The Link Between Metabolic Health and Cancer

 

I've been launching and explaining my Terrain Advocate qualification and about metabolic health, but I wanted to share today about why I went to school for this, and why I care so much. After all it took 8 months of classes and costs thousands of dollars. It's been on my heart and my mind to share more about why I did it. 

Metabolic health has a strong link to cancer risk. I'll go into the details shortly, but I wanted to make sure to put this out there. If you want to lose weight, that's great. I can help with that. When I help people with weight loss I'm teaching skills that they will have for the rest of their lives. My nutrition consults also help people feel better with more energy and an improved sense of well-being. My passion, though, is helping my clients avoid chronic diseases like cancer, and also helping those with a cancer diagnosis to have improved outcomes. 

Cancer is the worst. I've lost friends and family to it. It's like we all are either directly effected by it or have a friend or family member that was. Unfortunately it's more common that it used to be. For me, at this stage in my nutrition career, helping people make lifestyle changes to avoid cancer growth or diagnosis is.....my calling. 

When it comes to cancer risk, everyone is unique. People get cancer for different reasons. Sometimes we don't know why, but what I learned in school last year is that sometimes..... we do.  There are patterns (strong patterns!) and scientific research that we can learn from to reduce risk. In 1920 Otto Warburg taught us that tumor cells preferred glucose as a fuel source above fat. He then later theorized that damaged mitochondria is the cause of this change, and that this change event is the root cause of cancer. Whether the mitochondrial damage was triggered by toxins, DNA damage, viruses (HPV) or bacteria (H. pylori), unhealthy eating, inactive lifestyle or stress...it's the mitochondrial damage that triggers the changes that lead to cancer. When mitochondria is damaged, it changes how the cell makes energy. It starts to prefer anaerobic glycolosis, meaning it just wants more and more sugar. 

So this is kind of scary, right? Sugar feeds cancer. Cancer wants sugar. However, not getting cancer isn't as simple as just not eating sugar. Eating too much sugar is just one way to damage mitochondria. There are 9 other areas of health that contribute (inlcuding the causes listed above), and these 10 areas of health are called the Terrain Ten. What matters is how well balanced these areas of health are. You can take the Terrain Ten survey online to see what's out of balance for you. For example, one of the terrains of metabolic health is Stress and Biorythms. If this is one of your top Terrains from your Terrain Ten Survey (ask me about taking it!), then you would want to focus on lowering stress and improving your biorythms, in order to reduce your cancer risk. But how, you ask? How would you know how to balance these terrains in real life? Who could help you interpret your Terrain Ten survey results and give you real time suggestions on improving metabolic health? A graduated and trained Terrain Advocate is what you need. And guess what? Because I care about YOU....that's what I am, so I can help! You can rech out to me on Facebook or fill out the contact form here.