The majority of research and money spent trying to find a cure for cancer over the last 50 years has left cancer research no closer to finding a cure than when cancer was first discovered. The increasing annual expenditures of over 6 billion dollars that are funneled into cancer research world wide, has led two prominent cancer research institutions to conclude that cancer is most likely not genetic in origin.
While there is money well spent into research and discovery of the many different types of cancers, it is believed that cancer in its initial stages begins at the onset of mutation on a cellular level. According to some scientists, cancer is best regarded as a group of diseases that originate from abdominal cellular growth that have the potential to spread throughout the body.
In a research paper entitled ‘Cancer as a Metabolic Disease’ published in Nutrition and Metabolism in 2010, research scientist Thomas Seyfried argued that cancer was not genetic in origin but instead should be considered a mutation born from chronic inflammation. Thomas Seyfried’s research proven results came from transplanting genetic mutations of cancer cells into healthy non-cancerous cells. The resulting experiment did not produce a cancerous tumor as it was expected. The same test was reproduced using mitochondria that were slightly impaired and transplanted into healthy cells. This result is what generated a cancerous tumor.
What this study concluded repeatedly was that cancer is most likely a metabolic disease and here’s why. Mitochondria are considered to be the energy centers of our cells. All cells need energy to survive. This energy producing activity within the cell is called respiration. Without this ability, the cell would die. However the cell can withstand a bit of injury and loss of respiration as the cell resorts to a type of fail safe to help it retain longevity until the cell is capable of normalized function.
The loss of normal function is due to an outside source and the cell patiently waits in back up mode until the outside source stops corrupting or hindering the cell’s natural process. While the cell is able to remain alive, this back up plan causes considerable damage to it and alters the cell genetically. This is known in scientific terms as a mutation. This mutation is where cancer begins.
“The accumulation of mitochondrial damage over time is what ultimately leads to malignant tumor formation.” - Seyfried
The damage from the outside source on the cell is accumulative. What this means is that the damage to the cell is not seen immediately, but instead the symptoms are felt over a period of time. For example, symptoms often seen or felt in the body leads an individual to assume that the cause was immediate when in fact the damage to the body began long before they body began to express any symptomatic reaction to any accumulative damage. Often times cell damage begins as inflammation to which there are five categories:
Sporatic inflamation:
Fibromyalgia, gall bladder disease and gastroesophateal reflux disease ( GERD)
Chronic inflammation:
Alzheimer’s, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Eczema and Psoriasis, heart related chronic disorders, Atherosclerosis and stroke.
Chronic immune medicated inflammation:
Gullian-Garre and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
The fight for a cure against cancer continues, with more and more money being donated in humanitarian efforts to understand cancer and why it is quickly on the rise. The answers are not so elusive as we imagine as two prominent cancer research institutions have investigated the connection between inflammation being the cause of various diseases that mutate weak cells to form cancer. This significant study of cancer mutation shows that disease is not as spontaneous as one may assume. In fact it shows that sickness and disease are of our own making and not simply a matter of what is in our genes. There is a cure to cancer and it begins with opting for healthier food choices to avoid cancer where cancer starts.
