INTRODUCTION
We have been fighting the “war against cancer” from the moment we
declared it in 1971, and we are still not winning. Cancer is still a
leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly one in six deaths.
Globally, new cancer cases were estimated at more than 20 million with
around 10 million deaths due to cancer. Currently, here in the United States,
more than 2 million new cancer cases are diagnosed each year with more
than 600,000 cancer deaths—and unfortunately, those numbers continue to
increase. The most common new cases of cancers found here are breast, lung,
colorectal, and prostate cancers.
Most of Western medicine research is still looking for new cancer
cures based on the use of highly selective pure single chemicals with a
strong specificity for their targets. One chemical to kill one type of cancer
cell. Cancer, however, is a multifaceted disease that in most cases deserves
a multifaceted therapeutic approach. We now know that cancer has the
unique ability to change many chemical processes, genes, and signaling
pathways (how chemical substances interact and “talk” with each other) and
involve many cascading chemical reactions of genes and their proteins and
other substances, which allow cancer cells the ability to grow, multiply, and
thrive. In fact, it’s estimated that cancer can modify or change the function
of more than 400 different genes. Cancer can even create complex chemical
defense mechanisms that allow them to hide from the immune system,
promote more nutrients to fuel their rapid growth, resist chemical agents
meant to kill them, and turn off the “kill switch” that tells them to die after
making a copy of itself.
One single chemotherapy drug or chemical has very little chance to affect
so many things that have gone wrong. That’s why we’re losing the war. While
conventional cancer protocols usually now include administering more than
one cancer drug at a time (usually two to three drugs are now used in combination),
it has still not resulted in any real cures because, again, cancer has too
many (up to 400) ways to avoid two to three chemicals. Drug resistance after
chemotherapy is typically the norm.
Can plant-based medicines hold the key? Absolutely. Instead of just one
molecule/chemical, a medicinal plant can have up to 400 different natural
plant chemicals. All these chemicals can have similar or very different actions
and have a much better chance at affecting many more of the processes controlled
by cancer. For example, one anti-cancer plant featured in this book
(see graviola, page XXX) contains more than 60 different plant chemicals that
can kill cancer cells in 15 different ways. With so many chemicals working in
different ways, the cancer cells will have a much harder time creating defense
mechanisms against them all. The plant can also affect 17 different chemical
substances that cancer changes to create the main defense mechanisms
to defend itself, other natural compounds that reduce the blood supply to
tumors, and yet even other compounds that prevent the tumor from metastasizing
by robbing it of the energy it needs in five different ways. You’ll find,
as you read about the rainforest medicinal plants in this book, that every one
of them has these kinds of abilities to affect cancer on many different levels.
Now consider how traditional medicine systems usually combine three to
seven medicinal plants together for remedy-specific formulas to treat a myriad
of diseases and conditions. Some may be chosen to directly impact the
condition, while others are chosen to treat the symptoms in the meantime.
With anti-cancer herbal remedies, the most effective will be able to affect
the largest number of changes that the cancer causes (to promote its survival)
and to kill it efficiently. And this can be quite cancer specific. The manner
in which prostate cancer promotes its own survival will be quite different
from how lung cancer protects itself and promotes its growth. Thankfully,
you’ll also learn how we now have new research and testing methods that
help explain what the plants and their active natural chemicals are doing on
a molecular level to address and affect cancer in hundreds of different ways.
When plants are combined into remedies, there are now thousands of active
chemicals going to work in many different ways that have a much better
chance of affecting the hundreds of ways cancer can thrive.
How to combine the anti-cancer plants of the rainforest together based
on specific cancer types is the key to these remedy-specific formulas’ abilities
to fight cancer more efficiently. The most effective way to treat cancer may
well be to address all these many factors and determine the right combination
of medicinal plants—based on the type of cancer one has to fix and the
known changes the cancer has caused—while shutting down the specific
defense mechanisms cancer uses that limit the effectiveness of traditional
chemotherapies. In fact, you’ll find information in the book about how
mainstream cancer researchers are now combining some of the natural plant
chemicals detailed in this book with their chemo drugs for just that purpose.
They are also reporting how these natural plant chemicals can selectively
target just cancer cells without much toxicity to healthy cells.
This book is divided into three parts: Part 1 explores the new advances
in cancer research made to design new, more effective drugs to fight cancer;
why plants thriving in the rainforest offer real hope in these endeavors,
and how to combine them together for greater efficacy. Chapter 1 explains
why rainforest plants are so unique, how and why they create highly active
plant chemicals to thrive in an intense and stressful environment, and how
humankind has been harnessing and harvesting these remarkable natural
plant defensive chemicals for effective new drugs. Based on extensive
screening programs conducted between the 1960s and 1980s, the National
Cancer Institute (NCI) targeted more than 3,000 plant chemicals with
anti-cancerous actions, and 70% were found in rainforest plants. Since that
time, more than 127,000 plant chemicals have now been identified with
anti-cancerous actions through computer modeling, and yes, the majority
grow in the rainforest or tropical climates.
Several rainforest plants and their active chemicals have already been
targeted for this purpose and are detailed in this book. Scientists around the
world are conducting ongoing research concerning the benefits of combining
these natural defensive plant chemicals with various gold-standard cancer
drugs. They are reporting that the combination can increase the efficacy of
the chemo drug, lower the toxicity to healthy cells, and even overcome or
prevent drug resistance.
Information on these defensive plant chemicals is detailed in chapter
2, which provides information on a large classification of plant compounds
called polyphenols. Rainforest plants (as well as most fruits and vegetables
produce these natural chemicals to prevent and overcome the damage resulting
from negative growing conditions. In fact, you’ll learn that all plants
produce these types of compounds and understand why poor diets, lacking
in fresh fruits and vegetables, are now considered to play an important role
in increasing our risks of getting cancer and a number of chronic diseases
now plaguing our current society. The lack of polyphenols in the average
American diet is now also linked to developing chronic inflammation. The
chapter provides important information concerning the link between chronic
inflammation with cancer, which many readers may not realize. You’ll learn
in this book that new data reveals that one in six human cancers could be
attributed to chronic inflammation. It is also estimated that appropriate diet
and lifestyle modifications could prevent more than two-thirds of human
cancers worldwide, and diet is responsible for 10–70% (on average, 35%) of
human cancer mortality.
Chapter 3 discusses the scientific methods and procedures drug
researchers employ to turn a plant into a new drug. You’ll learn that there
are plant-based drugs that are manufactured and prescribed in other countries
for specific diseases and conditions (including cancer) and why they’ll
never be approved in the same fashion in the United States. This information
reveals how a plant-based drug is usually some patented extraction
process of a natural plant, rich in many plant chemicals. For this reason,
much of the published research on the plants reviewed to write this book
was published in other countries that manufacture, sell, and prescribe these
plant-based drugs. In the United States, these plant products are sold as
herbal supplements; mention of any medical claims as to what to use them
for is not allowed. As a result, far less research is being conducted on natural
plant products in the United States because product manufacturers are not
permitted to share the research to educate their customers.
The information provided in chapter 4 explains why and how these new
plant testing methods were created and reveals how a huge international collaborative
research program was conducted to study every gene in the human
body. The information obtained in gene research revealed the wonderfully
complicated chemical cascades that happen when a gene is activated to do
its job. It involves a chain reaction of up to 100 other substances (proteins,
enzymes, and other molecules) in the body, which also interact with other
genes and their substances. This allowed scientists to create a “road map” of
how genes functioned.
Then, many of the major players in the research collaboration began
studying the genes in people with various types of cancer and other diseases
to create other important road maps, which revealed what substances had
changed in the gene function chemical cascades. This chapter will tell you
how this new information changed the face of cancer research, cancer treatment,
and drug development forever. Not only did it help explain how their
current drugs were working on a molecular level, but it also provided new
chemical targets in these chain reactions of cascading chemicals they could
use to design new drugs. The chapter also provides information on what the
main catalysts are that start a healthy cell in the body to mutate or transform
into a cancer cell, the evolution of cancer, and how our cancer drugs have
evolved over the years.
Chapter 5 outlines the real benefits of these new road maps. It attempts
to describe in an easy-to-understand manner the pathways that cancer uses
to transform and survive the immune system and other programmed processes
of life and death, as well as the survival mechanisms cancer uses to promote
rapid growth and spread to distant sites by changing certain substances
in the cascading chemical reactions. We know so much more with these new
road maps! This chapter also provides an overview of the new chemical targets
being used for cancer treatment today, highlights which drugs (new and
old) are trying to use these targets to treat cancer, and which rainforest plants
and/or plant chemicals have been reported to change these same chemical
substances/targets.
Part 2 discusses harnessing the power of the plants. Chapter 6 provides
the naturopathic protocols I developed almost 20 years ago. I used these protocols
to develop several multi-plant formulas for cancer, trained and worked
with alternative health practitioners helping cancer patients, and lectured and
taught in various alternative health venues. Chapter 7 provides a specific plan
for different cancer types. I share the actual formulas I developed, provide
information on which specific plants I used to combine with them for various
types of cancer and the results I saw. In chapter 8, I share how I would
change these formulas today based on all of the new research that has been
conducted on these rainforest plants since I first developed them. This type
of information cannot be found anywhere else but this book. It will tell you
how to make a specific formula for the type of cancer you have and give you
the option to prepare the remedy in capsules, teas, or various types of extracts
along with how to take them.
Part 3 of the book is all about the rainforest plants that I have used for
many years to help fight cancer. It provides important new information on 13
rainforest medicinal plants and focuses on what is known today on how they
might fight cancer. The information for each plant includes a brief summary
of where the plant is found, its traditional uses, and which uses have been
validated by research. It describes all anti-cancerous research conducted on
the actual plant, identifies which active chemicals in the plant demonstrated
anti-cancer actions (which might explain actions demonstrated in the plant),
and then reviews all the research and information on those active plant
chemicals (and if any are the subject of new drug research).
New information on the plants is provided in a section that describes
how the plant and/or its chemicals are working on a molecular level to
affect cancer, which cancer pathway is being affected, and/or which specific
chemical targets within that pathway were changed. Also provided
is information on what other researched benefits and actions have been
demonstrated in research, which a cancer patient might find to be helpful.
As always, the plant data in this chapter provides information on safety,
availability of products, dosages, possible contraindications, and possible
drug interactions for each rainforest plant.
