Even the trillions (seriously, they outnumber our own cells) of microbes who hitch a synergistic ride with us are choking on our trash. The good ones at least. The more opportunistic microbes thrive, leaving us unable to digest nutritious food without discomfort, bloating, and malabsorption. Low FODMAP. Paleo. Gluten-free. These are just some of the many ways we work around our worn-out bodies now.
Heavy metal exposure exacerbates toxicity from molds, so they’re more anchored in us than before and enjoy that we are surrounded by artificially sealed and wet environments in many homes and buildings. If we took a longer, broader view of human health, we’d design differently. At least we can breathe easily outside, right? Well, not when the air quality shows high levels of pollution, including smaller particulate matter (PM2.5). These inhalable particles from soot and industrial activities can pass into the bloodstream, entering multiple organs including the skin. The pandemic may be waning, but hang onto those N95 masks. For people like me, it pays to actively avoid toxins. Another seemingly innocuous example is pharmaceuticals which are supposed to heal us, but their toxic metabolites linger and do more damage than good in bodies like mine. This would be why the list of side-effects in commercials has long been a subject of parody. I’m sure you could use some comic relief at this point, so here’s Dana Carvey eavesdropping at the pharmacy.
What if other people are vulnerable in similar ways? The body is beautifully designed to address toxins and disease but our environment/diet/stress load can overwhelm that amazing system and open the door to diseases, including but not limited to cancers. The key is managing all those loads on our bodies rather than addressing them after the fact with chemicals and surgeries that can further damage our natural systems. The good news is everyone can take active, incremental steps to improve the health of our bodies, our families, our communities, and future generations.
We should be fighting against toxicity rather than compounding the problem. Western medicine aims to treat our conditions with yet more (patentable and profitable) chemicals our bodies aren’t designed to process.
Doesn’t this feel like the point in the horror movie where the young kids head out into the woods while we hear the chainsaw starting up?
To me, it does. Chemo is the Mac Daddy of toxins, yet it was the “best option” and “urgently needed” when I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in February of 2020. Is it any wonder that mold and bad microbes had a heyday when I finished, like most people, with low white blood counts? Knowing all this empowers me to recover, heal, and protect my body going forward. What if I didn’t know? What does oncology have for us? Toxic scans. Take home drugs. “Maintenance chemo.” Sadly, that’s a thing. How can a body get ahead of that onslaught? It’s hard to imagine. Is it highly profitable for the cancer industrial complex? You betcha.
There is nothing empathetic about any of this. Take it from me. I’m an empathy expert. I also have scientific training, limitless curiosity, and now, unfortunately, too much personal experience in the oncological belly of the beast of the western medical system.
How will this degenerative situation change? I’m not holding my breath for people who have made their careers in western medicine/pharmacos/chemical companies to wake up. That would be nice, but that will also be the very last thing to happen. People’s livelihoods, mortgages…and most importantly, their identities are wrapped up in that system.
But we are not powerless. WE can wake up. We, the patients. We, the consumers of healthcare. We, our bodies’ longest allies and closest friends. When we do look around with eyes wide-open, we find there are alternative ways to heal our bodies. We find there are discerning and experienced people who can help us understand and defend ourselves against man-made toxins. We can learn how to buttress our immune systems rather than destroy them. We can take small incremental steps to proactively protect our bodies from physical and emotional toxicity:
- Drinking clean water
- Buying organic and unprocessed food whenever we can
- Cooking at home from whole foods
- Patronizing restaurants with better quality, noninflammatory ingredients when we do eat out
- Meditating
- Being mindful about protecting ourselves from emotional toxicity
More broadly, we can join like-minded others to support cleaning up the mess in our food system, water, environment, and buildings so that we fulfill our responsibility to leave the world better than we found it, rather than count on the next generation to make these changes. More and more people are waking up to these issues and doing something about them. To support your own health, you may need help. Look for people who work with the body’s natural systems across a range of issues, not individuals who may have healed themselves (temporarily) with one dogma or another. Once you see what’s going on, there is a lot you can do at the personal and societal levels. It feels good to do that work because it’s aligned with the design of our bodies and the natural world. It’s empathetic.
The more we move in the right direction, the more the broken elements of the western medical system will be left to change…or die of their own weight.
Better them, than us.
That would be real progress.
Thanks to John LeMay for edits to this post. For more perspective through the lens of empathy, check out Jackie’s book Currency of Empathy: The Secret to Thriving in Business and Life.
Jackie, thank you for sharing your insight from your heart and your head! Look forward to your next message.
My pleasure, Lamar. Thank YOU for taking the time to read and comment. I really appreciate the conversation.
Jackie,
Always enlightening to read your messages. Even though we are so enamored with modern medical science, we need to remember that there is so much that is still unknown. My thyroid cancer was caused by radiation of my neck when I was a child by a physician! Luckily, we know better today, but modern treatments aren’t always perfect. The question is, who is teaching us how to stay healthy? Modern medical education falls woefully short of that and physicians are not equipped to do it. Agribusiness and industry propaganda seem to be filling the void.
Hi Mary – nice to hear from you! Geeeezzzz…so sorry about your radiation-induced thyroid cancer. Yes, at least we are learning all the time about how to avoid such things. In all of my explorations about why cancer settled in my right fallopian tube to start, I’ve wondered a lot about an optional and exploratory procedure I had as a young woman to open the tube so I could get pregnant. There was no evidence anything was blocked, and we hadn’t been trying that long, but the procedure supposedly “did no harm.” Probably, that wasn’t true. And probably, if John and I weren’t traveling to different cities and working all the time, less time would have passed before we conceived without that, ugh, “help.” Of course, I had the other vulnerabilities too, and exposure to emotional toxicity prior to the diagnosis. Still…fallopian tubes are fragile. It’s hard to imagine that forcing air through them wouldn’t create some scar tissue. Your question about who is teaching us to stay healthy is excellent. Here’s my answer so far, in order of helpfulness: 1) curious and brilliant functional docs who left the big systems to practice patient-centered care, unconstrained (in CLE we’re lucky to have Inspire Wellness, and Jessica Hutchins, M.D.; she and Dan Neides, MD, are spreading the truth about individual health and the systemic issues working against us); 2) experienced and collaborative naturopathic docs (NDs). Options Naturopathic here has Dr. Laura Mourino. I find her well-informed, up-to-date, kind, and collaborative. Kind matters when recovering from the trauma of cancer, as you know all too well. There’s more than enough fear flying around from the trauma of western treatments. 3) entrepreneurial chiropractors have leapfrogged MDs in many, many cases. Here, Dr. Tim Keyes has been wonderful for physical therapies (applied release therapy, adjustments that support our ability to exercise/oxygenate our bodies without pain and injury) and Dr. Greg Kempf practices allergen (e.g., mold) desensitization through NAET (seems wacky, but has accelerated my mold detox – I have results to prove it). Osteopaths are often helpful too, especially with hands-on manipulations if necessary (like manipulating insides back into the right place after surgery). Finally, there are a handful of “experts” I’ve consulted remotely through the years because they have expertise a general practitioner doesn’t, e.g., mold detoxification and mast cell activation MCAS https://mastcell360.com/. Trying to detox mold in the care of a Cleveland Clinic functional doc was no small contributor to my ovarian cancer – I was already triggered with MCAS, highly sensitive to mold, burdened with ochratoxin (proven to cause ovarian cancer) and other mycotoxins, and she put me on a standard functional protocol without spending much time reviewing the many tests I brought or really listening to what I was saying. When I came back to let her know I had a cancer diagnosis, she said without a hint of empathy or curiosity or even responsibility to do no harm: “90% of people who do the mold detox are fine.” Wouldn’t it be great if she could learn something through my case so the other 10% didn’t suffer?! That seemed unlikely and I was launched into a whole other fight, so I never went back…and never will. Finally, I’ll say that no one person has ever had all the answers, and personally-derived dogmas are dangerous. If a doc isn’t willing and able to collaborate, it’s best to walk away. We also need to understand that, at this point, it’s still up to us to synthesize the best answers for our health across all the advice. Someday, as healthcare advances to HEALTH care in the way practitioners and we patients are trained, and as people start younger and smarter in this work, a single partner will be able to keep us healthy year after year. At that point, the annual checkup (which I did religiously at the Cleveland Clinic for 2 decades to no end… “you’re perfect. Have you tried hummus?”….or, “all I have for your hives and aches is Benedryl and prednisone”…I’m not kidding) will provide truly useful info through smart, whole terrain blood/urine/stool analyses and meaningful take-home advice about food as medicine, genetic SNP analysis to bio-individualize the plan (really not hard now), and when/if needed, clean supplemental nutrients (where people have individual deficiencies bc of processing issues and because our soil is so depleted). Agribusiness and industry propaganda are filling the void, as you say, but we can look away from that BS. We see the pig under the lipstick. The beautiful thing about the internet is that answers are emerging, crowd-sourced from people who didn’t stop until they pivoted into true healing. We need to be discerning in what we read and try, and then listen to our bodies. It’s not easy, but at least it’s possible to heal, even from difficult things like cancer. I always appreciate being in these conversations with you, Mary. Be well!
I just lost a dear cousin this week from after effects of radiation from a previous cancer. That won’t be on her death certificate. But everything they touched disintegrated ad they were trying to “help” leading from one intervention to the next. Isolation from family and friends as she went from hospital to rehab and back (COVID rules that are far behind CDC guidelines) compounded her problems. A sick 88 year old woman who couldn’t remember what the doctor said an hour later was required to direct her own health care treatment. She finally directed for hospice and peace. The system is broken.
Oh, sweetheart, that’s a sad, sad story. So sorry for her suffering – alone 🙁 – and your loss. Yes, the system is broken. Xo
Jackie- your brilliance, insight and empathy are reflected in each line. Thank you for sharing so the rest of us can continue to learn this critical, humanistic view to fortify ourselves and our families.
Thanks so much, Monica. Yours and Dan’s company on this journey means a lot to us.
Thank you Jackie for your wisdoms and experience. Waiting for your book on how you got through all the health care side effects.
Stay well and vital
Blessings OOOMMM
I’m blogging my way there, Ken, and will continue sharing what I learn as I get through all of the side effects. I’m still working on balancing the microbiome and recovering WBC/immune system. Even with great supports, bioindividualized nutrition, and feeling well most of the time, chemo does a number on those things. Energy healing is certainly part of the answer! Namaste!
I have followed a similar program and am 79 taking no meds. Great read coming from you. I am looking for a functional MD here in Boca- Fort Lauderdale area for a friend diagnosed with 2 auto immune diseases and feel medications may be missing the boat to heal her. Do you have any suggestions?? Any body here??. She has Pots with disautonomia hyper adrenergic pOTS. Also lichen plants. Trying to get her to find other alternatives.
I meant lichen planus in my earlier comment. I am a frien of your mom at Deercreek.
Good for you, Janet! I love to hear stories like yours. Functional docs – especially those who have left the bigger systems, where time and practice constraints make it difficult for them to be patient-centric – have been great sources of healing for me, and a good introduction to more holistic healthcare. I’ve also learned a lot from naturopathic docs (ND’s) and entrepreneurial, forward-thinking chiropractors (DC’s) and osteopaths (DO’s). Occasionally, certain expertise was needed too (e.g., mold detoxification, settling mast cell activation), and it’s been my job to synthesize it all/incorporate it into a protocol for myself. Most of the people who have helped me have not been local, but they are licensed to work virtually. So much can be done based on blood/urine/stool tests which are easily ordered and done at home. I don’t know anyone in Boca, but a quick google search showed a few people your friend could try. This one has the most positive reviews.https://drericwoodnd.com/naturopathic-medicine/ In his case, and usually, it’s possible to do an exploratory call without a charge to see how they might be helpful. I’d suggest doing that as well as looking through the reviews. You’ll find a good fit that way. In my experience, no one brings all the answers, but people who are willing and able to collaborate with patients help us move toward healing in one way or another. A functional MD may be best suited to helping your friend as she titrates off meds (in which they probably have some training) and into more natural healing modalities. Your friend is fortunate to have you. I hope she finds the help she needs soon.
Yet more science-backed, empathetic and actionable guidance. We’re lucky to have you putting this out to the world.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Steve. Your perspective means a lot.