The Puzzle

I've spent many hours attempting to solve a huge puzzle: what is cancer and why am I dealing with it?

Before going further, I begin with my conclusion:  
Only God sees and holds the finished puzzle picture. Try doing a jigsaw puzzle without the picture as a reference. You don't know how many pieces there are. You won't know when it is finished, either. Our Father has the whole picture and He knows which piece to hand over next. He knows which piece fits with ones He has previously supplied. Some pieces are bigger than others. Some I have set aside awhile until I find where they belong.

I am going to begin sharing those pieces now in approximately the order He gave them to me.

What causes fat
Sleep Deprivation
Digestion
Personality

Chemistry
Emotions - Cortisol
Exercise
Sunlight (Vitamin D3)

1. Fat. When I began solving this puzzle, I was obese. I had been in that range for about two years. I had struggled with weight since age 30, but had managed by dieting to lose weight several times, but I always gained back more than I'd lost. The yoyo syndrome many experience had begun to discourage me. I had actually decided a few months before I was diagnosed to give losing weight one last try (I say one more time because if I kept ending up heavier than ever it seemed unwise to keep dieting!) I was 55 pounds over the weight recommended for my age and height. I found it exceedingly hard to bend over, to get up on my horse (and he wasn't thrilled when I did), to climb stairs...I knew something needed to be done, but I had already tried metabolism diets, fasting, low carb/high protein,  Nutrisystem (twice)...What I hadn't understood, and hope that you do, is why the body stores fat. I had thought it was simply a matter of overeating. Because I am a short person and of medium build, I thought I just needed to eat less to weigh less. When I began to study the causes of cancer, I was alarmed to realize that fat is often the way the body puts toxins into storage until it can deal with them. So, if you eat things that are too toxic for the body to handle, it puts them into storage to protect itself. That meant that the fat on my body (that had all been acquired in the past 10 years) contained toxins that had threatened my health. I was carrying a toxic load around. My lymph system was too busy and too hindered to cope with the amount of toxins I had in storage! Once I realized this, I was rather afraid to even try to lose weight, but I found that those that gain weight, or who are obese, have a poorer prognosis with cancer. I didn't go on a diet, though. I didn't set out to lose weight. But, as soon as I changed my eating habits, the weight began to come off, a pound or two a week. At that rate it didn't overload my kidneys and liver. Losing weight slowly is almost imperceptible. It give the body a chance to adjust/cleanse/detox.

2. I also read that people who are sleep deprived run a 20 per cent higher risk of cancer. I had been sleep deprived all of my life. It is during the wee hours that the body does it's housekeeping chores. Just as I never seem to get around to house cleaning because of all the other more pressing things I need to get done, or the things I want to do, so had my body not been getting around to regular maintenance chores because I was not giving it the right time to do it. I had to work harder at correcting my sleep habits than anything else I attempted. I still haven't completely corrected them. All my life I've slept as little as possible (averaging 4-5 hours per night). When I did sleep I had nightmares. Awful ones about choking, being smothered, drowning, being gassed... I finally realized that those dreams had been to wake me out of apnea. They were my brain's way of getting me to breathe! I had to reconsider sleep position, what to eat or not eat near bedtime, room temperature, mental state, and the apnea I definitely had.

3. The biochemist I consulted in September (3 months after diagnosis) took a lengthy personal history from me and in so doing he recognized my digestive problems were long-standing and needed to be resolved. I knew I had a hiatal hernia. I knew that when I got upset my stomach dumped acid and cramped up. I knew I had had severe acid reflux, but that had gone away when I changed the way I was eating. The biochemist told me I needed to take probiotics every evening before bed (so they could settle into my intestinal tract to prepare to make use of the nutrients coming their way the next day). He also wanted me to take enzymes to help digest food in my stomach. He is the one that prescribed exactly what I should and should not eat and I stuck to his guidelines for the next six months. Here were his guidelines: no sugar, no artificial anything, no alcohol, no wheat, no dairy, no soy, very little fruit (except lemons, pineapple, blueberries, banana & cherries), very little red meat (he wanted me to have none, but I convinced him that our grass-fed beef was superior to regular red meat), nothing fried, no shellfish, only olive oil, few nightshade plants (like potatoes and tomatoes), no coffee or chocolate...that's what I remember. When I began eating more raw vegetables, less animal protein, gave up dairy, and went pretty much gluten free, my blood pressure came down into the normal range, my weight came off steadily, my aching subsided, my acid reflux went away, my skin stopped itching and flaking, my feet stopped swelling and hurting, and I had no more headaches. I monitored my PH using strips for several months. I never did see those strips reflect that I had gotten my PH into the right ranges. I continued to show up as too acidic. I adjusted many things in my food intake to try to make the results more alkaline. Finally, I read some articles that convinced me that the strips aren't telling you what your acidity is in various parts of your digestive system and your body; they are just telling you what is going on in your mouth and your urine. Understanding PH is much more involved than most sites make it seem.  When I told people what I had done to adjust my food intake, they were in awe and almost all stated they couldn't do anything so difficult. It really isn't difficult once you get used to it and learn what to do with the foods you can eat. I have become a gourmet cook! I didn't know how to cook but about four meals before all this!

The biochemist also helped me to see that I have a personality that maintains an emotional environment that is too tense. He said I needed to learn to relax. He said I needed to stop trying to do more and just let my body adjust to all the changes it was being asked to make. I began to monitor my reactions to things. I practiced ways to defuse anxiety and learned to focus on the positive things the LORD is doing in my life, not the things that I don't want to face. Like sleep, emotional balance is critical. Getting upset/angry and staying that way for 20 minutes or more causes the body to release cortisol into the system. Cortisol promotes cancer growth. I have read quite a bit now on the subject of how to handle stress. Breathing correctly is something I am currently practicing.

Chemistry. I soon realized, trying to understand articles in medical journals, that I was at a disadvantage not having taken Biochemistry or Anatomy classes. My reading skills did allow me to get at the gist of many of the articles, but there is so much really academic vocabulary impeding understanding. I mulled and pondered and chased down various terms. Later in this blog I will praise a book that came along 14 months into my research and it cleared up/answered so many of the questions I'd had earlier along the way. That book is
Cancer: Step Outside the Box by Ty Bollinger.

Exercise. Since taking care of livestock and housework definitely involve exercise, I was greatly relieved to hear/see that exercise is recommended for cancer patients. It does help defuse tension. It does get oxygen to the cells (cancer doesn't thrive in an oxygenated environment). It does cause the lymphatic system to work more efficiently. It does help rid the body of toxins (through sweat).

Sunlight (Vitamin D3) I don't like our summer heat in this part of Texas and I have been in the habit of staying in AC as much as possible during the hot season. I was told I needed to get out in the sun during the part of the day when my shadow is shorter than I am (mid-morning or mid-afternoon). I need to let the sun shine directly on as much skin as possible. There were other vitamins I found I needed to increase (B, C, E, A...) I don't take Vitamin A from synthesized sources; I get it mostly through carrot juice.

Note: The previous list is what I concentrated on for the first 10 months after diagnosis. In that time I lost 45 pounds. I have stayed at the same weight now another 6 months without worrying about how much I am eating. I do still stay mostly within the guidelines the biochemist originally prescribed. I have added more animal protein (our free-range eggs, our grass-fed beef, and goat kefir and goat cheese) to my diet, but other than that, I'm still pretty much gluten-free, sugar-free, soy-free, and except for green tea and raw, unsweetened cocoa, I am caffeine free.