Cancer Reality Check

I never realized how wide-spread and far-reaching cancer was until this past year brought it to the fore-front of my life.  My aunt passed away from breast cancer in the spring.  Tim's mom was diagnosed 1 week after my dad was.  Two of the parents that I had worked with in the past have been hit with a diagnosis within the last year.  One of my friends even had to put her dog down recently after it had suffered from the disease.  It seems like every time I turn around lately, someone that have been in contact with, or love dearly is having to deal with their lives being turned upside down by one little word- cancer.

Cancer is a mysterious disease to me.  I know that it is expected to effect 1.5 million new people just this year.  More and more patients are being diagnosed every day which also means that more and more patients are dying from cancer (about 1,500 A DAY).  People are walking as we speak in breast cancer 3 days, racing (or sleeping in) for the cure, buying products that support Live Strong or anything pink for breast cancer research, and donating exorbitant amounts of money to foundations to find an escape from this terrible disease.  And yet, we can't find a cure.  We know what causes it and some things that fight it.  We know how to treat it once you have it, and how to support others that get it.  We are searching, supporting, praying, racing, donating, and HOPING...But we can't find a cure.

I said a while back that once we got past the beginning stages of healing, I would begin writing about some of the solutions we explored throughout  our journey with cancer.  We learned many things from all of our readings and from talking to the many people that have touched our lives with stories similar to our own.  I can't say that I've been a perfect saint as far as changing my lifestyle, but I have definitely opened my eyes to the dangers of certain foods!  We can't find a cure yet and I don't know for sure if I can undo 29 years worth of damage that I may have been doing to my body but I'm sure as heck going to give it a shot!  I want to be around when I'm 80...don't  you?!?

One of the main things that we learned was how much crap we subject our systems to every day that our bodies just can't handle.  We weren't meant to eat artificial products made in factories- we were meant to eat foods that exist naturally on the Earth that have been used for thousands of years.  A good rule of thumb is: if you can't pronounce the name of the ingredients in the food, you probably shouldn't be eating it!  So, before I head off to hopefully get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight, I leave you with a few things that we have learned should be avoided...have fun purging the cancer-causers from your refrigerator and pantry!  I know that I felt a little more in control of this disease that has taken over my life after throwing a ton of unhealthy items into the trash to make room for those foods that will keep my body running for many, many years to come!

1. Avoid ANY items with additives such as aspartame or sorbitol.  As a lifetime dieter, I was surprised to find how many products I had in my refrigerator that I thought were helping me keep off the pounds when in reality they contained a carcinogen (aspartame) that turns into menthol, which turns into formaldehyde when in your body and gives your system all sorts of fits in trying to get rid of it.  Diet pop and anything that has reduced calories are no-nos.  Also avoid those little pink (artificial, chemical based), yellow (artificial, chlorine added), and blue (aspartame, artificial, chemical based) packets at the dinner table.  If you need to add sweetner to something, use    Stevia.  It's all natural, calorie free, and is actually sweeter than white table sugar. 

2. Sugar- both white and brown.  Since brown sugar is really just white sugar with molasses added to it, it's not any healthier for you than the white stuff.  Cancer feeds off of sugar.  We don't want to FEED cancer, we want to kill it!  I was shocked to see how much sugar I was consuming every day: yogurt, even the vanilla one I thought was healthy had over 10mg, the light dressing I was using on my salads had 16g per serving, my jelly had 11g, and a small bottle of apple juice had 25g!!!  I don't even want to think about how many sugar grams were in my morning Starbucks!  With 24g of sugar being the recommended amount for women per day,  (American Heart Association) I was most likely consuming double or triple that amount and not even realizing it.  And companies are smart with how they hide added sugar in our foods.   They don't make it simple for us by putting "sugar" on the label; they disguise it under names like high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, fructose, maltose (actually, anything with -ose), and maltodextrin.  You can't avoid sugar all together but you can try to limit the amount that you take in by really reading those labels and taking control of what goes in your body!

3. Fried foods contain hydrogenated oils, trans-fats, and acrylamide which is a by-product of the deep frying process.  Acrylamide is a known cancer-causer, and adversely effects both the brain and the reproductive system.  Not good.  I'm slightly partial to my reproductive system since I'm hoping to have a family of my own one day!  Plus, fried foods make you gain weight.  Also not good. 

So there's my input for the night (my apologies for the length of the post).    It wasn't a surprise to me to find out that the above items were carcinogens and unhealthy for me.  What shocked me was how prevalent they are in our diets and in the products that we buy.  Like I said, it really opened my eyes and caused me to look at the foods I put into my body just a bit differently.