Cancer Prevention & Treatment May Be the Same Thing

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

The breast cancer you may feel one day as a lump in the shower may have started 20 years before. We now suspect that all the epithelial cancers—breast, colon, lung, pancreas, prostate, ovarian—the ones that cause the vast majority of cancer deaths—may have been growing for up to 20 years or more. By the time it’s picked up, it may have already been growing, maturing, scheming, for years— acquiring hundreds of new survival-of-the-fittest mutations to grow even quicker, better undermine our immune system. So-called “early detection,” like by mammogram, is really, really, really late detection.

People are considered “healthy” until they show symptoms; but if we’ve been harboring a malignancy for 20 years, we may feel all right, but we haven’t been. So, many people who do the right thing and improve their diet in hopes of preventing cancer may very well, at that very moment, be treating it, as well. Cancer prevention and treatment may sometimes be the same thing.

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Image thanks to the American Roentgen Ray Society