Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (13 page)

SS:
And that is at the heart of Dr. Gonzalez’s program. He will love that you have said this. It’s very validating.

MG:
Absolutely. I think he’s completely right on. All the cancer patients who come to see me have a weak pancreas, and digestive pancreatic enzymes are critical to take.

SS:
And then making a serious attempt to be alkaline rather than acidic.

MG:
The acidic environment is the foundation for all illness to develop. The more acidic you are and the more toxic you are, the weaker your liver is. As your hormonal system weakens, the cells wind up not being able to utilize energy and turn into cells that can only ferment sugar. Ultimately these become cancer cells. The first step to a healthy body is to be less acidic.

SS:
So what you are saying is patients need to be the contractors and understand that nobody’s going to care more about them than themselves. Does it help you when a patient comes in informed?

MG:
The art of being a doctor is meeting patients where they are, and taking them up slowly. Thanks to your books, patients come in understanding a lot, and what’s amazing is that patients come in having read your books and now they know they are going to get better. They have “a knowing.” It’s not even a question with them. Again, once you expect certain things are going to happen, they happen.

SS:
Well, that’s how I feel. I utilize alternative medicine, and rarely ever, ever, have to access traditional medicine. I think you’ve given me a prescription once in the last decade.

You are very hopeful about the future relative to our health, aren’t you?

MG:
Yes, I am. It’s not about the bad guys, the toxins out there. It’s not about trying to get rid of every little bad guy and trying to eat every food that’s perfectly grown. You can’t do it. But there’s so much in our arsenal to strengthen the body, to help the body get rid of toxins, to augment our body’s hormone production with natural hormones, to strengthen these glands and organs so that we can overcome just about anything. So I’m extremely hopeful. As we move into the future and start using stem cells with their ability to help regenerate cells, organs, and tissues, it becomes very exciting … So the future is looking great.

SS:
I’m breathing a sigh of relief. Thanks, Michael.

MG:
And to you, Suzanne. As Bob Dylan said, “May you stay forever young.”

This book is meant
to blow your mind with the possibilities for your future and present health—which I’m sure the last chapters just did! A lot of the information in this book is outside the box. The new stuff is not what shows up from most orthodox medical doctors, but here is presented by cutting-edge Western-trained doctors, scientists, and professionals … the best of the best.

Dr. Joel Aronowitz is the doctor who performed my amazing breast regrowth using my own stem cells, and because the procedure is both personal to me and so revolutionary, it is Bombshell #1. This incredible advancement is available right now for women who can qualify for this clinical trial. It is my hope that with the conclusion of this trial, it will eventually be possible to have this procedure covered by insurance and made the standard of care. It’s important to note that when having breast cancer surgery, you need to retain the nipple and the skin around the breast, if possible. Otherwise, it leaves the surgeon nothing to work with for regrowth. Stem cell protocols are very exciting and in the future, potentially any person who has lost a body part due to injury or illness will be able to regrow it.

Clearly, stem cells and nanotechnology are the future. You found out how nanobots will turn the present model of medicine on its ear in my interview with Ray Kurzweil in
chapter 3
, but here we’ll talk about stem cells. They are available now for limited use, but they will play a huge role in new medicine, which fortunately is only a little more than a decade away.

What do you do when you’ve lost a body part? Up until now, prosthetics have been one option. For women with breast cancer, there have been two choices: implants or a “TRAM flap” procedure, in which a surgeon removes muscle and then moves a blood vessel from the stomach (usually) up into the breast area. The results are unsatisfactory, the look is unnatural, and the recovery time is long and arduous.

I am proud to say I am the first woman to have legally regrown a breast in the United States using my own fat and stem cells.

In 2001, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The remedy for my tumor was lumpectomy, followed by chemotherapy (which I refused) and radiation, finishing with the after-care drug Tamoxifen (which I refused).

Lumpectomy didn’t sound so bad; the doctor would just remove a little piece of my already ample breast. I didn’t think I would miss it, and then hopefully the cancer would be gone. It seemed pretty cut-and-dried. My doctors mentioned nothing about making changes in nutrition, or supplementation, or stress management; no one discussed any diet or lifestyle changes needed to make sure there was not a recurrence. Information of this sort was, and sadly still is, usually not part of orthodox medical protocol. Nutrition and natural remedies, or any other therapies such as homeopathy, not only are
not
considered but also are generally dismissed as a waste of time.

Oncologists are often good people taught a protocol in medical school that is care without a cure in many cases. The war on cancer has been a dismal failure with the exception of three kinds of cancer that respond to the approved medical standard of care: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and harsh after-care drugs. The cancers that do respond to chemotherapy are childhood leukemia, testicular cancer, and lymphoma.

Surgeons are taught to cut and repair, and we have the best doctors in the world in this country to do this. And to give credit where credit is due, our medical schools know their stuff when it comes to surgery. When you need surgery, you want to be in the United States.

But when it comes to cancer treatment, almost always alternative
options are not accepted by orthodox medicine; instead they are ridiculed and violently opposed as so eloquently stated in this famous quote (often attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer):

Yet when the standard of care cannot offer a cure, it is hard to understand with life hanging in the balance why alternative options are frequently not even considered. Surely a body bolstered by great nutrition and detoxification can benefit. A weakened immune system cannot fight cancer, so it takes patients willing to go beyond what traditional medicine offers to fight their own war on cancer their own way.

In my case, the first thing my doctor told me was to stop taking my hormones, that they were probably responsible for my cancer. “Based on what?” I asked. My doctors were lovely people whom I liked very much; they were caring and had great bedside manners, and I felt I was in good hands … But again, “Based on what?” kept running through my mind. There was no literature proving that estrogen and progesterone caused cancer (I had looked). At that time I had already started writing about the joys and benefits of hormone restoration. I told my doctor that I had come to believe, from my research, that an environment of balanced hormones prevented disease.

My doctor then asked me, “Based on what?”

“Well, clearly,” I said. “If estrogen were the problem, then why wouldn’t all young women have breast cancer, because in our reproductive years we are oozing with estrogen.”

“But you have an estrogen-positive tumor,” my doctor said. “Yes,” I answered, “but that means my body hasn’t been making enough progesterone. And, if I had realized this earlier, I believe I could have restored myself to perfect balance and probably never have gotten this cancer in the first place.” (At this time I did not realize I had a genetic defect, that my body did not make the anticancer component of estrogen called
estriol
, but more of an explanation about this later …)

We were getting nowhere.

Finally I said, “Look, I can’t stop taking my hormones. It is my belief based on a lot of time and study that balanced hormones in
perfect ratios are protective. For me to stop taking them would go against my beliefs.”

“Well,” said my oncologist, “I hope you don’t die.” My heart froze: I was going against him now … But I felt firm.

“I don’t think I will,” I said. “I actually believe I will die if I stop taking them.”

I had thought it through. I weighed the pros and cons. I took responsibility for my life. This was my choice, and I would deal with the consequences good or bad. I also decided that I was going to change my life and eat as though my life depended on it, which I believe is true. I made my decision. End of discussion.

The day of the surgery was intense; there were a lot of unknowns. The specialists had seen the tumor, about the size of a quarter, and now we were going to cut it out. I hadn’t yet mentioned to my doctor that I was not going to take the chemotherapy he had suggested.

Alan, as always, was by my side, as was my stepdaughter Leslie. But there comes a time when undergoing surgery that you have to let go of your loved ones’ hands and let the doctors take you away. I looked back at Alan as I was being pushed down the hall in my wheelchair toward the operating room … and our eyes said it all. I was going to be okay, but …

Two hours later, I awakened in intensive care. Alan was there. He said softly, “They got it all … and nothing is in the lymphs.”

This was good news. Now I only needed to heal and get on with my life.

Not so fast, my doctor told me; he said that even though I did not want chemotherapy, “radiation was a must.” At the time, everyone was automatically having radiation post breast surgery. “Really,” he said, “it’s a walk in the park, and it is essential to kill off any rogue cells.” We went back and forth on the necessity. I talked with several doctors on both sides of medicine, and all agreed that it was unsafe not to take the radiation. Finally, I agreed without much of a fight, but I didn’t like this idea at all. At the time not much information was available about radiation damage.

For six long weeks every day I would lie on the radiation table and think,
Isn’t it radiation that
gives
you cancer?

I vomited daily; my energy was zapped as though a plug had been pulled out of me. No energy, no sense of triumph, just sickness and exhaustion.

There should be a book written on the realities of radiation and
all the things that are never mentioned beforehand. I experienced horrible side effects: burned skin, burned insides of my esophagus, the killing off of my body’s ability to produce hydrochloric acid (essential for digestion), injury to my gut, vomiting, exhaustion. This was a walk in the park?

There is also yet another side effect for most women that is not discussed: with radiation, the breast gradually gets flatter and flatter until it looks as though there has been a complete mastectomy. In addition, the asymmetry causes severe pain, because in order to look “even” in clothing, one side of the bra has to be pulled up so high that it injures the noncancerous breast, and taking off the bra can be excruciating.

Two days following surgery they removed the bandages. The lumpectomy breast was at first quite swollen and didn’t look too radical. The treated breast was smaller than the other one, but nothing that would make you feel horrified to look at yourself. But as time went by, when the swelling subsided, it was
considerably
smaller than I had at first realized and then it began to degrade, gradually losing more and more volume from the radiation damage until it became nonexistent. Getting dressed became a challenge, and frankly, as a woman with a sexy image in the public arena, it was rather demoralizing.

Then the pain began … constant pain. As I said, in order to wear a bra, the full undamaged breast needed to be worn high enough to look even. This constant pulling and pressing injured the breast, making bra removal each night an excruciating experience. Also, as someone who enjoys sex, I didn’t find having painful breasts conducive to that activity. In time, I was always in pain. Something had to be done.