Listen to your Body

August 18, 2005
My Journey with Cancer

Listen to your body

Listen to your body. I have heard these words of advice many times since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Our bodies have its own way of telling us to stop and rest or eat the right foods. But oftentimes we refuse to listen. I need stress to write. I am a deadline pusher. As a news writer and newscaster, I love to write when I am watching the clock ticking its seconds away mercilessly and I am racing to beat it. I sound more alive delivering the news when I know that the rest of it is still in the process of completion inside the newsroom. My editor understands, but most often, it drives him to the wall.

I usually set an art exhibit before I produce the paintings in my one-man shows. The creative juices flow when adrenalin pumps hard enough to bring images to life. Stress could be the trigger to make us feel alive but at the end it leaves the body spent and bent to the rigors of abuse. A guitar has strings that need a certain amount of stress just to produce a beautiful melody. But too much stress can break the strings. And like so our bodies can handle only so much stress.
Although genetics are considered an important risk factor to acquire cancer, it is only secondary to dietary, lifestyle and environmental factors. Japanese women have only 1/5th of the rate of breast cancer compared to the United States, according to internet sources. These women tend to include fish in their diet which are rich sources of the omega-3 fatty acids. These essential fatty acids which are known for its anti cancer effects are found in cold water fish like salmon, herring, halibut, mackerel and sardines.
They are also present in lower fat fish like yellow fin tuna, sea bass, flounder, cod, rainbow trout, perch, Pollack and haddock. Fatty fish which has about 5 to 10 grams of fat include freshwater bass, mullet, bluefish and blue fin tuna.
In Dr. Don Colbert’s book entitled “What would Jesus Eat”, fish oil eaters like. Eskimos in Greenland have very low percentage in coronary heart disease. This study was conducted by Dr. J. Dyerberg in the late 1970s also showed that although Eskimos have a diet rich in oils of cold water fatty fish and seals they have a low level of bad cholesterol or LDL and high level of good cholesterol or HDL.
Sources say that dietary factors link to cause breast cancers are meats, total fat, saturated fats, alcohol, refined sugar, dairy and total calories. While those which can prevent breast cancer are fish, whole grains, legumes, cabbage vegetables, nuts and fruits.
Cancer has opened my eyes to the myriad of foods which has the natural way to heal. In Genesis 1:30, God said “to every breast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food.”
God created us to be omnivores. We can eat plants and animal foods. But according to Dr. Colbert, our anatomy has been made by our creator in such a way that we are better in consuming more plant products than animal products.
He cited that as human being, we have twenty molars, which are ideal for grinding plant foods with eight frontal incisors to bite in to fruits and vegetable, and only four canine teeth for eating meat.. We have hands meant for picking fruits, vegetables and herbs and not claws to rip animal flesh. Our jaws move vertically and horizontally while a carnivore moves its jaw only vertically.
Our intestinal tract is longer than a carnivore’s which is more designed to ingest plant foods. The carnivores also have more hydrochloric acid four times more compared to an herbivore, which meant that they could digest meat more rapidly and can eliminate their waste products faster compared to our own.
During this vegetarian period, Adam lived for 930 years, and Methuselah who was the longest man who ever lived on earth, was 969 years old.
Today, you are considered a rare find if you live to be over a hundred years old. The average lifespan is only 75 years. With cancer, this is even a remote possibility. It’s hard for me to indulge in such a fantasy, but God is a God of the impossible. He is bigger than all the cancers combined in the whole world.