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Cancer Hates Tea

A Unique Preventive and Transformative Lifestyle Change to Help Crush Cancer

Page Street Publishing Co.

CANCER 101 — HOW IT WORKS

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

WTF is Cancer Anyway?

Let's get something straight right off the bat:Cancer isn't something you catch.It's not like the flu that gets passed around the family, or something you can prevent by washing your hands. Cancer is something that gets triggered within your own body. Its initiation begins with a single screw-up in a cell's genetic code — which can go awry for any number of reasons, including stress, poor diet, smoking, sun exposure, toxins in the environment, even just plain life and aging. Having one or more risk factors doesn't mean that cancer is on its way — it can't survive on its own. It actually needs to be promoted, with your help, in order to succeed against you. Cancer works like an opportunistic scavenging empire builder, feeding right off your own body.

Good news: Your immune system is programmed to not let that happen and more often than not it's a top-notch cancer killing SWAT team.Your body stares into the face of death and saves your life daily. Of the trillions of cells alive inside you now, many thousands of them are downright nasty dudes, with the ability to seriously fuck some things up in the marvelous landscape that is your physiology. Your immune system is busy keeping tabs on millions of cells 24/7. It knows exactly when to yell "Die now!" selectively putting an end to those potentially damaging cells before they get a chance to do any harm. This enormously powerful scenario plays out thousands of times each and every day. You are one beautiful piece of machinery.

Bad news: Sometimes, those detrimental cells manage to get past your protective squad. This happens when your immune system gets tricked by some cancerous monsters or it's just overwhelmed on too many fronts to put up a good fight. Cancer begins slowly and surreptitiously, with just one or a small group of mutated cells, but not for long. The pace at which cancer cells divide and multiply cascades like an avalanche, progressing until they form together in a wicked organized group — a malignant tumor. Its malicious goal is to spread over as many parts of your human organism as it possibly can. Then your body's left dealing with this invasive monster — much like a pine tree contending with beetle kill. And that is no fucking joke.

Understanding cancer is difficult. Wrapping your head around how something as simple as tea could have any legitimate effect on cancer is also difficult. This chapter breaks it down step-by-step, and molecule-by-molecule, so as to allow you to understand what cellular mechanisms are happening when that tricky bastard cancer meets up with tea.

Let's steep on.

THE CRAZINESS THAT IS CANCER

Cancer is a term used for more than 100 different diseases that can start just about anywhere in your body. Each one of those diseases is distinct and works to destroy in unique ways, but they all have these three characteristics in common:

ABNORMAL CELLS THAT MULTIPLY WITHOUT CONTROL

Every day, millions of cells divide, grow and develop to produce more cells in your body. In babies and children, cells divide rapidly to support the growth of the organism. By the time we're adults this cell division slows down. Cancer cell growth is different from normal cell growth in that cancer cells replicate faster, without any respect for the meticulous order your body is wired for. What's key here is that we're talking about rapid growth of abnormal cells. They multiply faster than hell, they resist destruction in the natural course of cell death and they can overwhelm your immune system and normal healthy cells.

GROWTH AND PROLIFERATION THAT DESTROYS SURROUNDING TISSUES

Because cancer cells are multiplying more rapidly, they're consuming more of your cells' energy reserves. If a microscopic cancer gets its start without being shut down, it will keep growing and begin to form a tumor. This requires oxygen for energy, which the cancer coerces your body into supplying by getting it to build blood vessels to deliver oxygen to the tumor-building site. Once those blood vessels are created, the cancer can invade surrounding tissues.

THE ABILITY TO SPREAD TO DISTANT ORGANS IN THE BODY

This unique ability is what makes cancer so ridiculously scary. When a tumor sits nicely contained in isolation somewhere in your body, it can simply be removed. Cancer is a conniving disease, though, and by invading tissues and spreading throughout your body, it is much more of a challenge to hunt down and arrest. This is cancer's end game, and you've undoubtedly heard of it — metastasis.

Cancer is pure chaos. How does anything as wildly out of control as this disease ever get past your highly organized and systemized immune system?

There's no single cause of cancer, although there are a number of underlying risk factors, such as getting too many ultraviolet rays from the sun or exposure to cigarette smoke and other toxins.

The scary thing is that people with several risk factors might never develop the disease, whereas others who do develop cancer didn't have any of the known risk factors. To make matters more complicated, different cancers have different risk factors, and different cancers behave differently. Some people have super slow-growing cancers which they manage like a chronic disease, while others have cancers which can turn their life upside down within weeks. While some risk factors can actually provoke the onset of cancer, others (such as old age) might just be more common in people who get cancer.

Even with all of that unexplained craziness, there are a number of mitigating steps that can be taken to lessen your risk of cancer. Health organizations worldwide estimate that at least one-third of all cancer cases could be prevented. One well-referenced study from The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center points out that since only 5–10 percent of all cancer cases can be attributed to genetic predisposition that the remaining 90–95 percent have their roots in lifestyle and environment. That's downright mind-blowing, isn't it? The onset of the cancer monster, which is responsible for one in every four deaths in the U.S., can be prevented. Why isn't everyone standing in line for that?

HOW CANCER BEGINS

Cancer is lurking everywhere. All animals and even plants can get cancer. People of any age can get cancer and it can develop anywhere in your body. The average human body is made up of tens of trillions of cells. Those trillions of living, dying, growing and dividing cells require consummate order and organization. Their management has to happen in a very specific and controlled manner. When your body's cells become defective, they die and you regenerate healthy cells. In fact, you shed the equivalent of your total body weight in dead cells each year. When you're healthy, the birth and death of each cell is carefully controlled so that every part of you always has just the right number of cells. This process is guided by your genetic blueprint commander-in-chief deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). It's present in each and every one of your cells and contains your entire genetic makeup. DNA is essential for telling the cells in your body how to behave.

Everyone inevitably sustains physiological strain to their cells each and every day, either as a result of the chemical processes going on to keep you alive and kicking, or because you're fighting inflammation or noxious invaders such as tobacco smoke and ultra-violet (UV) rays. This brings on a damaging cellular condition known as oxidative stress, which produces chemically unstable molecules, called free radicals, in your body. Under optimal operating conditions, your immune system can deal with just bashing those hell raisers out. But there are instances when your immune system might not be able to keep up with counteracting the effects of oxidative stress and all the free radicals being generated in your body, and this creates an imbalance favoring the onslaught of those highly reactive molecules, which can have harmful effects on your cells' DNA. Your body's biochemical mechanism for counteracting free radicals is to neutralize them with antioxidants. At the deepest cellular level, antioxidants stop free radicals dead in their tracks by stabilizing them chemically, before those reactive agents can chemically attack your cells' DNA. Left unmanaged in their highly reactive state, free radicals can cause your DNA to spontaneously change its genetic message. This makes the cell no longer part of you, but a strange and screwed up mutation of you, evil doppelgänger style.

Ordinarily, the cells under attack repair their own DNA. It's estimated that an individual cell can fix up to a million changes to its DNA every day. When it doesn't get repaired, your immune system lets these mutations know they're not welcome, inviting them to gracefully die off. If one of the damaged cells doesn't die off, that mutation can continue to replicate with messed up DNA, and that's where real trouble can set in. The genesis of cancer is due to that key genetic change to the DNA in your cells. Eventually, the strangely mutated cells will spawn a whole new hoard of cells, all with mutated DNA, and they don't behave according to your body's original master plan. Their mutated progeny are very high energy and may begin to act immortal in your body, since they're not playing by your rulebook. An accumulation of mutated cells will progressively go on transforming the cells outside your normal DNA code. Most of the time, damaged cells will eventually stop reproducing on their own, or form harmless, benign tumors. But in some cases they can keep growing ravenously out of control, becoming malignant. And that spells C-A-N-C-E-R.

NATURE'S CANCER NEUTRALIZERS

When cancer's battling on unfriendly terrain, it can be forced to pump the brakes or retreat altogether. Your immune system fights cancer on multiple fronts and at every phase of its progression, beginning even before its inception, when free radicals are just beginning to cause chemical instability in your cells. Over the past several decades, we've seen a lot of attention on free radical chemistry, because those rascals can trigger a lot of human diseases. Your body needs to keep the balance between antioxidants and free radicals in your favor in order to maintain proper physiological function. As it turns out, cancer has its weaknesses — antioxidants are its very own Achilles' heel. So where do these antioxidants come from?

Plants aren't equipped with an immune system like we are, but they're good at standing their ground against extreme environmental factors, bacterial organisms and invading critters. A plant has its own set of biochemical defenses that it depends on for its daily survival. Those are the same chemical defenders that come to our aid when we ingest plant material. As soon as a plant comes under attack, its DNA activates this army of defenders to wage chemical warfare. It can help protect the plant from threats as wide-ranging as UV radiation, disease, invading microorganisms and competing plants. Threatening pests find these chemical combatants bitter and distasteful. This is interesting because these distasteful attributes are the same compounds that provide the astringent tastes we've come to love in tea. These powerful warrior compounds are polyphenol antioxidants and they soldier through our cells, sacrificing themselves by neutralizing hazardous molecules gone awry. Polyphenol antioxidants are like the star players who help the immune system team play at its peak in this game.

ANTIOXIDANTS AT WORK

WHY TEA?

The term "survivor" doesn't sit well with me. As strong as I feel today, I know those cancer cells currently dormant inside me just might break into a wild rave without giving me notice, calling my body back into a seriously bad romance which I have absolutely no desire to revisit. I was lucky enough to make it through a battle, but there is no guarantee that the war is over; not for me, not for anyone.

But why tea? Why not go crazy on other antioxidant-rich choices such as blueberries, pomegranates, or better yet, dark chocolate and red wine? Tea ranks higher than most fruits and vegetables in antioxidant potential and Vitamins C and K content. In all the studies I've read, there's a strong relationship between antioxidants and anti-inflammation, immune system function and anti-cancer activities in the human body. I've come to agree with the science that claims that cancer is a largely preventable disease and that the function of the immune system and cancer are in inextricably linked. Various medical studies from many different countries around the world have reported on tea as an anti-inflammation agent, as well as a selective immune-system booster in pursuing selective anti-cancer mechanisms. Note: In this book I don't refer to studies done on mice, as legitimate as they may be. I'm just not educated enough to make the jump from how something works in a mouse to how it would work in my own body.

I've always loved tea, but over the past decade, I've learned to appreciate great teas and their amazing health benefits more than I would have ever thought possible. One of the things I liked about tea is that it's a plant-based substance that exhibits some of those same selective biochemical actions as promising newer targeted cancer therapies and therefore looked like a non-toxic anti-cancer agent. If something as simple and natural as tea could help make any progress in regressing any cancerous activity and reducing the risk of recurrence, even indirectly, I was all in. It seemed to me like a win-win. So here we are. I hate cancer. I'm not leaving it all up to tea, but as an integral and consistent part of my diet and commitment to regular exercise, I view it as an added insurance policy in helping mobilize my body's immune system against cancer. It's become a simple and affordable daily luxury, and the fact that I love the taste, the ceremony and how it makes me feel, are just added benefits.

TEA, DEFINED

Not everything we dunk in water and drink as tea is actually tea, biologically speaking. The dictionary gives us a slew of definitions for tea, and these give us insight as to how loosely the term is used and why it can sometimes be confusing:

1. A hot drink made by infusing the dried, crushed leaves of the tea plant in boiling water.

2. The dried leaves used to make tea.

3. A drink made from the infused leaves, fruits or flowers of plants other than tea. Herbal tea or fruit tea.

4. Any hot drink, for example, coffee or cocoa.

5. The evergreen shrub or small tree that produces tea leaves, native to southern and eastern Asia and grown as a major cash crop.

6. A light afternoon meal consisting typically of tea to drink, sandwiches and cakes.

7. A cooked evening meal.

8. Breakfast, typically consisting of a hot drink and bread.

We're going to stick with the first two definitions only and discuss tea as the finished leaf product of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis or its water extract.

Tea is so simple; really, it's just leaf and water. It quenches our thirst and helps keep us hydrated. But once a tea drinker learns to appreciate the many nuances of flavor the tea leaf can embody, he or she is on their way to an amazing sensory voyage. Most cultures around the world have made tea part of their daily ritual, not because of its healing properties, but as a celebration of its culinary, aesthetic and mood-lifting qualities. Simply put, tea is one of life's pleasures. It makes people feel better and provides a quick, relaxing escape from life's hectic pace. This 5,000-yearold infusion is the most consumed beverage on the planet after water.

The history of medicinal herbs is rich and diverse and even older than that of tea. It includes many things we call tea, such as peppermint, chamomile and hibiscus, but strictly speaking, they're not really tea. They're herbals, fruits or florals. What we're focused on here are the leaves that come from the Camellia sinensis plant. These leaves possess the unique tea health benefits we're chasing. Teas made from this plant are classified under four main tea types: white/green, oolong, black and pu-erh. The customary way to make a tea beverage is by infusing its dried leaves into hot water, and this remains the most popular way of consuming tea today.

HOW CAMELLIA BECOMES TEA

Camellia sinensis (the meaning in Latin is "Chinese Camellia") is native to Southeast Asia, and now cultivated in more than 30 countries. This single species of plant yields more than 9 billion pounds (4,000 kilotonnes) of finished tea each year. Thanks to different varietals of the plant, production methods, growing and harvest season, and soil and weather conditions, one tea species produces a wildly broad range of flavors and appearances. How is it possible that a delicate and calming green tea comes from the same botanical as a nectarous and mysterious black tea? It all really comes down to the chemical process of oxidation.

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Excerpted from Cancer Hates Tea by Maria Uspenski, Ted Axelrod. Copyright © 2016 Maria Uspenski. Excerpted by permission of Page Street Publishing Co..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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