Gift of a Breast Cancer Diagnosis
I recently had the wonderful opportunity of speaking to a wide audience with the Marie Keating Foundation on what a breast cancer diagnosis feels like. Being diagnosed is like being hit by a truck and it takes time to adapt and heal!
Breast cancer can have many possible precursors including genetics (e.g. BRCA1 and BRCA2), Oestrogen and Progesterone imbalance (possibly from a high oestrogen diet), HER2 growth factor, environmental and chemical toxicity, stress, low immune function and electromagnetic field disturbances. However, we do not know what exactly causes breast cancer.
Research has shown that at any one time in a healthy individual there can be up to 10,000 malignant cells in the body. which are inhibited from developing in to cancer and killed by the body’s immune system. Our immune system can be affected by many things, down to our emotional state, toxins, medications and many more and when its not working correctly, the production of malignant cells is increased at the same time the body is least able to destroy them.
In the research that has been done around emotional and mental factors in cancer patients, a common picture emerges. The link of emotional, unresolved issues, where the person identity or a situation has been set up from which there is apparently no escape.
Such situations can generate feelings of despair, hopelessness and anxiety. This is usually happening unconsciously and these unresolved issues are then stored on a cellular, DNA, molecular and organ level. It is important that guilt is not generated but that self-awareness is made in order to initiate the healing process, from which the psychological impact upon the body can be reversed.
On a psychological level, breast cancer can provide a deeper message, a chance to grow and develop a real sense of self-awareness, if we are willing to allow it to.
It’s important for survivors and their families to realise that life can be so much better after a cancer diagnosis and that being diagnosed is not necessarily a death sentence. But it is an opportunity to turn life around and be the person they were brought on this earth to be.
It’s a hidden gift!
It takes time to adapt to what some refer to as “a new life”. And that length of time is different for everyone. At first, I didn’t want life to change, I was happy the way it was and thought that once treatment was over, life would go back to the way it was. It didn’t. And I’m so glad it didn’t.
Having a positive attitude encourages healing, of not only the mind, but the body as a whole and is a crucial part of treatment. Studies have shown that the patient’s response to treatment is more dependent upon attitude than on the severity of the disease.
The use of nutrition, supplements and herbs can be most appropriate, combined with physical exercise to reduce stress and to start healing.
Visualisation and relaxation exercises help to heal the mind, which has a feedback system to the rest of the body and has proved to be an effective tool in strengthening the immune system after a cancer diagnosis. There is evidence that such a technique actually reduces and possibly eliminates malignant tissue.
Cancer can teach us how to live, it can teach us that a holistic approach can bring a new lease of life for the patient aswell as for those surrounding them.
