We make cancer cells every day; they’re not dangerous

Cancer is a tricky disease, not to mention a scary one.

One in three Americans will be diagnosed in their lifetimes, making it the second leading cause of death behind heart disease.

The facts are that we create defective cancer cells every day of our lives, 10,000 of them in fact. But these microscopic cancers are harmless, typically never becoming dangerous.

Cancer is caused by your diet, not genetics

Did you know that 90-95% of cancer is linked to diet and lifestyle?

It’s not our genetics, but rather what we eat and do on a daily basis that either puts us at risk or lowers our risk.

A healthy immune and circulatory system starves cancer, robbing it of any blood supply. When that’s highly effective, cancer just never gets a foothold.

But, of course, sometimes the immune system isn’t robust enough and cancer does develop a blood supply and you receive the dreaded diagnosis.

What should you do if you’re diagnosed?

Ideally, we would avoid chemotherapy because of its toxic nature. It’s a killer of cancer cells, but it so severely weakens your healthy gut and immune system, that cancer typically returns.

What we should do, if possible, is activate our own immunity to kill just the cancer, leaving the healthy cells alone.

Is this possible? It is.

Immunotherapy rallies your own immune system to fight cancer

Immunotherapy treatments are called checkpoint inhibitors. The inhibitors effectively rip of the invisibility cloak cancers use to hide and remain undetected by your immune system.

Immunotherapy has been around for a while and it currently is more effective at treating some cancers than others.

Jimmy Carter survived cancer with immunotherapy

President Jimmy Carter had melanoma which had spread to his liver and brain. He made an official statement in 2015 that he was retiring from public life as he didn’t have much longer to live. He received immunotherapy and three months later the 91-year old was told all his tumors were gone.

Dr. Li, author of “Eat to Beat Disease”, got immunotherapy for his mother whose endometrial cancer had returned and metastasized to other areas of her body. She too made a full recovery.

Immunotherapy is a “miracle”… when it works

The “problem” with immunotherapy is that it doesn’t work on everyone’s cancer.

When it works it’s miraculous, but it only works about 20% of the time.

The link to success? Your gut

Researchers in France wanted to see if they could figure out why. Led by Dr. Laurence Zitvogel, they evaluated mice at first, demonstrating that altering their gut microbiome could affect their response rate to immunotherapy.

Fortunately, they found the connection to be the same in human cancer patients. Identifying a single gut bacteria, named Akkermansia, they found that if patients had that particular bacteria present in their gut, they were more likely to respond to treatment and have their own immune system successfully fight cancer.

Not surprisingly, antibiotics negated any positive response.

When you consider there are 39 trillion gut bacteria, finding this one bacteria species that has the ability to “uncloak” cancer cells is pretty amazing.

Akkermansia only accounts for 1 to 3 percent of the total bacteria in your microbiome, but it is highly effective at helping your immune system identify and fight cancer.

How can I improve the population of my Akkermansia?

Of course, you now want to go out and buy Akkermansia, right? It turns out that unlike Lactobacillus or Bifidobacteria or other species you can “take” in a capsule, Akkermansia has to be fed.

What it likes to eat is pomegranate juice and cranberry juice. The researchers gave patients a single glass of pomegranate juice for a month and found a robust increase in the Akkermansia population.

Why do pomegranate and cranberry make a difference?

Pomegranate and cranberry are high in bioactive (something which is found in food and has a beneficial effect on your health) called ellagitannin. About 70% of individuals are able to take ellagitannin and convert it into another bioactive Urolithin-A. It is this final bioactive that has anti-cancer, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties.

What allows the final conversion is the presence of Akkermansia.

So many systems of the human body work in this way. You desire “X”, but in order to make it you must be able to convert it from “Y”. And the conversion typically requires a nutrient. If you have that nutrient, you’re good, without it, nothing happens.

In this case we want a thriving population of the gut bacteria Akkermansia. How do you get that? Enjoy a daily glass of pomegranate or cranberry (unsweetened) juice.

There are many such foods that influence your microbiome, your detoxification systems, your ability to repair and protect your body. We will be discussing more of these foods and how they benefit you in upcoming blogs.

How’s your health?

If you are not enjoying the robust health you deserve, but you’re not really sure what to do, let us help you.

We specialize in getting to the root cause of why your body is giving you symptoms.