Spirit in Action

Kitchen Chemotherapy - Beat Cancer at the Roots

Susan Silberstein is author of Kitchen Chemotherapy and a number of other books & publications, and she is the founder & educational director of the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education (beatcancer.org).

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 01 Jun 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today for Spirit in Action, we're following up on an inquiry that began back in high school for me And that means four decades ago And it involves the possibility that the food that we eat can help or hinder our bodies as we struggle with the presence of cancer. Our guest today is Susan Silverstein, founder of the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education, on the web at beatcancer.org She's authored a number of books and publications, among them kitchen chemotherapy, hungry for health, and the natural sequel, hunger for health. With a vast amount of research knowledge accompanied by the experience that she's garnered with the clients of the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education, Susan Silverstein has an invaluable outlook on cancer and our hopes for coping with and curing it. She joins us from Philadelphia PA. Susan, I'm really excited to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you, Mark. I'm happy to be here. Of course, when you say here, you mean Philadelphia, which is kind of ironic since I'm the one who's Quaker, I'm out here in Wisconsin, which nobody connects with Quakers. How long you've been in Pennsylvania area? I've been in Philadelphia my whole life, except when I've traveled abroad. How serious is cancer relatively now compared to what it used to be? Has there been an increase in cancer over the last decades and centuries? Oh, absolutely. And of course, some people say, well, that's just because we have more efficient diagnostic tools, but the truth is now the lifetime cancer risk is one out of every 2.5 Americans. There are 1.6 million cancer diagnoses every single year in this country. It's hitting younger and younger adult cancers that used to be found among senior citizens are now hitting in the late teens and early 20s. And we have about 500,000 cancer deaths in this country every single year as well. I did interview someone several years ago who was dealing with the wide range of alternatives to cancer treatment. He, like you, is not a medical person, but he went out there and did the research. And he found out that according to the best statistics that have been produced out there, it's not at all obvious that the standard medical treatments of surgery and chemo and radiation that those uniformly produce really positive outcomes. And that's not, you know, he's not alone in that conclusion. We've got major researchers, biostatisticians, medical doctors, scientific researchers, even on colleges who have published articles and books over the last couple of decades, indicating that the war on cancer that was officially declared in 1971 by President Nixon, is an absolute failure. And why is that? What are we missing? Well, as Dr. Deborah Davis has stated in her book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer, which came out about five years ago, we're fighting the wrong war using the wrong weapons and looking for the wrong results. The actual ability of chemotherapy to contribute to five-year survival for adult malignancies is about 2%. It's not what we think it is. Dr. Oric Abel, who was a German biostatistician at the University of Heidelberg, he has written a couple of articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine and other journals, stating that chemotherapy is an unqualified failure. Now, I don't take a political position. I know that standard of care in this country is surgery, chemo, and radiation. But the truth is that a very, very large percentage of patients treated in that way get recurrence of disease or spread of disease. They have rather dismal quality of life, both physical and mental. And the main reason why that is happening is because we're not addressing the causes. We're simply addressing the symptoms, which is the tumor. And so if we get rid of the tumor, no matter what system we use, we've got a success. And if we don't get the tumor to reduce, we've got a failure. Well, there are a lot of situations where the tumor is gone, but the patient died. And there are other situations where the tumor is not gone, but it hasn't grown. It is stable for years, and the patient is enjoying perfect quality of life because of the homeostasis he or she has created with his or her own immune system through wise lifestyle choices that get at the underlying causes of the cancer. What led you to gather the knowledge? Obviously, you know so much about this field, about cancer and treatment of it, and what's effective, what's not. What led you to go from linguistics into cancer study? Well, it all started Mark about 36 years ago when my very young husband was diagnosed with a terminal cancer situation. It was a rare spinal cord tumor. There were no known treatment protocols. The prognosis was 12 months. So while he was undergoing seven neurosurgeries in the maximum chemo and radiation that his body could tolerate, I was in the medical libraries. Now, there was no internet in those days, so research was a little harder come by. So I was in the medical libraries. I was on the telephone. I was researching doctors and clinics and therapies all over the world. And I actually uncovered a lot of very promising resources. But unfortunately, my husband never got out of the hospital in time to try any of them. And he died on schedule in February of 1977, pretty much destroyed by the ravages of his treatments. So, you know, as I often say, he left me with two babies in a broken heart, but above all, a burning desire to make a difference. I wanted to make lemonade out of lemons. And I was determined not to bury with him everything that I had learned. A few months later, I did establish the Nonprofit Center for Advancement in Cancer Education, which we now call the cancer.org for our website. I really did find the bless in the mess, because in addition to being able to spare one family, the horrible experience that ours had, we have counseled nearly 30,000 cancer patients. And we have trained thousands of healthcare professionals and more than 50,000 prevention seekers. So I am truly blessed. And that is often the case in nonprofit organizations that are founded by people who were hit by tragedy and decided they wanted to turn that into a blessing for someone else. You've got the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education. And again, folks should know that's beatcancer.org. There's a link on Nordenspiritradio.org. You're doing counseling, you're helping people. I think often change their diets in other ways, address the causes that are perhaps behind cancer. How touchy is it? Does the government come and say, Susan Silverstein, you better not do this because you're not a doctor. You're not an oncologist. You can't talk about these things. Is that a narrow line that you have to walk? Because we are an educational center and not a treatment center, we have really not run into problems. There are a lot of licensed oncologists looking to do complementary and alternative and holistic therapies with their patients who have a very rough time. But we don't because we're very clear that we are not clinicians, that we are not practicing medicine without a license. We are simply guiding patients. We are a counseling and a referral and a resource center. And so the approaches that we help with are definitely nutritional and lifestyle related. We provide a lot of immune boosting approaches and also psychological and other non-toxic resources. And we do that for prevention of cancer, but also to prevent recurrence and also to support patients during, after, or instead of treatment. Your degree, your education is also not as a nutritionist or a dietitian or any of those kind of education. The same way that Michael Pollan is not particularly educated in those areas, and yet he talks, I think, very knowledgeable. He does the research like you've been doing, but of course you've been doing it for 36 years. What are the biggest myths that you felt were debunked by actually doing the research? Well, we can certainly talk a lot about diet. What we hear from oncologists is, "Oh yes, diet plays a role if you're trying to prevent cancer, but once you've been diagnosed, there's no proof that diet plays a role at all." And that is actually not true at all. There's a tremendous amount of research published in hundreds of biomedical journals all around the world, documenting not only the role that diet plays in cancer prevention, but more specifically, the role that diet plays in helping to reverse cancer. And there are probably at least a dozen mechanisms by which that takes place. And if we have time, I'd love to elaborate on some of those. Well, we do have some time. This is almost an hour-long program, and I do like to go to some depth so that we understand. I want my listeners to walk away with ideas of resources, including my dear friend Damien, who's also on the board for Nord and Spirit Radio. His partner, his fiance, has cancer, very advanced stage, and he's asking me, "What can I do?" And so, of course, I have to have him contact you directly, but give us some ideas about nutrition. And particularly, once you've got cancer, what should you be doing if you want to try and reverse it? What are the things that are possible? First and foremost is diet, but that is by no means the only approach that we take in our center. Our two fundamental approaches have to do with what you're eating and what's eating you. And sometimes that's all we need, but that's a lot of hard work. So I like to start with those areas, and then we bring in all kinds of other resources that are tailored for the individual patient. So getting back to food, first of all. Let's talk about the power of food, okay? Dietary factors can help slow down the growth of cancer or reverse it by, as I mentioned, at least a dozen mechanisms, including minimizing the side effects of conventional treatments, balancing hormones that might influence hormone-dependent cancers like breast or prostate or ovarian cancer, enhancing immune function, and there are all kinds of subsets of cells that respond with immune-enhancing diets. Stimulating a process called apoptosis, which is programmed cancer cell death. Cancer cells are supposed to self-destruct. They're supposed to know that they are not healthy cells. With the right kind of diet, they get the message and they commit suicide. With the wrong kind of diet, they don't get the message. In addition, proper diet can inhibit a process called angiogenesis, which is the ability of the cancer to develop its own blood supply. So it can nourish itself, so we don't want that to happen, so we can inhibit that with proper dietary choices. Stimulating new healthy cell growth, making the treatment more selectively toxic to the cancer cells, while protecting healthy cells, stimulating wound healing in the case of a surgical procedure, improving quality of life, including energy and pain and appetite and eliminatory functions, helping to prevent recurrence, helping to empower the patients who participate in his or her therapy, which is extremely important by making healthful lifestyle choices. And this work, this has been published in the Annals of Oncology in the British Medical Journal Lancet, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Very reputable journals have published articles looking at specific foods that get us into cancer trouble or help cancer to grow uncontrollably, and foods that help reverse end beverages that help reverse that process. So give me some of the detail of that. What foods should I, I shouldn't be eating. The fact that I'm a lacto-ovo vegetarian, is that good? It's probably good, although you don't have to be a strict vegetarian or vegan in order to be well, and there are certain body chemistries that actually need some animal protein. But in general, that's probably good. There are two ways I approach this. First is the foods and beverages that really encourage cancer to grow, and then the amazing list of anti-cancer superfoods that interfere with cancer cell growth. There's so much power on our plate, as Dr. Neil Barnard once said. So if we look at group one, the types of foods that are going to get us and keep us in cancer trouble, if we look at macronutrients, let's look at fats first. So the amount of fat, the type of fat, the quality of fat are all going to be important. Saturated animal fats are mostly going to be promoting of cancer growth, but if we look at unsaturated fats, we've got to stay away from the omega-6 fats and go into more of the omega-3 rich fats, and we can get into that in a few moments, if you like. And of course, fried foods. Then if you want to look at carbs, we have two groups as well. We have the refined carbs like white sugar and corn syrup and white flour, and then we have the more complex carbohydrates like beans and legumes and whole grains and vegetables. And the refined carbs are going to be very stimulatory of cancer because actually sugar is cancer's favorite food. Cancer cells take up sugar at a rate of maybe 12 times that of healthy cells. So we want to stay away from those types of carbs. And then we definitely need to stay away from microwaving, and that's another whole discussion. And then if we want to talk about the types of proteins briefly, we were talking about being a vegetarian and whether animal-source proteins need to be eliminated totally as opposed to plant-source proteins. The answer is probably not totally, but we definitely don't want more than 10% by volume, and calories of our diet coming from animal sources. Certainly not meat cheese and dairy, but we certainly could consider some wild fish and some free-range eggs and maybe some grass-fed animals. And very small amounts and of course surrounded by lots of plants. So a heavily plant-based diet is going to be very protective. I like to recommend about 13 fifth-sized servings of plants per day, fruits and vegetables. And if you microwave them, you get negative points. And in that category, there's some very specific ones. So the high fiber ones, the beans and legumes, they're going to bind up circulating hormones and carcinogens that promote cancer. The highly colored fresh fruits and vegetables are rich in the carotenoids or carotenes, which definitely enhance immune function and neutralize free radicals with antioxidants, both of which are key factors in cancer protection. The cruciferous vegetables, which are the cabbage family, broccoli and cauliflower and brussel sprouts, et cetera, those foods are very, very protective against cancer. A wide range of cancers. In fact, a high fruit and vegetable diet can actually protect us against at least 15 different types of cancer. I also like flax seeds, which are an omega-3 fat source, but they also have lots of other wonderful phytonutrients or plant-based chemicals that are protective against cancer. I like garlic. I like shiitake mushroom. I like a special kind of green tea that's very rich in EGCGs and catechins and other anti-cancer phytonutrients. So they're very specific foods. When I ask a patient, what are you eating? Well, I don't eat red meat and I don't eat refined sugar. I know, but what do you eat? Well, I don't eat this and I've eliminated that. I know, but what do you eat? And so a lot of times we find that people think of an anti-cancer diet as a deprivation diet, things you have to give up, when in fact I like to encourage people to think about what they must include, and very often the foods that they have not yet given up will either start falling by the wayside because people have less of a craving for it or less room for it. And on the other hand, if they are still clinging to some less than desirable dietary habits, they will find that including the foods that they must introduce will actually help minimize the danger and the damage that the not-so-helpful food could exact on the body. One of the things I need to know, Susan, is does this mean I have to eat Brussels sprouts? Because I really don't like them. Absolutely not. You know, I am a big negotiator. I am all for empowerment, and in fact I find that lagging power is probably one of the main reasons that the person got sick in the first place. And so I'm all about giving patients options to have control over all the negative aspects of their lives, and that includes foods they don't like. There's so many ways to get well. In fact, the good Lord gave us only one mouth and seven illuminatory organs, so we don't have to get it perfect. With a ratio of seven to one, you'd think we'd get it right. Exactly. What nations, I'm not sure you know this, but what nations have the lowest rates of cancer? Well interestingly enough, those are the nations that tend to have the lowest consumption of dairy products. And we see that especially with breast cancer. The countries that consume the least amount of dairy have the lowest rates of breast cancer, and by the way, the lowest rates of osteoporosis. And they may be some of the countries like Singapore and Korea, some of the Asian countries, that traditionally eat a heavily plant-based diet and not a lot of meat or dairy. And the countries that do have the highest rates of animal protein foods have high rates of cancer, and we saw that in the China Oxford Cornell diet and health project, which is the world's most comprehensive study of diet, health, and disease ever completed, that found very strong correlations between increased degenerative diseases like cancer in China and the changeover from the traditional Asian plant-based diet to a western diet of meat and dairy. And so there's really excellent research. It's a tough book to get through. We have the cliff notes for that available at our cancer center. But T. Cole and Campbell and his associates at Cornell did a really fantastic piece of research there. I've tried to pay attention to the information about microwaves, and I've read portion of "Hungier for Health," and I've certainly seen in other places people who say, "You know, we should avoid microwaves." I do believe it's a technology on which the good scientific research is not fully out there yet. I mean, I've seen different studies, and so, you know, cautionary principle, I understand that, and all. Have you seen studies, reputable large studies, that talk about microwaving and why it's problematic? Is it the micronutrients that destroys, I mean, cooking? A lot of people think wrong foods is the way to go, so we don't destroy so many nutrients. Well, there's no question that cooking in general can destroy nutrients. But if you look at a microwaved head of broccoli, you're probably only retaining 10% of the nutritional value, whereas a steamed head of broccoli, you're only losing about 10% of nutritional value. So there are a couple of issues. One has to do with nutritional value, vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients, or significantly reduced. So either the body isn't getting a lot of benefit, or the body cannot absorb these compounds because they're altered, or the body can't break them down. So that's one of the issues. And then secondly, has to do with the effects on the body, not just the effects on the food, but the effects on the body. A lot of digestive system disturbances and a lot of hormone imbalancing is taking place. And we've actually seen cancers, the GI cancers that are caused by a heavy microwave diet. We also see blood effects. So we will see lymphatic changes. We will see bloodstream changes, white blood cell changes, immune system deficiencies. And electromagnetic changes in the body. Now to answer your initial question, no, there has not been anywhere near enough research on the effects on humans of microwave foods. I wish there were, but I can tell you empirically from my experience at the center that I have seen very, very high correlations, maybe about 95%, 98% of the patients who have contacted me are microwaving their diets. It's one of the first things that I like to change. And I've actually reversed lymphomas by just taking the microwaving out of the diet and probably restricting the dairy. I mean, that's pretty much all it takes. Get rid of the little sugar and get rid of the dairy and get rid of the microwaving and you can get a normal blood pressure picture in three months. Now I don't mean to oversimplify because there's a lot more that goes into repairing body chemistry so that it will never host cancer again. But sometimes it's just getting a microwaving and leukemia of, oh my gosh, we can keep a chronic leukemia from ever becoming acute. We can get an acute one to switch back to chronic and we can get a chronic one to normalize in just a few months of watching the microwaving in the dairy. Does this mean that China has particularly low cancer rates? Well, they certainly did when the majority of people were on a traditional plant-based diet. But of course, fast food moves over to China, so do obesity and cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. And that is what the China study proved. So, look, I realized that if I eat in a restaurant, there's probably something I have ordered off a menu that has been microwaved without my knowledge. And that's, you know, I don't feel people have to be obsessive about things. As I said, you don't have to get it perfect. You just have to get it mostly right and the body can handle the rest. It's when you're getting it mostly wrong that the illimatory organs go on overload and they just can't cope. We're speaking today for spirit in action with Susan Silverstein. She is founder and educational director of the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education. Now, you might think that that would abbreviate to C-A-C-E, which it does, but actually where you'll find them on the web at beatcancer.org. And that's BeatB-E-A-T Cancer.org. You can find the link from NorthernSpiritRadio.org, where you can listen to this program again. You can listen to any of the programs we've had for the last eight years. And you can download them. You can also find us, of course, via iTunes or via the Pacifica radio network. Also, on our site, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. You can leave comments. You can make donations. We love your donations. They help us continue our work. And we also encourage you to support your local community radio station. Their work is so vital in terms of giving an alternative voice for the well-being of this country. Again, Susan Silverstein is our guest. She's out in Philadelphia, where she works with the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education. She's taught at a number of nursing institutions, although her degree is in linguistics as in little aside, Susan. Could we conduct this interview in French if you wanted to? Yes, yes, yes. Let's talk about it. Yes, yes, yes. It just so happens. My Peace Corps experience got me fluent in French, and I've just never lost it. What sources do you best trust for information? Besides yourself, I mean, obviously, you've gathered at the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education. You've gathered a whole lot of information. You put it into a number of books, books like Hungry for Health, Hungry for Health, Kitchen Chemotherapy, and many more books and publications and videos. What sources do you like to best rely on for information that's trustworthy about cancer, diet, and lifestyle? There are a number of sources. My most valuable sources, Mark, are my patients. I have learned a lot from the medical journals. I've learned a lot from books that I've read, from doctors and researchers whose lectures I have attended. But I have to say that I have learned more from my patients than from anywhere. Now, you have to understand that after being in this field for three and a half decades, and working with close to 30,000 patients, I and my associates are probably in a pretty good position for evaluating the whole crazy world of alternatives. And if you go online and you just Google alternative cancer treatments, you will find 11 million resources. And so what happens is that a lot of patients end up researching themselves into total research oblivion. They end up with analysis paralysis, and they can't evaluate everything that they see. And so we've developed criteria for evaluating the whole world of unconventional therapies that actually appears in a chapter about me in a couple of books. And we've also gotten a sense from our patients of the qualities that characterize the patient who is going to beat the odds, the patient who is definitely going to be going way beyond the expectations of his or her doctor. So when we are approached by a patient, and the question is, "Well, what's the best alternative for cancer X?" Our answer is always, "I don't know yet. Let's talk. I need to know about you." Because we, unlike the oncology profession, do nothing by protocol. They tend to do pretty much everything by protocol. We do nothing by protocol. Everything is patient-driven. Every program is individualized and tailored to each patient's personal needs. They're physical, they're financial, they're geographic, they're logistical limitations, and the limits of their belief systems. So we may have ten different patients with the same disease at the diagnosed at the same stage, but they may be following ten different programs, and all of them are doing quite well. What kind of results do you get? Is there some indication, has there been a study of the folks that you've talked to to see how effective this is? We have not had the personal or the funding to do that kind of study, although we have maintained meticulous notes on every case that ever contacted us. But we are now starting to gather that information going forward. I can tell you this, everyone benefits at least in one way. And many of our patients given months, weeks, and in a few cases, days to live have fully recovered, and then there's everything in between. So, as I often tell patients, we are all dying of a terminal illness called living. Nobody gets off this planet alive. The only thing we have going for us is our own quality of life, and everyone has their particular definition of quality of life that's different from everyone else's, and nobody's wrong. And so, what we need to focus on is how well can we live, not how long we can live, but how well we can live. We may get longevity as a wonderful byproduct of focusing on living well, but nobody wants to live long if they can't live well. And that's something that we always can contribute to, many times with a complete reversal, but it's always by looking at the ways people got sick in the first place. And it's so interesting because that's one of our favorite questions to ask, and it is never asked by the oncologist. Maybe that is what caused this disease. Do we have any ideas or very clear ideas of what causes cancer? Oh, we absolutely do. And in fact, a Nobel Prize was awarded in 1931 to Dr. Otto Warburg for figuring it out. So, essentially, if we're talking on the cellular level, cancer cells and healthy cells don't thrive in the same environment. Cancer cells, as I mentioned, are very weak cells, and they need a low oxygen, high sugar, high acid environment in order to thrive. Whereas healthy cells need a low sugar, high oxygen, highly alkaline environment according to thrives. So, that's the first part of my answer. It just has to do with the cellular environment or what we call the biological terrain. In addition, there are a lot of other things that contribute to that end body chemistry result. And that has to do with, we mentioned diet in quite a bit of detail. It also has to do with stress, stress management tools because we all have stress. So, it's how are our coping tools and skills and our personality factors. There are very specific psychosocial behavioral qualities of the patients who beat the odds. And so, we can talk more about that. It has to do with environmental toxins. But as my friend, T. Cole, and Campbell from the China study has said, diet can trump toxins every single time. Well, to a large extent, that is true. But we do have to minimize our exposures to a whole host of chemical toxins in our air and water and food environments. And then we have to make sure, as I mentioned, we have a lot of elementary organs. We've got to make sure they're functioning efficiently because sometimes cancer patients fail on conventional treatment, not because the treatment didn't work, but because it worked so well and killed so many cancer cells, but those cells have nowhere to go because the elementary organs aren't working efficiently and the doctors are paying absolutely no attention to that fact. And so, we have to teach patients how to detoxify their livers, their kidneys, their lymphatic systems, their lungs, their colons, and while we're at it, their emotions. So, there are all kinds of reasons why one gets sick. And out of the close to 30,000 patients I've worked with, I can only think of one where we couldn't figure out together what was making them sick, what made them sick years before the cancer actually manifested. And in that particular case, we didn't have a very long interview. That's important because conventional oncology treats the tumor, the symptom. We look at the causes. We want to know what made that body produce and sustain malignancy. And when we get at that, we get power. We usually have a lot of power for reversing that condition. Now, that doesn't mean everyone's going to recover from cancer, but it means that a lot of people can live much longer with better quality of life, or, and if they don't totally get rid of their cancer, they can live, as I mentioned, in homeostasis with that cancer, so that they're still enjoying perfect health and energy, even if the tumor is just sitting there. It's just not going anywhere. But so many times we obsess with destroying every last cancer cell, which often happens at the expense of the patient, and it's very difficult to do anyway because the body's always producing more malignant cells. And because they're microscopic, we can't see them, so it's very hard to even test for them. Could you make something clear for me, Susan? And again, we're speaking with Susan Silverstein. She is founder and educational director of the Center for Advancement and Cancer Education on the web at beatcancer.org. The question that I had, Susan, is how much you interface with doctors? How much that's a territorial issue, adversarial control issues? Are there doctors that you work alongside? They're doing treatment one way, and you're helping support that with diet? Are there doctors who are friendly to the Center for Advancement and Cancer Education? Absolutely, yes. In fact, we get referrals from doctors and nurse practitioners and nurses all the time. We don't take an adversarial position. It's up to the patient to decide with his or her doctor to what extent he or she wants to use conventional medicine. And some patients just do surgery, some just do a biopsy, some choose chemo and radiation if that's offered to them. And wherever that patient is, we don't interfere with doctor-patient relationships. And the doctors who know us know that to be true and they're happy to send us patients because they know that we will not tell them what to do. We will not tell them what not to do, and we will help them be more successful than they might otherwise be without our help. One of the things that we're kind of obsessed about in this country is cancer-causing things. It could be that you're smoking and that causes cancer, or it could be that you're eating some chemical product that's in your food that causes cancer. How much of that is the cause of cancer? You mentioned things like stress. I mean, do we have some idea of the mix of how these things contribute to make cancer grow in our bodies? I tend to not like to think of any one particular cause of cancer. I think it's a confluence of factors. You find people who smoke, who don't get cancer, as well as people who smoke, who do. If we look at the people who don't get sick, who have been exposed to a toxic environmental factor, or have a toxic lifestyle, or a toxic diet, we can learn an awful lot. It's not just dumb luck. And some of it is genetic, but not nearly what we think. Genes are only responsible for maybe 5% of cancers. So it's not that. It has to do with our entire biological terrain. And stress is a big part, but we all have stress. So whether we allow that stress to become really this stress, that's an issue. As I mentioned, the coping styles of people, when it comes to dealing with stress, are very important. Then let me give you an example, since you brought up the smoking. So let's say that you have been a smoker for 30 years, and obviously you are on the way to lung cancer. That's pretty much well known. Well, if we start interfering with your diet, interfering in a good way, intervening with your diet, and we suggest a particular type and amount of green tea, and we suggest a few herbal supplements, or nutritional supplements, we can probably interfere in one of the phases of cancer production, because there are many phases that healthy cells go through in order to turn them to the point where they are rapidly replicating. So we can interfere at a variety of stages, and keep those, you know that it actually takes about a trillion cancer cells. Before a tumor can be detected by the most sophisticated of diagnostic tools today, that it takes 90 days before two cancer cells become four, and another 90 days during the time that those four become eight. And so most cancers are subclinical, 10 to 20 years before we actually find that. And so early detection is really late, and the best prevention is not early detection. The best prevention is to start interceding with turning around our body chemistry while we're still in the subclinical stage, and we'll always stay that way. We only have a few hundred cells, or a few thousand cells on board, and a healthy body can recognize, seek out, and destroy up to a thousand cancer cells every single day as part of its own built-in immunosurveillance mechanism if we just give that body what it was programmed to need. You know, I'm aware that even though we have a fairly lengthy program to discuss us, and we're just scratching the surface, and there's so much more to know. I do have a couple other questions for you, but if people do want individualized consulting services, do they just go to beatcancer.org, get a hold of you, and they can set that up? Is that how that works? They can set that up through an email, but at that point we're going to tell them to call. So they can call our toll-free number, it's 888-551-2223-8851-2223. We work by telephone all over the world with anyone who speaks English, and although I speak a few languages, I do my counseling in English, and so if people would like to set up a time, they can do that. We charge no fee for service. We also don't get any government funding or insurance reimbursement, but we do not charge fees. We ask for a donation. Patients can donate whatever they can afford, or their friends and family can make a donation in their honor, but truthfully, if a person has no means to donate, we help them anyway. So how is what you do at the Center for Advancement and Cancer Education? How is that different than American Cancer Society or the other people out there who catch the limelight about cancer? I'm glad you asked, because we have three ways in which we differ. First of all, our prevention programs focus on real prevention, not just early detection. I have nothing against early detection. It's better than late detection, but it doesn't prevent anything. Second, most cancer treatment programs focus on destroying the tumor. We focus on rebuilding the body, again, addressing the reasons that people got sick in the first place, and interfering with the process of cancer rather than just the manifestation of the cancer. Third of all, most cancer organizations raise money for research. We raise money for education. Billions of dollars have been raised. They've been spent on research. That research has been published in scientific journals. We teach people what the research says and how to apply it in their daily lives. And of course, I don't think we need more research for the cure because prevention is the cure. It sounds like a really important service that you do at the Center for Advancement and Cancer Education. Two more things, Susan Silverstein. One is, earlier in the interview, you mentioned no one gets off this planet alive. And I wanted to ask you about your beliefs because I think Jesus and Muhammad and a few others are supposed to have gotten off the planet alive. Do you happen to have any beliefs in that area? Well, let me put it this way. The body doesn't make it off the planet alive. The spirit in my mind lives forever. And no matter how you choose to honor spirit or recognize God, I believe that the spirit is really the driving force in terms of our wellness. And so I can give you all the healthy diet in the world. But if your spirit is dead, I can't get you well. We can get healing even in death. But I can't keep you on this planet unless I can get your spirit engaged. And that is a major focus of the work that we do. Very, very important. And about your personal beliefs that contribute to this work you do, do you have a particular spiritual outlook? I mean, where has it gone from come to? Maybe this work has transformed you spiritually. I was very spiritual before this work came along. But I was definitely, I will say, egg dawn. That's a funny word. I was inspired, which is, of course, coming from the word spirit anyway, etymologically, I was inspired as I saw my husband dying. I found words to share with him that I don't know where they came from, if not from spirit. And when I'm counseling patients, I always ask God spirit, the universe, to guide me. And inevitably, I am moved to bring up topics or to respond to something a patient says in ways that are not just from logic. And so this has been such a privilege for me. Not everyone needs to find as important a role for themselves on this planet as running a whole radio series or running a cancer center or starting a charity. That's not what's important. What is important is that we find our own particular gift that we were brought here to share with the world. And when a patient can find his or her special way of serving society and the planet and the universe, usually that patient just spontaneously gets well. Diet helps, but that's not really where it's at. I believe cancer begins in the spirit. It somatizes in the body later. And of course, conventional cancer therapy always focuses on the body and the tumor and not the physiology and the process and the growth. Those patients who really do well, they transform everything about their lives, not just their lifestyle and their diet and their exercise, but the way they view themselves and others and their family and their whole relationship with the universe. That's really where it's at. And it's so powerful. It's just amazing. I just have so many cases where when the spirit woke up, the cancer went away and if we couldn't wake the spirit, it didn't matter what we did for the body. On my website, I normally with each interview or each program I try and put down religious and spiritual influences past and present. Are there any that I can list for you? From what you said in the interview, I can't come up with one that would be. Well, I mean, I was born Jewish. I am practicing Jewish and I'm very knowledgeable. I have taught the Old Testament since I was 16 years old. I'm fluent in the Hebrew language as well, by the way. But I am very knowledgeable and observant, but it's the spiritual aspects of my life and my work that have taken me much beyond just observance, because you can take an observant anybody and their values, their morals, and their spirit may not resonate with the higher good. I hope that all of the above for me resonates for the higher good. That's what I always look for. One of the most amazing quotations from Albert Schweitzer has become my mantra, and it might be a nice way to end this program. He used to say, "Each of us carries our own doctor inside us. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within a chance to go to work." That's some great wisdom. We've been speaking with Susan Silverstein. She is founder and director of the Center for Advancement and Cancer Education on the web at beatcancer.org. She's been counseling people, diet and cancer, and other issues for 36 years in this field. She's got a number of books out there, including Hungry for Health, Hungry for Health, Kitchen Chemotherapy, and many other publications. And Susan, I'm so delighted to hear about your work. I'm thankful for your making this vocational choice on this earth. A lot of people sometimes pass up that call, and I'm glad that you didn't. And thank you so much for joining me for Spirit and Action. Thank you, and thanks for this privilege of working with you today. I'll take you out for today's Spirit and Action interview with Susan Silverstein by sharing a song by one of my all-time musical favorites, Peter Alsop. With the six hours of interviews I've had with him between my two programs, you know that I think he's an excellent and profound musician. Judge for yourself as you listen to one of his songs about a different way of aiding the body struggle with cancer, using imagery. This is Peter Alsop in his song, "Samet and the Dragon." See you next week for Spirit and Action, Peter Alsop. Every evening, just a bedtime, "Samet puts his arm around." Jumps upon his great white-style young, grabs his sword, and then he's gone. Riding faster than the wind, he races through the countryside. No light streaming down on him, he's on to fight the dragon that's been burning him inside. Soon he sees the giant body of a little boy asleep. He rides up to the giant ear and listens to the giant breathe. He knows the giant's really him and he must go inside it seems. He's bigger than a mountain range and "Samet knows the dragons waiting in the land of Rome." And "Samet yells his battle cry, ha-bari ha-lu-ale." The stallion rears and charges in it, "Samet knows they're both afraid." Through the twisting, turning tunnels will be found the passageways. Among the bloody, steaming rivers within the giant's neck, brave Samet. Gallops through the maze. Through the viny sin, you forest, under tendon trees and bone. They can feel the dragon roaring. Soon they'll reach the dragon's home. Then through the smoke of burning flesh, the dragon's laughter cuts the air. He throws his hot hand stinking breath, the stallion trips brave Samet falls into the dragon's lair. Then Samet sees the dragon's eye. He sees the hint of fear within. Could it be Haru Hari? The dragon is afraid of him. The power runs through Samet's arms. It feels the rainbow light inside. He draws his mighty healing sword and strikes the fire breathing monster right between the eyes. The dragon knows his days are numbered, his fire's gone, he turns to run. He's going smaller, growing wicker, and Samet knows the time has come. He raises up his healing sore knees, stronger than the foul disease. The dragon screams at his soft ears and mouth. The giant body of this boy can heal him please. He whistles for his stallion who comes, running to his master's side. And Samet leaps up on his back and off again for home they ride. Off again for home and ride. Every evening just at bedtime Samet puts his armor on, jumps up on his great white stallion, grabs his soul. And then he's gone. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern spirit radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)