North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>]

Proper treatment for anybody depends on that particular person's system. (And, believe it or not, modern medicine is well aware of this. Any physician still denying it is not a good doctor. Find another one.)

I didn't know hemochromatosis was that common. If 1 in 7 people are carriers, and if even the carriers have a different response to iron than others, certainly testing for it should be routinely done in childhood (at least unless there are major difficulties involved in the test itself.) But the proper treatment for anemic people who do have it may well not be the proper treatment for anemic people who don't have it. And no-gluten diets are only likely to be useful for people who can't tolerate gluten. Again, the diet or other treatment that is useful for one person may be actively harmful for another. 

The fact that some people getting conventional cancer treatment die anyway is no reason to ignore such treatment. Conventional cure rates for some kinds of cancer (including the skin cancer that started this discussion) are extremely high. Refusing treatment for a cancer with a very low cure rate and unpleasant treatment may make a lot of sense, presuming that the patient has become informed on the specific situation; but in order to become well informed it's necessary to actually consult with at least one physician well trained in that field; and refusing to check a suspicious skin growth for well over a year does not in any case fall into that category. 

I think I have said what I have to say on this topic, and I certainly can't force anyone to listen to it by repeating it further; and this is mostly off topic for the list (though the nutritional and/or medicinal qualities of fruits, specifically, I think is on topic). So I will stop posting here about this.

-- Rivka


On May 21, 2009, at 12:06 AM, Kieran &/or Donna wrote:

> <x-tad-smaller>Rivka, </x-tad-smaller>
> <x-tad-smaller>    I knew a number of people who went through chemotherapy for their cancer, and they are just as dead as the ones you knew who died after trying "food cures". </x-tad-smaller>
> <x-tad-smaller>    There are some things that the doctors and the public should know about who gets cancer.  My husband and I have between us the 2 most common genetic diseases in America.  He has hemochromatosis, I have celiac disease.  People with hemochromatosis absorb more iron from their diet than normal people do.  1 in 7 Americans are carriers and absorb 50% more iron than normals.  1 in 200 have double genes for it and absorb 3x as much iron.  When the iron level reaches a certain point, the cancer rate goes through the roof.  I've not been able to convince anyone to get their iron saturation tested when they were first diagnosed.  Cancer cells MUST have iron to multiply.  Once chemo is started and the bone marrow is screwed up, I think it might be a bit harder to figure out what the test results mean.  One thing is for sure, when chemo makes the patient anemic, the last thing they should do is take iron supplements!!!  </x-tad-smaller>
> <x-tad-smaller>    Celiac disease is specifically associated with Lymphoma and colon cancer.  For those who react to gluten, it turns off their natural killer cells that attack cancers. I note it seems to be associated with female cancers, and that makes sense as it interferes with digestion and absorption.  With fluorine and chlorine in the water and bromine in the bread, iodine is outcompeted for absorption and transport.  A celiac's poor absorption just makes the situation worse.  When we were told that Japanese women don't get breast cancer and that it was the soy, that was wrong.  It was the fish and seaweed they eat - they get 100X as much iodine in their diet as Americans.  It takes iodine to break down estrogen.  Too much estrogen or estrogen mimics raise the chances of breast, uterine, etc. cancer.  I merely got nice benign fibroids, I was lucky.  </x-tad-smaller>
> <x-tad-smaller>    Anyway, remember the fad for a macrobiotic diet for cancer?  The weird thing is that it would have worked for both of these groups of cancer prone people.  The phytic acid in the brown rice is the same phytic acid that is extracted and sold as "IP6" and used by people with cancer to bring down their iron levels to slow cancer growth.  And as the diet includes no meat, the largest source of easily absorbable iron would be avoided.  For celiacs, the lack of wheat in the diet would allow the immune system to become more active and would take stress off the adrenals and liver. </x-tad-smaller>
> <x-tad-smaller>Donna</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>P.S.  Lucky is right, it's not the fat in red meat that causes cancer.  It's the iron.  But if we knew who the 1 in 7 hemochromatosis carriers were, the rest of us could eat all the meat we liked.  My husband eats meat, not a lot, but I did finally stop using my beloved cast iron pans. </x-tad-smaller>
> _______________________________________________