Can Your Body Heal Itself of Disease ... Including Cancer?
by www.SixWise.com

Hippocrates, famous Greek physician and herbalist from the 4th century B.C., practiced medicine by treating the whole person rather than the individual symptoms. Considered to be the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates believed in the body's natural ability to heal itself. The root of Hippocrates' beliefs has become the basis for naturopathic medicine, or naturopathy.

Naturopaths believe that your body's natural state is one of harmony and balance. It is therefore the intrinsic nature of any living organism to heal itself of illness, disease, and injury in order to return the body to its natural, balanced state. Illness and injury are disruptions of your body's normal state of equilibrium, or homeostasis.

According to naturopathy, any intervention used in an attempt to restore health should not further disrupt your body's quest to regain homeostasis. A fundamental belief is that the whole person must be treated in order to remove the disruption of bodily equilibrium, namely the cause of the illness.

To achieve great health and balance, naturopathic medicine incorporates many different forms of alternative treatments, tailoring custom-made treatments to individuals depending on their specific health condition.

Some of the most common naturopathic treatment methods are:

• Changing your diet and evaluating your nutrition

• Receiving counseling for lifestyle modification ( ways to reduce stress, increase sleep, exercise, increase positive thinking, etc.)

• Botanical medicine (medicines derived from whole leaves, roots, stems, etc.)

• Homeopathy (treating diseases with drugs made from a diluted form of the disease itself)

• Mind-body therapies (hypnosis, meditation, biofeedback, etc.).

Using Your Diet to Heal

What you eat can have a powerful impact on your body's state of wellness or disease, and diet is a clear example of how your body can heal itself of disease.

The macrobiotic diet, for instance, is a popular form of nutritional therapy that emphasizes high complex carbohydrate and low fat foods, as determined by your individual needs. According to an article from the Journal of Permanente, the five categories of food that make up the macrobiotic diet (with recommended weight percentage of total food consumed) are as follows:

• Whole cereal grains (40%-60%), including brown rice, barley, millet, oats, wheat, corn, rye, and buckwheat, and other less common grains and products made from them, such as noodles, bread, and pasta.

• Vegetables (20%-30%), including smaller amounts of raw or pickled vegetables -- preferably locally grown and prepared in a variety of ways.

• Beans (5%-10%), such as azuki, chickpeas, or lentils, other bean products, such as tofu, tempeh, or natto.

• Regular consumption of sea vegetables, such as nori, wakame, kombu, and hiziki -- cooked either with beans or as separate dishes.

• Foods such as fruit, white fish, seeds, and nuts -- to be consumed a few times per week or less often.

The macrobiotic diet advocates organically grown foods (a way to minimize the intake of cancer-causing pesticides) and minimally processed foods. Followers of this diet typically avoid foods including meat and poultry, animal fats, eggs, dairy products, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and refined sugar. It is especially important for people who have cancer to stay away from sugar, a.k.a. glucose, because it is used as fuel by cancerous cells and in turn furthers the growth of cancerous tumors/tissue.

While most experts agree that a diet focused on fresh, organic foods -- with plenty of vegetables and a minimum of processed foods -- is best to fight disease (including cancer) there is much debate over the role of animal foods in a disease-fighting diet.

On the flip side of a macrobiotic diet are those who believe saturated fats from grass-fed meats, butter and other whole-fat dairy products, particularly unpasteurized varieties, actually promotes healing in your body.

"Saturated fats play many important roles in the body chemistry. They strengthen the immune system and are involved in inter-cellular communication, which means they protect us against cancer," according to the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Omega-3 fats from fish oil are also widely known to fight against cancer of the breast, prostate and others.

But no matter which diet you feel is best for you, the premise remains: your body is more than capable of fighting off illness if it's given the proper balance of nutrients to make it thrive.

The Emotional Side of Illness ... and Healing

A major focus of many naturopathic and other holistic approaches to disease treatment and prevention is not only your physical body but also your emotions.

"The mind-body connection has to do with the idea that what happens in our minds or our emotions affects our body," says Katherine Puckett, LCSW, director of mind-body medicine at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

"If you feel worry in your mind, you feel it in your body. And some of these things are obvious to us like butterflies or heart palpitations, or you get diarrhea from stress or you can't sleep ... then there's a really important one that isn't usually as obvious, but even more significant probably, which is that stress over time can affect the immune system."

Indeed, stress has been called America's number one health problem, and it is estimated by the American Institute for Stress that 75 percent to 90 percent of visits to the doctor are for stress-related problems.

Even more astounding, according to the research of Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, every disease originates from an unexpected shock experience or emotional trauma. Based on over 40,000 cases studies and years of research, Dr. Hamer has shown the direct correlation between emotional upset and physical disease. As it says on the German New Medicine homepage:

"... A sudden shock affects not only the psyche, but impacts at the same time (visible on a brain scan) the part of the brain that corresponds biologically to the specific trauma. Whether the body responds to the unexpected event with a tumor growth (cancer), with tissue degeneration, or with functional loss, is determined by the exact type of conflict shock."

The only way to heal your body, according to Dr. Hamer, is therefore by resolving the emotional trauma. His treatment program, which focuses on identifying and resolving the original emotional shock, has a 92 percent success rate.

This is another powerful testimony to your body's ability to heal.

Although there is a lack of scientific evidence to support the idea that your body can heal itself with the assistance of natural treatments, there are countless reports of individuals who have in fact healed themselves of disease in this very way.

If you do have cancer or another chronic illness, it is up to you and your doctor to decide which treatments are best for you. But, if you do choose to incorporate naturopathy into your treatment plan it is becoming easier to find cancer treatment centers, such as Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), that include naturopathic methods in their cancer treatment programs.

According to CTCA, for those of you already undergoing cancer treatment, naturopathic remedies can still help by

• Supporting normal metabolism during treatment

• Decreasing side effects of cancer treatment

• Boosting your body's immune system

• Providing strategies for long-term cancer prevention and health maintenance

• Improving energy, well-being and overall quality of life

For even more tips on how to prevent and manage cancer and other chronic illnesses, take a few minutes to read through the Recommended Reading Below.

Recommended Reading

Nine Lifestyle Changes You Can Make to Help Prevent Cancer

How to Manage Cancer-Related Fatigue

Sources

Cancer Treatment Centers of America. What is Naturopathic Medicine? September 2008.

Dunne, Nancy, et al. Naturopathic Medicine: What Can Patients Expect? Naturopathic Care-Covered by Many Major Carriers-Can Complement Customary Clinical Practice. Journal of Family Practice. December 2005.

Horowitz, Joellyn, MD and Tomita, Mitsuo, MD. The Macrobiotic Diet as Treatment for Cancer: Review of the Evidence. The Permanente Journal. Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Fall 2002. Vol. 6, No. 4.

Klotter, Jule. Sugar & Cancer -- Shorts -- connection between high blood sugar and tumor growth. Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients. June 2002.

Medterms.com. Definition of Homeopathy. September 2008.

Mothernature.com. Naturopathy. September 2008.

Nr.cc.mn.us. Herbal Therapy -- Help Your Body Heal Itself. September 2008.

The Weston A. Price Foundation

German New Medicine