Lets face it. If we depend on science or the pharmaceutical industry to find a cure for this cancer thing, we'll all be dead of cancer before that happens. I have always believed this is a disease of ignorance and lack of understanding. If we try to look at this thing logically, there are several places to start. One obvious question comes to my mind. Is cancer this minefield that indiscriminately hits anyone and everyone or the planet, or does it vary in severity depending on geographical location, culture, and certain lifestyles circumstances such as nutrition and diet? My investigation showed me that the latter is the obvious answer, that is, obvious after you sort it all out…………
The Hunza tribe, Northern Pakistan, sorting and drying apricots
That being said, this is only one piece to this puzzle that is plaguing all of us in the back of our minds, about the dreaded cancer.
When I first got into this cancer research and ran across the book "A World Without Cancer" by G. Edward Griffin, He listed these cultures and tribes around the word that never (or rarely) got cancer. He listed the Hopi Native Americans, The Navajo Native Americans, The Eskimos, the Abkhasians, and the Hunza tribe. Finding that provocative, I dug a little deeper and it seemed there was something to this. However just reading something in a book or on the web does not truth make, so I jumped into motion with that "God Given" talent of wading through all the mis-information and contradictory opinions to get to some truth. Researching the truth or fiction about the Hunza tribe, I found a lot evidence but in the end the research was "inconclusive". Why? There were writers who say the Hunza story of no cancer and longevity was a myth that happened to spread like wildfire, sort of an urban legend. I am never afraid of thoroughly looking at the opposing point of view. I found a decent amount of writing on the web disputing the Hunza cancer free theme, one of which you can read here called "The Truth, Myth, and Lies about the Long Lived Hunza People" . He make some good points, enough to give me pause. But my gut feeling is that this guy is an advocate for meat eaters Adkins diet, and has a bias against anything promoting the vegetarian diet. I have no pony in the race of Vegetarians vs. meat eaters, I will adjust my diet to whatever keeps me cancer free and gives me all around optimal health, and if lucky, the enjoyment of eating. I also found it curious that he has a line in the web article that says: "The Hunza people did grow apricots and eat the apricot kernel of the apricot pit. The apricot kernel does indeed contain vitamin B-17, and the people may have had a low incidence of cancer, but the apricot had nothing to do with the cancer rate in the Hunza people. Vitamin B-17 has never been shown to prevent or cure cancer. The dead Hunzakuts were never examined by anyone to verify the cause of death. It was never proven that they had a low incidence of cancer." That struck me as strange because although he is writing an entire article to rebuff the Hunza myth, he seems to acknowledge in this article that the Hunza's might have low rates of cancer, but is just not "proven". He goes on to post extensive scientific evidence that meat eating diet is what prevents cancer. Having to be the judge and jury for my own well being, it seems to me that there is something to this Hunza, cancer free thing, but with so much contradictory evidence, and lack of information, I, although a personal believer, as an unbiased judge, had to throw this case out of court. I had better results with the Hopi Native americans, Navajo Native Americans, and Eskimos however.
Why? There seem to be extensive documentation in the United States about the lack of Cancer in these cultures before the influence of the Europeans. Some of the most solid evidence is from the American Medical Association. I consider that solid evidence because this type of mainstream institution, in my opinion, is not very innovative into any dynamic thought about cancer causes or cures. They are straight up all about the pharmaceutical industry. I don't wanna start "Raging against the Machine" in this article, so I will leave it at that. I ran across several old articles from JAMA (The Journal for the American Medical Association) one from 1949, long before Cancer, Diabetes, and all our ailments got sucked into the vortex of, the trillion dollar insurance industry, big business, Pfizer, Merek, Obama-care, and all the other craziness and confusion we now find ourselves in with these diseases, with no end in sight and no cures on the horizon. I have linked to one of the University of Arizona articles from 1956 here. And, another general article here for good measure. And I'll throw in another pertaining to the Eskimos. and how they had very little cancer until coming in contact with the "Western Diet"
Of course, I know three articles does not a case make, so as I always say in discussions with people, trying to sort out things rationally: "What can we agree upon?", "What can be proven and agreed upon by opposing sides?".
The answer to that would be in the following bullet points:
* The incidence of cancer among the Hopi Native Americans is (or was) 1 in 1000 as compared to 1 in 4 for the USA as a whole
* Prostate cancer varies widely between different countries, even more than breast cancer
* White South Africans have seventeen times more large bowel cancer than black South Africans
* North America, Europe, Australia have very high rates of colorectal cancer compared to Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.
* The Czech Republic has a death rate of 34.19 per 100,000 male, while Bangladesh has a rate of 0.63 per 100,000 males as pertains to colorectal cancer.
Not saying I have been over Bangladesh to check the numbers, I'm saying that the items on the list above can be proven true or not true, depending on how close we want to go check the facts and figures.
As I have said, this is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle. And although I am jumping the gun and giving my opinion on the entire picture on the Jigsaw Puzzle box. When this all sorted our by the rational, logical mind, we will find all of this comes down to diet and nutrition.
Furthermore, the other amazing thing I realized about from looking into the Navajo, Hopi, and Eskimos, is that as soon as they strayed away from their traditional diets and started to consume the modern western diet, their cancer rates skyrocketed. What does that mean? Let's think logically here. It means the Navajo, Hopi, Eskimos are not some super-races of people, put together in some special way different that the rest of us, they simply seemed to be in balance because of the diet of the culture. That seems to be an easy way to link this whole cancer mystery back to nutrition, and not to Genetics. In the latest awesome book I am reading about Cancer and other diseases, The China Study, author T. Colin Campbell says only 1 to 3% of all cancer is attributed to Genetics. Not saying his word is law, remember I keep saying I am a natural skeptic, but he does present a very valid case with extensive comprehensive research.
So I am gonna stop here, and leave this as only one piece of the puzzle. Look, I am deep into modern science and such, and because of that, I am quite convinced that modern science is not gonna give us an answer to this cancer plague anytime soon. I think there is a much more direct approach. The approach of being able to wade through all the misinformation, and contradictory information and think logically and practically about this very pressing issue in our health and wellness. In the end, I will perhaps not prove, but if lucky, at least present a convincing case that it all comes back to the nutrients in the diet, one of the most important so far as cancer prevention is concerned is B17, also called nitrilosides or laetrile, which exists in about 1500 plants, but has it's highest concentration in apricot seeds.
6/8/2013 I wanted to add to this article that I wrote over a year ago that I think Vitamin D is also crucial to cancer prevention, there is obviously an interconnected web of nutrients that work together for cancer prevention. I have wrote about several, you can read about them in my "Staying Well" section of the blog.
~stay healthy~
click here or the photo below for all my articles in "Staying Well"
8 Responses
Your Comments
Beautifully said. You may save more lives than the Coast Guard.
You are definately on thr right track here. I am also currently working to identify relation between Diets and Cancer incidence. another food for thought – why Gaza has lowest overall incidence of cancer while next door Israel has one of the highest? (hint: compare the number of Fast food joint per capita)
I think its all obvious the more we look at it. The Gaza vs. Israel thing might work well in an article I’m thinking about pertaining to closely related cultures and cancer rates. For example, Japanese living in Japan have lower cancer rates than the same Japanese that immigrate to the USA, when their risk of cancer goes up dramatically.
Your conclusion; food is the cure for illness, I could not aggree more!
Great article Doug, beautiful logic and truth. I agree that this is how we can find a solution that a TRILLION dollars worth of researchers, scientists, doctors and various technicians have not been able to do over the last half century. Actually if anything has changed due to the vast amount of research the cancer threat has become horrifically worse.
Vitamin D3 is actually fabricated by our own bodies due to the stimulation of our suns rays impinging the surface of our skin. In 30 minutes of exposure we can produce as much as 30,000 IU of this enzyme under the right cicumstance.
I don't know much about the apricot seed except that they taste very good and obviously are not poisonous to our normal cells but are to the cancer cells.
I believe you are onto the solution and you don't have to do all the work simply because there is trillions of dollars worth of very expensive information already completed.Seems to me there are many researchers that have this work but have been prevented from publishing the real findings. Lets hope some of them will bring it on. Best of luck.
Tore
Hey Tore, thanks for such a great comment. You’re right Vigamin D3 ia a major player in this cancer prevention thing, one of many of an intricate web healing agents. You have to remember every era in history had these deadly diseases, i.e. The Black Plague, Scurvy, and so forth.
~stay healthy~
My father was Dr. John A. Richardson, MD who introduced G. Edward Griffin to the topic of Laetrile / Amygdalin. I have been eating Apricot Seeds for 50 years and am the founder and President of Nutriseeds Inc. My mission is to get everyone in the world eating 5-10 Apricot Seeds per day. Please feel free to reach out to me for any questions or to get a copy of my free ebook for updated information about Apricot Seeds and B17
Yours in Health,
John A. Richardson, Jr.
Hi John Richardson,
Thanks for your comment. I’m really passionate about this subject thought I’m not sure how many people I have convinced of it. I eat 3-5 apricot seeds a day, I started perhaps 10 years ago. I’m not sure how much can really be proved, except for the next generation, if they look at the cause of death of perhaps 30,000 people who ate 5-10 apricot seeds a day, and if the cancer rate of that 30,000 is abnormally low, then at least the next generation will have proof.
In the mean time since I truly believe in the issue, I’ll keep taking my apricot seeds every day (though some days I forget, and I take a month or so off every year, as I do with all my superfoods).
Finally, I hope people don’t fall for this myth that apricot seeds are poisonous. I’m convinced that is this tragic issue of Money Driven Medicine paying people to spread false information on the web, to keep people away from natural cures. They’d go out of business if there was no cancer and people took back control of their health.
Stay well….
Doug at GAIA Health Blog