Reversing Cancer with a Plant Based Diet

Now here is a great story. A Texas major went vegan and now spreads the word to others. I have the same t-shirt as they do but mine is blue and white :) Just thought I'd share that. Anywho.....I wanted to share this article; I see it as a step in the right direction. Those in leadership using their position in a positive way, sharing the truth about health, diet, and the amazing benefits of veganism. Look at this,"The popularity of plant-based eating has also influenced at least six local restaurants to add vegan dishes to their menus." Now that is another step in the right direction. This is Texas guys!!!! You know how much they idolize their animal protein.

  Reversing cancer simply by making the PROPER lifestyle and diet changes is possible. Yes it can be that simple. 

It is the medical industry $$$$$ that wants you to believe it is complicated and scary and expensive. Do the research. Let me say that again, do the research; there is no denying the truth. Do a simple Internet search for "raw food diet for cancer" and you will have plenty of healing testimonials to read. Then look up medical studies on GreenMedinfo.com and you'll have months and months worth of great studies to read and research. 

What we put into our mouths everyday can determine the level of health we will or will not possess. After the article I have posted a video showing how our "feet, forks and fingers" are "the master levels of medical destiny for millions upon millions year after year."Watch the video clip below for the explanation. 

I also attached an article showing the alarmingly high levels of radiation patients are given and the harm it can cause. And of course I've included a great vegan recipe that just so happens to pack a powerful cancer fighting punch!!

Here is the first article: 

Texas Monthly

The Mayor Went Vegan, Then Spread the Word

By ROBYN ROSSJAN. 25, 2014

Ed Smith, the five-term mayor of Marshall, with his wife, Amanda, changed his diet after a cancer diagnosis in 2008.

The side of Vicki VanDeCarr’s tote bag reads, “Only kale can save us now.”

In Marshall, a growing number of residents believe that slogan is not far from the truth. Barbecue and chicken-fried steak are a way of life in this corner of East Texas; so are obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease. But because of the mayor, Marshall is becoming known as a stop on the national vegan speaking circuit and a small city where people who eschew animal products can order in restaurants.

Ms. VanDeCarr, 52, came to Marshall from nearby Beckville last weekend for the New Year, New You Health Fest, which promotes a vegan diet. In its third year, the event attracted more than 400 people from 17 states and three countries. The agenda included exercise classes, cooking demonstrations and lectures by vegan celebrities like the runner Scott Jurek and the cooking instructor and author Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

One day last year, Ms. VanDeCarr’s Zumba instructor invited her for vegan snacks after class and sent her home with a copy of the 2011 film documentary “Forks Over Knives.”

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“Before, I thought going vegan was like eating cardboard and hugging a tree,” Ms. VanDeCarr said. “After eating some of her food, I was like, ‘Man, it tastes really good.’ ” She watched the documentary, which helped convince her that a plant-based diet could help her avoid some of the health problems plaguing other members of her family. Since then, Ms. VanDeCarr has helped her daughter, son-in-law, mother, mother-in-law, father-in-law and four grandchildren convert to what she calls a plant-based, whole foods diet. Although the diet promoted in Marshall excludes animal products, most refer to it that way, avoiding the term vegan. “Vegan” calls to mind what you cannot eat, while “plant-based, whole foods” emphasizes what you can, said Shannon Johnson, the Zumba instructor who converted Ms. VanDeCarr.

Ms. VanDeCarr now brings lasagna made with meat-substitute soy crumbles to her church dinners. Her conversion is not an anomaly. Many area residents attending the festival spoke of adopting a plant-based diet, dropping pounds and reversing chronic health conditions. The Facebook group for Get Healthy Marshall, the movement’s umbrella organization, has about 600 members.

Get Healthy Marshall was started by the five-term mayor, Ed Smith, and his wife, Amanda, who directs the nonprofit group. When Mr. Smith received a diagnosis of prostate cancer in 2008, he decided to treat it with aggressive dietary changes under a doctor’s supervision. He began eating only whole grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes. Scans later showed that the cancerous growth had disappeared.

“Many people are using that approach and getting great results,” said Dr. Neal Barnard, president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a preventive-medicine group that advocates a vegan diet.

The Smiths thought that lifestyle could benefit others. In 2011 the couple held two events in Marshall that featured the former firefighter Rip Esselstyn, who helped his colleagues switch to a plant-based diet and wrote the New York Times best seller “The Engine 2 Diet.” One event was for firefighters, and the other was for all residents. When the residents’ talk drew nearly 200 people, the Smiths decided to underwrite an annual festival.

Reggie Cooper, the assistant fire chief, who attended the program for firefighters, said he had struggled to manage his diabetes with medication and what he considered a healthy diet: baked fish and chicken, fewer fried foods. After the program, Mr. Cooper and two other emergency responders switched to a plant-based diet for 28 days: enough time, Mr. Cooper said, for him to “detox” and change his palate. He has since lost 50 pounds and stopped diabetes medications.

“Ed and Amanda found a pot of gold,” Mr. Cooper said of plant-based eating. “They didn’t just sit on that. They brought that pot of gold to others.”

   

Through Get Healthy Marshall, Ms. Smith has organized monthly plant-based potlucks, which typically attract 30 to 40 people. The group also offers healthy-eating tours of a local supermarket, which stocks vegan staples like quinoa, an egg substitute for baking and half a dozen kinds of almond milk. The popularity of plant-based eating has also influenced at least six local restaurants to add vegan dishes to their menus. These restaurants are highlighted on gethealthymarshall.com.

Mr. Smith describes the vegan movement as a spectrum with animal rights on one end and health on the other. He said a few people had criticized him for not emphasizing the animal-rights aspect. That’s not the appropriate tactic for East Texas, he said. Mr. Smith himself comes from a cattle-ranching family and spent his summers as a teenager working on the ranch.

“People are much more receptive to the health” message, he said. “We’ve seen people make the change for health purposes, and once they’ve been able to disassociate themselves from animal products, all of a sudden they’re more receptive to what’s happening with animals. It’s not such a challenge to their own personal ethics.”

Education works better than legislation, said Brad Smith, a Forest Service firefighter from nearby Longview. Mr. Smith, who is not related to the mayor, adopted a plant-based diet after attending his first New Year, New You two years ago.

“It’s an inviting approach versus a regulatory approach,” he said of the mayor’s initiative. “People push back when you tell them what to do, especially in Texas, but when it’s their choice it may be more long lasting.”

Robyn Ross is a journalist in Austin.

A version of this article appears in print on January 26, 2014, on page A27B of the National edition with the headline: The Mayor Went Vegan, Then Spread the Word. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer (Too Much Radiation)

DESPITE great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States. Increasingly, we and many other experts believe that an important culprit may be our own medical practices: We are silently irradiating ourselves to death.

The use of medical imaging with high-dose radiation — CT scans in particular — has soared in the last 20 years. Our resulting exposure to medical radiation has increased more than sixfold between the 1980s and 2006, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements. The radiation doses of CT scans (a series of X-ray images from multiple angles) are 100 to 1,000 times higher than conventional X-rays.

Of course, early diagnosis thanks to medical imaging can be lifesaving. But there is distressingly little evidence of better health outcomes associated with the current high rate of scans. There is, however, evidence of its harms.

The relationship between radiation and the development of cancer is well understood: A single CT scan exposes a patient to the amount of radiation that epidemiologic evidence shows can be cancer-causing. The risks have been demonstrated directly in two large clinical studies in Britain and Australia. In the British study, children exposed to multiple CT scans were found to be three times more likely to develop leukemia and brain cancer. In a 2011 report sponsored by Susan G. Komen, the Institute of Medicine concluded that radiation from medical imaging, and hormone therapy, the use of which has substantially declined in the last decade, were the leading environmental causes of breast cancer, and advised that women reduce their exposure to unnecessary CT scans.

CTs, once rare, are now routine. One in 10 Americans undergo a CT scan every year, and many of them get more than one. This growth is a result of multiple factors, including a desire for early diagnoses, higher quality imaging technology, direct-to-consumer advertising and the financial interests of doctors and imaging centers. CT scanners cost millions of dollars; having made that investment, purchasers are strongly incentivized to use them.

While it is difficult to know how many cancers will result from medical imaging, a 2009 study from the National Cancer Institute estimates that CT scans conducted in 2007 will cause a projected 29,000 excess cancer cases and 14,500 excess deaths over the lifetime of those exposed. Given the many scans performed over the last several years, a reasonable estimate of excess lifetime cancers would be in the hundreds of thousands. According to our calculations, unless we change our current practices, 3 percent to 5 percent of all future cancers may result from exposure to medical imaging.

We know that these tests are overused. But even when they are appropriately used, they are not always done in the safest ways possible. The rule is that doses for medical imaging should be as low as reasonably achievable. But there are no specific guidelines for what these doses are, and thus there is considerable variation within and between institutions. The dose at one hospital can be as much as 50 times stronger than at another.

A recent study at one New York hospital found that nearly a third of its patients undergoing multiple cardiac imaging tests were getting a cumulative effective dose of more than 100 millisieverts of radiation — equivalent to 5,000 chest X-rays. And last year, a survey of nuclear cardiologists found that only 7 percent of stress tests were done using a “stress first” protocol (examining an image of the heart after exercise before deciding whether it was necessary to take one of it at rest), which can decrease radiation exposure by up to 75 percent. In recent years, the medical profession has made some progress on these issues. The American College of Radiology and the American College of Cardiology have issued “appropriateness criteria” to help doctors consider the risks and benefits before ordering a test. And the insurance industry has started using radiology benefit managers, who investigate whether an imaging test is necessary before authorizing payment for it. Some studies have shown that the use of medical imaging has begun to slow. But we still have a long way to go. Fortunately, we can reduce the rate of medical imaging by simply avoiding unnecessary scans and minimizing the radiation from appropriate ones. For example, emergency room physicians routinely order multiple CT scans even before meeting a patient. Such practices, for which there is little or no evidence of benefit, should be eliminated. Better monitoring and guidelines would also help. The Food and Drug Administration oversees the approval of scanners, but does not have regulatory oversight for how they are used. We need clear standards, published by professional radiology societies or organizations like the Joint Commission or the F.D.A. In order to be accredited for CT scans, hospitals and imaging clinics should be required to track the doses they use and ensure that they are truly as low as possible by comparing them to published guidelines.

Patients have a part to play as well. Consumers can go to the Choosing Wisely website to learn about the most commonly overused tests. Before agreeing to a CT scan, they should ask: Will it lead to a better treatment and outcome? Would they get that therapy without the test? Are there alternatives that don’t involve radiation, like ultrasound or M.R.I.? When a CT scan is necessary, how can radiation exposure be minimized?

Neither doctors nor patients want to return to the days before CT scans. But we need to find ways to use them without killing people in the process.

Rita F. Redberg is a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, where Rebecca Smith-Bindman is a radiologist.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 31, 2014, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

How Risky are CT Scans?

February 13, 2014 by Michael Greger M.D. in News with 8 Comments

The greatest radiation exposure risk comes not from the Fukushima fallout or the polonium naturally found in all seafood (see my last video, Fukushima and Radioactivity in Seafood), but from doctors.
This was the study that originally shook things up: “Estimated Risks of Radiation-Induced Fatal Cancer from Pediatric CAT scans.” Researchers concluded that the best available risk estimates suggest that pediatric CAT scans (also known as CT scans) will result in significantly increased lifetime radiation risk. How increased? In the United States, of the approximately 600,000 abdominal and head CT scans annually performed in children under the age of fifteen, 500 of these individuals might ultimately not just get cancer but die from cancer attributable to the CAT scan radiation. In response to this revelation, the editor-in-chief of the leading radiology journal admitted that radiologists have not been watching out for children.
The cancer estimates were based on data from Japanese atomic bomb survivors, in terms of how many deaths one can expect from what kind of radiation dose. However, there’s never been a study able to actually document the excess cancers—until now. It turns out that the X-rays released by CAT scanners may be twice as carcinogenic as the higher energy gamma rays released from atomic bombs. Just a few CT scans may triple the risk of brain tumors and leukemia in children.
Other studies are being performed around the world to quantify the risk and should be out in the next few years. Until then, what can we do? First of all, we should get X-rays only when absolutely necessary. Good evidence suggests that between a fifth and a half of CAT scans aren’t necessary at all—they could be replaced with another type of imaging or not performed at all. That’s a lot of added cancer risk for no added benefit.
If you check out my 4-min video Cancer Risk From CT Scan Radiation, you can see the risk of developing cancer for different groups after getting one CT scan. The risk of developing cancer after a single CT scan may be as high as 1 in a 100 for a baby girl. It can take years for cancer to develop, though, which is why the risk is lower in the elderly since they have fewer years left to live. The diagnostic medical radiation dealt out in one year is estimated to cause 2,800 breast cancers among women in the United States, and 25,000 other cancers. That’s doctors causing a lot of cancer.
One chest CT scan is like getting 400 chest X-rays, and a stress test heart scan can be like getting over a thousand X-rays. Doctors need to communicate the risks of these procedures, using relatable analogies. For example, the risk of a chest CT is like the risk of having a car crash during 2500 miles of highway driving or of smoking 700 cigarettes. You pick up a pack of cigarettes and there’s a warning label, but then you go in for thallium heart scan, and no one minds telling you that the risk corresponds to smoking 1400 cigarettes. One in every 270 middle-aged women that get an angiogram may get cancer because of that one test.
The risk associated with the thallium heart scans shocked me. By eating healthy, we may not only eliminate the death and disability associated with heart disease and its treatment (such as open heart surgery), but the risks associated with heart disease diagnosis as well. See these videos for my advice on preventing heart disease:

• One in a Thousand: Ending the Heart Disease Epidemic
• Cavities and Coronaries: Our Choice
• Heart Disease Starts in Childhood
• Our Number One Killer Can Be Stopped
• China Study on Sudden Cardiac Death
• Eliminating the #1 Cause of Death

As I explain in my full-length live presentation on preventing, arresting, and reversing the 15 top killers (Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death), adverse drug reactions from prescription drugs are estimated to cause more than 100,000 deaths in the United States every year, making doctors the sixth leading cause of death. And that’s not counting other “iatrogenic” (physician-caused) harm, such as these radiation risks or medication errors or infections acquired in hospitals. My profession needs to do a better job of offering fully informed consent, clearly and comprehensively explaining the risks and benefits of each alternate course of action.
What about getting X-rays at the dentist? I’ve got a video about that too: Do Dental X-Rays Cause Brain Tumors?. And cell phone radiation? See my video Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer?
-Michael Greger, M.D.

So let's end on a positive note with a yummy recipe! Research green juices for cancer and you'll have more than enough to read on the subject!!

Today's green juice:

5  raw broccoli stems
1 small organic apple
1 organic lemon, peel included
3 stalks of organic celery

Run all of the ingredients through your juicer, garnish with lemon and enjoy!

+JMJ Today I am grateful for a new bunch of baby bananas on the tree.