This Powerful Herb Can Combat Cancer

The role of epigenetics in health and disease is becoming ever clearer, and I firmly believe this field of study will eventually supplant the current medical paradigm. The conventional belief has been that genes controlled their own expression and were therefore the direct cause of certain diseases. This laid the groundwork for the idea that your genes predetermined your health.

But genes are in fact NOT self-regulating.

Having “bad genes,” does not at all mean you’re doomed to suffer some inevitable fate. Genes are merely blueprints, and these blueprints are activated and controlled by something else entirely, namely their environment. This environmental information—which includes diet, toxic exposures, as well as thoughts and emotions, and more—can create more than 30,000 different variations from each blueprint, allowing for an astounding amount of leeway in modifying the expression or “read-out” of each gene!

The Power of Food as Medicine

As a result of these findings, we’re now finally seeing science alter its course to investigate the power of optimal nutrition to improve health and prevent chronic disease from occurring in the first place. To anyone who is well-versed in alternative medicine, this is simply common sense. But many are still in denial about the power each individual wields over their own health, and that preventing disease and even treating disease can be as simple as modifying your diet and lifestyle—essentially, altering the environment of your body, to provide the best, most health promoting growth medium possible for all your cells.

Part of the explanation for why food can have such a powerful influence on serious diseases such as cancer is due to its influence on a biological process called angiogenesis– the process your body uses to build blood vessels. Cancerous cells, like all other cells in your body, cannot thrive without the oxygen and nutrients supplied by your capillaries.

Excessive angiogenesis (too many blood vessels) promotes diseases such as cancer.

Most of us actually carry around microscopic cancer cell clusters in our bodies all the time. The reason why we all don’t develop cancer is because as long as your body has the ability to balance angiogenesis properly, it will prevent blood vessels from forming to feed these microscopic tumors. Trouble will only arise if, and when, the cancer cells manage to get their own blood supply, at which point they can transform from harmless to deadly.

As our ancestors intuitively understood, Nature has laced a large number of foods and herbs with naturally occurring inhibitors of angiogenesis, rendering them natural “anti-cancer medicines.” Simply by consuming these anti-angiogenetic foods you can naturally boost your body’s defense system and prevent blood vessels from forming and feeding the microscopic tumors that exist in your body at any given time.

I’ve previously written about a number of different foods found to have particularly powerful epigenetic influence, such as broccoli and resveratrol, but many researchers consider the curcumin in turmeric to have the greatest potential in combating cancer.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

KrassiAWAY B.

8:19AM PDT on Jul 16, 2011

Noted with interest.

July 16
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Connie W.

5:22AM PDT on Jul 7, 2011

Are you suggesting eating fruit is bad for a cancer patient because of the fructose contained in it?

July 7
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Debbie L.

7:38PM PDT on Jun 29, 2011

Thanks a lot. I really liked this article :)

June 29
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Rosalee A.

1:13PM PDT on Jun 28, 2011

I currently use a supplement which includes not only tumeric but
transveratrol and I have noticed a real change in
inflammation of joints and muscles. When I mentioned it to my naturopath he was not surprised.

June 28
send a green star

Cindy B.

12:45AM PDT on Jun 28, 2011

SO wonderful to see Dr. Mercola on Care2!! I just discovered him this past year and now get all his regular email articles... they are always so packed with information and well-documented too. I save all of them. Thank you, Dr. Mercola!

Emily S.

1:00PM PDT on Jun 27, 2011

Good info!