Awakening the Inner Physician


Local Health Practitioners on Beating Cancer with the Immune System by Linda Sechrist


S


ince President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971 declaring “war on cancer,” and the National Cancer Institute was declared the nation’s principal agency for cancer research, Congress has fund- ed, on average, $4.9 billion per year to investigate the causes, prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Additionally, despite countless independent fundraisers and campaigns for funding research and raising aware- ness, cancer rates have dramatically increased year after year. According to the American Cancer Society, a stagger- ing 50 percent of men and 33 percent of women will get some form of cancer in their lifetime.


Instead of more money, which clearly is not fixing this problem, many doctors and other health professionals that are focused on functional and life- style medicine favor integrative cancer treatments, which include effective natural therapies that enhance immune system function, address the root cause of the disease and are more focused on prevention and wellness. Numerous local health practitioners


such as Deborah Post, a board-certified advanced nurse practitioner and owner of Wellbridges, in Fort Myers; renowned neurologist David Perlmutter, M.D., owner of the Perlmutter Health Cen- ter, in Naples, and co-author of Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment; Kimberly Lemons, a cer- tified clinical thermographic technician (CCT) and owner of Suncoast Thermal Imaging, in Cape Coral; Taryn Kean, a CCT Level 3 and owner of Southwest Medical Thermal Imaging, in Bonita Springs; and Ursula Kaiser, a Naples


“While millions race for


a cure, the cause is staring plainly back at us: thousands of daily chemical exposures, poor nutrition, lack of


exercise and a stress-ridden


lifestyle conducive to a down- regulated immune response. The point is to remove the multiple known causes of cancer, and the cure will be obtained.”


~Sayer Ji, co-author of Cancer Killers


resident and author of My Journal to Wellness: How I Beat Cancer Naturally, are all in alignment with the mission of the Living Proof Institute (LPI) in West Chester, Ohio, where cancer is viewed as an environmental health hazard. Because diet, emotions, toxin exposure, activity levels, sleep and immune health determine the internal and external en- vironment of our body’s 75 trillion cells, when cancer develops, the first question that is asked at LPI is: What was the state of the internal environment that allowed this to happen?


Deborah Post, Wellbridges According to Post, who has 25 years experience in a variety of health set- tings, an internal toxic and over-acidic environment that fuels the growth of cancer is created by the consumption of too much sugar, bad fats (hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, trans- fats and rancid vegetable oils) as well as refined, processed and prepackaged


chemical-laden food, in addition to a toxic external living environment. Post works with an integrative medical mod- el and uses a variety of complementary techniques that include medical herbol- ogy, nutrition and health education. “Cancer is a last-ditch effort by the


body to say, ‘Wake up! I am too toxic to function. Clean me up so I can get back to work,’” quips Post, who recom- mends lifestyle changes such as proper diet, detoxing and exercising in addi- tion to an assessment of the work and home environments for toxins. “These steps are relevant to getting the immune system back in working order, because there is no pharmaceutical that will ever trump its power,” she cautions. Post offers an example of how detoxing and cleaning up the inner en- vironment impacted one of her patients with basal cell carcinoma—abnormal, uncontrolled growths or lesions that arise in the skin’s basal cells. Over a period of time, the man had more than 40 basal- and squamous-cell cancers removed from his body, enduring six to 12 surgeries a year. But, after he detoxed and started a healthy diet and supplement regimen, his skin patches healed for six months without inci- dences. Post explains, “This is what Dr. Mark Hyman, an expert in the field of functional medicine who authored the article, ‘The Right Order of Things: Peeling the Onion of Chronic Disease,’ means when he says, ‘Healing depends not only on doing the right things, but doing them in the right order.’ From that story, the right place to push or pull on the web of biologic dysfunction emerg- es, along with the right order of pushing and pulling to restore balance.”


natural awakenings August 2013 35


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