ANTI-Cancer. A Great Book, But I Have One Criticism

I’m reading a book called, AntiCancer – A New Way Of Life, by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber.  Dr. Schreiber is a professor at the University of Pittsburg School of Medicine, (a place where he finds a terrific colleague in Dr. Devra Davis, author of the must-read book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer).

Dr. Schreiber has cancer.  He was treated with conventional medicine fifteen years ago, but when he relapsed, he decided to do a serious investigation into natural approaches.  He has kept the cancer at bay for seven years using this approach, and the book is a repository of what he has learned.

Guess what he learned, definitively.  He learned that diet matters, supplements matter, your environment matters, and your mindset matters. 

He reveals what many of us already knew - that doctors learned very little about nutrition in medical school, and have picked up even less after graduating.

He learned what Hippocrates said so long ago, that you should let “food be your medicine, and medicine be your food”.

He documents the foods that have the most anti-tumor potential.  Those foods include a lot of vegetables, but they also include grass-fed animal products, such as grass-fed beef, milk, yogurt, and eggs.

He learned that we should avoid industrial chemicals, such as pesticides and insecticides, (which means, therefore, that we should try to eat organic foods).  He learned about the potential dangers of dry-cleaning chemicals, aluminum, certain plastic products, and things like parabens and phthalates in personal care products. 

He learned that exercise is an outstanding resource, and recommends a minimum protocol for it’s anti-cancer benefits.

He learned about the validity of detoxification programs.

He learned about the incredible benefits of dietary supplements, such as fish oil, green tea, turmeric, oregano, ginger, vitamin D, probiotics, and others.  (He also recommends “medicinal mushrooms” like so many others do.  This is one of the few times that I ardently disagree, since I have spent the last several years studying under Doug Kaufmann, who has done the most important work possible showing the fungus link to diseases such as cancer.)

And he learned so very much more, that a single report can’t do it justice.

In short, I give this book very high marks on all fronts.

I hope to interview him on my radio show, SuperHealth, very soon, just as I interviewed his colleague, Dr. Devra Davis.  Therefore, I should state clearly that my final observation is not meant as a criticism of Dr. Schreiber in any way.

My criticism is simply this:  None of what Dr. Schreiber says in this book is new; it is only new to the conventional medical community.  For decades… No.  For CENTURIES, the natural approach to health and disease has offered both soundness in its recommendations, as well as worthy criticisms of the conventional medical model.  (The “conventional” medical model as we know it today in America is not “centuries” old, I realize, but the natural model has always offered a convincing approach in the things to do, and more recently, in the things notto do.)

I, in no way, disparage anyone for coming around to the truth of what many of us have preached for years.  I would, however, appreciate it if someone in the medical community, when he or she finally arrives at the correct conclusion, would actually acknowledge that the “snake oil salesmen”, the “alternative medicine practitioners”, and the nutritionists had been right all along!  Most of us in the nutrition industry have been taking it on the chin since the moment we left the conventional medical philosophy, with it’s side effects and questionable studies, and opted instead for the philosophy that says, “Modern medicine will become really scientific only when physicians and their patients have learned to manage the forces of the body and the mind that operate via the healing power of nature”, (Rene Dubos, Professor of Biology, Rockefeller University).

An extremely worthwhile, substantive read.  I highly recommend it.