Back from vacation

Wow! Time for another edition of Photo Friday.  Sorry I missed last week’s post but the Former Boyfriend and I were vacationing in Central Florida with my Brother Paul and his wife Deb.  It was great to spend time with them – and by the way Paul’s looking great, just waiting for doctor appointments and decisions.  To repeat a favorite Tom Petty quote, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

While we were gone there were a couple of huge cancer stories.  The first was a study that claims 65% of cancers are caused by bad luck. The study concluded that many cancers are caused by bad luck in cell division. The media have taken off with this headline, which claims the 2/3 of cancers are caused by the “bad luck” of DNA mutations and only 1/3 are caused by diet and lifestyle.

This is in direct contradiction to the American Association of Cancer Research.  And this flawed study did not even include prostate and breast cancers in the data. I hate that the media are perpetuating this lie because it makes cancer patients feel powerless.  It suggests that if you didn’t set the stage for it to grow then there is nothing you can change to prevent a recurrence. You don’t need to change your diet or get off that couch and exercise.

This was not a lab study, but a study of other studies…just a bunch of gobbled statistics, no humans were even involved.  Choices do matter and there are literally thousands upon thousands of scientific studies which have found that prevention and reversal of cancer through diet and lifestyle are possible.

Thankfully Dr. David Katz wrote a rebuttal in the Huffington Post.  He emphatically states that the report is not true.  He lists several studies that show some populations around the world get much less cancer, as well as other chronic diseases, not because of genetic advantage, but because of lifestyle advantage, mediated by culture. Dr. Katz states fortune favors the prepared!  So I’ll eat my veggies tonight and every day.

The second cancer story was 17 year old Cassandra Fortin who refused chemotherapy cancer treatment.  She’s been taken from her family in this stressful time and put into children’s services custody where she will be forced to undergo chemotherapy treatments. After going through chemotherapy and knowing that attitude is 80% of surviving I ask that anyone who prays send prayers to this girl.  Chemotherapy and the constant side effects are horrible enough…I can’t even imagine being forced into that situation against your will. And if she’d been a few months older, the courts wouldn’t have been able to do a thing.

Just before one of many lovely lunches

Nobody was fed to the gators

Oh for another walk on a warm afternoon