Introduction

The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2003 there will be approximately 1,334,000 new cases of cancer diagnosed in the United States and that 556,000 Americans will die from some form of cancer. Roughly one quarter of all deaths in the United States can be attributed to cancer. It is the second leading cause of death in the Western world (after heart disease), and in the United States it has become the leading cause of death for people under the age of 85. It is expected to become the overall leading cause of death in Canada by 2010 and in the US by 2018. With the exception of stomach, rectal, cervical and uterine cancers, incidence for all cancers has been on the rise for more than 50 years.

Due to the declining death rates from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, cancer will probably become the leading cause of death in the Western world. From a disease that killed a relatively small percentage of the population less than two centuries ago, it has grown over the years to become what many consider the largest health problem in the world. Today, roughly one out of every two men and one out of every three women will develop cancer during their life. If it continues to increase the way it has over the last half century, it won't be too long before most people are expected to develop some form of it in their lifetime. But it doesn't have to be this way; we can change this scary trend if we want to.

Cancer is a complex disease that develops due to a combination of several factors that include your genetic makeup, age, diet, physical activity and exposure to carcinogens over time. We address most of these throughout the book, but our focus is primarily on the one factor that we have the most control over: diet. Diet also happens to be the factor that most affects whether you develop cancer or not. It might come as a big surprise to most readers, but it really can be prevented by eating the right things and having other good habits. The American Cancer Society, which is extremely conservative, estimates that at least half of all cancer deaths can be prevented. We believe that this number can go as high as 90 percent.

Part of the Institute's philosophy is that cancer is an immunodeficiency disease as opposed to local or organ-specific disease. The general idea is that if the body is maintained well by providing it the right nutrients in the proper amounts, then the body's immune system will generally be able to prevent the development of cancer and usually reverse it if it actually starts. Laboratory experiments and human and animal trials have found that many natural substances can prevent cells from mutating or that can revert them back to normal if they do mutate. In addition, many compounds have been found to help the immune system to distinguish cancerous cells from normal cells so that it can attack and destroy only the cancerous ones.

It can be argued that we all get cancer all the time. What happens is that almost as soon as a cell starts on the path of becoming cancerous, or just as soon as it does become, the body's immune system kills it or converts it into a normal cell. Your body comes into contact with all kinds of toxins every day, and cancer is the result of the accumulated damage they have caused it over time. It does not happen overnight; it takes years to develop. It occurs when the body's interaction with carcinogens goes unchecked by the immune system or by certain substances that occur naturally in our food. However, we believe that your immune system will win this battle even if you come into contact with a significant amount of carcinogens, so long as you get your fair share of cancer preventers (as we call them).

Cancer is more prevalent today because we have turned our environment against us. Most of the carcinogens that we come into contact with every day were created and released into our environment by man. These include chemicals in our water, air, soil and in products we consume. In order to cope with an ever-increasing world population, we have had to find ways to reap more food from the same surface area. We have to inject animals with hormones, and we have to grow our crops by spraying them with pesticides and give them chemical fertilizers. We have to grow our crops without crop rotation, which leads to them being depleted of essential minerals. Our grains are processed by bleaching and refining them, and much of the fish we eat is contaminated with heavy metals such as mercury from our increasingly polluted oceans. Most of these "extras" on our food are carcinogenic, and the lack of certain minerals and vitamins weakens our immune systems so we are unable to fight these carcinogens.

Originally, fruits, vegetables and certain animals had all the nutrients we needed to prevent cancer. We got to where we are because we evolved into a species that was able to protect itself from cancer and other diseases with the nutrients found in foods that had existed on Earth for millions of years. Our bodies would take what they needed from these foods, and all was well. Unfortunately, the artificial means that are being used to increase food production have led to a loss in the nutritive value that our ancestors received from their food. It no longer has as many of the protective compounds it once did. The processing that most food goes through in developed countries strips out many of the substances that our immune system needs and adds others that are harmful to our health.

Even if today's foods had all the nutrients they were meant to have (and organic food* just might), they would probably still not be enough. Our bodies developed through evolution to be able to survive and to defend themselves from carcinogens through the cancer preventers found in our food. The problem is that as technology has advanced in order to improve our standard of living, the world has become ever more polluted and has surrounded us with mutagenic substances everywhere. As we evolved, our bodies were never expected to come into contact with so many carcinogens.

If our technological advancements had been much slower, including our medical advances and our carcinogen production, what would have happened is that the process of natural selection would have ensured that only those with genetic mutations that protected them from cancer would have survived and passed along their genes. This would have left the world with a human population that was able to resist the most prevalent carcinogens using the nutrients found in the food supply. However, what has happened is that our rate of carcinogen production has been much faster than our rate of beneficial mutations, and this is the reason that we have more cancer than ever. Every year more and more chemicals are created and more and more of them get into our environment. We can only expect cancer incidence to continue increasing unless we decide to preemptively stop it.

You have two choices in reducing your likelihood of developing cancer. The first is to avoid cancer-causing agents in your food, personal care products and your general environment. The second is to eat the foods and take the supplements that are known to prevent it, as well as making the lifestyle changes that are known to reduce the risk of developing it. The first choice is the more difficult one to implement, among other things because we don't know of all the substances that cause cancer. In addition, many of the known carcinogens are in our environment – we breath them, eat them, drink them and come into contact with them every day without noticing. The only way you could avoid cancer-causing agents altogether would be to leave civilization and move to a mountain in the middle of nowhere, where you would grow your own crops and raise your own animals. This, however, is not a practical alternative for most of us. Additionally, this does not protect you from your own genes, which may predispose you to certain cancers.

The second choice is to counter-attack these carcinogens that you cannot avoid anyway. But how do you counter-attack them? They say "the best defense is a good offense", a saying that most certainly applies to cancer prevention. It is much easier than anyone would think. There are many plants, herbs, fruits and vegetables that have been shown to prevent and sometimes help heal certain cancers or cancer in general. Consuming these foods, and supplements that are derived from them, is how you counter-attack – call it a "preemptive strike". We know that many of the substances that certainly cause cancer don't cause it in everyone that is exposed to them. This is why millions of people smoke every day and don't ever get it. They are probably consuming the substances that prevent it and therefore counteract the negative effects of their cancer-causing habits.

The US government declared war against cancer several decades ago, but has not managed to make even a dent in it. It has no enemy casualties or even prisoners of war to show for it. All we have is millions of our own casualties, and they keep mounting every day. This is probably part of the reason that Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel Peace Prize winner, correctly claimed that the "war on cancer is largely a fraud". Part of the reason that we are still losing this war is that the approach has been all wrong. What the government and most institutions involved in cancer research have done is to look for a cure. What they haven't realized is that "the cure" is within all of us. They have been busy trying to figure out how to cure it instead of what prevents it. If you can prevent it, then you don't have to cure it. Trust us when we tell you that it is much easier to prevent it than to cure it – don't let yourself get it.

Add to the wrong approach the fact that politicians are financed by large pharmaceutical companies and you realize that there is no way we could have already won the war on cancer. These companies have no interest in a natural way to prevent or cure cancer because products from nature cannot be patented and sold at high profits. So they lobby the government to make sure that cancer-fighting foods and natural supplements cannot be promoted by manufacturers as cancer-preventing substances. Whenever research results show that some natural mineral, vitamin, phytochemical, or other substance prevents cancer, the FDA and other government organizations always say that the claim cannot be made on the product because "further research is required". They will say this forever because it is in the best interests of the large drug companies. Meanwhile, they have no problems giving fast-track approval to many drugs that often have severe side-effects.

It turns out that most of the foods that your grandmother and her grandmother have been recommending over time are generally the right ones to eat. However, it also turns out that even if you ate all the right foods you probably still would not be fully protected from cancer because you generally cannot eat enough of them to get enough "good stuff" into your system to fight all the "bad stuff" that you come into contact with every day. For this reason, we need supplements of the cancer preventers that come in these foods, namely vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. In this book we lay out a program that includes the natural foods and supplements that you need to effectively prevent this deadly disease. Until that vaccine is found, make sure you get enough of the substances described in this book in order to protect yourself from it. Getting enough of these is as close as you can get today to a cancer vaccine.

This book is broken down into three major sections. The first is about the basics of cancer. It explains what it is, its causes, how it can be diagnosed and how it is usually treated. Section II discusses the different substances (vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals) and foods that have been found to prevent cancer and provides empirical evidence for their effectiveness. The third section gives specific recommendations for the doses and amounts of the substances and foods that you need to consume to be protected. Exercise and diet in general are discussed in Sections II and III of the book as well.

You will notice in the Recommendations section that we recommend certain brands of certain products. The companies that own these brands are sponsors of the book and the Institute. The reason that we invited them to sponsor us is that their products genuinely have preventive properties, and we feel that it is important to help people choose the products that can help them the most.

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