"It is our roots that shape our future"
George Orwell, 1903-1950
Background
Written on : March 2023
Edited last: December 2024
My Leukemia
On April 19, 2022, at the already ripe age of 82, the results from a routine blood test showed that I had Leukemia. The formal name for my condition is Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). When my doctor called, I was shopping in Sobeys in Richmond Hill, Ontario, while my wife was at my daughter's home which we had come down from our cottage to visit on the occasion of our grandson Confirmation.
After giving me the results of my blood test, my doctor said "It is not a death sentence yet ... I have scheduled for you Bone Marrow Aspiration tests and other tests with an oncologist in Peterborough." I told my doctor that it was not a good time for more discussion as I was shopping, and that I would be scheduling an appointment with him to discuss further, and ended our conversation.
After I recovered from my initial shock, and after more discussion with my doctor in which he urged me to see the oncologist without delay, I decided to take a "wait-and-see" approach. My sister had died of Cancer years before, the brother of my son in-law had just died of Cancer, and his father, who at the time was been treated for Leukemia, was not doing well. And so I was not that impressed with oncologists and their chemotherapies. Fortunately, I still was symptoms free and was still feeling reasonably well, energetic, and under control.
Soon after, I started reading papers, articles, and books on what experts think that cancer is, why it occurs, and how it is treated. This learning journey will end no time soon as there is a huge amount of literature available, and there is a huge amount of new literature being generated continually as a result of the large amount of ongoing cancer research. Lately, however, I am coming to the conclusion that reading about this new research may not be that useful to my health after all. Why? Because my reading is making increasingly evident that researchers are clearly only interested in the discovery of new patentable drugs to treat cancer, and curing cancer is the last thing in their minds. With rare exceptions (such as W. B Coley (15,16), Otto Warburg (9,10,11), Linus Pauling (1), and Cameron Ewan (1)), for years the goal of researchers appear to have been to discover drugs to make cancer a chronically manageable disease rather than cure it. Why? Because people with chronic manageable diseases (such as Diabetes) require treatment for all their lives and accordingly make a lot of money for the health industries but there is no money to be made from healthy people.
The main takeaways from all this reading has been that a cure for cancer has not been found yet, that there are several powerful therapeutic drugs which, in combination with surgery and radiation, have been reported to have shown some success in slowing down the progression of some cancers, and that all of these drugs and radiation have several serious side effects that cause significant suffering and,often, even death. And to add insult to injury, these drugs can also cause other serious cancers, and damage our Immune System (25).
After ruminating on this for a while, I have concluded that my best decision going forward is to continue the monitoring of my CLL progression indefinitely to the very bitter end, and continue providing good nourishment to my body and keep relying on my body's "wisdom" to keep itself healthy.
Further reading and rationalization keeps reinforcing my conviction that there is not much to be gained from CLL therapeutic drugs other than suffering and more disabling conditions from the side effects. To be clear, I need to say that I am okay with other procedures that medical technology can offer me nowadays, such leukapheresis and blood transfusions, but I am not okay with ingesting poisonous chemotherapeutic drugs. If I have a couple of years left, I do not want to spend them suffering from the side effects of drugs and spending my time going for tests and doctors. If things get worse, I will accept it, and go quietly when the time comes. Nobody lives for ever! And while I am still around, I will focus on the things that I enjoy doing, take care of my responsibilities, and make sure to leave my affairs in order.
Can cancer be cured? As discussed in the page "Can Cancer Be Cured?", I firmly believe that cancer can be prevented and, if we fail to prevent it, it can be cured ... but it is not going to be easy because our society today does not make healthy living easy! For example, we have known for years that Sugar is hugely dangerous to our health (1,37,38,60) and yet every ready-to- consume food and drinks in grocery stores contain sugar! Would you believe that shopping for my diabetic wife the other day, I could not find a yogurt without added sugar!
I am also convinced that cancer cannot be cured by treating the symptoms of our cancers by poisoning our body with Chemotherapy, Immunetherapy, and Targetedtherapy drugs. To get well, our body does not need poisons! It needs good nourishment!
I believe that the only way to prevent and to cure cancer, as well as other diseases (see page Root of All Diseases), is to re-learn reverence for our body miraculous "wisdom" to take care of itself if correctly nourished. And we need to remember that "correct nourishment" is not only good clean food, but that it must also include vitamins supplementation, especially vitamin C, and vigorous daily exercise. Why supplementation? Because our food supply nowadays is not as nutritious as it used to be and is laced with toxins and pollutants mostly because of the emphasis on quantity rather than quality (18,19); And also because abundant vitamins in our diet will enable our body to fully utilize its "wisdom" by pick and choosing the amount of nutrients needed to stay healthy. Also, it is now well known that vitamins disarm to a significant extent the toxic impact of food toxins and pollutants (32) by enabling in an optimal way the trillions of biological reactions ongoing continually in our body to keep us healthy.
Improving My Health
Convinced that I could not rely on medicine, I decided to do something to improve my health. Inspired by my roots that taught me the value of good nutrition and hard work to stay healthy, and schooled by the current knowledge of nutrition and of the importance of vitamins, in March 2023 I embarked on a self designed regimen consisting of good food, vitamins supplementation, and exercise (My Regimen). Why self designed? Because all those out there ready to give us advise on how to eat, to remain profitable, they must spin their advice to promote the products of more powerful vested interests such as Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Sugar. Definitely there is a lot of information out there, but it must be sifted through carefully to find the "nuggets" in it.
When I was growing up, there were no vitamins available. Many of them were not even discovered yet, and their nutritional importance was not yet fully understood. However, we were lucky then that the food available to us from our own fields, from our own animals, and prepared in our own kitchen was very nutritious, albeit we could have used a fair bit more. Nowadays, with these vitamins and our current scientific knowledge of the various nutrients needed by our body, we are able to nourish our body in a way such that it is able to fully utilize its "Body Wisdom" in picking the nutrients needed to avoid deficiencies that leave the door open to diseases. Linus Pauling called it "The new nutrition" (2).
When we were growing up, we were also lucky, although we did not know it, that we could not afford the alternative "rich" food that in our days only the rich could afford ... and get sick as a consequence (see "Diseases of the Rich"). And we were lucky that there were no junk foods, no junk drinks, no cosmetics, and no recreational and lifestyle drugs! Tobacco was the only "drug" available but was used mostly by the rich because it was too expensive and peasants could not afford to indulge in it too much. And we were lucky that we could not afford to go and see doctors ... one almost killed me by prescribing blood letting for my pneumonia at age one! (See page "My Doctors Encounters")
Wine from our own vineyards was a staple at our dinner table, but getting drunk was strongly stigmatized. My parents insisted in no more than one glass of wine with lunch and with dinner. Drinking and smoking was taboo for women mostly because of the strong belief that these substances would cause unhealthy babies. For the same reason, men were also strongly advised by our elders to abstain when they were planning to have babies. What happened to this wisdom today? People seem to have forgotten it as attested to by the many babies born already with drugs and alcohol "addiction" because of "in utero" exposure to these drugs. Could this be the reason why today there are so many special need and confused children in our schools? There were none in my days!
And I always find amusing to remember that in my growing up days, women and men in our peasant's community were all trying hard to gain weight!
Today we have plenty of food available. But now this food is not as nutritious (17,18) because of the modern growing practices that favour quantity over quality and because of the increased amount of pollution in our environment. Also this food is somewhat poisoned by pesticides, herbicites, and genetic modification. Even our meats are somewhat tainted because of the use of antibiotics, hormones and fattening practices in crowded "feed lots" before slaughter. And, unfortunately, we also have plenty of processed food, junk food, junk drinks, recreational and lifestyle drugs, cosmetics, and our lifestyles suck! And, also unfortunately, we seem to have forgot what good food is as testified by people crowding restaurants and fast food joints, and by the junk food and drinks crowding the grocery stores shelves.
In my growing up days in the 1940s, we learned nutrition and cooking at our dinner table from our own parents who cared deeply about our health. Today, nutrition is learned in courses offered in schools and in several online organizations. These courses are largely sponsored and/or influenced by "Big Food", "Big Pharma", and big Sugar industries that use these courses to promote the items that they produce not because they care about our health but because they care about their profits. Even institutions that train and license dietitians, or provide eating guidelines for people with diseases such as diabetes, are heavily influenced by the food industries (36, 37, 38). Would you believe that diabetic associations are promoting "liberalized diets" with no restriction on sugar even though such diets will require larger amounts of diabetic medications? And can you believe it that today, even after it has been established scientifically that sugar is the dominant contributor to our modern diseases (2,37,38,60), senior homes feed their residents diets that contain more than 30% (more than six times the amount recommended in official nutritional guidelines) of the calories in the form of sugar? And they feed it to everybody, even the diabetics!!! The motivation is obvious: food loaded with sugar is much cheaper than good food and has a longer shelf life, and feeding everybody the same diet is much cheaper than customizing the diet to the individual residents needs. Our society today should punish severely people profiting on the back of people's health and suffering. Would you call this "human trafficking"? Our seniors are those that we need to thank for the freedoms, affluence, and comforts that we are enjoying today, and they should be fed and treated like royalty!
And to add insult to injury, even our own doctors maintain that nutrition is not important for our health! When was the last time that your doctor suggested a diet change instead of prescribing a couple of pills?
On the fortunate side, today we have access to vitamins and their nutritional power is now well understood, even though currently strongly demonized by our medical professionals. These vitamins, if judiciously used, do impart amazing health benefits (see page "Body Changes"). Vitamins can make up for the nutritional shortcomings of modern diets, and can also diminish the toxic impacts of food and enviromental pollutants (31). I also reason that, as we age, our body ability to extract nutrients from the food is declining and we can compensate for this decline by increasing the concentration of nutrients in our body with vitamin supplementation. The importance of good nutrition is eloquently discussed in references (23, 36, 37). I agree, based on my own experience, with the message in above references including the emphasis on the importance of daily exercise or daily physical work. For good health, good nutrition must be integrated with vigorous daily exercise especially for those who live a sedentary life style.
Clearly, if we care about our health, nowadays we cannot rely on the services that our society makes readily available to us. Everybody out there is being driven hard by the Need Imperative and relying on the Shoemaker Principle to make customers return. And I understand the reasons ... it is not easy keeping paying the bills that never stop coming! But exceptions must be made when it involves people health and suffering. Our elected official should take action ... but they are more preoccupied with lining their pockets and covering their own rear-ends rather than our health!
So when it comes to our health, we are on our own! For this reason, I embarked on my self designed nutritional and exercise program (My Regimen) on March 9, 2023. Why self designed? Because advises from professionals are tainted by "Big Food", Big Pharma, and Big Sugar influences and these professionals all seem to have never learned about the importance of our biochemical individuality (4,5). At the time of this editing, I am very glad to be able to say that I feel well, energetic, and even somewhat rejuvenated. Would you believe it? At 84 and counting, I am back doing chinups! Also, since March 2023, I have experience several real amazing changes in my body as described in the "Body Changes" page. Changes that are truly hard to believe!
My Qualifications
There is much discussion these days about the alarming increase of diseases in North America. This is leading to shortages of health resources such as doctors, nurses, hospital beds, and beds in long term care homes. One of the conditions being singled out as responsible for this increase in diseases is that an ever increasing number of us are being diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome. This is a condition that makes our bodies fertile grounds for all kind of Western Diseases such as Cancer, Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Disease, and Dementia (36,37,38, 40).
As I am approaching the end of my days on this planet, I feel compelled to add my voice to this discussion because I think that I have something worthwhile saying. I have enough education and determination to enable me to read and understand the medical literature available, including drug clinical trials reports, and draw my own conclusions. I also have qualifications that not too many have: I have experiences over quite a long life during which I have had the opportunity to experience first hand the amazing healing power of nutrition and physical hard work, and the extent to which medical interventions are effective.
I have had amazing experiences, some even hard to believe!
I grew up during a period when nobody was taking any pills, blood-letting was the gold standard for the cure of pneumonia, nobody got vaccinated, nobody was homeless, family values were the pillars of society, divorces were unheard of, everybody "washed their dirty clothes" in the privacy of their homes, most people looked inside themselves to resolve issues, sex was a private subject not for public discussion, everybody was trying to gain weight, and only the rich suffered our Western Diseases (Diseases of the Rich).
And I am approaching the end of my journey at a time when everybody is taking many pills every day, antibiotics is the gold standard for the cure of pneumonia, everybody is getting vaccinated several times a year, many people are homeless, family values are being destroyed, divorces are very common, most people "wash their dirty clothes" on social media, most people look outside to resolve issues, sex is openly discussed in public, everybody is trying to loose weight, and everybody is suffering our Western Diseases.
My experiences make it obvious that our western diseases are due to the following:
- Prescription drugs pushed on everybody;
- Processed food, vegetable oils, and too much sugar in everything;
- Too much eating outside of our own kitchen.
- Food grown with emphasis on quantity rather than quality;
- Insufficient amount of vitamin supplementation;
- Insufficient daily physical work.
And where is the proof? Just compare the diets of the Peasants and of the Rich from my growing up days. This is presented in the page "Diseases of the Rich". As summarized on this page, when compared to the diet of the rich, the peasants diet contained: No medicine; No processed food and no sugar; Food from our own fields prepared in our own kitchen; And plenty of daily physical work. And Western Diseases were totally absent in our peasants community but were common among the rich.