Gambling —it’s never a good idea, yet each year people flock to Las Vegas to do just that. Why is it a bad idea? Because in each game played there, the “House” has the odds tilted in its favor, so that eventually and on average, the players lose money. There is no way to beat those odds: player’s skill is meaningless. Except for one game — Blackjack.
In Blackjack, skill can tilt the odds. Players with brains able to do computer-like calculations in their heads, memorize a detailed system, and keep track of all cards that have already been shown can just slightly turn the odds in their favor. The tilt is small, and it may a lot of games to see the effects, but there are actually “professional” Blackjack players who can make money in Vegas with “the System.” Just in case you are thinking that you want to be one of them, be aware that Vegas is pretty good at spotting card counters, and you probably won’t get very far.
One of these professionals, no longer playing because he was spotted and banned from all Vegas Blackjack, claims he has some things to teach us. Basically, he says that, when you have a system that gives you greater chance of winning over time, stick with it. He explains that when things are going badly your emotions will scream at you to abandon the system and bail out too soon, telling you that this time must be an exception, and that you will get in worse shape if you continue. You know that the odds are in your favor, yet emotions are telling you otherwise. He says that even professionals sometimes get scared out of a winning hand, and they fold.
When it comes to disease, particularly cancer, the House can be a fearful beast that will tell you to abandon hope and fold. You know better, yet when staring down the monster, your emotions take over. Then the odds are against you.
The System with the best odds
If you aren’t convinced that “the system” is a real game-changer, you won’t have the stamina to pursue it very far. But, since you are alive, you are already thrust into the “game of life.” Your goal is to win in this game, and for most of us that means living a long, healthy, vibrant life. You need to know that the system you are following gives you the best odds of doing just that. Cancer can stand in the way of that goal! But whether you have cancer now, or are simply hoping to prevent it in the future, there is a system to significantly improve your odds in the game of life.
You live in a toxic world. All types of radiation bombard you daily, you have stress from your work, finances, and family, you can’t seem to find enough time for proper exercise, you don’t eat as well as you know you should, and you worry. All these weaken your health. These are the cards against you: Toxins, Radiation, Stress, SAD (Standard American Diet), Fear, and Subconscious Thoughts. You can accept some of those cards, or take good Air, Water, Food, Sleep, Exercise, Detoxification, and Prayer into your hand — we call that system the “7 Basic Steps.”
Now you need convincing, so you are ready to use the system and not fold during tough times. First, if you look at standard cancer therapy, it consists of many cards of the bad hand above— Toxins, Radiation, and cellular Stress at the very least. Emotional Stress and Fear will likely come along too. Do you want to pull some of these cards into your hand? How well does fighting fire with fire generally work?
The standard therapies are aimed at doing enough damage to the cancer, before killing you, that you might kill the cancer and have some life left in the process. It’s a gamble, and the cancer has the upper hand because the Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) are hard to kill — they are well-equipped to handle toxic environments. Without destroying all the CSCs, cancer remits but leaves those seeds behind to start up more cancer.
There is plenty of evidence that standard therapies are at times helpful at first but then harmful over time, and often fail to remove the cancer. Even if you do take some of these cards into your hand, the health-promoting cards can shift the odds more in your favor.
Bring on the evidence
Published in Nutrition and Cancer, researchers at the Department of Social and Administrative Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California analyzed nearly 200 studies on the relationship of fruit and vegetable intake to various cancers. They found that those with low fruit and vegetable intake experienced about twice the risk of cancer compared with those with high intake, even after compensating for other factors. Now, assuming that the low fruit and vegetable group was still eating meals, the low fruit and vegetable diet meant that they were eating higher levels of other foods, i.e. meat, dairy, and the rest of the SAD. The fruits and vegetables either had great benefit, or the other foods did great harm — or perhaps a combination of the two. In any case, how does doubling the odds in your favor sound to you? Since many fruits these days are bred for high sugar content, those eating fruits and vegetables could lower their risk even further by careful selection of which fruits and vegetables they consume. By the way, this study notes, regarding the value of fruits and vegetables, “for breast cancer a protective effect was found to be strong and consistent…” That’s a sophisticated way of saying that it makes a particularly big difference in breast cancer.
Score a 2x odds improvement with a good diet. What else helps? Published in Cancer Causes & Control, another study of studies, this time conducted by the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, concluded in a comparison between those in the lowest physical activity group versus the highest activity group, that “About a 50 percent reduction in incidence (of colon cancer) was observed among those with the highest level of activity across numerous studies that used different measures of activity (occupational or leisure-time activity).” A 50% reduction in risk mathematically means another doubling of the odds against getting cancer. Granted, this study focused on colon cancer, but other studies show similar results for other types of cancer. Could we say that the combination of diet and exercise just gave us a 4x chance of avoiding cancer? Is anything wrong with that math?
There’s more. Published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS One), researchers at the Department of Epidemiology, German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany took data from 23,620 middle-aged participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Potsdam study and found that those getting less than 6 hours of sleep daily had a significantly increased risk of cancer over those getting 7-8 hours, at a ratio of 1.43 to 1. That’s not such a great impact as that of diet and exercise , but poor sleep can add another 43% cancer risk.
Studying the effects of prayer and meditation on cancer entails a wide range of beliefs and meditation techniques. “Mindfulness-based” is a catch-all term to include various forms of meditation. In one study, published in Cancer, researchers at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada studied 88 breast cancer survivors and found that those with mindfulness-based practices for at least three months showed no decrease in telomere length, while those in the control group did show shortened length over the three months. Telomere length is an overall aging factor, and is also has been linked to breast cancer prognosis according to the researchers.
Negative studies show how cancer-promoting activities and substances, such as smoking, substance abuse, stress and fear, food carcinogens such as found in cooked food (particularly meat), and risk factors such as obesity all contribute to increasing cancer risk. If you have such negatives in your life, just getting rid of them drastically improves your odds. Then you can go on to getting the over four times improvement in your odds of avoiding cancer from the activities the studies just highlighted.
If you already have a cancer diagnosis
It’s likely that we all have some cancer cells running around in us, but many of us don’t go on to get a cancer diagnosis. The cancer basically goes nowhere, because conditions aren’t right for it to develop. The reasons why it doesn’t develop are multi-facetted, but they boil down to environment. All cells respond to their environment. Some of the environment is the nutrients, water, oxygen, and toxin levels surrounding the cells, but the environment is also the signaling they receive from other cells. That’s why the cellular environment is not just affected by diet and exercise, but also your mental state. All cells use their genetics to respond to their environment, and since so many DNA code segments exist, most of them dormant but which can be brought into play when needed, the specific DNA you have is far secondary to the cellular environment in terms of your cells’ responses.
If you have a cancer diagnosis, you simply have more cancer than those of us who don’t have a diagnosis. The rules haven’t changed, and the same things that improve or harm your odds before diagnosis are the same after. Now, however, the stakes are higher. This is where you are tempted to fold and abandon what works. Don’t abandon the 7 Steps — double down!
Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Practice, researchers at the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center reviewed two major randomized trials on breast cancer and concluded that lifestyle modification is a vital part of cancer prevention and care. They encourages practitioners to use a comprehensive approach as a major part of their treatment.
Commenting on the trials, Dr. Pruthi, a Mayo internist, emphasized the importance of lifestyle modification, genetic testing and risk-reducing strategies in breast cancer prevention and management. “Physicians should be recommending individualized risk assessments for their patients…” She then advises that they be counseled in lifestyle modifications. She says these strategies may be beneficial in reducing hormone-sensitive breast cancer tumors that have a good prognosis, and they also may be beneficial in preventing tumors that are not hormone-sensitive and have a poor prognosis. “For many years, breast cancer prevention research has primarily focused on the use of anti-estrogen medications to reduce the incidence of favorable, hormone-sensitive breast cancers, but it is critical that we reexamine and implement other risk-reducing strategies to prevent unfavorable breast cancers, known as triple-negative tumors,” says Dr. Pruthi. She encourages women and their health care providers to consider a comprehensive approach to breast cancer treatment and prevention that includes genetic risk assessment and awareness of modifiable lifestyle factors.
There is no way that good lifestyle modifications can worsen your cancer risk or harm your chances of overcoming cancer. There is no downside, other than some effort on your part. With cancer, it’s time to double-down.
So are you willing to make the effort to improve your odds? Can you stay with the system, even when it is tough? Or do you fold?
Dr. Nemec’s Review
To have a foundational system is critical in life and health. Health routines are vital to keep the mind/body in balance. For over the last 35 years we have taught all our patients our foundational system called the Seven Basic Steps to Total Health. This is what they are taught so that it becomes a strong foundation to build the building of Total Health upon. When health challenges knock at the door it is because we have not built a strong foundation of anti-inflammatory foods, proper oxygenation, hydration, exercise, sleep and learning to live more fully in the moment, reducing stress naturally. Let‘s look at one example of breast cancer. The study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Practices stated some facts that we have promoted for the last three and a half decades:
- Patients should be counseled on diet and lifestyle- we have always done this in our teaching and treating programs.
- It is not just about conventional treatment and hormone reduction medication, but about making a healthy diet, exercise and lifestyle modifications to make a strong foundation.
- Genetic testing- We do nutritional genetic testing on our patients to know where their potential weakness are so we can maximize the enzyme reaction rates with customized diets and personalized supplementation to minimize the weaknesses. This makes much more sense than having a woman cut off her breasts preventatively just because she has a genetic weakness. Removing the effect does not change the underlying cause.
- So no matter what type of cancer you have or what type of breast cancer you have been diagnosed with, you must address the foundation of health if you want to heal even this health challenge. This is why people contact us to have either an alternative or integrative approach to healing instead of just trying to treat the effect.
Let me share with you a story about one of our patients who contacted us after unsuccessful treatment with conventional medicine for breast cancer. She was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer for which she did multiple rounds of chemotherapy. The cancer came back in both breasts so she did more chemotherapy and removed both breasts. After that the cancer came back in her colon and she finally contacted us saying she needed to trying something different because what she was doing was not resolving the problem. After being on our program for six months her tumor markers were normal and she felt great — and she was great on all follow-up tests. One difference between what we had done vs. her conventional treatment: We built a strong foundation of 7 Basic Steps to Total Health, where we addressed all the causes of the inflammatory and toxic environment so her body could finally shift into healing. In doing all of our treatments, therapies teaching, diet, customized supplementation, lifestyle changes, exercise program and continued health parameter testing she was able to completely reverse her disease and make an environment where it could not return.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Total Health Institute but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Total Health Institute along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
