Excerpted From
WHAT YOUR DOCTOR MAY NOT TELL YOU ABOUT BREAST CANCER:
Balance Your Hormones and Your Life from Thirty to Fifty
Chapter Three
The Nature of Breast Cancer
In spite of what your doctor might tell you, thanks to thousands
of studies on cancer done all over the world, right down to the genetic level,
we do know a great deal about when, where, how and why cancer begins and
progresses. Although there are still some details we still don t entirely
understand, cancer is not a complete mystery.
If we know so much, then why are we being badly beaten in the
“war on cancer?” Aside from the difficulty of changing prevailing
medical dogma and treatment, preventing and healing cancer in a big way would
entail vast and dramatic changes in lifestyle for Westernized countries. We
would have to severely reduce or give up our pesticides. We would need much
better control of industrial pollution. We would need to reduce our reliance on
plastics that shed estrogen-like chemicals, and other petrochemical products
that emit harmful chemicals, such as carpets, furniture and the particle board
used to build houses. We would need to drastically reduce our use of
prescription drugs, and change the way HRT is prescribed. The use of hormones
to fatten livestock and fowl for market and to stimulate milk production in
dairy cows, would need to be banned. We would need to cut way back on the
amount of processed foods and sugars we eat, and adopt a balanced whole foods
diet. We would need to sacrifice some monetary gain to reduce stress levels in
our lives. That s the big picture. Now let s move down to the
cellular level and fill you in on the basics of what we know about cancer.
When Does Cancer Occur?
Cancer occurs when normal cells multiply (proliferate) faster than
normal, lose their differentiation (remain immature), and have diminished
apoptosis (cell death) rates. Don t worry, we ll explain all of this.
Cancer cells are primitive in that they haven t grown up and
become skin, or bone, or liver or uterus—in medical terms they are
undifferentiated. At the stage where they would normally keep developing
into a specific type of cell, they divide instead, into another primitive cell.
This is because something in the genetics of the cells that gives instructions
on how to differentiate, or mature, is broken and has faulty communications.
This miscommunication is usually caused by damage or some sort of
toxic environment within the cell sufficient to affect the cell s
chromosomes (genes). Such damage can result from estrogens, viruses, radiation,
genetic predisposition, exposure to toxic chemicals, or injury to the tissue.
Most tissues of the human body are not necessarily more
susceptible to cancer after being injured, but breast tissue is unique in its
combination of vulnerability (e.g. it s not safely tucked away inside the
belly like the uterus and ovaries), and in its ability to change in response to
hormones. Most women are well acquainted with how quickly their breasts can
grow larger (and become tender) premenstrually. Once pregnancy is underway
breasts change dramatically. This ability to change undergo rapid growth is one
reason that breast cells have greater susceptibility to DNA damage through
tissue damage. Cancer biologists are well aware that when a tissue replicates
rapidly its genetic code (DNA) is more vulnerable to damage by chemicals,
viruses, and radiation that may express itself some years later as cancer.
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