The Number One Cause of Cancer
By Don Bennett, DAS

If I asked you to name a cause of cancer, the list that I would compile would be long. I'd hear processed meats, cigarettes, pesticides, an acid-forming diet, environmental toxins, chemicals in our water, alcohol, being sedentary, radiation from cell phones and mammograms, too many sunburns, and hopefully, not enough nutrition. But I contend that the number one cause of all cancers – the main reason there is so much cancer – is... misinformation.

In this category are such gems as...

"We don't know what causes cancer"
(but we're fundraising like crazy to find the cure)

"The body can't heal from cancer"

"The best protection is early detection"

"We're winning the war on cancer"

"Your best chance for survival is surgery, chemo, and radiation"

"Cell phones don't cause cancer"

"Bras don't contribute to cancer"

"All you need to do to prevent cancer or to heal from it
is to eat a fruit and vegetable diet"

Let's explore these popular but untrue notions.

"We don't know what causes cancer"

Yes we do; the causes of cancer are known, they are just not common knowledge. And they are not common knowledge for a very good reason. If more people knew how to prevent cancer, this would be devastating to those for-profit industries that make trillions of dollars from people getting cancer. So they have a vested interest in the causes (and natural cures) not becoming common knowledge.

"The body can't heal from cancer"

Yes, it can. It's always trying to. In fact, it's always trying to prevent cancerous cells from becoming "cancer" as we know it today. Most people are simply doing too much of what creates cancerous cells and not enough of the things that support the body's ability to manage cancerous cells.

"The best protection is early detection"

No, the best protection (against breast cancer in this case) is not doing the things that contribute to breast cancer in the first place, and doing those things that support the body's "anti-cancer" processes. Again, it is known what they are, but it is not common knowledge.

"We're winning the war on cancer"

The official war on cancer was declared in 1972 by then-President Richard Nixon. How we're doing with this war is determined by the "Five-Year Survival Rate." When a person is diagnosed with cancer, the timer starts, and the number of people who are still alive after five years is the barometer for how we're doing with the war on cancer. But thanks to improvements in detection technology, and thus earlier detection, today's timers are being started earlier than they were back in 1972. So more people are still alive after five years than back then, and therefore it's thought that – thanks to the medical and pharma industries – we're winning the war on cancer. But when you adjust that Five-Year Survival Rate for the earlier detection factor, the Five-Year Survival Rate is unchanged. Unchanged! So, catching cancer a little earlier is not allowing for more permanent "remissions"; it's simply skewing the Five-Year Survival Rate, and making it appear as though we're winning the war, when clearly we're not. And since actually winning the war on cancer would severely injure the medical and pharma industries, you can be sure that big business is not actually trying to win this war, even though the public perception is that there is a huge effort to do so. Watch the documentary What the Health for details and to see why all the pink ribbons and "pink-washing" are, at best, disingenuous, and at worst, a sham. (Yes, I said it, and that's because I hate seeing people being taken advantage of, for the sake of money, at the expense of their health.)

"Your best chance for survival is surgery, chemo, and radiation"

Really? When you compare the results of the conventional treatments to the so-called alternative treatments, you see quite a different story. Because these non-medical treatments are non-toxic (don't tank the immune system), and they have a far better outcome than conventional therapies (95% effective for soft-tissue cancers vs. 5% effective with conventional treatments), this info will not only not be made known by the establishment media, efforts will be made to smear and even quash this info and those practitioners who make it available (affecting both livelihoods and even the lives of those who really do care about helping cancer victims get rid of it). The truth is out there, you just have to find it... and you can't turn to the for-profit cancer industry for the truth about cancer.

"Cell phones don't cause cancer"

Yes, and the Earth is flat and only 6,000 years old. Let's deal with this issue using science. See the articles listed at the end of this article for some facts.

"Bras don't contribute to cancer"

And we never landed on the moon. See the articles at the end of this article to find out how and why bras do contribute to breast cancer. (I know, you don't want to hear this if you're a woman, but do you want to avoid breast cancer or do you want to roll the dice?)

"All you need to do to prevent cancer or to heal from it is to eat a fruit and vegetable diet"

I've saved my biggest pet peeve till last. The pieces of inaccurate information above are understandable being that there is so much profit at stake. With tons of money on the line, you can be sure there will be tons of mis- and dis-info and boatloads of miseducated doctors. But you'd think that those practitioners and educators who sincerely want to help people avoid cancer or heal from it would do the due diligence required to uncover the truth about cancer, and naturally they'd be open to hearing new things about how to prevent it and heal from it. And they wouldn't allow their own preferences or biases to color their otherwise good judgment. And they'd actually want to peer-to-peer with those like-minded educators and practitioners for the good for those they counsel and educate. But sadly this is not the norm, and you shouldn't assume that it is.

Say what you will about the conventional medical model, but at least there is some standardization of the info that's given to the public, and standard-of-care protocols that MDs follow. What would the public think of doctors if all docs did their own thing; some surgeons washing their hands before surgery and some not (because they don't think they need to). You'd have to do a lot of researching before picking a doctor or surgeon to see. Well, as it turns out, if you want the best odds of never getting cancer, or the best odds of getting rid of it, you must also do a lot of vetting of both info and educator. Why? Because, for example, some educators who promote the healthiest of diets maintain that, regarding diet, all you need to do is to switch to a raw vegan diet and eat fruit and greens, and you'll have the best odds of never getting a diagnosis of cancer, and you'll have the best chance of getting rid of it if you already have it. That may sound good on paper because of what is known about the differences in diets as to their general health outcomes, but there is more to know than just "eat fruits and veggies."

As it turns out, the foods of the diet you eat are really nothing more than transportation vehicles for the elements the body requires for optimal health: vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, trace elements, carbs, fats, protein, water, fiber, hormones (plant-based), and enzymes. So the obvious question then becomes: Do the foods that you're eating contain "enough of all"? A very long time ago, when we gathered our foods from Nature, the answer was obviously 'Yes'.

Today, for most people, our foods are being grown for us by us (by a for-profit industry), and not for us by Nature. So anyone who thinks that the nutritional quality of today's fruits and greens are the same as they were many millennia ago is getting their info from the wrong source. And when you also take into consideration today's demand side of the Supply & Demand issue, our bodies are not being supported in their efforts to keep us cancer-free for a lifetime.

So even though a raw vegan diet is the diet we're biologically and anatomically adapted to, and therefore it's the best diet to eat if you want the best odds of never getting a diagnosis of something serious (or getting rid of some malady that you already have), if a raw vegan educator tells you, "Once you start eating enough fruits and vegetables you don't have to worry about nutrition" or "You don't need any nutritional supplements to have the best odds of preventing cancer or healing from it" this should be seen as a red flag because of what the science reveals. Yes, the person telling you this may truly be a sincere person who honestly cares about the people they teach, but their information can still be inaccurate. (And then there are those educators who appear honest and sincere but in reality aren't because they want to sell an easy-peasy program and want your money going to them and not to worthwhile nutritional complements to your diet). Sad, but a reality.

Now let's also consider the health issue this article is addressing: cancer. Although cancer is natural (no one is running around injecting people with cancer cells, we develop cancer), the way cancer manifests in our society today is unnatural, meaning, we wouldn't have been experiencing cancer like we do today 100,000 years ago. Indeed, cancer did not become common until very recently on our timeline, so our body has not had nearly enough time to evolve a more effective cancer-fighting system. We do have such a system though, because everyone gets cancerous cells from time to time, but that system evolved to deal with a very occasional occurrence of a cell malfunctioning in such a way so that it replicates too much and too fast. Today we have a lot more things that create cancerous cells, and our present cancerous cell fighting system is not suited to deal with such an unnatural onslaught.

So it stands to reason that something equally unnatural would be called for to deal with the unnatural cancers that plague us today; and I'm not talking about chemo and radiation therapies. Yes, they are certainly unnatural, but there are non-toxic and highly effective therapies available, but since they are seen as "unnatural", those health educators mentioned above who are of the belief that all someone needs to do, if they receive a diagnosis of cancer, is to do natural things, like eat a natural diet, get a natural amount of sleep, etc. While these practices would certainly help a person not develop cancerous cells in the first place, and would also help the body's immune system stomp out these cells as they form, once a person gets to an unnatural stage of cancer development, merely adopting healthful lifestyle practices may not be enough to totally resolve the cancer.

So if a health educator recommends that someone who has been diagnosed with cancer should simply adopt healthful lifestyle habits and they will be fine, this advice should be seen as a red flag and not as a "magic bullet." There are other things that the person should be doing, and one of them is working with a health educator whose recommendations are grounded in reality as opposed to being based on firmly held doctrinal beliefs that don't square with the world we're living in today.

So, if you want the best odds of not getting cancer, or of getting rid of it, you need to be able to recognize the misinformation concerning cancer. This requires education, and not just from one person... multi-source education is best so that you can come across conflicting information such as the nutritional issue mentioned above.

Knowledge is power, but only when it is enough, and is understood. So learn as a researcher and not as a student if you truly want the best odds of avoiding a degenerative disease such as cancer... a student is taught things, a researcher learns about disease looking at more than just the conventional information, employing the ethos of science.

Don Bennett is an insightful, reality-based author, and health creation counselor who uses the tools in his toolbox – logic, common sense, critical thinking, and independent thought – to figure out how to live so we can have the best odds of being optimally healthy.

Recommended Reading

The Ethos of Science

Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer?

Bras and Cancer

The must-see documentary What the Health

Holistic Doctors Being Silenced, Permanently (not for the faint of heart)

COUNSELING