Prevent Cancer Naturally in 3 Steps

The best way to prevent cancer naturally is to never get it!  Read my thyroid cancer story to find out how I (likely) got cancer and how you can prevent cancer naturally in just three steps.

If you’ve been following along with me on Instagram, Facebook, or my email newsletter, you probably have heard by now that I have thyroid cancer.

Back in August, I had a biopsy performed on a small but suspicious thyroid nodule.  It came back with 95% certainty of papillary carcinoma.  While I somewhat expected this diagnosis, I was still a bit dumbfounded.  I had just spent the summer working with a functional medicine doctor, and I felt better than I ever have in my whole life.  My doctor said I was “halfway to healed” with regard to my thyroid.  I was even off my thyroid medication for the first time in five years!

And now, the suggested treatment for thyroid cancer is to remove half of my thyroid.  And that’s really it.  Probably go back on medication for forever, but no chemo.  No radiation.  Just a surgery, probably a week’s recovery, and back to life.  Not that terrible by a long stretch when you consider other, “big” cancers.

Except that I sing.  A lot.  My degree is in singing.  I have been teaching voice for 15 years.  I perform somewhat regularly.  Singing is probably my greatest earthly joy.  When I sing, I feel SO alive!  And thyroid surgery is somewhat risky for a singer.  

There is a (not all that small) chance that permanent vocal damage can occur with thyroid surgery.  My doctor told me that even if things went absolutely perfectly, she could not guarantee I would not notice a difference in my voice just due to the nature of the dissection itself.  (Isn’t that something you do in biology class?  And now someone wants to do that to my throat…)

This was hard news.  I would try to sing, but instead I would just cry wondering how much longer I would get to keep singing.  Maybe forever.  Maybe not again til heaven.  

So, given the fact that I like my thyroid and wanted to keep all of it, and also given the fact that I like singing, I have decided to pursue alternative treatments.  

I have always said that God designed our bodies to heal themselves.  It was time to live out what I believe.  Besides, God made me weird for a reason!  I’ve always dabbled with various healthy protocols, loved learning about how foods nourish our body, and sought to find the right exercise to energize my body.  In fact, I believe God has been preparing me to deal with this cancer in this alternative way since childhood.  

Hear me well when I say this: I am not saying that having a surgery for cancer is inherently wrong.  If I wasn’t a singer, I’d probably just do it and be done with it!  But, I’ve got nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain from trying this first.  My cancer is very slow growing, located just within this tiny nodule, and honestly not affecting life for me.  (Remember, I feel better than I ever have.)  Why not try this first?

Sometimes a week in bed recovering from surgery sounds nice.  Read some books.  Watch some movies.  Take a lot of naps.  It certainly feels like a lot less work than all this celery juice!  But, this is right for now.

Where do I begin?

So, how does one begin constructing a protocol for healing cancer?  Where do you even start?

Well, to be perfectly honest, it started with some friends who have been there before.  Doesn’t it always start that way?  Someone you know who had the same diagnosis, or at least someone you know who knows someone.  I’m really thankful for those people who pointed me in the direction of good resources.  It is out there (just not at your doctor’s office).  

I learned that cancer cells take about 10 years to form into something big enough to be recognized on a scan or an ultrasound (about 5 mm in size).  My nodule is about 14 mm.  So, I started thinking back to what my life was like 10 years ago.  What was I doing then that may have gotten me here?

Doctors that treat cancer with alternative therapies all seem to use the following list.  Here’s how to get cancer…

The “How to Get Cancer” List

Step 1: Expose Yourself to Environmental Toxins, Chemicals, Viruses & Heavy Metals

These are somewhat unavoidable in our current, modern world.  At best, we can mitigate our exposure, but they do pose a risk to getting cancer.  Exposure to electromagnetic fields are all around us!  Radiation exposure occurs just getting on an airplane.  

Chemicals that are known and verified carcinogens can be found in processed foods, GMOs, and produce sprayed with glyphosate (many if not all non-organic fruits and vegetables).

Viruses can enter your body at any point and lie dormant in cells.  Then they can “turn on” when toxins or stress also enter the body and wreak havoc.  In fact, one guy even thinks Epstein Barr virus is the root cause of almost all thyroid problems!

Heavy metals can be found in va((ines (alarming amounts of aluminum; just read section 11 of any va((ine insert readily available for your perusal at www.fda.gov), large fish and seafood, makeup and beauty products, and even in the tap water that comes out of the faucet.  

My life 10 years ago…

I did not think much about any of this.  I drank tap water that had fluoride and chlorine (known thyroid disruptors) for 33 years!  Conventional produce was all I ate (it was so much cheaper!).  I even slept with my cell phone on my nightstand every night (right by my head!).  And I had no clue that this toxic load had built up so much in me until I started doing some detox protocols and felt so very awful, but more on that later.

Step 2: Eat Processed Food

There is so much “food” out there that fills us up without nourishing our bodies.  God made food to be our best medicine, but this stuff posing as food has become our slowest form of poison.  My rule is, if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it (or at least, not often)!  Make sure it grows from the ground or has a mother before you put it in your mouth.  If you think real food doesn’t taste as good as processed food, just start eating real food anyway and your taste buds will, in fact, change and recognize real food as delicious (give it at least 28 days).  Your body knows when it is being nourished.  Let it talk to you again.  

The chemicals found in processed foods are foreign invaders.  That’s why they make you gain weight!  Your body will try to protect your organs by surrounding them with fat to keep the invaders out.  Try gaining 10 pounds of fat eating foods from the earth.  You can eat a WHOLE LOT of avocados and trim down.  It’s not a calories game.  It’s nourishment.

My life 10 years ago…

I was a collegiate runner who lived on pretzels and animal crackers!  (Can we say, lots and lots of conventional wheat?  No wonder my body hates gluten now!)  I thought I needed bagels and pasta before each race.  Sure, I liked salad and fruit, too, but I filled up on simple carbs.  I thought I was doing okay because I wasn’t eating candy, but I was sure wrong!

Step 3: Get Really Stressed Out

First of all, we need to recognize that there are several different types of stress.  These could be physical (like too much exercise or not enough sleep), mental (like a difficult job), emotional (like a death in the family), or spiritual (like bitterness toward someone who has wronged you).  Your stress load combines all of these factors.  So, maybe you sleep 8 hours every night, but you’re on the verge of losing your job and going through a divorce.  Pretty big stress load!  Or maybe you are trying to train for a marathon but you have a new baby who won’t sleep.  Also, pretty big stress load.  And maybe what’s stressful for you isn’t stressful for others.  That’s okay.  If it’s stressful for you, it’s creating a stress load.

My life 10 years ago…

I was always trying to be perfect.  I ran 40-50 miles per week and slept maybe 5 or 6 hours every night.  A 4.0 G.P.A. was imperative every semester. My goal was always to win all my races, get the lead in every opera, and obtain a full ride to grad school.  I had concocted a pretty good stress load all of my own doing!

So Now What? How to Prevent Cancer Naturally in 3 Steps

So, I decided to start healing by just undoing what I figured may have gotten me here.  Some of these things I had been slowly changing in the last 10 years anyway, but now I was full throttle changing everything!

Environmental Toxins, Chemicals, & Heavy Metals

• Get a Burkey water filter for completely clean water
• Do various detox protocols to remove the toxic buildup (more on that later)
• Switch to non-toxic makeup, hair products, candles, and perfume
• Sleep with my phone and iPad in airplane mode, and avoid holding my phone up to my head

Food

• Continue on a paleo diet (REAL FOOD–no grains, dairy, legumes, soy, or corn)
• Also remove eggs and pork (with hopes of adding eggs back in someday)
• Juicing lots and lots of fruits and veggies and making superfood smoothies
• Eating organic produce as much as possible
• Using specific supplements as needed

Stress

• Get 8 hours of sleep every single night.  (Every single one!)
• Read my Bible and pray every morning (as I have for most of my life)
• Say no to activities that take away from the most important things/people in my life
• Spend time with my husband and kids and lean into them
• Enjoy hobbies and reading to relax 
• Exercise with moderation (no big races or too many super hard workouts right now)

I’ll never get to know exactly how I got cancer, but I do believe that it has causes.  It doesn’t just crop up for no reason out of nowhere.  So, I’ll attack it the best that I can with the resources I have.  I plan to cover my detox protocols soon, so stay tuned!

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