Empowered Patient Blog
I was curious to test the claim of black salve to remove an abnormal skin growth and decided to experiment on myself for the sake of science and the edification of my inquisitive readers. What follows is an account of my self-experimentation—and success—with using black salve to remove a large mole on the upper right quadrant of my chest.
Some permutation of the sentiment of being busy is a common answer to the question, “How are you?” Busy started being worn as a badge of honor at the same time in history that burn-out was categorized as an “occupational phenomenon” by the World Health Organization.
What causes cancer, and what contributes to cancer formation? These are two different concepts that overlap and influence each other.
A cause of cancer is a carcinogen. A contributor to cancer formation can be mutagenic but is context-driven by the strength and duration of exposure, genetic predisposition to cancer, and the collective burden of other environmental triggers.
I’m always surprised when thought leaders in mainstream oncology claim uncertainty as to the cause of cancer. The answer is quite straightforward—perhaps not simple, but unambiguous despite the complexity of the factors involved in the etiology of cancer.
I got my first up-close and personal taste of this during a very difficult conversation shortly after my 3-year-old son, Kicker, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. While chatting with another cancer dad, he shared his experiences with his young son and how I needed to prepare for…
Every wall of our new home needed a fresh coat of paint. A dozen gallons of paint later, we moved in without any evidence of off-gassing toxic, cancer-causing chemicals. This is of the utmost importance for our family given my cancer history (with lymphoma, think significant environmental toxicant exposure), and also because my wife is chemically-sensitive and reacts to airborne pollutants.
Take a moment and expand on what constitutes a cancer-promoting or anti-cancer lifestyle; think beyond that black-and-white dichotomy.
Just a quick but VERY important reminder of how important clean air is to health, especially those treating, in remission from, or acting to prevent cancer (hint: that should be all of us).
One thing that gets my goat is the attribution of mammography as preventative medicine, as if getting a yearly mammogram could prevent breast cancer. A mammogram is a tool of prevention not detection.
A curious thing happened following the recent publication of my book, “Cancer and EMF Radiation.” I hit an unforeseen snag that hampered my ability to spread the message that non-native electromagnetic fields are a significant human carcinogen.
There has been a movement within allopathic medicine to adopt a holistic model in their paradigm. This gave rise to functional medicine, practiced by a new generation of integrative physicians, having great success in esteemed medical centers such as Cleveland Clinic.
I have great reverence for the scientific method and one of its beneficiaries, conventional Western medicine (immunotherapy played a role in my cancer journey). Yet conventional medicine sometimes fails to address the whole person—body, mind, spirit—through its reductionist lens. For that piece of the healing puzzle, many turn to practitioners of holistic medicine, such as naturopathy and Chinese medicine.
All healing is an exercise in change. If you want different results, you have to be willing to do something different. Looking over the breadth of a lifetime of destructive choices, sometimes there is much that needs to be done differently.
I’ve recently lectured about my experience living with a small bowel obstruction. During that talk I shared my smoothie recipe, formulated for its ease of digestion and nutrient density. Although no longer suffering from episodes of small bowel obstruction, I have maintained my ritual of blending a breakfast smoothie for its anticancer benefits.
What if cancer, like so many chronic diseases, is an accumulation of little compromises?
Sometimes cancer has a big, blatant cause—like radiation exposure. Other times the cause is unclear and its inception insidious. Without an obvious etiology, conventional oncology tends to default to badly behaving genes as the cause of malignancy.
“I got complacent. Don’t ever let that happen to you.”
These were the words of advice offered to me by a patient when reflecting on his second encounter with cancer. The first was a lymphoma diagnosis 10 years prior, and recent scans showed a reappearance of malignancy along the spine.