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What is Cancer?
Cancer describes over a hundred diseases, each involving the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells and their subsequent spread to other parts of the body. The characteristics of cancer can differ according to the organ in which it begins and it will retain these characteristics when spreading to other sites.
The human body is composed of trillions of cells, which when healthy enable all of life’s functions, such as eating, breathing and moving. Cells divide in a regulated way, to replace worn out or damaged cells and to allow growth.
However, sometimes mutations occur, cells no longer function as they should and become cancerous. Such abnormal cells can divide in an uncontrolled way and grow into a tumour. Whilst benign tumours remain safely where they started, malignant tumours spread and the destruction that they cause can prove fatal if appropriate steps are not followed.
It is important to be aware of cancer being a symptom of a less efficient immune system. Understanding this is critical in your decision to do what you can to help yourself get well. The strongest protection from cancer is your immune system, which for years has "cleaned up" potentially cancerous cells, but is no longer doing so sufficiently to maintain your well being.
There are a number of publications available from Cancer Recovery Foundation, which provide specific steps on the road to recovery. They will help you to establish a holistic approach, combining medical treatment with psychological and physical steps and findin meaning and purpose. This holistic approach will help you to improve your quality of life, giving you a stronger immune system and promoting the healing power of your own body.
Cancer: A Message to Change
The conclusion from many years, studying why cancer patients get well is that they change. They heal their whole selves by creating a positive mental and physical state of being.
Through self-awareness, survivors develop a strong sense of what is good for them in their lives. They nurture a deep sense of their own self worth, establishing a personal world which is more ordered and in which survivorship follows change.
Although these changes can be identified, they cannot be easily quantified. However it is possible to look at the changes that survivors have themselves described. At present, the Cancer Recovery Foundation database of survivors contains the personal histories of more than 15,000 "terminal" cancer patients who have out-lived their original prognosis, many of them by decades. This information forms the basis of several studies into survivorship, where survivors were asked, "What did you do to get well again?"
The Cancer Recovery Pyramid was developed from interviews and answers taken from questionnaires. The most recent survey was from over 600 cancer survivors who have each lived for 10 years or more from the date that they were informed that they were terminal. The results clearly demonstrate that survivors have tended to change six important areas of their lives, which are medical, nutrition, exercise, attitude, support and meaning and purpose, which together can provide a roadmap for living with and beyond cancer.
Some have suggested that these patients might have responded to the medical treatment, regardless of changes in other areas of their lives. However whilst not conclusive, this analysis offers a great deal of compelling evidence that this holistic approach has beneficial results.
Approaching cancer as a message to change, enables people to maximise their healing capacity and improve their quality of life for the time that they have. This journey begins by you asking yourself the question; "What message to change is cancer asking of me?"
In summary the key principles of cancer survivorship remain:
1. You are responsible for choosing how your cancer will be treated.
2. Each person needs an individual program of treatment.
3. Carry out your own research.
4. Appreciate the range of conventional, alternative and complementary cancer treatment options that are available to you.
5. Heal your whole self, by creating a state of mind, body and spirit from which you can live well.
Prevention
We are often reminded of the importance of early detection of cancer. However it is also important to remember that prevention is better than a cure. Consequently you should consider how your lifestyle choices could affect your health. Changes that people could make in their lives include; eliminating tobacco if they smoke, eating more nutritional food, taking more exercise, reducing stress and drinking less alcohol.
The Roadmap to Recovery provides a plan for recovery.
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