The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Breast Cancer: A Practical Manual for Understanding, Prevention and Care - Softcover

Kaur ND, Dr. Sat Dharam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0778800806 ISBN 13: 9780778800804

Publisher: Robert Rose, 2004

Synopsis

Despite the risk of developing breast cancer, many women still have a limited knowledge of its causes and prevention. The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Breast Cancer uses the most recent research studies and clinical evidence to explain the causes of breast cancer and techniques for its prevention.

Some of the topics covered are:

• Comprehensive explanations for the causes of breast cancer -- hereditary, hormonal, environmental
• Identifiable environmental risks
• Self help detoxification programs, diet plans and herbal recommendations
• Natural medicine strategies which complement conventional medical treatments and promote recovery
• Psychological support

Protective factors are highlighted and valuable exercises and worksheets for breast care are included, such as The Breast Health Balance Sheet, an extensive questionnaire that helps to determine risk factors.

Written in an empathetic and accessible style, The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Breast Cancer is an excellent resource for women seeking breast cancer information.

About this title

About the Author

Sat Dharam Kaur, ND lectures on breast health at a naturopathic college and has a naturopathic practice specializing in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer. She has a worldwide reputation as a teacher and activist and has been a featured speaker at The World Conferences on Breast Cancer.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

A Call to Women

In the fall of 1996 I began teaching the Healthy Breast Program because I felt it was necessary for women to become proactive in the prevention of breast cancer. From my studies of naturopathic medicine, I had some knowledge to share, and while I was a student, I had watched one friend in her early thirties die of breast cancer. My inability to help her at the time stimulated the writing of this book years later.

As I read more articles about breast cancer, I was not only astounded by the connection between the deteriorating environment and cancer development in our age but also angered by the cover-up of this knowledge. My passion to communicate this knowledge grew. I started to visualize women all over the world getting together in small groups -- supporting each other, educating each other, claiming their identities, preventing the disease in themselves, and taking an active role in preserving the environment. I felt inter-species grief resonating in my heart. The grief of mothers unable to nurse their young and unable to nurture themselves because the soil, the air, and the water have become inhospitable to life. The grief of bald eagles who see the shells of their offspring shatter unnaturally beneath their weight; the grief of St. Lawrence beluga whales dying of cancer, their carcasses hazardous waste because of the chemicals they contain. I heard the painful cries of future generations robbed of children because their hormones have been tampered with. It is the feminine principle, the right to raise offspring, that is being violated. The waters of life have been poisoned along with the earth and breath of Gaia. Breast cancer is the call to arms. Arms of action, arms of prayer, arms of holding and joining, arms held up in resistance to complacency, convenience, and denial, arms united. We each have two arms. Together we are one body.

This call to arms has many facets. Breast cancer reminds us that we must be honest with ourselves and in our relationships -- that we speak our truth and follow our inner guidance. Breast cancer draws the anger out of us -- anger at God, anger at ourselves for having surrendered pieces of our wholeness we must now retrieve, anger at the political, corporate, and industrial forces that have got us in to such an insane environmental mess, anger at the unconscious ease of convenience. The breast cancer epidemic offers us a path of purification that we sorely need. Each of us must choose when to plant our feet upon that path -- before or after a diagnosis. I believe that the only way out of the global breast cancer epidemic is through a path of purification. To me this includes honoring the soul and our unique abilities, being mindful of what and how we eat, releasing toxic emotions, cleansing the body, adopting a spiritual practice which is suited to our individual make-up, and realizing that it is our duty to make the environment safe and sacred once again.

It became clear to me as I was writing this book that we must shift from our present attitude of domination to cooperation and facilitation. We have been trying to dominate nature with our agricultural practices and it is making us, wildlife, and the planet sick. We have been trying to dominate the body with the overuse of antibiotics, the birth control pill, hormone replacement therapy, chemotherapy, and invasive treatments. The body has its own intelligence. It is much more fruitful to work with, rather than against, the body's processes: assist the liver in detoxification; enhance elimination with fiber and probiotics; balance the glands with herbs and meditation rather than cut them out, shut them down, or replace them with drugs; fortify the immune system with nutrition, herbs, visualization, and yoga before we immobilize it with chemotherapy and radiation. This is a naturopathic medical approach which recognizes the inherent ability of the body to heal itself when given the means to do so.

We have been trying to dominate each other with marketing hype and consumerism. The driving force behind domination is greed. Greed is destroying the Earth, our home, and destroying us. We must move from greed to living simply, realizing the consequences of our actions. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. Breast cancer is evidence of that. Governments are not acting in the best interests of planetary ecology. We cannot rely on 'them' to take care of us or the earth. Industry continues to spew out billions more tons of chemicals each year into the environment while insisting that it does no harm. Countries explode nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants malfunction. There is no other Earth but the one we live on. Is there anywhere safe? Where can my children go?

Before we buy a product, we can consider how the air, earth, water, and wildlife were affected in the production of it, if it can be recycled or not, and whether it is safe to burn or bury. Most of the things we use are not. As our population expands, so does our toxic landfill. Before we eat our food, drink our water, and flush our toilets, we can ask these same questions. Then we do what we can to create positive change. We can accomplish a lot together. We are the guardians of the fertility of the Earth. All of us.

I feel a responsibility to do what I can in my own lifetime and to help others do the same. And so this book has been born. My prayer is that you will take it, use it yourself, share it with your daughters, sons, husbands, partners, friends, and lovers, teach someone else and perhaps start your own Healthy Breast Program. And that all over the world women will say no to food that is not organic, to plastic, to nuclear power, to chlorine, to anything that nature cannot take back into herself to nurture something else. We have broken the cycle of creation with our toxic waste. We must mend it.

Our immune systems resonate with the health of the planet. The planet is our collective body -- if she is sick, so are we. She is in our blood, our bones, our muscles, our organs. When I had my first child, I felt the earth split as my daughter entered the world. I felt the oceans in my breasts as they filled with milk. I was initiated into the mysteries of the earth. I have not forgotten. She is my mother. I believe that as conscious women, we can and must act as the white blood cells of the planet. Our bodies' immune systems are not separate from the earth's self-protective functions. We have loaded our Earth matrix with debris of every description that does not belong in her body -- nuclear fallout, plastics, plutonium, organochiorines, pesticides, chemical hormones, non-biodegradable landfill -- just as we must recognize and rid our bodies of toxins, so must she. The earth is our body too. Our bodies arise from the 'mater' of the earth and to the earth they will return. There is no separation.

Mankind has become the cancer of the earth as cancer has become the scourge of humanity. Where are the white blood cells of the earth? We find them in the environmentalists, the activists, the educators, the naturopaths and herbalists, the organic gardeners, the builders of windmills and solar energy units, the clean-up crews of environmental disasters. We are the 'cure' for this cancer. I invite each of you to become one of the white blood cells of the earth as you activate your own immune systems. Answer this call to women to act against the breast cancer epidemic by using some of your renewed energy to participate in healing the planet. We need one another to survive. We are the guardians of life and growing things.

I believe that women can turn things around. We stand united. We say no. We shall remain conscious rather than bowing to convenience. We hear the voices of the beluga whales, the polar bears, the Lake Apopka alligators, the Baltic seals, the bald eagles, Great Lakes salmon, and the voices of each other pressing us on, asking us to please help and act now. We act with the welfare of future generations of all species in our minds and hearts. We can and must make a

Edition details

• Publisher: Robert Rose
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0778800806
• ISBN 13: 9780778800804
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384