Summary & Study Guide - Anticancer Living ebook

Summary &Study Guide

Anticancer Living

Transform Your Life and Health with the Mix of Six

Lee Tang

Title: Summary & Study Guide - Anticancer Living

Subtitle: Transform Your Life and Health with the Mix of Six

Author: Lee Tang

Publisher: LMT Press (lmtpress.wordpress.com)

Copyright © 2018 by Lee Tang

All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

First Edition: October 2018

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN: 9781988970165 (ebook)

ISBN-13: 9781725859104 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1725859106 (paperback)

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and author make no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of these contents and disclaim all warranties such as warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. The website addresses in the book were correct at the time going to print. However, the publisher and author are not responsible for the content of third-party websites, which are subject to change.

To my wife, Lillian, who is the source of energy and love for everything I do, and to Andrew and Amanda: watching you grow up has been a privilege.

BOOKS BY LEE TANG

For a complete list of books by Lee Tang and information about the author, visit Lee Tang’s site.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Books by Lee Tang

Synopsis

Part One: The Anticancer Age

1. The Anticancer Revolution

2. Our Healing Powers

3. What Causes Cancer

4. A Cell’s Quest for Immortality

5. The Epigenetics of Prevention

6. Synergy and the Mix of Six

Part Two: The Mix of Six

7. Pillar 1 - Building Social and Emotional Support

8. Pillar 2 - Stress Reduction

9. Pillar 3 - Better Sleep

10. Pillar 4 - Exercise

11. Pillar 5 - Nutrition

12. Pillar 6 - Minimizing Exposure to Environmental Toxins

Appendix

Appendix A: Eating by Food Groups

Appendix B: Environmental Toxins Hit List

Appendix C: Staying Healthy on the Road

Index

About the Author

Plea from the Author

SYNOPSIS

“Anticancer Living: Transform Your Life and Health with the Mix of Six,” by Lorenzo Cohen, PhD and Alison Jefferies, MEd

Book Abstract

Part 1 of this book outlines the cancer landscape and introduces the concept of the Mix of Six — the six key lifestyle factors that work together to promote an optimal environment for preventing and healing cancer. These six lifestyle factors are social connectedness, stress, sleep, exercise, diet, and exposure to environmental toxins. The synergy created by these six factors can delay or prevent many cancers, support conventional treatments, and significantly improve the quality of life for cancer patients. Part 2 presents the latest research and recommendations for adopting the six pillars of anticancer living — building social and emotional support, stress reduction, better sleep, exercise, nutrition, and minimizing exposure to environmental toxins.

Author

Lorenzo Cohen, PhD, is the Richard E. Haynes Distinguished Professor in Clinical Cancer Prevention and director of the Integrative Medicine Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He is on the board of the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health and a founding member and past president of the Society for Integrative Oncology.

Alison Jefferies, MEd, has worked extensively as an educator. She is a former president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center Faculty and Family Organization and works with Lorenzo Cohen to foster health and wellness in individuals and their communities.

Important Note About This Guide

This guide is a summary and not a critique/review of the book. The summary may not be organized chapter-wise but summarizes the book’s main ideas, viewpoints, and arguments. It is NOT meant to be a replacement, but a supplement to help you understand the book’s key ideas and recommendations.

PART ONE

THE ANTICANCER AGE

1

THE ANTICANCER REVOLUTION

Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States. 33 percent of women and 50 percent of men can expect to develop cancer. Although most cancer strike when we’re older, some are affecting people at younger ages. The medical establishment responds to this uptick of cancers in the young by calling for earlier screening. But early detection isn’t always the best or only answer. Sometimes, early detection can lead to overtreatment with no survival benefits. A better way is to prevent or delay the onset of cancers, especially the types that strike young people.

In the early 1960s, the United States faced a public health crisis brought on by cigarette smoking. Surgeon General Luther Terry showed that cigarette smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer and the 70 percent higher rates of mortality for smokers versus nonsmokers. Since then, publicised lawsuits against tobacco companies have kept up public awareness of the causal link between tobacco and cancer. Yet today, 15 percent of the U.S. population still smokes and the percentage of smokers remain high in many Asian, African, European, and Middle Eastern countries.

Although the rates of lung cancer among American men have declined, the rates of lung cancer among American women — who smoked later than men — continued to rise through 2000 and have just declined. This is because lung, throat, esophageal, and other tobacco-related cancers are common among the elderly, and so women who smoked during the 1960s and ‘70s may just now be facing the cancer-related consequences.

The causal link between lung cancer and tobacco smoke has led to the launch of a new field of cancer prevention — the search for lifestyle and environmental factors connected to the onset of cancer. David Servan-Schreiber, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was the pioneer in this field. Having been treated twice for a malignant brain tumor, he became interested in ways to enhance his immunity, decrease inflammation, and suppress cancers, while improving his quality of life. His book, Anticancer: A New Way of Life, has helped design the early phase of the Comprehensive Lifestyle (CompLife) Study at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Recent research shows that over half of cancer deaths could be prevented by making healthy lifestyle changes. A 2016 study by Harvard researchers found that not smoking, drinking in moderation, maintaining a healthy weight, and regular exercise could prevent 41 percent of cancers cases and 59 percent of cancer deaths in women and two-thirds of cancer cases and deaths in men.

David’s work challenges the survival models used by oncologists to predict outcomes for their patients. In a chapter in Anticancer, David writes about the cancer experience of the legendary scientist Stephen Jay Gould who was diagnosed at age 40 with abdominal mesothelioma, a cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Gould learned that his cancer was incurable and the median survival time was eight months from diagnosis. But he knew how to read a bell curve. He noted that at the end of the survival “tail,” a person with mesothelioma could live three to four years, far better than the median of eight months. Both he and David Servan-Schreiber significantly exceeded the expected survival time for their types of cancer.

We can use two bell curves to chart the Prevention and Control of cancer: a prevention graph and a survival graph. The prevention graph charts the age of cancer onset. The survival graph charts the survival probability after the initial diagnosis. If we adopt an anticancer prevention plan, we can extend the left tail of the prevention graph by reducing the cancer incidence rates. If we adopt an anticancer treatment plan to enhance the efficacy of conventional cancer treatment by making lifestyle changes, we can push the survival graph up and to the right, increasing the survival probability and quality of life for cancer survivors.

An anticancer lifestyle promotes cancer prevention and enhances the efficacy of cancer treatments while improving the quality of life. It not only helps us to live better and longer but also delays the onset of cancer, perhaps indefinitely. It is a dramatic change from our current reactive posture with cancer detection and treatment.

ONLINE VIDEOS

Cancer Prevention: The Anti-Cancer Diet and Lifestyle

Anticancer_a new way of life

Dr. David Servan-Schreiber’s Remarkable Story

2

OUR HEALING POWERS

Our body is a robust disease-fighting machine, but its ability is affected by our daily lifestyle choices such as stress, diet, sleep, and exercise. When we are sick, we must ensure our daily lifestyle choices help our body to heal itself.

In a 2007 randomized control trial, the renowned physical Dean Ornish showed that early-stage prostate cancer patients could slow the progression of their cancer and reduce the need for surgery by changing their lifestyle.

Many doctors are reluctant to suggest lifestyle change as a part of a cancer prevention or treatment program because they do not feel the connection between lifestyle change and disease stood up to a medical standard of proof. Many well-meaning cancer physicians inadvertently did the same thing because they failed to share the connection between lifestyle and disease with their patients.

Medicine can treat cancers to make them undetectable, but full eradication is rare. Aiming only to “kill” cancer can cause irreparable harm to the body’s ability to heal itself, making the patient vulnerable to other health problems. At the MD Anderson Cancer Center, doctors help cancer patients make lifestyle changes to increase the success of conventional treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation, and stem cell transplants. The center focuses on six anticancer living lifestyles called the Mix of Six — social connectedness, stress, sleep, exercise, diet, and exposure to environmental toxins. These six lifestyles are synergistic, meaning the combined effect of two or more is greater than the sum of the individual effects.