When I was diagnosed with cancer, of course, I started Googling it, right? I found some great new information coming into the knowledge of humans about cancer: what causes it, and what we can do about it.
I discovered new research on fasting and cancer. It’s diving into the question of what causes cancer to grow? Why do cells just suddenly go out of control? One of the things cancer scientists tell us is that we’re constantly creating cancer cells; everybody has cancer cells all the time. Cells often go faulty but our immune systems break them down and flush them out. Mutated cells die all by themselves very often.
It really isn’t the fact that cancer happens that’s the problem; the problem is that we feed it and it gets out of control. And the thing that cancer eats is sugar. The best way to get rid of sugar is to fast. There are interesting studies about how fasting can slow down and stop cancer.
So, immediately when I was diagnosed, between the period of time that I had a biopsy that said I had cancer and I was scheduled for care, I started fasting five days at a time.
There’s no way to ever know, but I think this might be one of the reasons I was able to live through this. Fasting slows down the food source for cancer, and it also seems that fasting while you’re going through the process of chemo helps cancer cells die. What happens is that when you fast you get your body into a state that puts cancer cells into crises. Then, while in that state of crises, you have a course of chemo, and the chemo is able to more effectively kill any of those bad boys that are left over.
The other thing is to stop eating refined sugar altogether… which is plain good advice anyway. Refined sugar is hard to give up; do not underestimate that. Refined sugar is literally a drug; it’s a poison that tastes really good. It’s hard to quit, but the best possible thing to do for a healthy body.
I started doing a fasting process before I was in treatment. I fasted as much as I could, and then when I was in chemo, I would fast before the chemo treatments, and then a little bit into them, and then slowly bring food back.
Fasting is a very powerful process. We have control over so few things in our lives, but we do have control over what we put into our mouth. We have control over when we chew and swallow. When you fast, you’ve made the decision to not put anything into your mouth. It’s amazing how the mouth responds to that! It begs, “Come on! Put something in me! Put something in there! Come on.” And then, of course, your stomach joins in the chorus.
Here’s a little Pro tip for you: the easiest way to get started with fasting is to get up in the morning, have a regular day through lunch, then skip dinner. Don’t eat anything all night. When you wake up the next day and don’t eat anything till lunch. And now you’ve fasted 24 hours; a good portion of it was while you were sleeping, so you’re way less miserable. Always finagle the bagle if you can.
So I started this fasting process, and it’s a very powerful process. It lets you understand that we have way more mastery over ourselves than we’ve been led to believe. If you allow the fasting process to run inside a process of self-examination, and self-revelation, then it can be a very powerful spiritual tool.
This is why so many religions include fasting as a part of their regular spiritual practices. It makes us better human beings. So, give it a try gently. Be nice to yourself. Do some studying about on how to effectively fast for short periods of time, and you’ll find it to be beneficial.