by Rebecca, Student, London UK
Recently I undertook a research project at Bath University, looking at the effect epigenetics can have on the formation of breast cancer. What I found was really amazing, and very relevant given the current trends of breast cancer worldwide.
Breast cancer is now so common it is hard to find someone who is untouched by the disease either directly or indirectly through friends and family. It has become the enemy within and women across the board are now encouraged to check their breasts for any sign of breast disease. October has become synonymous with pink ribbons and raising money for breast cancer research.
I have seen so much in the news and in general about the few options available for women with breast cancer when it comes to treatment and prevention. The most common option for treatment, and now also for prevention, is the removal of the breasts, and sometimes the ovaries too, even before any cancer is diagnosed, if the women are deemed to be at high risk of developing the disease.
Scientists have isolated the ‘breast cancer gene’ and can give genetic counselling to women with this gene as to what their options are. However, what I have found interesting is that the research or information I talk about below is seemingly not taken into consideration, let alone placed equally alongside all other treatments and preventatives.
As taught in many high school biology classes, every person has DNA (Deoxy-ribo Nucleic Acid), which is like a genetic code that contains all the instructions needed to build everything that makes up the body, and make it function. However, what is not often taught is that your DNA on its own is only part of the story of how you come to exist and what happens to you during life.
Think of your DNA as a really, really long strand of string in our bodies, that is wrapped around little proteins called Histones. Your DNA wraps around a Histone, and then chemical tags can bind to these Histones. It is this second layer of structure (the chemical tags and the wrapping around the protein) that is called the Epigenome. It is the Epigenome that shapes the structure of your DNA.
The proteins help to organize the DNA because they have tails that can become covered with chemical tags and affect the DNA interaction. Some sections of DNA become tightly wrapped up, making the genes in that section inactive or unreadable. However, the proteins can also relax genes, making them active and easily accessible. So in effect, although your DNA code remains the same for life, your epigenetics are flexible, and whether a gene is wrapped up tightly and difficult to read, or is relaxed and easily accessible, is in reaction to your environment and your lifestyle factors, things like stress or diet.1
So how does this relate to cancer? Well, cancer develops when a cell becomes abnormal and begins to grow out of control. Out of control growth occurs by both turning off the genes coding for proteins that slow cell growth and turning on genes coding for proteins that speed up cell growth. Epigenetic events can affect many of the stages in tumour development; for example some of our lifestyle choices over time could lead to the section of gene that codes for slowing cell growth to be wrapped up tightly, while allowing the gene that codes for the speeding up of growth to be relaxed and readable, causing the increased chance of a formation of a cancerous tumour.
For my research project I focused on breast cancer, as it is the most common cancer among women in the United States, after skin cancer. It was estimated by Cancer Research UK that there were around 55,200 new cases of invasive breast cancer in the UK in 2014, that’s 150 cases diagnosed every day. And Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 1.68 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, with around 11,400 breast cancer deaths in the UK in 2014.2
The epigenetic alterations that occur are not well understood, other than that they are key contributors to breast tumour formation. Prevention, treatments and diagnostics are being developed by some researchers to target epigenetic changes leading to breast cancer.3
One such researcher is Mina Bissell, who has shown that cancer is not only caused by cancer cells and out of control growth, but by an interaction between cancer cells and their surrounding cellular microenvironment.
Her talk on TED ‘Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer’ is fascinating and she asks the same questions I used to try and get my biology teachers to answer all the time – how, when every human starts off as one single cell, a fertilised egg, do the cells in your nose know to become a nose, and your elbow cells to be your elbow? And why do you not wake up one day with a foot for a hand? The cells in your hand contain the same information, and therefore the same potential to be a foot, as your foot does. And yet it doesn’t happen. And so, the same question can be asked of cancer. Can we really say that one day, a single cell suddenly ups and decides its DNA is going to mutate, and it’s going to become cancer?
These questions led her to find that it is not a random event, but that all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them. She works with breast cancer, and so uses the example of a mammary gland (the gland in a woman’s breast that produces milk) to explain how this works.
They took just a tiny bit of a mammary gland, called an ‘Acinus’, where milk is created (shown in the picture below) and they asked, how it was that those cells formed that structure. It was believed up until this work, that the yellow cells around the red and blue ones in the picture were simply there to give the gland its structure. However, what they found when they took these cells out of the natural environment of the breast, and placed them in a dish, was that within a few days they forgot what they were, lost shape and stopped producing milk.
So what is the significance of this? What it shows is that environment and context overrides, and somehow signals to the cell to do different things. But the question became: How?
Mina Bissell thought that maybe the structural cells people always thought were only there for shape, actually contained information and signalled to the nucleus or ‘brain’ of the cell what to do.
She and her co-workers took cellular material containing the extracellular matrix (ECM) that surrounds breast cells, and put the cells which had forgotten what they were into it. In a few days, the cells had re-organised into fully functioning glands that produced milk, demonstrating once again it is the context the cell finds itself in that determines what it will do.
But it’s what she did next that was really incredible. She formed the hypothesis that if context is the most dominant thing, then a cancer cell restored to normal context should revert back to a normal non-cancerous cell.
And so they tested it – they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell.
She has given us a different way of viewing cancer – in her words, a more hopeful one – one where it is not a game of the genetic lottery, or one where you one day randomly wake up with cancer, but a view where cancer is the result of a context or environment that is signalling a normal healthy cell to become cancer. What her studies have shown is that the 70 trillion cells in our bodies are constantly communicating to the extracellular matrix, which is communicating back to the nucleus of the cell, keeping and restoring balance.
Mina Bissell has said herself that arrogance kills curiosity and passion, she doesn’t understand everything and that there is far more to be discovered4 and I agree. I think that we need to start matching up different research and findings to produce a larger understanding of what is at play in the body when cancer forms. What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer.
The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing.
Could we possibly consider that our bodies are like one little cell in the environment that is life – and that our life gives us signals, that we can choose to respond or react to, either making our environment a healthy and harmonious one, or one that effectively ‘gives us cancer’? Could it be that the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc., has an effect on our smaller internal environments, that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous?
Unfortunately, this will not make drug companies millions, nor will it make anyone famous for finding a cure, and most radically, it will ask people to put their health before their ability to do as they like with their bodies, asking them to take responsibility for the scientifically confirmed effect our lifestyle has on our bodies. It is for this reason perhaps, that Mina Bissell’s research is not yet front page news, and that no one is connecting up the dots to what appears to be a very simple conclusion, that perhaps the key to understanding cancer and possibly preventing and/or healing it will be found in the way we live.
References:
- University of Utah. (2014). Epigenetics at a glance and gene control. Available: What is epigenetics?
- Cancer Research UK (2016) Breast Cancer Statistics. Available: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/breast-cancer#DIKlwm8WjE4QgdDp.99 Last accessed: 23/11/16
- Dworhin A et al. (2009). Epigenetic alteration in the breast. Seminars in cancer biology. 19 (3), p165-171.
- Mina Bissell. (2012). Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer. Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/mina_bissell_experiments_that_point_to_a_new_understanding_of_cancer?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread Last accessed 23/11/16.
Read more:
1) Lifestyle choices and breast cancer prevention
2) Breast cancer: Knowing what I know now, I would definitely do things differently.
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
This is such an interesting article to read but also depressing at the same time as the article was written in 2016, so 4 years ago. It feels to me that the work of Mina Bissell has not been taken further. The studies of Mina Bissell make so much sense, by asking such simple questions as how do the cells in our body know what part they have to play to make up the human body. Where do they get the instructions from? I guess we take our bodies for granted and never really take much notice of them until they start to show signs of ill health. Is it possible that the way we have set up our current way of life, we disregard our bodies and rely on our minds to work things out, when actually it is our bodies that carry the greater intelligence as this Mina Bissell’s research clearly shows.
Great and didactic article that should be available in medicine studies and the general public.
Thanks for sharing it Rebecca
This is an amazing blog as is the work of Mina Bissell what this blog confirms to me is that our whole body is in constant communication via our cells, whereas we have been led to believe it is our minds that is the dominant communicator.
You make science so easy and interesting to understand not only that I love how you hone out to the much bigger picture leading it back to body and listening to what it is telling us, the choice is ours in do we listen and respond to it or override and ignore it!
Rebecca, this is an A-mazing sharing. I recall watching Mina Bissell’s Ted Talk and was fascinated by it. If we really break it down to the nitty gritty, say at conception, how do the cells know how and when to multiply.
There is more to life than being a human, everything communicates with everything, the precision of conception is just the same as the precision life offers to us. It is governed by something more than, just life.
What an inspiring sharing and much to ponder over too.
If only we pondered more Shushila but we don’t. We tend to not question things, often accepting what we’ve been told by our parents, our teachers, science, religion and government. However the trouble with being able to truly ponder is that it’s an activity that is offered to us by a particular energetic source and that is the energy of the soul. Therefore to truly ponder we have to be aligned to the energy of the soul but most of us are aligned to the energy of the spirit and the spirit doesn’t ponder, not truly. The spirit may question and ruminate but never with the freedom to actually come up with something that is outside its current way of thinking. The tricky part is that the spirit will think that it’s come up with something that is outside its regular parameters, whilst all the while still being very decidedly confined within its original box.
Alexis if we were as you say to ponder is it then possible that we can say that the 70 trillion cells in our bodies are constantly communicating to the extracellular matrix, which is communicating back to the nucleus of the cell, keeping and restoring balance, and that the 70 trillions cells in our bodies are also constantly communicating back to the universe? All the cells in our bodies are made up of the particles from space/ Universe, so it would make sense that they are then in communication from that which they are made from just as the cells are in constant communication to the extracellular matrix. So we could say our bodies are constantly communicating but are we listening?
What gets me Mary is even though I know this and even though I can hear what my body is saying (e.g. I need to go to the loo) I still choose to ignore it!!! And I know that this is because I am being impulsed by a consciousness that doesn’t want me to self care, a consciousness that ‘glues’ me into work, so that I feel compelled to finish just one more thing before going to the bathroom.
“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed.`’ A powerful article Rebecca and one which confirms that we are architects of our own health and futures. Understanding the main determining factor is how we live, not genetics puts responsibility for health back into our own hands.
This is fascinating because Mina Bissell is a scientist and one of a few of them that is prepared to say
“that arrogance kills curiosity and passion, she doesn’t understand everything and that there is far more to be discovered”
There are not too many scientists that say that these days and I guess that is why we have not heard much about her research. Is it possible that as a scientist you have to toe the line in order for your work to be recognised in the scientific world.
It is very exposing that something so ground breaking as the research above has not been placed in the spotlight. It shows that the dominant mindset is protective of the status quo and those that control it desirous of guarding their own security.
Michelle, what is fascinating is that Mina Bissell had to appear on Ted Talk to present this so called discovery, what if there are other researchers, questioning this too. It’s time to stop spending money on sending people to space and more on the real science of life.
‘These questions led her to find that it is not a random event, but that all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them.’ This is huge and goes to show that how we live our lives and the choices that we make really does impact our health. Mina Bissell’s research is showing that getting cancer is not the random event we think it is.
It is a fascinating piece of research but one that backs up what is already a known esoterically. It is perverse that we need research to confirm to all what is already truth to a few and unless this research is out there, the truth for the few will not be listened to and become the truth for all.
Your presentation here is just so valuable, Rebecca. Just like Serge Benhayon translated E=mc2 into ‘Everything is energy, therefore everything is because of energy’ – these amazing lab findings really need to be translated into our everyday language of movement that everyone can relate to and understand as our living truth. Thank you.
There is so much meticulous and precise order to so many aspects of the Universe we witness, otherwise there is no way we would be able to start formulating hypotheses and predict things. More than that human life is completely run by cycles, forget about the man made ones which there are plenty of, but there are the solar, lunar and the planetary cycles that gives us the years, months, days as well as the seasons. There are the predictable cycles of illness and disease, the menstrual cycle, and many many more. How on earth can we propose that anything in our universe is ‘random’?!? I love studies such as Mina Bissell’s that put us straight about such imaginings.
Research into the relationship between the way we live, the environment we live in and cancer from these findings in my opinion needs to be explored further. It is not rocket science but a science certainly worth investigating if we want to get to the root of cancer and its widespread prevalence in society today.
Thank you Rebecca for your article, it’s a very interesting read. I’m fascinated by what you have shared about the environment around the cell and that communicating to and instructing the cells. I can see the parallel between a single cell and a single human being, and what communications I am responding to each day and how the way I then live contributes to or harms the larger body of all of humanity.
Mina Bissel’s work is amazing. She looks deeper into the causation of cancer. But considering we are multi-dimensional beings, not just physical walking mechanical bodies there has to be a deeper energetic causation also. Our living and loving can be a preventative tool – or not.
The only way that we get to understand a particular disease is to be humble enough to know that we do not know everything about it and so cooperation is needed amongst people to find out what is truly known about a particular disease.
That humility is like a receptivity and openness, it’s a very beautiful part of being human.
I love the facts you present here Rebecca. It has made me realise there is no end to the amount of appreciation for just how amazing our bodies are, as long as the cells have harmonious surroundings, they remain healthy or actually return to homeostasis when their environment is restored from being out of balance.
“And so they tested it – they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell”.
Our bodies really are the blueprint for educating us on true living – without it we would really have no other signposts. Thank goodness the body reflects back to us what our choices are, but are we ready to listen?
So true Michelle. We have got to a point where we ignore the natural ‘signposts’ of the body and instead use all manner of manufactured signposts outside the body to determine how we’re going. We use the ‘food pyramid’ or any number of the other dietary guides to tell us whether what we’re eating is right, we listen to other people’s exercise regimes to determine how we should exercise, we draw from our ideas and use comparison to gauge how we’re doing in relationships and we compare our health to others (often to those who are much sicker than us) to get a reading about our own health. Pretty much all of our signposts about life are external and therefore not true. As you say say Michelle, “Our bodies really are the blueprint for educating us on true living”.
That’s beautifully explained Alexis – no where do we offer support for ourselves or others to trust in our/their own wisdom. We learn from very young to disconnect from it and yet it is the best friend we could ever wish for.
An incredibly informative and insight-full blog offering me, and humanity, so much vital information which has the potential to cast a new and very bright light on the cause of cancer. There was so much shared I was nodding to, but it was these words amongst everything written which really jumped out at me; “arrogance kills curiosity and passion”. Words, in this case, every medical professional involved in the field of cancer would benefit from reading but also a very wise message for all of us, in our everyday life. For me, arrogance shuts the door to endless possibilities.
I so agree Ingrid. When we think we ‘know it all’ we shut the door on any further enquiry.
And when I look around these days, especially in the field of medicine, science and religion, I see so many doors closed on what may be possible if the old and comfortable way of looking at life was to be discarded. And of course, then there are those doors which may be open but simply lead to a place which enables the door opener to receive the recognition and attention, and in some cases the money, they are desperately seeking. You’ve certainly opened my eyes to what’s behind all these doors!
Yes and we can also get to something and think that “this is it”, as in an end point or pinnacle, whether that be a scientific discovery, a loving relationship, our health and vitality, etc, the truth is there is always more – more learning, wisdom, discoveries, and more love to live.
It still seems to be missing in our societal consciousness that we do indeed play a massive part in creating our own illness and disease; likewise how we also play a pivotal part in our own healing.
What a fascinating blog. Why are we not testing this and experimenting with it on a big scale? What we have done so far hasn’t worked very well. We have nothing to lose, only our health to gain or maintain if we change the way we live.
Fascinating and revealing of a truth we all know that the way we live and the choices we make are reflected in our physical body.
I have come away from reading this with a greater understanding and appreciation for our incredible human bodies. And how I am affects much more than I think.
When we stop and consider the death rates of cancer and in this example of breast cancer, is it not wise to review it openly and honestly as to how we are living that is causing such figures. Epigenetic too makes absolute and complete sense and we do tend to take on the behaviours and habits of our parents, which on the surface makes sense; it’s a DNA linked cancer but more and more it is being confirmed that the way we are living our life and our environments is what has a huge influence on our health. It is whether we are prepared to take responsibility for that or not.
I really love this article. And, true – there’s no money to be made in this, but we wouldn’t need an expert telling us what to do to try this out either.
There is a lot fear around breast cancer, and the October affiliation with it is just one example of how so many women do not want this condition to continue as part of our lives, but what is being presented as available to us as women is ways to ‘combat’ this dis-ease. There is very little by way of supporting women to re-connect with their deep and beautiful love. There is however, Esoteric Women’s Health which is doing exactly that, and the transformative affects of this are enormous – far more so than rallying and striving for answers.
It is easy to go about our lives without checking our breasts for changes or lumps, however it should be an important part of our routine, cancer is a signal that a what otherwise would be a normal healthy cell has changed, could it be that it is a signal for us to change the choices we are making and in turn is asking us to change the way we live.
Is it our genetics that cause breast cancer, or is it possible that there’s an even deeper root? We used to think that the earth was flat and that mentality got us nowhere. If we are the intelligent and open species we claim to be, we wouldn’t be so stuck in our ways insisting that things are the way they are, when it is so obvious that there is more to life and our ignorance.
I found that true answers to problems are always simple and they always ask us to take responsibility. That is probably why the most simple answers like this one, that make so much sense, are not front page news. We like complicated answers so we can say we cannot apply them or we like easy answers that don’t ask us to change our lifestyle but the truth is that we know that we have to change our way one day if we want true change.
Beautifully simple and powerful expressed, Lieke.
If something is not simple it is not the soul that is communicating, but our head, who loves complication and control. And we do almost anything to keep this ‘bubble’ in its place, so that we don’t have to take responsibility and bring more love into the way we live our lives.
Thank you Lieke for your wisdom and extraordinary clarity, I particularly appreciated this line “We like complicated answers so we can say we cannot apply them or we like easy answers that don’t ask us to change our lifestyle…”, so very true.
Could it be that when we get a recurrence of cancer after a few years in remission it is due to our returning to the way of life we lived (that may have contributed to the dis-ease in the first place)? Research into those who made lifestyle changes versus those who returned to their old patterns of behaviour after cancer, would be an interesting area of study.
Our lifestyle choice are now called lifestyle diseases.
It makes sense doesn’t it that we could have diseased / dis-eased living.
Cancer research focuses on looking at treatments outside of ourselves and our lifestyles, with a magic pill or research into vaccines. Yet the life we have lived results in our illnesses. But of course there’s no profit in researching lifestyle medicine.
I absolutely loved reading this incredibly powerful blog, and Mina Bissell’s research on epigenetics is worthy of a Nobel Prize because of its far-reaching implications of how we look at cancer, and I’m sure all illness and disease for that matter. It shows the amazing intelligence of the human body that is so much more advanced than we ever gave it credit for, and to know that we have the power to make lifestyle changes that have a direct effect on our very own DNA which controls all cellular functionality is incredible. But as Rebecca mentioned, this research is also asking people to be more responsible with their behaviours and does not leave room for blaming anyone else, or ‘bad luck’ for people getting cancer.
“it is not a random event, but that all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them” This underlines the truth shared by Serge Benhayon that ‘there are no accidents’.
The common things pretty much everyone has experienced to do with our health and body are the common cold (see it even has the word common in it!), the flu, aches and pains, spots, cold sores. Pretty much all of these point to the fact that we have a part to play. Nothing is random and even with the cold and flu it is clear that even if there are germs and viruses around, we have a part to play in making ourselves susceptible. So why don’t we take this wisdom further? Most of us don’t even want to accept responsibility for these simpler cases, preferring to find something we can blame thus thinking we are a victim of circumstance.
This is so fascinating. It actually does make sense to think that if our body already has the intelligence that puts us in a specific order to keep it in homeostasis, the same science must be applicable to the relationship between our entire body and its environment – and what becomes obvious is that, if anything, it is our choices that would get in the way of this stupendous intelligence.
This makes complete sense. Why should cells suddenly do something different? If their environment has changed then they are receiving a different message and all they are doing is responding. We have the power to remain healthy by giving our bodies a healthy environment to live in. If we do not do that then they will change to suit the environment that we have created.
Nothing is random, nothing at all. The fact that we see things as random is purely a reflection of our lack of understanding.
“By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious”…. this is an extremely revealing and important comment… and something that we all would so much benefit by living by.
The harmony that is offered to the body by our movements speaks volumes when we choose to make more loving choices. A great starting point!
“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed…” This is amazing as it suggests our choices in lifestyle, and the relationship we have with ourselves has something to do with the development of human dis-ease… we certainly have a greater input into our health and wellbeing.. its not only about taking medication, but more. Our medicine is also about our lifestyle choices.
This is great to open up our awareness that cancer isn’t just ‘bad luck’ but its development can be linked to our lifestyle choices.
I love how you have opened up the research into Breast Cancer, and with the support of the research done by Mina Bissell been able to look deeper into why breast cancer is still prevalent in our society regardless of the amount of research, effort and technology that has been put towards trying to cure it. “What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation.” When we see it like this it brings a much greater awareness to how we live and how we react to life, and brings the responsibility back to ourselves. Rebecca you have a great way of making something complex simple and easy to follow and understand.
I agree Jane it is about a stop moment, an opportunity to reflect and review where we are and taking time to really feel, connect and know that the choices I make can either loving and nurturing or not.
Changing the way you live and being more responsible for your choices and behaviour is challenging and confronting at times but it is actually very very joyful as it allows us to be more of who we naturally are. Being who you naturally are or cancer? It’s our choice I guess.
Having recently heard of another woman being diagnosed with breast cancer I was very interested to re read your amazingly informative blog Rebecca. There is something seriously wrong with the way we disregard our bodies and still expect them to be healthy and function perfectly. No matter what the illness, we are all guilty of this . Prevention is better than cure. We all need to listen to our bodies and act on its loving words..
The question to be asked is: how in the world can something so beautiful and sacred as the woman’s breast become the enemy within? What is this telling us about us?
Eduardo a great question that we can fear and hate something that is actually there to nurture and support.
Such a fantastic article and what I find fascinating Rebecca is your point about how this has not yet made front paper headlines. This along with many other things can be exposing the potential corruption that plays out with pharmaceutical drug companies, governments and anyone else that has an investment in this.
Thankyou for sharing the research you have done Rebecca. I love the work of Mina Bissell. We need to look to our everyday choices Conventional medicine is now waking up to the fact that many illnesses relate to our lifestyle choices – and can this support a disease from returning ( as is only too common with cancer) or indeed prevention in the first place.
Brilliant blog Rebecca, one I thoroughly enjoyed reading and will most definitely read again.
Absolute gold what you have shared here Rebecca. Thank-you, its definitely worthy of deep consideration as it makes so much sense.
This research you share is quite amazing Rebecca. Thank you for sharing this with us all and for the insight into breast cancer that most would not have access to.
It is so key that how we live determines our health. What an amazing experiment to share the way that cells change based on their environment. It just makes so much sense and it is what we all need to hear. It comes back to responsibility and if we are truly prepared to take responsibility.
This is one on my favorite blogs, it is so obvious that the way we live determines our health, but so many of us want to turn a blind eye to this fact. There was a stage in my life that I wanted to ignore this, I was not willing to take responsibility, physically and certainly not energetically for how my actions and choices affect my health. When we are in denial, we justify that nobody deserves cancer and that Aunty Mary was so nice, or my friend was taken too young. When you are clear on what this research means and you connect, you know that it’s not about deserve, as cancer is not a punishment, it’s not about nice because it is not a game of being good to seek reward.
The key is knowing we are love and expressing in truth of this knowing. To qualify this, being love is honouring that you are a body of love and therefore you should treat yourself as if you are precious as a baby, second, being true means your actions are not geared to appease or please others but instead hold yourself in a deep level of care, that naturally extends to others. Now this is an environment that a cancer cell has little to no hope of forming in, unless the cancer is there to clear out ill choices from other lives but that is another blog all togther.
This was a very interesting read, I love the way that you have presented this information- in such a simple and easily understandable format- that is a real skill. I now have a much greater understanding of DNA and how DNA works.
Wow Rebecca – if environment is such a powerful factor in the health of our cells, what is the environment we create every day with the choices we make? Do we promote toxicity, anger and aggression? Do we ingest the poison of jealousy, separatism and individuality? If we do, then surely it starts to make sense that our body will start to struggle and our outer world will reflect that too. The environmental damage we see in the news is super serious, but as you show this situation starts first with the way we are in ourselves.
Each of us is a patch of Life, we are the very life of Life, we are it so to speak, life doesn’t happen outside us, we are the very livingness of life itself, therefore how we are living is the life that we will live, it can’t be any other way.
What a great blog you have written here Rebecca, leaving nothing out and giving the reader a huge dose of understanding and awareness if they so choose to look deeply into their health and how they are choosing to live.
Why is what has been discovered not in the newspapers and the wide world medical system? Is humanity not ready for these discoveries? Or… are we just delaying truth to be revealed in our lives?
Wow…. Fascinating and extraordinary. What a blessing that we have 70 trillion cells in our body all working to keep and restore balance and our only responsibility is to live in a way that provide a healthy environment for them to do what they innately know to do.
This is mind blowing! I sent it to my best friend as I just wanted to share it with someone, it makes me so happy that there are people around the world discovering the true cause of cancer. I get so upset when October comes around and we all think we are supporting by buying a pink ribbon. The way we can truly lead and support this epidemic to truly heal is by living in a way that inspires others, that speaks to people and says, hey, there is another way to be and it doesn’t involve any self harm, in fact it is all about being the love you are!
Each month when we menstruate or as the Ourcycle app supports us with is using the moon as our monthly cleansing we get an opportunity to reflect on what the body is showing us. Every little symptom can be the insight of gold as to how we can make changes that support us to be all of who we are and not a contracted, shut down female caught up in the masculine energy.
I loved reading your blog Rebecca, we can go a long way to help ourselves by taking responsibility for how we choose to live, and the more loving those choices are the less strain we put on the physicality of our body.
Why wouldn’t the answer to curing cancer be found in the way we live? It is accepted that people suffer from stress because of the way they live. It makes so much sense but will never be accepted or shared publicly because there is no money to be made from this. It would also mean people may have to start taking responsibility for the choices they make in their lives.
I agree that your article is definitely one that needs more careful consideration. We definitely have a big part to play in the health of our bodies and looking at the way we live is paramount!
As I read your wonderful article Rebeca, it feels like the answer could be found in the wisdom of the ancients, who always understood that everything must be taken into account when treating the human body.
The answer to all our woes is in reconnecting to our bodies, cherishing them and listening to the constant communication they can give us.
You can’t deny what you are presenting here Rebecca, I know the moment I started to connect with my body and look at ways it was communicating with me things started to change. How I was not being loving or how I was ignoring it and in particular not connecting to myself in a deeply honouring way. Sometimes I let life and what needs to be done become more important but it doesn’t take me too long to register this and realise how dis-connected I have become.
The statistics you share Rebecca are shocking but it seems that unless we, or someone we know, are directly affected by this invasive disease these statistics simply remain as numbers on a page not a real life experience. And then of course it is important to acknowledge that although there is one person with breast cancer all the people close to them are going to have their lives affected as well; that’s one awfully big statistic when you add it all up.
Cancer is in many ways a big deal and affects the lives of increasingly more people. But when we bring our lifestyle choices into the equation I get the feeling that it isn’t the big, bad disease but something we do and can change.
“… it is the context the cell finds itself…” – isn´t that a wonderful reflection for us as (human) beings, who only get to know who they are by the reflection of our brothers, and further indicating the cause of the multiple social problems we have as society, a society that doesn´t know how live in a way that supports each other in our true making. Let´s learn from nature and understand the universal laws we as humans tend to ignore.
a fascinating read – thank you. I have always maintained that genes are a sort of catalyst, or an indicator of potential and nothing more.
“The prevention of breast cancer – the answer is in our bodies”, this makes complete sense when so simply stated. – If it is in our bodies that breast cancer develops, then surely it is from within our bodies the healing way can be found.
Our true physical state of being depends on the energetic quality state of being within ourselves, in other words, we choose to hold on to hurts and live life indulging in reactions creating a body that is run on emotions which cause disharmony and eventual illness rather than the love we are made of.
I know that depending on my environment and if I am letting this in to influence me, my mood or how I feel is constantly changing. So if I allow in what is going on around me to affect me, then to me it makes complete sense that it is having an effect on my body and cells also. I used to be totally reliant on what was going on around me and gauge what I needed to be like to cope and deal with any situation. Today I have realised from the teachings Serge Benhayon presents that I can stay consistently steady and only observe and not absorb what is going on and now I feel completely different, at ease and my body emanates with a harmonious vibration. Doesn’t take that much to do the maths on this really does it.
It’s entertaining to hear a talk, watch a video or discuss a point. We like, it seems, to consider all the possibilities till ‘the cows come home’. But hasn’t it been staring us in the face, for centuries that there is something quite essential about the energy in which we live? Isn’t this something we all know, a common sense fact from long ago? Surely we can agree the way we choose to be has a great power over our reality. It stacks up doesn’t it? But our actions do not. Until that is, you realise that there is some part of us that sees the world and our body as a mere instrument with which to play. It doesn’t care what it does as long as it gets a buzz and creates delay. So the biggest question for us all is not ‘what is the cause?’ of illness and disease, but ‘are we willing to stop the rot, to cease the crazy games, forgo the drama and stimulation – in exchange for living simplicity?’. Thank you Rebecca for sharing and highlighting this.
Joseph you have posed a great revealing question about our inherent awareness and sense of the significance of energy: “Isn’t this something we all know, a common sense fact from long ago?” Perhaps the focus ought to become not about proving the absolute interplay of energy in every aspect of our lives, but to enquire why on earth do we keep choosing to hold on tight to such a self-imposed blind spot that so enormously limits our intelligence and awareness.
The ‘blind spot’ is part and parcel of the energy from which all of our problems originate hence why we doggedly keep repeating the same old behaviours that lead to the same problems, dilemmas and conundrums that we’ve always faced. Yes sure the detail of our problems may change but the flavour basically stays the same and that is that we see ourselves as separate from each other and hence behave in a way that confirms our assumed separation.
Surely, it’s not truly scientific to ignore some research and focus on other research, or to downplay case histories as not providing evidence or to ignore the simplicity of our commonsense and substitute it with complex theories and hypotheses.
Great considerations posed at the end of this article… ‘Could it be…’ invites us to explore our attitudes towards things and the responsibility we have in a very clear way.
It is totally fascinating for me to see the change in thinking over the decades and how certain researchers are digging deeper and deeper to find truth. If this information goes more into the world and is taken seriously we as humanity have to look at the root causes of our illness and diseases in general and question our thinking and behaviours and how this can lead to illness and disease.
Fascinating thankyou. I had always maintained that it was likely that genetics were nothing more than a catalyst of certain diseases, an indicator of potential if you like, and not the actual cause of a disease. It would appear that my original feeling was largely correct, given now what the field of epigenetics is presenting – and so here we have a situation where within the turn of a decade, we have science turned on its head as to what was previously believed to be true. This is no criticism of science at all – that is in its truest form what it is meant to do, to continue to unravel and question even itself, but it is a criticism of those who stand by the ethos that society must constrain by way of thought and action based purely on what has been proven, and that there should not be room for countering viewpoints, or indeed ways of approaching life that are not based on such limited perceptions. I understand why that approach is taken. It is a protection of sorts to ensure we are not fleeced and harmed by the snake oil salesmen of the world in the world of health. And whilst I get that, personally, I would suggest that we need to place more faith in humanity to learn to discern for themselves what is true, and that it is much healthier to live in a society that is open minded and free by all accounts to explore life to its very end, despite the fact that occasionally mistakes might be made.
Putting the responsibility for our health into the hands of another, doctor or healer, or looking for a magic pill to take away the ill, alleviates us of having to look at our lives and the disharmonious ways in which we are living, treating ourselves and others.
This is a great example of how nothing happens in isolation from the environment or context it is in. In fact our relationship with all aspects of life, even our gene pool matter.
‘…the answer is in our bodies…’ a phrase that very quietly stops me in my tracks and invites me to consider my body as a wise and insightful ally in life; always with me, always sign-posting every choice. Very inspiring, thank you.
We all get the opportunity to provide our own context in life, whether that be a loving home, a respectful and decent workplace, a kindness to all or a stillness within. All set the context from which our bodies respond.
Your blog shows how important the woman’s relationship she has with herself is, as this has an impact on a cellular and epigenetic level.
This blog shows the return once again to self responsibility and the deep levels of knowing that come from within. Yes the environment is there for us to work with in harmony and our bodies are radars of truth if we are willing to listen and follow with our heart rather than our head.
A single part cannot work in isolation to the whole it is a part of without compromising or forfeiting its synergy with it. If we truly understood this then we would have a far greater understanding as to why there is so much death, disease and destruction in our world in place of the harmony, joy and vitality that is otherwise so abundant to us.
If Mina Bissell said this then she is very wise
“Mina Bissell has said herself that arrogance kills curiosity and passion, she doesn’t understand everything and that there is far more to be discovered and I agree. I think that we need to start matching up different research and findings to produce a larger understanding of what is at play in the body when cancer forms.”
It seems to me that scientists have become very arrogant and have lost that curiosity that is so needed when it comes to understanding how everything works.
The last point is the key one I feel in this beautifully informative article, no-one will get famous or rich in what may be our most effective way to treat cancer, the lifestyle we lead. If we can see the changes that occur to a cell based on its environment, then it makes more than just sense to give ourselves the optimal chance of health through how we live and what we subject ourselves too, it is imperative, just as it is that we stop blaming chance but instead take responsibility, for responsibility is the first step to change.
Learning to listen to what our bodies are telling us, that how we are living is showing that we are out of sync to our natural rhythm, is one that I still am developing. Thanks to the Esoteric Breast Massage, without which I wouldn’t have felt and realised how hard and shut down I was as a woman. Esoteric Woman’s Health has also been a huge support in letting go of ideals and beliefs that have been a hindrance in my life and reflected in the toughness that I thought I needed to be. So deeply grateful for all the Universal Medicine modalities and how they let you feel where we have stepped so very far away from.
Imagine
We have surveyed every last inch of life to find the thing we need to do to avoid cancer. Some people say it’s taking extraordinary doses of Vitamin C, others that the answer lives in raw foods – the inexhaustible list of solutions goes on with everyone’s opinion about the right thing to do. But very few people that I have heard, have suggested that the true cause lives not with our tasks but in the quality that we choose. What if the energy we live and breathe and move in has the greatest affect over our health? This is the simple presentation I heard 6 years ago from Serge Benhayon. It’s completely changed my life since then, and I feel I am only just starting to understand the true importance of energetic quality for every woman and man. Thank you Rebecca for joining the dots and showing that science is slowly coming to see the true significance of energy.
The findings of Mina Bissell and her team are kind of unbelievable, and this shows to me how as a whole our global approach to cancer has been quite narrow – thus what she says seems remarkable when actually if I really look at it it makes total sense.
Can we consider life on a cellular level, do we care if our cells are out of our ‘normal’ range. Everything makes sense here, I understand without a doubt that how I treat my body impacts on it at a cellular and I would say energetic level. It is like we have a huge city inside us and all our population of cells requires supporting, so often we neglect the community that works tirelessly within us, supporting our function, homeostasis and health. When it comes to cancer, I feel this subject could be discussed move widely, it is not strange to consider the mutation of cells, being a result of our choices.
‘Arrogance kills curiosity and passion’. To be open to learning anew demonstrates a humbleness, that many of us would benefit from, rather than thinking we know it all – and ‘if we keep on doing what we’ve always done, we will get what we have always gotten’ – attributed to Henry Ford. So when an open-minded person presents a new way or idea it takes a while for it to be eventually accepted by those around who have an ingrained belief that their way is right.
The greater truth that all this incredible research leads us to is that we are not lonely isolated fragments drifting randomly in a great cosmic soup whose movements and those we make within it have no bearing on our form and the cells within it. We belong to a vast Universal intelligence and order that consistently offers us a pull back towards being able to live in complete accordance with it. As always, the choice is forever ours as to whether we align to this pull, i.e. choose to receive our instructions from the environment that surrounds us and thus align to our true essence or ‘Universality’, or whether we choose to pull against it into ‘individuality’ and therefore the subsequent discordance that then ensues from such a move made against true harmony.
With breast cancer at 60,000 new diagnoses per year in the U.K. and rising, this is a very relevant topic, and one that you have shed refreshing light on – actually offering the means to a cure rather than a temporary fix or symptom-stopper.
The epigenetic story is not a new one, rather it is not popular – it is much easier to push for a pill or magic serum cure than it is to explain to people that it will be the way that they live that can affect their health.
Could this be because we all resist taking responsibility for our lives and therefore leave ourselves in the wilderness of being ‘at the mercy’ of situations, living as though we are not in charge of, and responsible for, our bodies?
So beautifully presented, “The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing.” At the end of the day we are all responsible for our health and wellbeing and a livingness that supports harmony in our bodies.
What is so fascinating about the difference between some genes and epigenetics is its flexibility. This would seem to provide a much wider part of the picture in that our coding is not all fixed rather dynamic. Our choices and lifestyle can therefore influence that return to a harmonious balance in our body or movement towards disharmony and perhaps illness and disease.
This is a front page article. The body knows harmony to its bones (pun intended) and works hard to restore us to harmony.
Yes Felicity wanting to avoid research that supports the biggest source of communication (the body) is crazy when you think about it, but is so evidently the attitude taken when we are choosing to sit in the comfort of irresponsibility in true health care.
I am fascinated by Mina Bissell’s research, I notice that it has escaped mainstream press, yet we say we want to find a cure for cancer and ignore that revelation from her research into the way the body communicates. Very interesting indeed.
“The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing.” It so obvious that fighting our own body year in year out would have to have a serious health ramification. I am so aware that i need to be more switched on with what supports my body in truth. Ignoring that always catches up with me, in both small and bigger implications.
Yes. And when I acknowledge the fact that the way I live has an impact on my health and well-being (and therefore on others and a bigger picture if we take into account how overstretched our health care system is), ‘taking responsibility’ becomes a very simple, practical and purposeful opportunity.
This impact is far greater then we care to be aware of. Each moment we choose to make choices that don’t support our health and well being the closer we are heading towards a grander level of harm to our health system as well.
Fight of any kind is tension at the very least. And so when you consider that many people who discover that they are ill take the stance of ‘fighting’ the illness, it’s easy to see how they’re potentially bringing more tension into their already tense bodies. Does this mean that I am advocating that we simply lie down when we receive a diagnosis and do nothing, no I’m not. But rather than bring fight into the situation we could bring a willingness to understand why we’ve become ill, a certain degree of surrender and a liberal dose of honesty. All things that will support us in this life and beyond.
The answers to all illnesses are in the messages from the body, but we must listen to them and learn how to interpret them. Sometimes they don’t give us the answers we desire, but they always give us the truth.
We have been led to regard our genes as being a fixed and unchangeable, especially when they have mutated. What this article is showing us is that even this extremely precise structure in our cells are in fact very responsive to the quality of their immediate environment. Our genes are able to both mutate and return to their true form as a consequence of how the extracellular environment is cared for or not, something which is very much within our control.
150 people are diagnosed with breast cancer each day, wow that is huge, so many families, communities are affected. The fact that it’s getting worse is also concerning; the fact that your article however shares that the way we live affects our cells provides the answers we need. What always fascinates me is why we wait until it’s too late to change, instead of loving ourselves deeply enough to change how we are living today?
‘Arrogance kills curiosity and passion’. I like this quote from Mina Bissell. From reading a lot about cancer it would seem that vested interests – and corporate greed – are preventing the exploration and use of more natural – and cheaper – ways to combat cancer. But surely prevention is key, for us to live in such a way that the cancer cells that do form in our body don’t take hold because we have built an immune system and a body that won’t allow cancer to take hold.
We incubate illness and disease with our day to day choices. Many of us consistently make choices that are a veritable breeding ground for the mutation of cells. We are the ones doing it to ourselves which although it may sound harsh, means that we are also the very ones who can promote true internal flora with the quality of our choices.
By being aware that our bodies will respond according to the environment we put them in, whatever environment that may be, we really have no excuse to complain if we get sick or injured. How amazing would it be if we were all willing to take full responsibility for anything that happens in our bodies and to make a choice to make the necessary changes in order to truly heal ourselves. If this were the case, our medical system would be a very different one to the one it is today.
Yes this does raise the question – are we ready as a humanity to be responsible for our health via listening to our bodies? It is a big one and one only needs to look around to see the state we are in and how much we don’t listen to our bodies. But in this we have an opportunity to change; to start to stop and feel what is being communicated to us.
‘the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed’ Such a great article Rebecca – the way we live has a very real effect on the outplay of our physical make-up. Most would agree that this makes total sense, but not many of us are willing to undertake the depths of what this means – down to the energetic detail, where everything begins.
With the information, we can learn so much knowledge, but the key is feeling into what the message is from the body. It starts as a learning to transform into a wisdom when it becomes a lived experience. I have experienced both processes and know how much deeper I can recall it when I feel it in my body with a surrender, it gives a much greater confirmation of the process. The body gives us the very wisdom we look outside for.
Beautiful article Rebecca.This is breathtaking discovery about context, by Mina Bissell and team, in detail, that quantum physics provided the basis for at the beginning of the last century (1925). It is very wonderful that this strand of revolutionary science which is much closer to describing the truth of things than any other strand of science, is being made practical for the dawning of a turn around in the way the medical profession sees the growth of cancer.
No matter how much ‘proof’ we get from the double-blind, randomized studies we do, the real answer is in our bodies but we tend to avoid looking there because it means we cannot then blame anything outside ourselves and we would have to take responsibility for our own health. Interesting that Mina Bissell’s research is not ‘front page news’.
It is worth looking at how much we have been conned by scientific research and dogma – even when the average common sense person would quietly differ and ignore the current party line – but what if we were to all speak up openly about what feels true or not. What if we restored to science true open enquiry and learning free from bias, dogma and corruption – what kind of a science would we have then and what kind of relationship could we develop with it.
It amazes me how an experiment/investigation that offers a game changing way to approach breast cancer, with scientific evidence to back it up can be so ignored by the media and medical institutions… We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars researching the cure to cancers, but if the answer was found and it exposed how it was down to our lifestyles and way of living would they actually stop and tell the world?
And if they did – would humanity listen?
“it will ask people to put their health before their ability to do as they like with their bodies, asking them to take responsibility for the scientifically confirmed effect our lifestyle has on our bodies.” This is a brilliant and real piece of research shared here Rebecca confirming our responsibility for our own health and well being and our amazing bodies for showing us when things are not right making illness and disease a loving thing to help us and keep us on track if needed.
Wow – 150 cases of breast cancer diagnosed everyday is insane. If this were happening in a breed of animals we would be much more concerned. Why is this not on the front of our papers. People don’t want to see the illness until they experience it for themselves.
The impact of our environment on our health and wellbeing is clear. How we choose to live is without doubt a contributing factor to our health. So our medical systems now need to transform to include this as a foundational element of health.
I agree Heather – this responsibility for our health needs to underpin all aspects of health care.
When the medical system understands and accepts that how we choose to live, is without doubt a contributing factor to our health, there will be a stronger call to each and everyone of us, by them, to take deeper responsibility for those small daily choices towards our own wellbeing, mental and physical health. This will change the foundation of health and the healthcare system.
Rebecca what is clear is that if we don’t first consider Epigenetics with Genetics then we will never truly appreciate that the way we live life is what is key, that without our willingness to deepen the care, quality and love that we live with – coming from true purpose then true healing can’t take place. Perhaps this is one reason why many who get sick stay in the cycle of sickness rather than heal and move on.
“Breast cancer is now so common it is hard to find someone who is untouched by the disease either directly or indirectly through friends and family.” When I was a child, cancer was not so common as it is today. I mean we did hear about the odd person who got cancer and it came as a shock and would always have us as a family feeling the impact and what it meant to lose the person. And as it was, some of our friends and family got cancer, but it was usually the older generations and though it was still a shock it was not really a surprise as such. But these days, the incidence is far greater, and the people affected are far younger, and it presents a different challenge to come to terms with losing a loved one or a dear friend of a younger age, But like anything, to me this increased incidence of cancer, is a sign for us all in society to be more observant and watchful of how we are living and looking at how this is contributing to and affecting our lives. There is much we can learn from such situations, regardless of whether it is happening to us to to someone we know.
It’s amazing to be able to look at the pictures of cells and structures of these in the understanding that they are subjects of the environment we are in, not just physical conditions such as heat or light etc. but all other factors such as stress and emotions will also affect them.
I agree Michael. All of our environmental conditions have an impact on our cells, whether they are physical, mental or emotional, and this is something that has been somewhat overlooked until fairly recently in the medical profession. A few days ago, I heard that if a group of people sing together having first connected to who they are, that within a short time even their hearts will start beating in unison.
The science of epigenetics and research by Mina Bissell is really interesting and to me shows just how much of an effect our way of living can have on our cellular make-up. The clarity that Serge Benhayon offers on the different kinds of energy that we can choose to move and build our lives with brings in the missing key ingredient here in my opinion; the union of the science of epigenetics and energetic quality gives us the whole picture.
Absolutely Fiona, there is something about each cell and its DNA, but it is also about the cells environment, but then to make our understanding complete, we must bring in the energetics and the quality of our environment in terms of Energy. And hence with what Serge Benhayon presents, we finally get a whole and complete understanding and approach.
I agree Fiona, there is a union and a marriage when western medicine meets the energetic whole that is universal medicine – together they provide the full and complete picture – the physical cure and the energetic healing.
It is quite a thesis to consider the possibility that a cancer cell may not necessarily be pathogenic but actually responding to an external stimulus and all we would need to do is to change the stimulus and the cell would stop behaving as a cancer cell. Very interesting.
We do need more understanding of what is at play with cancer and all illnesses and disease, ‘What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body.’ Absolutely.
“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation”- It then makes lots of sense that the way we live our lives plays an important part in staying healthy.
‘all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them.’ What more proof do we need that how we live our life matters!
Our approach to illness and disease research has predominantly been focused on the issue at hand in isolation. Yet in Mina Bissell’s research, the dependency of the cells on cues from their environment to inform them about how to behave is hugely significant. Perhaps instead of targeting the misbehaving cells themselves, we need to look at everything else in life that has led to what we are facing.
This is a great blog showing how important our internal environment is in determining whether we will get cancer, which brings it back to how we live, our diet, lifestyle, choices etcetera. A cancer cell reverted back to a non-cancerous cell when placed back in a healthy environment, ‘And so they tested it – they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell.’
Why do our cells to mutate and decide to become cancerous, ‘that it is not a random event, but that all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them.’ So how important is it that we look after this environment.
Most of us would swear blind that we didn’t put our hand up for the ailments, illness and diseases that we get, but the truth is that at one level, we are the orchestrators of it all.
Our bodiles are so incredible the way they are able to heal themselves, given the right conditions. And if we truly consider and inderstand this to be the case, it makes sense that by giving it conditions that do not support it, our cells will equally behave in an adverse way. So the state of our health really does ultimatley come down to our daily choices which we are totally responsible for.
Rebecca, thank you for explaining this so clearly. You have made a good point here that this type of research is not likely to be so popular:
a. because it asks people to take responsibility for their health and
b. it will affect those who are invested in ‘curing’ cancer such as researchers and drug companies.
Research results can be manipulated to prove a desired outcome so it would be good to take an overview of all the research that has been done and ‘connect up the dots’. Even without the research it does make sense that ‘the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc., has an effect on our smaller internal environments, that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous.’
If the answer is in our bodies why do we keep seeking short term solutions from our recalled knowledge and intelligence?
‘…what I have found interesting is that the research or information I talk about below is seemingly not taken into consideration, let alone placed equally alongside all other treatments and preventatives.’ Why isn’t the medical world looking at epigenetics? It makes sense that environment and context matters with cancer, just as it does with all else.
The environment we create for ourselves, in our home, in our workplace, in how we are with ourselves, in how we are with others makes an immense difference. If lovingly attended to it creates a nurturing space that cradles us in every moment.
A very clear in depth research and understanding of Breast cancer and all that goes on in our bodies. True understanding comes from the way we are living and this is not from the research often offered to us and very more real to be listened to for the future as we are beginning to see. A really great sharing Rebecca Thank you.
I love your reference to Mina Bissells work. Unlike many other scientists she doesn’t put cancer down to chance or bad luck. Research into lifestyle medicine isn’t attractive to study as there is no money in it for pharmaceutical companies. No evidence doesn’t mean things don’t work. The current obsession with evidence basis is rife in many aspects of society, health and teaching to name but two areas.
I am fully with you Rebecca. I too do understand that there is more to which the body responds. Illness and disease are not something randomly occurring to us but is the end result of what we have presented to it by our way of living. That means, that once we get ill, although we then need the immediate help and support form our medical system to help us cure from the bodily symptoms, changing our way of living to a more harmonious way will massively assist us in our recovery and in the prevention of any future disease.
You make a great point Rebecca about the drug companies not appreciating what this article and evidence shows us, because as you say, this will be the cause of the companies going bust. So what is more important, the money or the true health of the people?
Until we, and the companies with us, are mostly living for the prosperity of us all and not for self gain instead, these companies will remain ignorant to the results of these studies and will continue with doing what they have been doing for centuries, that is to put all their focus on finding that one magic pill that one day will make us all healthy again.
Developing research on prevention, treatments and diagnostics to bring deeper understanding of the epigenetic changes that lead to breast cancer feels crucial in delivering very real, everyday, life-changing choices to us all.
The title of this blog is truly inspiring… “The prevention of breast cancer- the answer is in our bodies” as it seems clear through epigenetics that the body follows and is in response to the choices we make and way we live in it. Possibly prevention is right under our own nose…
Wherever one is in life it is a result of the choices that we lived up to moment so it totally makes sense that “the key to understanding cancer and possibly preventing and/or healing it will be found in the way we live”, and also to so many at present unanswered questions.
Your simplification of epigenetics is greatly appreciated Rebecca, what Mina Bissell and yourself are offering makes complete sense, it is your last paragraph that highlights the crux of this escalating disease, for there are mighty factors that do not want the truth of these findings known.
Lucindag that sums it up, for when the truth is first widely known and then made part of our overall healthcare programs many industries will shrink as they will no longer be needed in the same way.
What a fantastic piece of writing thank you it really is the science behind the questions that people keep asking.
It seems to me that epigenetics is the future of medicine
Really enjoyed reading your in depth blog Rebecca, looking at how our lifestyle affects our body is key, however there needs to be a deeper look at how we get that message across, that lifestyle choices are actually much deeper than most think, it means looking at how we are with ourselves every day, what we eat, how we eat, how we move our body from the first step in the morning to last thing at night, the kind of sleep we have, how we react, the amount of emotion we take on, and the way we speak and express, the list is almost endless. And most of all how this is our responsibility to feel and be aware of, and how we can always change our next choice.
Fascinating, I found reading about what you had written about DNA really easy, understandable and a joy .. I wanted to read more. This just goes to show that our lifestyle affects every single cell within our body ‘So in effect, although your DNA code remains the same for life, your epigenetics are flexible, and whether a gene is wrapped up tightly and difficult to read, or is relaxed and easily accessible, is in reaction to your environment and your lifestyle factors, things like stress or diet’. I recently listened to a woman on the radio who is terminally ill with cancer; what she said is along the similar lines that you share here and was pretty amazing. She shared that she could not blame anything on the cancer but needed to take responsibility and that it bugged her when she heard others talking of their ‘battle’ with cancer as from her point of view she was at war with her body long before the cancer manifested and could even be a reason why it did.
I have begun to understand how the answer to everything is in our body. And if we connect in stillness, we can feel it, and know exactly the way to live.
Fascinating that science is revealing slowly to us just how inter-connected our bodies are and that no cell acts alone without influence from its surrounding ‘compadres’. We can extrapolate that out to human beings as well in that none of us live in isolation to the rest of humanity whether we are physically in contact with others or not, we are energetically connected to everyone all of the time.
I agree Andrew – not only as above so below, but as within so without – that what is true for our cells that make up our bodies should then be true for the bodies that make up humanity.
Very true Andrew our cells are affected by both the micro and macro environments they exist in. Therefore, both the cells in our bodies and human beings are never ‘lone islands’, we are sending out ripples all the time that affect one another’s bodies and in turn one another’s cells. A cell’s ability to return to health is supported both by it’s extracellular environment, plus the social climate the person lives in.
Just how much further could science be revealing or confirming the truth of life, if humanity itself was asking for it?
Brilliant and pertinent point Michael, what sells more The New Scientist or Heat magazine?
So very true Lucinda, and while we can criticise those who reach for that magazine, really what we need to address is why we allowed science to become so stuffy and the preserve only of those with huge intellects. If science is all around us then it should be captivating, for we live in a fascinating world, and we ought to be using our intelligence to convey this in a multi dimensional way that grabs our interest and leaves us fascinated for more.
I love this article for inviting us to ‘play a part in our present and our future wellbeing’.
And in doing so, is it possible that we can also help the issues we currently face around aged care – of a whole generation grows up looking after themselves knowing the affect this will have on their future health, what kind of older population would we end up with?
What Mina Bissel’s research confirms is responsibility and perhaps this is the hardest point for people (and medicine) to currently get their head around. If it’s our daily choices that lead to cancer then it’s time to be responsible for how we live.
I find it amazing that although so much is known about the effect of lifestyle on disease, and cancer in particular, it is like there is a blindspot to actually acknowledging fully this affect that we ourselves outplay. It must come down to our integrity, our willingness to see our full role in the ill health that prevails, and stop using words like fight and battle when it comes to disease. If a cell is altered by our behaviour and become cancerous, or makes a dormant cancerous cell awakened, then surely it is better to pour our focus into how we live, and how this affects our bodies, and stop looking for a cure and a fix when the answer is in how we live.
Let’s welcome any scientist/researcher that is open to look ‘outside the box’ to find the underlying cause of the disease – clearly what we have done so far merely focuses on the cancer itself and ignores the root cause of the ill, which for most women means that they go back to the exact same behaviour and patterns after the physical treatment.
The question I believe we have not asked about genes, is: are genes the actual cause, or the catalyst. In other words, are they simply a marker of potential, or are they the harbinger of doom they are often made out to be, especially with regards to breast cancer. Recent explorations into epigenetics would suggest that it is the former, more than the latter.
Once again it all comes down to taking responsibility! I am the custodian of my cells that belong not to me but to all! If I choose to trash my cells, disease occurs – when I change this behaviour, never ceasing love is there to hold and restore my true nature. Cellular level or macro level – one is indeed a reflection of the other. Awesome re read Rebecca.
Having been diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, from my experience Yes for sure the answer lays within us. Every part of the disease was about my relationship with myself and the outside world. By focusing on the quality of my relationship with me rather than the disease which was simply the end product of loveless choices I was making in life, I have been able to make sustainable changes in how I regard myself and care and love me first. I underwent whatever surgery and medical care was necessary but it was being willing to consider and look more deeply that has meant the experience was a healing one, as I had the opportunity to stop the behaviours that were actually killing me.
What you describe kind of reminds me of making a sandwich around the disease – one one side we have conventonal medicine, providing the support and surgery to physically recover and on the other side is the personal responsability and willingness to look at how our lives lead to this point, and what changes we can make that will not only further support the healing process, but remove the root cause to help prevent a possible recurrence.
Thinking our illness and disease is just a random bad luck experience is so very disempowering. Realising what we face is the end product of the way we have been living for a long time and that it is a loving prompt for us to refine how we relate to life is immensely empowering.
This is an awesome article Rebecca – epigenetics is an area of science which begins to bridge the gap between our way of living and the scientific or medically accepted reasons for our illness and disease. Perhaps epigenetics would be more influential if it did not also start to show that we are ultimately responsible for our own wellbeing and our own health.
‘The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against.’ We are re-discovering that the body communicates everything we need to know right back to us and that the medicine we need to consider is the very way we live.
I find it fascinating to read how responsive our bodies are to a cellular level, constantly communicating with the extra cellular matrix, according to their environment staying healthy or not. Thank you for writing this brilliant blog Rebecca.
This is profoundly revealing but makes complete sense. Even something as simple as a very gentle hum can introduce a different vibration throughout the body that has the potential to touch every cell and change the way it is vibrating, and so bringing it back into harmony with the cells around it. We have so much potential to change our lives around if we are willing to take responsibility for the way we are living them and the choices that we make.
If we consider that even a very gentle hum can support the body’s return to harmony it becomes clear that nothing is too small or too insignificant on our health and wellbeing.
A brilliant and fascinating read. And it feels like of course a group of cancerous cells would revert to their harmonious ways when placed with cells that are harmonious themselves. It reminds me of people and how we act by usually following the norms around us – a kind of cellular peer pressure according to what energy is predominant.
This is a profound revelation offered here. No thing and no one in the Universe exists in isolation. Everything is in constellation and relationship with everything else. It makes sense that we can not consider truly healing or even supporting ourself without starting to reflect on every aspect of the whole of our life.
The fact that cells are known to be influenced by the environment is something that needs to be considered with far more importance, the answer to so many of the health issues is clearly down to the way society as a whole is living – perhaps our resistance to have to change how we life is driving cancer reserach down other paths – yet what you share here is clearly where we will all eventually have to get to and then surpass.
The field of epigenetics offers us all a way to make every day count in our lives with choices that support and honour our wellbeing, rather than being at the mercy of our family history.
I have started to look at how I am living and they way I am going about my life and can see how driven and hard I have been. To be able to give ourselves the grace to see that this isn’t supportive and that the body contracts and shuts down is super important to register. Once this happens we can see that there is another choose that can be made. One that is deeply loving and honouring of how I feel – The choice is always ours.
What a great blog Rebecca, so much knowledge and wisdom shared and so very much appreciated. I love what you have exposed and highlighted. Our quality of life is dependent on the choices we make and the responsibility we take; I learnt a lot as to how this plays out in our bodies, thank you.
Awesome sharing to show how we live is so critical to what happens in our bodies. It is as simple as that – and i know in myself that I can always go deeper, always be more gentle, always appreciate my body more – because we’re at a stage in the world where we are getting sicker, and being able to have a choice in how we live is a huge start to supporting my body.
Rebecca I love how you have opened up the topic on breast cancer and illness/disease. So often our 1st thought is how to stop it or cure it rather than actually look at why these things are happening and what our bodies are showing us about the way we are living. There is soo much we can learn from our bodies when we stop and listen to them rather than just wanting to get through from one day to the next.
Sometimes the best way we can learn is through another person sharing their experiences. I have seen women and heard many women share their experiences of breast cancer or other illnesses and diseases, and in this process when you hear the details and get to see what the person is going through, it is sometimes enough for us to stop and assess our own life to see how we are faring and if the choices we are making are truly supportive or not. There lies great value in learning from another, and there lies great value in learning from our own choices too. And in reading about statistics and the research on the illnesses and conditions, we need to realise that these numbers are people, real people and that we all have a choice and can make a difference.
What a great article Rebecca, showing how the way we live has a huge effect on the way our health is. It is a knowing fact that with Diabetes life style choices create the biggest problem.
A great title to a much needed blog “why does humanity have dementia and why are we downplaying it?
“…The epigenetic alterations that occur are not well understood, other than that they are key contributors to breast tumour formation…” And the possibility of considering “… that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body…”
… I wonder, with more study and understanding into epigenetics, that it could be part of the way of how to prevent formation of breast cancer?
I wonder why one theory or intervention such as genetic counselling is championed over another and why we don’t enquire further for a fuller picture of cancer and its prevention? We rely so much on the medical profession and research to provide us with solutions and yet how do we engage with the wisdom of our own bodies and felt sense.
It’s true Rebecca, our reactions to life have to have a consequence somehow. If they build and build without being cleared then our bodies simply have to express this – in the form of illness.
I have heard that other research about the shoestring end bit (telomeres) on our DNA that if short, it opens us up to all sorts of things that are not good. The longer they are, the healthier we are! We can change the ends length by lifestyle changes. Why are we waiting for science to tell us something we have always been able to feel but wanted confirmation for out outside?
I’m so glad there are people like you, Rebecca in this world and asking the questions needed to evolve us all out of this ‘victim’ trap of thinking disease and illness are just random events we have no say in. Mina Bissell’s research should be on the front page of everything everywhere yet because it asks us to be responsible for the context/environment we live in as ‘cells’, there is little interest. I also like connections you’ve made with her research and epigenetics as I hadn’t fully understood it until now. Thank you.
It makes perfect sense that for every movement or thought, we cause particles to shift, which also has an impact on every cell in our body. This brings a whole new awareness to the quality we choose to live in as your article suggests Rebecca, we are the result of our choices
I agree – with research in physics showing the constant shifts and changes in electron energy levels as no one electron can share the same energy level as another, we cannot consider our actions, through and feelings to not be affecting this constant movement and in what way?
Rebecca this makes so much sense, that the way we choose to live affects the macro and micro levels of our lives. Considering our bodies as the bearers and wearers of our every thought and action is a great awareness to have, without this we could run amuck and perhaps not treat ourselves so well. At some point things start to break down when miss treated.
The next step from knowing the impact of ‘lifestlye’ would be to actually measure that life style – not simply in the obvious risk factors, but also looking at why sometimes the top athletes get sick and they have the best so called health and nutrition in the world – surely that raises some questions?
As we go out into the world and find ourselves imposed upon by Societal rules, regulations, demands, the separative beliefs and ideals around religions, culture and nationalism, we lose ourselves and take on ways of being that are not us. The end result is that the body becomes stressed and suffers in different ways expressing it’s distress with different symptoms or indicators of dis-ease – we become lost, we lose our shape. What Mina Bissell showed when she separated out the cells is a reflection of what has happened to us in the temporal world and shows that it is time to re-connect and re-claim the divine beings we truly are.
Thanks Rebecca, you have opened up much needed contemplation around what it truly means to address lifestyle choices. To merely correct our diets and go to bed early is so far from the mark when what underpins our choices is the energy that is coursing through the body in every moment. That has far more impact than any outer resulting choice. If we don’t address that, we won’t address the end resulting illness and disease.
Well said Jenny. The energy that we choose is ultimately what makes our lives what they are and reflects our true state of health. If we want something to change, then this is what we have to address.
Exactly Sandra, until we understand this as a society, that change doesn’t happen just because we want it to, or because we try to make different choices from that wanting. Until we address the why we do it, we won’t shift the energy that’s behind it, and hence it will just continue to impulse the same, or some variation of the same behaviour… and the body will reflect the fact.
Thank you Rebecca for this amazing information that really makes sense. The science of epigenetics is really revealing what is going on in our bodies scientifically which combined with the ancient wisdom of the way we live and who we really are offers us the realities of the harm we do in how we are living as society as a whole and the changes we can make.
We cannot under estimate the influence that anything can have on our bodies, whether it something that has a physical impact, or a more subtle but mental or emotional one. It is these more subtle influences that can go undetected for so long, but that end up having a physical imapact if we are not willing or choosing to feel how they affect us in our physical body. Everything around us will induce some sort of cellular reaction, it is how we respond that is the key.
Rebecca those statistics are very exposing on how common breast cancer is and how many lives it is affecting. That doesn’t even take into consideration the people that are affected by those that have breast cancer. What you present is extremely powerful in that we could actually have within us the ability to turn those figures around and see a massive decline if we were to stop and look at our lifestyle and the way we are living as women. There is clearly a common trend that is neglecting the key importance of what it is to be a woman. I know when we make our lives about everything else except ourselves that this has to have an impact on the quality of our being.
Great point to highlight about the tendency of women to side line taking loving responsibility for themselves whilst they prioritise others and that this ultimately does not serve.
It is scientifically known that even the most chaotic or disturbed particle is endeavouring to return to harmony. I love what you are presenting here . . . “By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing” . . . Beautifully said Rebecca and this means being aware of what our body can and cannot handle and acting on that awareness taking full responsibility for our own health and well-being.
it makes so much sense – we belong to a universal order that we are part of, just as each cell and organ in our body works together to bring harmony to the whole, so too do we have a part to play in the constellations of our Universe..
Thank you for bringing the science to what I feel is true in my body.
I wonder how far we would be getting in the prevention of breast cancer if we intensely studied the epigenetics of breast cancer and cancer in general. This may then give us options to change the progression towards cancer. It may be difficult for the private sector to justify paying for this but a large endowment may be a possibility.
Fascinating to think of ourselves as the cell, and the life we lead as the petri dish… what kind of environment do we choose day to day for our bodies, and if its one of stress, disorder and abuse, is it any wonder that our bodies then get sick?
Life really is a petri dish – awash with different enviroments and signaling to us all the time. But in the end a cell has a cell wall which determines what can enter or exit the cell – in the end we have a choice as to what in our environment effects us.
Are we not just one giant cell with legs that builds an extra wall to protect our bad choices?
It would certainly be interesting to look at life like this – a scaled up model of cells in an ecosystem – how would it change policy and society if we were to consider the choices we make as affecting the environment around us. Much like when a cell excretes harmful waste, could we be doing the same when we shout and swear and get angry and abusive, or when we get stressed and tense – what if these things seep into our environment and can be picked up on by other people – other cells.
At such a young age we give our power away to others, being told how we feel and what that means. When something was going on with our bodies then there would be an echo of reasons as to why it was going on. But when given the space to feel our own bodies and what it is that they are communicating to us then we actually really do get to know what is telling us. Medical support is incredible and necessary but we don’t need to give up and give our power away in doing so.
This is something we clearly need to turn around. Instead of teaching our young to dismiss their own awareness and feelings, to supporting them in making sense of what they are feeling and their ability to express it. Such level of self honouring and responsibility will then be with them the rest of their life. The expertise of the Medical profession is necessary and appreciated, and when it is embraced as part of a bigger context of deeply caring for and being responsible for our lives it is immensely empowering.
So good article Rebecca, I’ve been amazed to read it and on the same time feeling a big aha inside. Yes definitively the answer is using our ability to respond to whatever situation we go through hand by hand with our body instead of throwing it like a soldier on the frontline for a battle of war. It’s a matter of choice to get along with our body like a buddy, your research is an appeal for responsibility worth to listen, thanks for it.
A brilliant article Rebecca. Simple and clear in its explanation, and plain to see that by making some simple changes to the way we live in order to bring harmony into the body can have a potentially astounding and positive effect on any illness or dis-ease. What an enormous asset this model would be to Western medicine if it were to be fully embraced.
Are cancers just the extreme end of the bell curve? One end could be that first cigarette. Lifestyle covers the whole gambit of things that are not conducive to the vessel we occupy. These are all choices that we have the power to change.
Well said Steve – ill health is not simply the end point of disease or illness – there are many steps taken away from health to reach that point, steps we can recognise and track back so that we can see not only what leads us to these end points, but that an absence of disease is not necessarily a marker of health but could simply be a point along the same line.
I am not sure. The frustrating thing about the bell curve and cancer is that people all along from the bell curve get cancer. Yes, the odds change as you move from one end to the other but you can get cancer from anywhere on the curve.
What a great research article Rebecca, and the ramifications are across the board, therefore I feel this research is applicable to every type of cancer. Life-style choices have to make a difference to our body’s internal structures and whether or not it becomes cancerous.
I agree Greg – these findings are not restricted to breast cancer alone. We are currently in the desperation for treatment against the rising tides of illness and the work done by western medicine is amazing but we are seeing the fact that we cannot sustain the levels of treatment demand is asking for.
The answer definitely is in the ‘way we live’, and if the medical profession would become the leading lights in having a Livingness that truly supported their bodies maybe then the patients would follow the example they set. Not only that medico’s would get a greater understanding about the root cause of illness and disease and start to prescribe with a different approach. Thank you Rebecca this is a great conversation that is very much needed.
This certainly brings the responsibility of our health and well-being directly back to us and the choices we make in our daily lives.
“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed.” This is a fascinating read Rebecca… it makes so much sense that the way we choose to live impacts our bodies – how can it not?!
Awesome Rebecca – I love the way you break this subject down from something so large to something as small as our cells. What a new slant this research gives to caring for our environment, for if each cell changes and and responds completely and utterly to its context, then the same is surely true of all of us too. What internal environment do we create? What is the outward one we help to make? There is no limit to the effect that our choices have.
This is an amazing blog and sharing on cancer cells our body and the way we live being the major contributing factor to Breast Cancer and its development and cure. The answer is there in our bodies all along and one could ask why is this not more studied when our body is the marker of our life and shows us so much calling out to us to listen. The study of epigenetics you share here Rebecca is amazing and offers us so much to work with and simply makes sense, is very empowering and gives us the key to change how we live to one of harmony and flow.
“Could it be that the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc. has an effect on our smaller internal environments,..” YES “…that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous?” YES! Makes total and sense that each choice affects everything down the line to the smallest component of the body.
The answer to much illness and disease lies in the details, at least that’s my interpretation. If we make choices in every moment, it is open to us to consider their impact, do they heal or harm us, do they leave us in equilibrium or throw us out of homeostasis. As an example, that might be how we respond to something that is emotionally pulling us, do we want to be taken out of balance in response to events we can’t control. It seems a rather haphazard way to live, especially as we have a choice to not react and instead take stock of each situation and read what it all means. Is our lack of observation and indulgence in reaction and drama actually killing us, it does seem like it might be.
The body has soooo much information it tells us, we have to choose not to dull or numb it but listen to the messages. It does it’s best to help us and we can be our own worst enemy by ignoring it.
I literally love this blog for the simple fact it makes everything very real and simple.
The answer to cancer and to everything is certainly in our bodies Rebecca. And it is very cheering to see that Science is realising this fact. Wonderful that Mina Bissell is publishing what she has found and crucial that we spread the news. Which reminds me – I will send this out on Social media . . .again!
A brilliant article Rebecca. With the scientific proof in that: “… the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed” and that “,.. cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation” – it really is extraordinary that this is not headline news across the globe and that medical researchers, doctors and complementary therapists everywhere aren’t formally trained and seriously addressing the lifestyle risk factors side of things regarding all illness and disease.
It really begs the question “WHY?”
“It is the context the cell finds itself in that determines what it will do.”So, how that context comes about and how to change it are crucial insights. It is interesting how this approach makes us an essential part of the story; which we are.
If we consider what epigenetic has to offer we can look further than interventions and look what contribution our choices make to our health and quality of life.
I agree – treatment is vital, but prevention is the key. If we can live in a way that reduces the propensity of cancer to develop, we can significantly reduce the need for treatment
This is an amazing sharing on the facts about breast cancer our health system and what is really going on. The state of affairs in the NHS and world health organisations everywhere is not coping and the call is for us to all take responsibility for our own health and well being by true caring in the way we live. The answer is in our bodies all we have to do is connect and listen which is simple and true and very empowering.
Articles like this need to be published on the front page of newspapers. It is fascinating that the research of Mina Bissell’s work has such evidence yet not many people of heard of it and that it has not been embraced by the health systems and governments. Why would such clear and precise information and proof be not available for all of us to see easily? If we were to have this as our consideration that our environment is essential to our health and our bodies then it certainly gives us the opportunity to reflect on the way we are living.
“… By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing…” This, to me shows us just how much epigenetics inter-relates with the study of Preventative Medicine.
We have all felt that cancer has environmentally been the culprit! Research has always focused on cures, that’s where the money is. Mina Bissell’s work is now the piece of scientific proof that was missing that establishes a foundation of the cause of cancers and provides a whole new way in preventing and curing it.
I agree with Mina Bissell that arrogance kills curiosity and passion about deepening our awareness. This coupled with our tendency to avoid accountability and responsibility for what life is reflecting to us means we have been content with seeing breast cancer and all other physical issues as something that just happens to us. Yet more and more inspired individuals such as Mina Bissell and Serge Benhayon offer us glimpses of a far deeper, expanded and responsible relationship with our health and the whole fabric of life.
I agree with Mina Bissell that arrogance kills curiosity and passion about deepening our awareness. This coupled with our tendency to avoid accountability and responsibility for what life is reflecting to us means we have been content with seeing breast cancer and all other physical issues as something that just happens to us. Yet more and more inspired individuals such as Mina Bissell and Serge Benhayon offer us glimpses of a far deeper, expanded and responsible relationship with our health and the whole fabric of life.
I love the title of your blog Rebecca because it says it all. We look all over the place to find a cure for cancer yet with all things in life, the answer is very simple and actually in ourselves, our body.
This is a fascinating blog that is a must read. I like this summary -“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer.” Knowing this empowers us to make more loving choices which then supports the body rather than what we mostly do which is to work against the body.
We could ask the question, ‘Why are some areas of the body more prevalent in growing cancers than others?’ and this is where the understanding comes as to lifestyle and how it affects our health. If every organ and every part of our body reflects a particular aspect of our lifestyle, then if, for example, our breasts are our centres for nurturing and nurturing is something we are all don’t do, then it is not surprising that breast cancer is so prolific. There are such opportunities for Western Medicine to work with the Ageless Wisdom in understanding our illnesses and, what’s more, in preventing them occurring in the first place.
150 women diagnosed with breast cancer every day and over 11,000 women die every year in UK, those statistics are horrendous. So the research into the cause of breast cancer continues, forever looking outward, but your evidence here Rebecca shows we need to look inward to find the reason for this is how we are living.
I agree Gill – those statistics are horrendous, and although there have been amazing increases in survival rates, diagnosis rates continues to rise. Instead of trying to deal with the end result, we need to stem the flow of what is causing it.
Those statistics really do portray the state of our society very well. Thanks for sharing Gill.
If we know that most cancerous cells result from our epigenetics, the choices we make on a daily basis, and if we know, to use some specific examples, that the glass of wine, the deep fried takeaway food or less obviously that angry exchange and that undealt with issue that we have not addressed are causes of cancer, and most people I talk to accept the affects of food, drink and stress, then what feels needed is a deeper exploration of the root cause. The why of not caring for ourselves and directly sabotaging our health over the years. It is like a game of russian roulette, we know something isn’t good for us, but it medicates us to not feel so we do it anyway. it is this medicating that we can consider, for under it lies the reasons why we make choices that give us cancer.
Rebecca, great article, I love how simple and accessible you have made this subject, usually scientific research and papers I find hard to read and understand because of the scientific language used. What you are sharing here makes complete sense, ‘our life gives us signals, that we can choose to respond or react to, either making our environment a healthy and harmonious one, or one that effectively ‘gives us cancer’?
This is a brilliant article bringing to our attention an alternative take on research, illness and disease. Can we accept that the lack of attention given to research like Mina Bissel’s may well be due to the fact that we do not want to take responsibility for our own health or the overall wellbeing of our societies?
The work of Mina Bissell is very important because she is addressing the common thought processes that tend to go along with cancer, because there has been quite a strong tradition to date of how we are to address and consider cancer as a disease. However, through her scientific research Ms Bissell is breaking through these well established constructs of modern thinking and is making way for the future of what both medicine and disease will be.
It would be quite something if we could reverse cancer or even reduce the rate at which we as a population get cancer by measures that are in addition to modifying our cancer-generating lifestyle actions like smoking or drinking.
Brilliantly said Rebecca ‘The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing.’ – and fabulous, because then illness and disease is never ‘random’ and we can enjoy taking responsibility for our health and wellbeing.
This is fascinating research and points to the fact that we have far more say in our health and wellbeing than is the widely accepted current view. Could it be that far from being doomed to a genetic lottery we actually can mould and change the shape of our own DNA by the way we live and the choices we make on a day by day, moment by moment basis?
I agree, we are far more in control of the outcome of our lives and its quality than we often get told. It is not about aiming for a illness, disease or problem free life, but one where the quality lived carries us through whatever occurs in the physical body
Amazing and informative Rebecca, the drug companies would be all over it if they could bottle and patent it but alas for them. The responsibility with our health is really in our own hands, sure we all need doctors and pharmaceuticals from time to time but we can definitely reduce the odds of get a disease by the way we live and the environment we live in.
An amazing article, with much to take on board in terms of how willing we are to look beyond the search for external causes for our illnesses and diseases and consider the part we play in our individual and overall health as a race.
I agree Matilda, we have a tendency in life to always be looking outside of ourselves, further and further, without ever taking the time to look within and reflect on the effect of our choices.
I agree – it is all over the news that our NHS is at breaking point and cannot continue under the current unprecedented levels of strain. What if this is the best time to look at our way of living, the strain we place on our bodies and the possibility that they two are not able to function correctly under this strain
It is all over the news that our NHS is at breaking point, but is anybody really listening or doing anything about it? This is the best time to take responsibility for ourselves, because if we don’t and the NHS implodes, who will look after us then?
Exactly Rebecca – one way to reduce strain is to increase capacity, another way would be to reduce demand by living a healthier lifestyle.
With a family history of Breast Cancer I have experienced a kind of fait accompli when it comes to Doctors giving me a checkup. It is assumed I am at the mercy of this seemingly unstoppable disease. But what you write above Rebecca blows that theory out of the water, and offers a way of being empowered in the face of genetics.
I agree Heather – it gives people who have for their whole lives felt like the threat of cancer has loomed over them outside of their control are given back the power to determine to a great extent your own health.
This really is the ‘all in one’ explanation of breast cancer and tumours; imagine if this was taught in schools, and we were offered the opportunity from a young age to understand in more depth what was going on in the world and with our families, relatives and/or friends who may have cancer. Science would be worldly rather than a subject many students find tricky because of the complicated detail, language and processes.
Yes, Susie, ‘science would be worldly’ and there would be a forum for all the questions we ask of ourselves to be explored without necessarily having a straight up immediate answer. Humility in accepting all that we do not understand and have yet to open up to is an important aspect of evolution and learning.
This is such an empowering blog that we all have the opportunity to embrace. That through making certain changes in our environments will support us to have harmonious balance in the body. I know one thing that I work on daily is not going into nervous energy to cope with the day and brace myself with what I have to get done. Letting myself let go and also to be able to see what is going on around me doesn’t necessarily mean I need to be what is going on in me – learning to observe and not absorb.
It has always surprised me that epi-genetics has not received more publicity by the press. Maybe that is because it serves to point to the the part we all play in our own health – that we are not necessarily just the victims of the random lottery of genetics. In other words, the study of epi-genetics calls us to be responsible for our life in a way that the mere study of genetics does not.
I agree Adam – the seeming complexity is given free reign as we make excuses as to why its hard to prove to what extent this or that does or doesn’t affect our genes. In the end, I have seen with my own eyes the power that changing life choices can have – I have felt them in myself and it is not rocket science to put two and two together and say that maybe, just maybe, a life of stress and anxiousness, of disharmony, lack of exercise, poor diet etc., might have an adverse effect on the body
Yes Adam, epi-genetics makes so much sense and I also ask why it gets so little attention.
I can’t help but notice a trend humanity has for avoiding implications of personal responsibility.. it is a much harder pill to swallow than a pill itself… and what epi-genetic discoveries strongly asks us to take a very honest look at our part in our health…
I love your extraordinary work Rebecca the upshot being that True Wisdom simply and naturally dispels fear.
The statistics in this article are mind-boggling. 150 women per day! That is a colossal number to happen everyday, with even more people affected who are not a part of this figure, such as the children, partners, parents, friends, colleagues etc who also have to deal with the prospect of loosing someone they love. But I love so much what Rebecca has presented, she is a bright light in this field.
In 2014 there were 356860 new cases of all cancers in the UK or 977 per day. With breast, prostate, lung and bowel accounting for 53%. And, these numbers are growing every year! There is so much evidence that the cause of cancer is indirectly related to the way we are living… when will we stop and listen to what our bodies are saying to us?
This is incredible science which makes sense to the very fiber I am made of.
We know how a simple thought can cause massive chemical reactions in the body as with a sexy thought releasing hormones or a fearful thought triggering the adrenals… so it is not a big leap to consider that how we think and how we live creates an internal environment which can be supportive or harmful to our bodies.
If we picture one child growing up in a hostile & neglectful environment and another in a loving & supportive one we know the out come of their emotional and physical health will not be the same… With this in mind; are we not the creators of our internal environments as well and our cells like the many children who live in the Ghetto, village or joyful world that we are creating every moment by our every choice?
Absolutely Jo, it is indeed incredble science. And it brings it all back to the responsibility we have in every single moment and everything that we do, say and even think, as all of these things, no matter how minute they are, have a direct physical and emotional impact both internally and externally on not only our own bodies but also on the people around us.
Yes Sandra,
Now that I know Serge and many of the students of the inner most and now that I am taking more responsibility myself I have a glimpse of what taking full responsibility looks like… and it makes more sense to me than anything else; I see that:
Taking responsibility for every choice and/or reaction, thought, emotion and action heals us and the world.
‘However, what is not often taught is that your DNA on its own is only part of the story of how you come to exist and what happens to you during life.’ – This point is super important and humanity has yet to fully understand the importance of epigenetics and how much our way of living affects our health and wellbeing.
This description of epigenetic outlines how even our genes are constantly responding and in relationship with all aspects of life and nothing happens in isolation from each another. This would highlight that we have an opportunity to take energetic responsibility for our choices.
Given the simple but extremely powerful work of Mina Bissell, that you have shared and expanded on, why is it that we have not yet listened to this. When I consider this point it also comes up why have I not fully listened as her work does not need scientists to do anything in a lab but for us to all look at at the harmony we bring to our life.
If a cell can revert back to its normal function with the right environment then could this indicate that many medical conditions that doctors perceive to be permenant are not? Our bodies are amazing but do we appreciate and respect all that our bodies can do?
We know living with high levels of stress and reacting to situations or others is harmful to us, we can feel it in our bodies, so why is it we resist the steps to change our environment, the way we live and react to a way of living that is more natural and harmonious?
Yes Fiona, It is not a big step to consider that our internal environment would be affected by stress and reactions, as we feel this all the time… so it is really important to ask that question ‘why do we resist working on changing the environment and the ways we live that are not bringing health and harmony?’.
It is common sense to me that our body is affected by how we think and move and whether or not we are feeling free and joyful to be all of who we are, or if we are feeling contracted and less than who we really are… perhaps with all this illness and dis-ease we are seeing exactly what this does to our very cells which are subject to the energy of the environment they are in…
I agree fiona – it is a common sense part of life that we can feel in our bodies when we get angry, sad, stressed, frustrated etc and yet we don’t link up the dots between this physical reaction and the end point of illness or disease.
If a cancerous cell reverts back to a healthy cell when put into a normal environment, what potential this poses for bringing love, care and nurturing to the body.
I agree Ruth, we all know the feeling when we are sick and get into a hot bath, or warm bed and give ourselves some space to relax and rest and come back to balance – everything feels instantly better, what if we lived in this restful state of being all the time
Absolutely. The potential for what we can change simply by bringing true love and care to our bodies is enormous. The key is consistency and committment to bringing it into every moment of everyday.
That genetic lottery and if the odds of winning (losing) and getting cancer are high enough, then you do not wait for your number to come up, you have the surgery (in relation to breast cancer for example). Yet Rebecca informs us beautifully that the science is there to support lowering those odds significantly when we go beyond ‘normality’ in how we measure our health choices in our lives in order to satisfy a certain cultural expectation as to what makes a ‘good’ life, despite our bodies. Yes it surely means sacrificing the binge eat or drink that ‘normally’ occurs every few months, to lower our standards of health and wellbeing enough in the other 95% of our lives so we fit in. And it also means opening up to a divine knowing within that if we truly connect and listen to that inner voice and live by its principles, then we can trust that our bodies can tell us what lifestyle choices will arrange those epigenomes in configurations that can play their part in sustaining our existence with a balance and vibrancy that can truly serve the greater whole. So it comes down to listening and supporting our bodies in various ways to live simply and naturally through an inner wisdom and for me, this is the same inner knowing which says, it is totally up to each individual to make their own choice.
mmm there is so much in what you say here on breast cancer that I can apply in the area I work in. You have given me so much food for thought here. I know I will take this and bring it in to my daily living. I have been aware of Mina Bissell’s work but the way you have shared it has supported me to find the link that I couldn’t see for looking! bananas! Thank you.
Mina Bissell is a truly great scientist in her ability to stay open and observe without being influenced by the possibility that if her findings show that individual responsibility (how we live) plays a key role in preventing and reversing cancer rather than a medicine we can take without having to change anything we do, the funding may not be there…
Isn’t it time we look with fresh eyes at our health issues, untainted by what we ‘want’ to see or not see?
I love the detail of the DNA and the genes and how the epigenetics are flexible. This marries the science and the art together that how we live in the body makes a difference to what happens to the structure of our basic makeup. It is real proof that we can make a difference so when we change how we live, the body will respond. The cure for our ills comes not only from the medics but from within.
As a woman I can say that I have spent many years of my life looking outside, to be liked, understood, seen for who I am, agreed with, accepted, concerning how I dress, how I speak, what I choose…and I am an independent, opinionated and courageous woman, but still I have fallen into the trap of what others think or perceive about me…I am realising how damaging this is for my health. Our bodies hold wisdom, there is no doubt that being aware, connected and honouring of how our bodies feel and function supports us in so many ways. Our health flourishes for example, I say enough of cancer being our enemy, a fight to be had, but instead develop a conversation such as is found in this article and in the comments below.
It would make sense that breast cancer has one or more causes with some causes more important than others. It would then also make sense that, if we can and do remove those causes, our breast cancer rates would reduce.
I love the way you make such sense of science in the way you express Rebecca – if Science was presented this way at school I feel that everyone would want to become a scientist and join you in exploring the wonders of the world. I knew instinctively that the way I lived affected whether my body was functioning well or not. However, I wasn’t sure how to join up the dots – and I certainly had never heard that our body holds such wisdom and power when we connect. Serge Benhayon has brought a new depth of understanding to the world – one that will be there to serve the world ad infinitum.
The further science progresses into how amazing the body we occupy really is, the further we get from simply listening to what it is telling us!
The answer to illness is definitely in our bodies. I can feel very acutely when my energy expands and when it contracts. When I am expanded I feel vital and healthy. When I am contracted I feel depleted and as if I could get sick. My body tells me the way. It is up to me to choose to listen. If I don’t I am choosing a path that leads to illness.
How fascinating that the cancerous breast cell reverted to a normal healthy cell when its environment was changed. What a powerful message this is, that in taking care of ourselves and changing our lifestyle to living responsibly could have such a change on our health. Thank you Rebecca.
I love the understanding of the epigenetics with our health Rebecca. This is changing the face of research that proves at a cellular level how we do influence our health by how we live. When we know this, then we can feel the responsibility of how we live our lives, and know we have a choice to change it. So our good health or ill health is totally in our hands. It’s not a criticism when we become ill, because the body is giving us a correction with this in order to help us learn more. The body is so great!
The fact that this won’t make drugs company millions would be an incentive that the industry and people, organisations and governments that have investments in this will do everything in their power to with hold any evidence that would otherwise change the current situation. It is no surprise that the scientific evidence that Mina Bissell has presented has been under the radar. The question is who is it that is in control and do they really care about the people?
There are people who have a very strong financial incentive to reduce the incidence of breast cancer: Those who pay for our health care and who administer our health system. They need to see evidence that there is a treatment and then that treatment could get a lot of support. For example, there are psychological interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy that don’t make a lot of money but that are very popular.
This is gold, in relation to the future of medicine, and its treatments of diseases… ” it is not a game of the genetic lottery, or one where you one day randomly wake up with cancer, but a view where cancer is the result of a context or environment that is signalling a normal healthy cell to become cancer…” Everything, the way we live, our thoughts, emotions, attitudes all seem to have an impact on our internal cellular environment. Could Self-Care and Self-Love be the cornerstone of Preventative Medicine?
The question on my mind is… who benefits from keeping this information from being looked into more deeply and eventually be taught as common knowledge?
On a practical level, the Pharmaceutical Companies obviously do not want anything as big as cancer to be addressed by simple life style adjustments and daily choices to be more responsible, for there is no profit in people self caring.
From an energetic prospective, there is a force much more evil than any drug company alone, it’s a force that works through empty men and women in many roles, preying and relying on people being numbed out and ignorant to their own power…. It can come through people with big big money, sugar industry, tobacco companies, Politicians in bed with drug companies. They are the obvious big fish but it can also come through your great Aunt pushing a Christmas cake on you, or an old school belief that having a glass of milk a day is healthy and gives you calcium, it’s an energy that does not want to be exposed, that knows that if we really embrace this new research we are unable to indulge any more without taking responsibility for our actions. So really when you think of it, the force that doesn’t want this information to be available to all equally can come through any of us, if we step away from our purpose and into the shadows.
Hear hear Sarah. How about a whole article on this?
I have never written an article, but it’s clear from the length of my comments that I am an in the closet writer wanting to bust out! There are a few things stopping me from going there, one is once I do, I don’t think I will stop and what if I just keep writing? The responsibility and attention you get from a whole article freaks me out a bit but I do have a lot to say, in commenting only I am safe, for what I have to say will be buried in the bottom of a pile, therefore less attention, less responsibility, less scary….Total cop out I know, but I am painfully honest all the time, I really do want to take the plunge though! It’s almost like I am standing at the edge of the pool, dipping my toes in, my arms in, playing in the water but I can’t get the guts up to jump, I think someone just needs to push me in so I can get over it! hahaha
When science is able to propose or suggest a possible causual factor such as how a gene might be responsible for breast cancer, we could even look further as to why our genes manifest that way, or we could just stayed focused on finding a solution to not having that gene. In my experience a solution only provides part of the answer and reduces our understanding to an aspect of the problem, not a true healing where the whole is addressed.
There is so much we can explore here from Mina Bissell’s research if only we choose to. We raise a vast amount of money every year in order to find a cure for breast cancer and we will keep on raising money if we want answers from outside of us. What if and why not put this money to further explore Mina Bissell’s research so that we can have a greater understanding into the cause of breast cancer and our part, our responsibility in creating the cancer in our body? I know and understand this is a big pill to swallow but if we so desire and want to know the root cause and the way in which cancer is formed in the body then we have to accept this truth. Thank you Rebecca for sharing your research project as I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it which is unusual as I can easily get distracted and lose presence when reading and understanding anything on science.
When presented in this way it is indeed surprising that this research is not more public knowledge but then again perhaps not surprising given the fact that it all points to the fact that the best medicine is how we live which is a huge step up in responsibility for all of us and will not make anyone much money, and would expose many charities doing research into finding the magic ‘cure’ for cancer. But eventually the truth will become common knowledge – it is only a matter of time.
A very practical and common sense approach to illness and disease, our lifestyle choices determine the quality of our health.
What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. – So as a population why are we not living responsibly in relation to the choices we are making when this makes absolute sense? Why would we not first connect to what is loving and therefore supportive first above everything else? Hmmmm because there are a lot of comfortable ways that do not support the body such as staying up late, watching excessive amounts of TV or playing video games, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, consuming sugar, striving for perfection, and the list goes on and on. There is a level of responsibility that one must live when one accepts that the choices we make in the way that we live have a far greater impact on out health and wellbeing than what is being collectively acknowledged.
An absolute YES to this Rebecca: ‘Could it be that the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc., has an effect on our smaller internal environments, that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous?’ And the same goes outward from our bodies to the rater community, to the planet, to the Universe. Remember when we were little kids we used to write on our School Exercise books: (e.g.) ‘Lyndy Summerhaze, Lismore, NSW, Australia, The World, The Universe? We knew what was going on!
Wow Rebecca I am so blown away by the way you share. I usually switch off when things get too ‘scientific’ because I find most science seems to make me feel confused and frustrated rather than inspired. Your blog and the work of Mina Bissell have had the exact opposite effect on me. I feel like this science is simply confirming the truth I have felt all along.
That’s great to hear Leonne, Science is wondrous and the way we can describe the universe and life around us. There is no greater gift than the ability to look around and wonder at the beauty in the world, and no complication of research or scientific description should mar that.
Yes Leonne, I agree, reading about Mina Bissell’s research and findings in Rebecca’s blog changes the true meaning of the word ‘science’ and how I relate to it. The word ‘science’ has been so misused that I have really struggled with it. Reading blogs like Rebecca’s supports me to connect to what science is really all about… to understand in its simplicity The Way of The Livingness.
What Mina Bisell’s studies have brought to light expands the scientific understanding manyfold. If the scientific community and the cancer research organisations fail to hail this as a great finding deserving further funding and research, their priorities will be shown for what they are.
“Could we possibly consider that our bodies are like one little cell in the environment that is life – and that our life gives us signals, that we can choose to respond or react to, either making our environment a healthy and harmonious one, or one that effectively ‘gives us cancer’?” Reading this feels huge and says to me that we each have a responsibility to become more aware of how we are living and equally why we live in particular ways. Do these ways support a truly healthy body and being, or are they ways that pollute and destabilize it so that illness and disease have more of an opportunity to occur? The choice to do so or not, is always ours.
Many people are frightened of cancer, calling it ‘the big C’ as if the name cannot be mentioned. Yet there is another letter, ‘the big R’, responsibility that whilst we might find the word equally frightening and shy away from what it means to us, offers so much if we are willing to responsibly look at our lifestyle choices.
What this exposes is the greed and lengths our world will go to, to hold back evolutionary truths which would change Humanity’s choices in the way they self care and the way they live their lives. It only takes a few to start to live a different way by making more deeply loving self care choices and the outcome will support everything Mina Bissell has shown and all that you have shared here Rebecca. This piece of writing and what it contains is evolutionary.
As science is able to understand more and more about the mechanisms of how things work i.e. cancer, it would seem that we need to consider that it might only reveal one part of the story. When we observe and isolate and reduce to pinpoint a particular aspect we might lose the whole context in which life operates, and focus on a solution related to that one aspect rather than the living whole.
I always remember a quote by Hippocrates, considered the father of medicine where he says ‘It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.’
He knew even then that there was more to the equation of illness and disease than simply the end result of the symptom and the biological process that leads to it. He also taught that you cannot focus in on the issue with the eye or the heart or the leg – the whole body has to been taken into account.
There is another way of dealing with the fear of breast cancer, and through the wisdom presented in this blog all women can connect to that way.
We are to be much more loving, caring and appreciating of ourselves to break the current trend of rising cases of breast cancer (and all the other forms of cancer). This starts by allowing ourselves to start questioning what it is inside of us that stopped us from appreciating, caring and loving ourselves (and others). We are such tender, loving beings. Our natural state of being is that. Starting an honest conversation is a great start. As well as a necesarry one. There’s no one to blame or to hold to ransom. Honesty and allowing ourselves to feel is the only thing (which in modern society is a big one) that is needed.
It is great to hear there are scientists working out there who are not under the influence of biased, sponsored scientific research – the extent of which is now only just beginning to be grasped. Time we stopped giving our power away to the false dogma of institutionalised science and allowed the freedom of true observation and inquiry to bring forth truth science once more.
Our bodies really do hold all the answers. Even when we get sick, it is not happening because the body is failing, but because it needs to clear the disharmony. When ill health is viewed from this perspective, every disease bears a message, that when read, felt and understood can support us to discover new and harmonious ways to live life that support harmony and health from the inside out.
A Brilliant and empowering sharing Rebecca showing our responsibility for our health illness and disease and how we affect this and can make the changes necessary simply by the way we live and move.
It’s amazing that if you take cells out of their natural environment within a number of days they can lose their shape! If our diet, lifestyle and everyday choices might even have the SLIGHTEST impact on the environment around cells within the body (which they do) then we have such a huge responsibility to look after these aspects of our life and give them equal attention as we would our work, kids, hobbies etc.
“The epigenetic alterations that occur are not well understood, other than that they are key contributors to breast tumour formation.” the fact that we know they are key contributors yet are not well understood is quite key, if we know that epigenetic changes occurs based on lifestyle and environmental conditions then why don’t we put our focus there in the first instance? Perhaps because we have to look at the quality of energy behind the lifestyle choices as well as the changes in lifestyle themselves?
This really is liberating and puts things into perspective. We have the power to choose a supportive way of living that allows our bodies to communicate in harmony.
Rebecca, I absolutely love what you have presented here. Years ago when I was doing a degree in Molecular Biology, we studied the human genome in huge detail thinking all the answers lay in this – and here we are now realising how important a role the environment has for each cell and how the DNA is actually used. I love the simplicity of what you have presented and I love how it ties in with the fact that nothing is random, but that we all have a choice and play a role in all that happens to us and around us. A blog worth several re-reads for me!
“If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer.”
An absolute delight to read an otherwise complex subject matter reducing it to a simple clear caring blog with humanity in mind.
“If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer” – how true Rebecca, and a stark reality for most to comprehend, even more to actually activate through making different lifestyle choices with this understanding. Choices – affect the internal workings of our body leading to its disharmony, or else confirm the harmonious stasis, and, perhaps we are yet to discover the actual extent that internal workings are affected by personal every day choices, and, the effect this has on everything else and ourselves, others, including the evolution of mankind. Hence, what is laid here is foundational, even universal/cosmos related given the inter-connectivity of cells, molecules, structures, and so on. Great to have this article Rebecca, thank you for writing it.
Thank you Rebecca for this clearly expressed and in-sight-full blog. I have no nursing or any medical background but what you presented seems to me to make a lot of sense – much to ponder on.
Every-thing in life (including all illness and disease) is there to help us to return to the truth of who we are, it’s just that most people pretend not to know this because if they admitted that they do in fact, know this, then they would have to admit to knowing so much more.
“Scientists have isolated the ‘breast cancer gene’ and can give genetic counselling to women with this gene as to what their options are. However, what I have found interesting is that the research or information I talk about below is seemingly not taken into consideration, let alone placed equally alongside all other treatments and preventatives.”
Why and what is it that our medical profession isn’t taken self-care and self-love seriously? Love is actually our biggest medicine. As the lack of expressing love is actually the reason that we develop illness and disease in the first place. I know for myself that if one person in a group is open and honest, than usually the rest follows. As if one’s giving permission to love, others feel they can choose so too. This is actually what’s being tested which makes perfect sense to me. That’s why the world has become so destructive as most of the people are actually reflecting so many not so loving choices. Thank you Rebecca for bringing common loving sense back into the occasion.
We must understand that illness and disease is first in our movements, then in our bodies.
Rebecca, I love your combination of in depth study and common sense. It is inspirational.
“So in effect, although your DNA code remains the same for life, your epigenetics are flexible, and whether a gene is wrapped up tightly and difficult to read, or is relaxed and easily accessible, is in reaction to your environment and your lifestyle factors, things like stress or diet.1” This feels like a major key in understanding breast cancer and finding ways to live in such a way as to avoid being prone to it. Excellent article Rebecca.
The way we live our life can’t but have an effect on our internal environment; how we respond to life, our emotions and feelings, what we eat, how we take care of ourself physically and mentally, how we are in relationship with all others all make a difference and affect our body as it is with us in everything that we do!
It’s become normal to treat our body with substances, emotions and ways of living which aren’t natural for it, and don’t support the fullness of what it is, and yet our body will always let us know one way or another just what exactly is not natural for it.
‘She has given us a different way of viewing cancer – in her words, a more hopeful one – one where it is not a game of the genetic lottery, or one where you one day randomly wake up with cancer, but a view where cancer is the result of a context or environment that is signalling a normal healthy cell to become cancer.’ – I am surprised to experience that this is not a real wakeup call for women and men alike. Having posted this profound information on Facebook, there has been no response what so ever. Why is it that we seemingly do not want to know that WE ourselves not only have the opportunity but the responsibility to live in a way that truly supports our own health and wellbeing.
Apparently it took Mina Bissell decades to get to this point, she modestly maintains that her most important contribution is that she hammered away at her point for thirty years!!! It really highlights just how ingrained and invested science is, when someone comes along and challenges the accepted systematic line – no matter it’s simplicity and clarity.
History can be read as a tale of people making discoveries or putting forward new ways of thinking and being shouted down, suppressed or dismissed, only to be found to have been correct many years later
Yes Rebecca, we have discounted many wise people in their time only to later realize they had it correct…
…this science is a big deal as it brings the same answers the Ancient Wisdom has always know to the world in a scientific modality.
Are we ready to take responsibility for the massive amount of illness and suffering we are experiencing across the globe and work to live in a way that is true and therefore not harming of our bodies?
Rosanna, wow that just goes to show how stubbornly we resist information that tells us we need to take responsibility for our health and our choices. To patiently and persistently hammer a point for thirty years and for those around her not to be considering it as a potential to changing the way we have in the past understood cancer is quite revealing as to me it seems a very simple and clear observation.
I agree Fiona, there’s a beautiful simplicity to it that defies what science has been searching for.
Indeed the conclusions that both yourself and Mina Bissell arrive at make total sense, and the truth is if we were to truly digest the enormity of our lived responsibility around illness and disease then people would no longer see themselves as victims of their circumstances but would in fact be greatly empowered to be actively engaged in their long term recovery.
Mina Bissell is a very high achieving scientist her work is changing the way cancer is regarded. I wonder how many years it will be before we really apply her findings to our everyday lifestyle. The quality of our inner environment definitely influences way our cells behave, which really brings the focus back to the importance of nurturing our selves as essential, fundamental, universal medicine.
“… The answer is in our bodies”… Bingo!… Reading your blog about epigenetics, makes you see very much, how we do have direction over the health of our body just through the way we live, self care or self nurture, as this makes a difference on our internal cellular environment.
Superb read Rebecca, well presented, appreciate the simplicity of your summing up – “What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer”
Is it that “…no one is connecting up the dots…” because to find a ‘cure’ for cancer would mean millions of dollars less for the pharmaceutical industries and people would have to take responsibility for their choices and for their own health, rather than relying on someone else to fix them?
If our illness are not just random events (and epigenetics is beginning to prove this is the case) then we really have to rethink our whole approach to disease, getting ill and the way we live.
I would love to see this further studied. There is so much focus on a cure for cancer but most of that focus seems to be about finding a magic pill. What if the cure to cancer lies in our own responsibility? And what if we change the way we view cancer and all illness and disease and begin to look at why the body has created it.
This research confirms what is actually simple common sense. If we are living in a way that is abusive, protected, contracted, lessening, hardening, and in any way less than who we naturally are then we are going to get sick. And if we get cancer as a result then is it not in the way we live that the key to the puzzle is found?
As a society we have become so concerned, defeated and resigned with what we are facing, and that we have gone into a knee jerk reaction of cutting out parts of our body, not just because it has a problem, but also because it may in the future. Yet with all of this going on, we have not taken the hint that we may need to stop and deepen our connection, awareness and nurturing of ourself. Recently I had to stay at home, in bed, to allow my body to heal from an operation, and after a lifetime of running around and focusing on everything but me, I found it so very difficult to honour that time and just be with myself. Whatever fancy drugs or operations we come up with, without this level profoundly honouring and taking care of ourself nothing will have a chance of truly healing.
The fact that 150 new cases of invasive breast cancer are diagnosed every day in the UK should be a monumental stop moment for us to consider WHY this is happening and how the way we live is potentially poisoning us. Billions of pounds and dollars has been spent on finding the ‘answer’ but have we really evaluated the relationship between cancer and lifestyle with a willingness to take responsibility?
I feel an urgency to get this out into the world to allow women to make their own informed choices knowing that there is this research information alongside the present medical information so they can make the correct decisions for themselves. I understand there is a process for research to become acceptable in the medical profession, but this information must be made available to medical practitioners all over the world.
What a beautiful biology lesson – it has purpose, relativity to all women, and very easy-to-make migration and relevance to illness and disease as a whole.
Its awesome to think that the remedy to cancer lies within our bodies and that the way ahead is not to focus on finding the cure via genetics, but to instead focus on the quality of the extra-cellular environment. This brings together all the other understandings that are now surfacing about alcohol, tobacco and other substances we ingest causing cancer in a way that the genetic theory does not. The quality of our health really does lie in the quality of our daily choices, as what we ingest has no choice but to contribute to the quality of fluids that surround, nourish and supports our cells.
I loved re-reading this article as it is very empowering – we cannot now simply say I have been given this diagnosis and then say its all over and give up – for we can change the way we are at any moment and it is never too late – our DNA confirms it! Thanks Rebecca for sharing your research.
Our bodies are incredible how they can communicate so clearly what it is that going on. How the way we live has an immediate effect on our bodies. What we can be ignorant of is that these bodies that we walk around with affect not just ourselves but they are affecting all of us. We can think that it doesn’t have an impact but it does. So what is life presenting to us that we feel we need to live up to which asks us not to be who we are and is creating such dis-harmony in our bodies. We don’t need to be at the stage of cancer to feel that things are not harmonious in our lives and bodies.
The power of self-care cannot be underestimated. On a cellular level and on an everyday practical vitality and well-being level. How we treat bodies, is how we manage and care for our cells and like having little dominos inside us, if they begin to feel battered and unwell this can spiral throughout the body and dysfunction and ill health occurs.
A great analogy, our choices can set off chain reactions and patterns of behaviour that entrench the same thing over and over. There is a big difference between a day when we have gotten a good night’s sleep, eaten well, drank water and not been caught up in the day’s events, versus a day where the opposite is true – we can feel the tiredness, or the ache and tension in the body and this takes a toll.
I have read many testimonials from people who have cured themselves of very serious illnesses by changing the way they live. Although I have not had any serious illnesses, my own experiences confirm to me the huge impact that changing my lifestyle has had on my health and well-being.
What a very en-riching read Rebecca – it makes sense when it is presented in a simpler context. To the way dis-ease is researched, to the results, and how they are outputted so all can comprehend. Even to the responsibility of the patient in how they approach in healing the dis-ease. And, the simple questions are asked? So, when the researcher has in mind through their heart that these results include all and the research takes ALL into context we have some answers and not solutions … An absolute delight to read a simple caring blog with humanity in mind.
Being self caring and self loving is more than skin deep. It actually affects and benefits us on a cellular level. Could this be the key to Preventative Medicine and the breakthrough in medicine to curb the rise of illness and disease rates?
This research was fascinating to read. I just love how amazingly responsive and intelligent our bodies are. It is amazing to consider how much the extracellular environment can affect the way cells behave. Yet it makes sense that this is going on at a micro level, as we humans behave completely differently in response to our environment. If we live in a hostile unsafe place, it affects our health and wellbeing, so it makes sense that if we create a body that is hostile for our cells, with poor food, drink, drug choices, stress, emotions etc. that the cells will react.
“Whether a gene is wrapped up tightly and difficult to read, or is relaxed and easily accessible, is in reaction to your environment and your lifestyle factors”. I love the simplicity of this. This is how I find bodies and people behave on all levels. When they are being moved and treated with ease, they work harmoniously and to perfection and are accessible to others. When they are held tight and wound up, this creates stress and a drain on the whole body and they are shut off from other people accessing them. The macro always reflects the micro in nature.
In the end, what is here presented is actually quite logical. If we care for ourselves, our cells resonate in that way. If we don’t care for ourselves, there’s less space inside of us and cancerous cells have the possibility to take over. Isn’t it magic that cells actually come back to their natural order (love) when they’re surrounded by healthy cells again. Which means that we’re to be deeply honest with ourselves and start feeling the innate importance and preciousness of ourselves. Thank you deeply Rebecca!
The answers to life’s problems are so simple as you have pointed out here Rebecca. There is something blind and complicated in the human mind when it is not using awareness nor attuned to the essence of who we are, which keeps us blind to the obvious!
It is amazing how often we can be blind to the obvious – something can be right in front of us but we can be too stubborn to see it. When we see things for what they are without trying to make them anything else life can be simple and everything makes sense.
I find it quite distressing when I hear of young women being encouraged to have their breasts cut off to prevent them getting breast cancer where none is currently visible. Surely a course on self care and self nurturing would be far more beneficial and less risky.
To me this is such a positive piece of information into what is important for our understanding of just how significant our choices are in every moment especially how we think about ourselves.
‘The prevention of breast cancer – the answer is in our bodies’ A great blog, the title says it all for me – absolutely revolutionary. When we are hit with a serious illness we look outside for solutions and cure, and not within – or at our very own living being the true medicine.
That the research of Mina Bissell has not made front page news is extraordinary. For more than 35 years, she and her team have worked on building this understanding; that structure and context are integral to cell function and health. Cells are not tiny islands, adrift in an empty sea. They are receivers of information that makes sense of their genetic contents.
You have explained this so clearly Rebecca, it is a joy to read.
Epigenetics looks like a huge field of study with many interesting and surprising research results to come.
There is nothing like being reminded of the how my body works on a cellular level to confirm for me that I am part of something so much grander than I can truly comprehend! What a responsibility to care for and honour it. Wonderful blog Rebecca!
A sobering but important message for us all, Rebecca…that if we continue to neglect and disregard our bodies there is a cancer waiting to happen.
We harvest what we sow!
It is sobering, but to me it is also inspiring – to turn to all those affected by cancer, often at a loss as to how it could have happened to them and simply support them to see how there is so much more that they can do to truly deeply care for themselves and their bodies, as ways to take steps back to a more harmonious inner environment. But why wait until after the diagnosis to slow down, take more care and set more boundaries in our life to maintain that healthy environment – we can choose it at any point.
Rebecca, this is an amazing blog. It is up to us to take responsibility and heal our body, your last paragraph really highlights this and puts the power back into our own hands. Our body is highly intelligent and we tend to underestimate its healing abilities. A very inspiring read, Thank You!
Our body and its cells are alive at every level. Our body belongs to an order that is universal, in rhythm with the natural harmony that is in the universe always. When we choose to live out if this rhythm as is the case with modern life for so many of us, our body is in stress and disarray. This is not rocket science but common sense. The question is though, do we want to heed this common sense and the responsibility it entails or do we choose to keep our heads buried in the sands of ignorance and thus continue in the constant angst and apprehension of the possibility of disease being around the corner.
This is a brilliant article Rebecca, fascinating, insightful and well-researched. Amazing to join the dots and really see beyond any doubt that cancer, like all illness and disease is a response to a disharmonious way of living.
Yes, and how empowering this understanding is if it turns out to be true.
Occam’s razor; the simplest explanation is preferred, fits perfectly in this research, that the way we live is the greatest source of our illnesses!
Love it! Science knows everything, it just chooses to avoid it at all costs.
If we really take this on board, then Mina Bissell’s research offers us so much more than just understanding breast cancer, it opens a new door to understanding all our diseases. And it feels like there is a micro and macro picture to consider here. If the cells in our bodies are instructed how to behave by the space that surrounds them, the extracellular environment, are we too instructed how to behave by the space that surrounds us, our extra bodily environment? Therefore it makes sense that the way we live both outwardly and inwardly has a very direct impact on the quality of our health. What we feed our selves, what we absorb from the world around us, what we accept without question all instruct our cells to behave in certain ways, some of which go directly against their true nature. If we really begin to tidy up our lives from the inside out, we can restore harmony to our internal and external environments and thus assist our bodies to resume their natural health and order.
This makes so much sense Rebecca, not only for our own bodies but for the shape the world itself is in, societally and planet-wise: ‘The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing.’
It appears to me that epigenetics is the link between human emotions / behaviour and dis-ease formation, because, how we live and the relationships we have with and in life would naturally affect our environment – internal and external – which epigenetics is showing us that our environment has an impact on our cellular behaviour. The future of human health would have to be Preventative Medicine with epigenetics at its core, as this is most likely to have the greatest impact of reducing global diseases for the future.
I love this article. It could be called thinking outside the box, but actually it is pure common sense.
Brilliant article Rebecca, thank you for sharing. It is so important to share this information so that we do start to ask much broader questions and don’t just look for solutions so that we can continue with the ill patterns that may have caused the cancer but actually heal and create true change.
The language used by those that share diagnosis around illness can often be the inhibitor to understanding and making choices towards wellness. What you have offered here Rebecca is so clear and makes so much sense. What choices might a person make if this information and understanding was shared along with diagnosis of illness and in this case breast cancer?
The language can make it simple or complicated and we respond totally differently when we are able to understand.
I believe that the prevention to any thing is within our bodies and in the way we live. The body is so amazing and yet we often don’t take care of it or how we live in it and that is where the major issue lies.
I agree Rosie, every biology class would have me astounded at the perfect synchronised way the body works, the balance and harmony of every part and every function – it is one of the most beautiful things and yet we do not treat it with respect and beholding
I find it amazing that we don’t learn more about our body and how it works from a young age, we do live in it afterall!
Articles like these are super important – we need to keep asking the questions that will eventually make more and more people become aware of this profound information.
‘Breast cancer is now so common it is hard to find someone who is untouched by the disease either directly or indirectly through friends and family’. If this is the case, and this is only one disease, how ill do we have to get and what will it take for us to be collectively open to the findings of the research you are sharing?
I keep returning to read this blog Rebecca – it makes so much sense of underlying causes of illness and disease. We have to take a far deeper level of care with ourselves, by responding to what the body is asking for continuously.
I wonder if others have done this research – putting a cancer cell in a healthy scaffold and under what circumstances does the cell revert or the cancer spreads. I have not heard of reversion before – I thought the only way cancer cells are dealt with by the body is through their destruction.
We have somewhere between 10 trillion to 70 trillion cells in our body. When I feel these figures from my body I get the sense of responsibility I have; to look after the magnificence that the body is, the environment I provide for these cells and thus the quality in which my cells interact, and thus the quality of body I walk around in each and every moment.
This is brilliant, Rebecca – “By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing.” This blog lays to rest the myth of life and illness just happening to us as random occurrences, and empowers us to make conscious choices about how we live.
Mina Bissell’s research along with this article are much needed contributions to our understanding of cancer and how to prevent the rising tide of cancer statistics, something that years of well funded international research has not yet achieved.
After re-reading your article Rebecca, it strikes me that having your breasts or ovaries removed because there is a ‘risk’ of getting cancer is actually a way to dodge taking responsibility for how we live, and how we’ve been looking after our bodies and thus the cells/tissues that can make or break whether a tumour develops, thus we miss out on the lesson on offer by our bodies, not just from cancer itself but from the call to take more responsibility and really pay attention to our lifestyle and quality of being.
From bringing my attention to the way I am living my life and moving on from disregarding and loveless ways to a much deeper, loving and caring way with myself, I have noticed how my body responds in the complete opposite. When we feed ourselves this quality then it makes sense that the body will respond and feed this back. How we live will always be reflected in the body. I am so thankful to have been introduced to the work of Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine teachings that I am continually inspired by.
Mina Bissell’s results on her research are opening new doors of understanding how our body is working and how our behaviour and how our surroundings and perhaps our reaction to them has a direct effect on the behaviour of our cells. This is fascinating and worth more researching and studying.
Many women are terrified of getting breast cancer. Could this be because there is no true understanding of why women get the disease? If we were to know that lack of nurturing contributes greatly to breast cancer, then women could take responsibility to nurture and care for them selves, therefoed being active in preventing it and no longer feeling they were at the mercy of may-be one day waking up with breast cancer.
Do we really want to know the answer? Are we really prepared to see how things are? Are we willing to accept without modification the root cause of illness disease? For what you touch on here Rebecca is common sense, not the ‘rocket science’ we make science out to be. So perhaps the fact is the greatest obstacle we face is not lack of technology or research data but the willingness to let go of the irresponsible and reckless way we live every day?
I have just re-read your amazing blog Rebecca with even more attention to some of the detail I was not able to take in first time around and am even more blown away. From the way you have described the epigenome, it sounds like the quality of our life-style has a huge influence on the state of our cells and their environment. There is no ‘random’ and there is no locked in ‘fate’ (these two opposites both serving to take us away from truth). There is only a record, an imprint of how we have been living, and the flexibility of how we can be. The communication between every cell and particle in the body and the between the body and the universe is continual and powerful.
Thank you Rebecca for this scientific presentation and research in a way I could so simply understand. It is a very powerful message that is offered to us here about epigenetics. It fundamentally it shows us how our environment and how we live in our bodies is related to our susceptibility to cancer or other diseases or states of ill health. Breast cancer has impacted women all over the world and when women are diagnosed it is shocking news to get and the treatments they undergo are very intense on their bodies. I wonder if as women there are certain ways we are living that affect our epigenetic readings and thus breast cancer develops as based on this research?
How are we living as women where breast cancer is high and it seems to be increasing? Is there a common underlying theme, specifically for women?
Epigenetics is a fascinating subject and one that needs to be studied a lot more! But unfortunately, as Rebecca points out, there is not a lot of money in it, because it is about re-educating people, inspiring them to live a different life, which is more in support of their health. This is something Universal Medicine is known for and is very successful with.
Mina Bissell’s presentation on the role of a cell’s micro environment gives us huge possibility to start to challenge the understanding and advice that’s currently given to women about their bodies and breast cancer.
Agreed Rosanna and I would say it starts to ask people to consider how the information affects every single one of us, as it’s not only breast cancer but many other conditions that it can relate to. Yet as others have shared, as there is no money in the treatment (self responsibility and love) and no quick fix pill, the time for this to be widely accepted will be further away than it needs to be.
A fascinating and educational read. I love the questions you ask that prompt us to consider how the way we live can affect our internal environment and therefore signal harmony or disharmony within our cells depending on our choices… An empowering read that puts the responsibility for our health firmly in our hands.
We don’t just one day wake up with cancer, or any illness. Our bodies give us small signs along the way and if these are not seen or ignored, then the signs that something is out of harmony continue and in my experience, get louder. But signs like headaches, menstrual problems, aches and pains, constant colds, etc are sometimes seen as just something you get, and not seen as signs by the body that something needs to be looked at in how we are in life.
This morning I realised that I am love and that I’ve actually always known that. Ignoring the fact and not being invited to choose differently made me choose not so loving choices. Which is okay, it is definitely about making the body lead in making choices. Instead of the (separate) mind. It isn’t an easy road, especially in the beginning. Because if we change patterns into more loving ones, the reaction of those around us is often not so confirming and / or supportive. Which is obvious as more loving choices offer a different reflection to others. Preventing breast cancer as well as many other illnesses and diseases starts with allowing ourselves to deeply feel our body and in that getting to know ourselves once again.
Rebecca thank you for sharing this, this will get people pondering. Like you say, there is such a high increase in breast cancer and with Mina’s research it makes so much sense how our environment affects our health, but she is not on front page media as it’s not going to make anyone money, it’s going to get everyone to start taking responsibility and media is all about money, as are the drug companies.
There could well be an enormous response if these results are presented in an accessible way. Perhaps not the first time but eventually.
‘Unfortunately, this will not make drug companies millions, nor will it make anyone famous for finding a cure’ – Indeed, is it time we take a closer look at the corruption and greed that is running the multi million or trillion dollar industry around cancer? Are we being advised that which in truth serves the best, or that which fills the bank accounts of the drug companies?
“The most common option for treatment, and now also for prevention, is the removal of the breasts, and sometimes the ovaries too, even before any cancer is diagnosed, if the women are deemed to be at high risk of developing the disease.” If this is the treatment that is currently common we know there is something missing as it is not natural to have to remove natural or/and healthy body parts to heal a disease. The other research showing that it is our choices, our way of living that create a environment for cells to flourish or grow into disease makes more sense and also gives the power back to us ourselves to heal/prevent.
I have seen Mina Bissel present on this to. It really confirmed that the quality of our environments has an enormous impact on the way our bodies operate in every simgle way.
Quantitative research gets ever more complex, and feels to me that sometimes we are further away from the truth with the results. The example of the advice being given to women with the breast cancer gene and the results of the decisions women make, because of the current genetic research, feels like it comes from fear. This understanding you write about breast cancer here Rebecca makes so much sense and exposes how research needs to take qualitative information very seriously.
It feels like a huge eye opener when you think about how many women are non-verbally communicating to each other how to be a woman in today’s world and their breast cells are picking this up from all angles, not only internally but those around us also. So is it any wonder that our internal environment can make a huge difference to our cellular health.
These simple facts may be skirted around for now by the scientific world, but it is only a matter of time until we will all come to accept that everything is energy and everything is because of energy, which confirms that there are no random ill effects or events in life, only consequences to the choices we make.
There are a few big words in this blog…but aside from that I am so struck by its abject simplicity. Rebecca – you are a natural teacher and leader and if science were taught and presented in this way in our schools, universities and newspapers, then we would be in a very different state of un-well-being than we are now.
A priceless blog Rebecca – as you say, bringing these two pieces of evidence together offers another possibility for exploring the importance of true nurturing, self care and making changes to the way we live on a daily basis and the impact on cancer this could have. This could change cancer research to include lifestyle choices as paramount importance.
“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer”.
Amazing article Rebecca, and so clearly delivered. Thank you. There is certainly much more to be considered when it comes to cancer, and any other disease for that matter, than what is currently on offer to us. Bringing this back to the way we live also brings a level of self responsibility, and maybe one day this will be what doctors will be writing on their prescrption sheets!
When we look at the millions of women diagnosed each year with breast cancer we can feel the need for more understanding of Epigenetics and deeper examination of our lifestyle choices have on cell structure, health and formation.
You and Mina are lighting up the path of truth. It is up to us whether we walk it but I deeply appreciate you bringing this wisdom to the fore-ground for us all to see. Thank you.
“So in effect, although your DNA code remains the same for life, your epigenetics are flexible, and whether a gene is wrapped up tightly and difficult to read, or is relaxed and easily accessible, is in reaction to your environment and your lifestyle factors, things like stress or diet.” This alone shines a light on the assumption that just because we might inherit dodgy genes, the way we live carries equal weight in contributing to the quality of our health. What if our scientific focus came to rest on the quality of our daily choices, diet, exercise, work, sleep and their impact on our epigenetics, rather than attempting to un-pick the genetic puzzle? Surely Mina Bissell has opened the door to an entirely new platform of scientific research and understanding that can truly support humanity to resolve our appalling health statistics, her research work should be headline news.
The relationship between our lifestyle and our wellbeing is clearly demonstrated by our teeth. Not many people would simply visit the dentist twice a year without at least brushing their teeth every day if not more frequently. We know our teeth would quickly begin to ‘complain’ by decaying causing toothache. To me this is a perfect example of self-care, self-nurturing and even self-love at work – even though our primary reason for looking after our teeth is perhaps vanity. Perhaps then this is how we should view our relationship with our entire body – as our job to self-care, self-nurture and self-love – and that our bodies are forever ‘signalling’ when something is out of harmony, so that we may respond. Perhaps the future of health care requires us all to be more pro-active in our relationship with our entire being, rather than simply seek help when we are unable to function fully.
Ah, free will! We are never, it seems satisfied with the way we look. The evident of the boom of body enhancements and the length we will go to attempt to reach the nirvana of perfection, that is never achieved. Teeth are on this list and the artificial blinding snow white choppers that are flashed at every opportunity! But with all of this window dressing what is being hidden under what is presented?
I became aware recently of people attending music appreciation groups. How amazing it would be if people met and shared on ‘body appreciation.’
It has come to my notice that within a particular circle I’m connected to, almost all friends and family over the past 30 years have died or live with cancer. And there appears to be a complete lack of knowledge about why this is happening with everyone supporting and seeking an outside cure. There is general acceptance that cancer just happens to us and thinking that it has nothing to do with how we live. There is much work to be done if we are to re-educate people on how disease forms in the body and the part we play in its occurrence.
Awesome Rebecca – this should be a front page article and it is brilliant to start to raise and talk about; – epigenetics and how they have a role in the choices we make and our lifestyle, – the possibility that we have a responsibility to our bodies, – the possibility that we have a responsibility to each other, – the fact that if we were to look at how we live, that we have to consider there is no pill or magic cure – and that it starts with us first.
The power of what is presented here is that Rebecca has made public vital information that would otherwise have remained in scientific journals and laboratories and hidden from view.
So many women are brought up with the belief that martyrdom is their lot, that they have to put themselves last and others first, that self-sacrifice is the only way they will be appreciated and loved. But it doesn’t happen and so many women simply burn out. We need to show that there is another way, that self love and self nurturing is vitally important and could be the one thing that helps us to reduce the incidences of breast cancer
A very informative blog to read Rebecca. Is it possible that Mina Bissell’s research hasn’t made front page news as there is no big money to be made from it and also maybe because people would rather put all the blame on the environment or something outside of themselves and don’t want to take responsibility for their health or change the way they have chosen to live which has contributed to the illness and that this is what this research is exposing? Although on saying that, they should be given the information so that they can then make the choice to adhere to what is being presented or not. This is about us choosing to be in our power by taking responsibility for the way we live.
How many mountains do we have to climb looking for the answers before we realise that the answer to every-single-thing is within?
“… What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed…” Bingo! time to widen the net, and look at the relationship a woman has with herself (self care / self love vs self loathing). These underlying feelings and attitude towards ourselves and the way we then interact with life would surely have an influence on the internal and cellular environment within the body.
Amazing amazing amazing article thank you Rebecca – worthy of all medical journals, university courses – in fact where does such significant information not fit in to our education and way of life, considering the massive explosion of cancer in the world? Thank you Rebecca, this has definitely helped to expand my understanding of the role of epigenetics and where the science is at.
Here there is a wonderful mix of complete awe at how the genes in our bodies work, and the practicality of what is presented – a stunning piece of writing.
I agree Doug how could you ignore a finding like this!!!!! It is literally impossible to. However most of the scientific community seem to have done which just highlights how lost they truly are and how stuck they are at finding answers when they have literally been handed to them on a plate as Mina Bissell has done.
What an informative and amazing article. Thank you Rebecca.
What if we studied society, asking how we lived in every aspect of our lives, I feel it stands to reason that we would see certain illnesses associated with the life styles and circumstances we choose. Mina Bissell findings are showing us this and it puts the responsibility of our illnesses squarely back in our court, to look at how we live, and move which results in the quality we live with in our bodies.
You write with such simplicity, openness, authority and with humanity at its core. And what I mean by that is that you are taking a portion of life, and questioning it and asking the bigger questions so we can think about the topic and what feels right for us. And you are asking us to consider that how we life could be effecting much more than we think. Thank you.
Wow, we are undeniably responsible for our health.
It tells a lot about the general lack of self-worth in the world that we’ve allowed removing breasts to become a normal way of preventing breast cancer. Yes, DNA is important, but it isn’t that we can’t change our lives. By allowing love in, we’re deconstructing unloving choices and with that we’ll be starting choices that are in-line with our natural way of being: innately loving and caring. Which is the best prevention we could ever ask for. Yet, this isn’t main stream knowledge / common sense. We’d rather accept removing breasts as a preventive solution than asking ourselves about the life-style choices we’re actually choosing.
‘Breast cancer is now so common it is hard to find someone who is untouched by the disease either directly or indirectly through friends and family’. – Surely Humanity is ready to connect the dots. All the research in our developing countries has not slowed breast cancer, has not reduced the numbers of women effected and yet the momentum continues to grow. Rebecca what you have unfolded so clearly for us all in this article is amazing and truly life giving. Thank you.
I agree Christine – all the dots are there to be joined, and yet as if we sense the picture they will create if we do, we have yet to join them all up and be faced with the fact that, no matter what, there is an element of personal responsability that needs to be taken when it comes to the way we live and the illness and diseases we experiance. At the very least, a humanity taking this responsability would help reduce the pressure and high intensity, but what if it could completely reverse the trends? Is it not worth trying?
What you have explained and expressed here Rebecca does make so much sense and if it could make the drug companies money it would be top of the agenda, but only goes to prove what we all know already that they are in it for the money and not for any sort of true healing.
Mina Bissell’s research on cancer is fascinating and ground breaking. The fact that she is proving cancer is not “a game of the genetic lottery…” radically changes our view of the disease. It leads us to ponder on our choices in life and then what we might be doing to contract the disease in the first place.
With cancer rates so high, and even the word cancer being more normal as so many people have it, articles like this are what is needed to inspire people to see that there is a major relationship between how we live and the health of our body. We cannot continue to blame something else, it is time that we see that everything we say, do and think effects our bodies. We know it, but in my case, I have played dumb or turned a blind eye to what is staring me in the face.
We do not need some study to proclaim to us something we can feel in our bodies is the truth, the ultimate reality that of how we live affects our body… we just need to wake up and listen!
‘What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer.’ – I would say this evidence is something that regards every human being and should be accessible for all, not only in relation to cancer but anything to do with health and wellbeing – our inside environment affects the whole spectrum.
Gosh, Rebecca, this is so well written that non-scientists such as myself get a clear and exact picture of what Serge Benhayon has been saying for years, and it puts the onus squarely back on us to deeply consider our lifestyle choices as key contributors to our state of health and wellbeing – “it will ask people to put their health before their ability to do as they like with their bodies, asking them to take responsibility for the scientifically confirmed effect our lifestyle has on our bodies”.
This understanding that you explain Rebecca that the epigenetic changes occur by the way we live and how the work from Mina Bissell show they can be reversible is so cool. This information should be available in every GP surgery for people to read. The body is amazingly clever to reflect this for us to give us the opportunity to heal ourselves.
“…perhaps the key to understanding cancer and possibly preventing and/or healing it will be found in the way we live.” Hear hear Rebecca, I would definitely vouch for this option having experienced breast cancer and reflected and felt in my body what led me to that state of health. I agree there is a definite need for more research into this area of breast cancer, as so far nothing is changing with the current research. It is seeming like the answer is actually closer to home than we want to admit – that is in our relationship to our own precious and tender bodies as women. Thank you for a insightful and currently researched article.
It seems very plausible that what is truly supportive for cancer research and discoveries wont make anyone rich. Is it a possibility that’s why there is a delay?
I was shocked by the number of women world wide affected by breast cancer, it is astounding, and not forgetting their families and friends who are also affected in some way.
I saw that research by Mina Bissell too, what an interesting woman so passionate about her work and with a great openness and curiosity. I love what you have shared here in relation to her work and your own findings.
More in depth study just waiting for us to undertake it. It seems pretty obvious to me that the way we live has a huge effect on our bodies also and should not be discounted.
Women, men and children need to read this article as it explains so clearly what is actually going on with the birth of cancer. Considering cancer is a significant cause of death, fear and unease in a lot of people’s lives and if we consider the people that it affects that have not actual disease but dis-ease, then this covers the majority of society. With the statistics rising year on year clearly there is something else that is not being looked at. It is devastating the statistics that Rebecca shares here and with the support of medicine, true healing will only come from the person and the choices they make who is carrying the dis-ease. Serge Benhayon since 1999 has been sharing, presenting and teaching through Universal Medicine a way in which this is possible and I have observed hundreds of people change their lives with the support of these teachings, including myself.
‘Mina Bissell has said herself that arrogance kills curiosity and passion, she doesn’t understand everything and that there is far more to be discovered and I agree.’ Yes Rebecca I agree too. I know that when we can accept that there is always much to learn and more to evolve to it doesn’t mean we stop appreciating where we have got to or what we have supported, but it does mean that we don’t walk through life claiming we have got it all worked out when in fact that is impossible given the magnitude of the universe and everything there is to learn about it, our place within it and what we are returning to.
I guess one of the reasons why research into Epigenetics is not being so well funded is because it is about lifestyle not medicines, and pharmaceutical companies will not make so much money if we all live healthy lifestyles, apart from the ones selling chemical-laden ‘Health products’. Sadly in big business there is more focus on profits and less on what humanity actually needs.
Sadly indeed – I feel you have hit the nail straight on the head here Carmel.
When you think that the only preventative action being offered to women with a high risk of getting breast cancer is to have a double mastectomy, it seems mad not to be fully investigating and trialling what Mina Bissell has discovered in relation to lifestyle choices and how women are living.
I agree Debra, and more research is being done – the substantial role epigenetics and in turn, our life choices is having is known in the scientific community – and yet it is not front page news. For me, this is a huge exposure of all of the fundraising and research done in the name of curing cancer, to set to one side a possible preventative measure, backed up by research, simply because there is no money to be made from people being more responsible for the way they live, the only gain is the lives of those we lose to cancer, and those affected by that loss, which apparently in our current society is not of greater value than money.
The way we live, that is how we handle life, has a tremendous effect on ourselves. What happen to the physical body is the end result of that. In this regard, it makes perfect sense that if you handle life in a more or less balanced way the quality of the body you will move cannot be the same compared to a body that lives in internal turmoil or which moves driven by emotions. Many of the effects of how we live go unseen just because we do not dare to see what we are doing to ourselves.
The work of Mina Bissell turns so much of the scientific world on its head but as you say Rebecca it does not make people millions so it will not be explored until there is a revolution in humanity takes place – the gentle revolution of truly loving one’s fellow brother and sister in place of the present greed at the expense of another.
“… all cells, including cancer, get their instructions from the context or the environment that surrounds them.” Which makes perfect sense to me and in my view explains why our genetic material is instructed to behave in so many differing ways. This understanding restores to us the power of our own healing by cherishing our extracellular environment. Our cells are so sensitive, they respond to mere specks of hormones and chemicals in an instance, conveyed to them by the surrounding fluids and encasing sheaths. Learning to observe and feel the effects of diet, fluid consumption, sleep patterns, emotional and mental stressors have on our bodies allows us to appreciate the impact they have on our extra-cellular environment. Clean, simple and tender living goes a long way to supporting this sensitive space within our selves and the quality of our health.
‘She [Mina Bissell] has given us a different way of viewing cancer – in her words, a more hopeful one – one where it is not a game of the genetic lottery, or one where you one day randomly wake up with cancer, but a view where cancer is the result of a context or environment that is signalling a normal healthy cell to become cancer. Knowing that there is a context that signals our cells and that we are responsible for that context is very liberating. No longer do we need to have apprehension about the genetic lottery or the randomness of waking up one day to cancer. The law of cause and effect is absolute and our choices determine what will occur in the context of the body.
Would it be cynical to say that most people doing research have an invested outcome and a paycheck for looking for a method to cure cancer? Stopping the cause can be as simple as just changing the way we live… has no profit?
Rebecca what you have presented so incredibly well is a wonderful balance of science and common sense, which is a very powerful combination indeed.
Rebecca I was flabbergasted to read that skin cancer kills more women in America than breast cancer. Why don’t we know this? Why is breast cancer more known and talked about than skin cancer. We don’t have charity events to raise money and awareness for skin cancer and yet have plenty for breast cancer? The odd thing is, that even as I write this I feel an opening towards breast cancer and a rather lack lustre feeling when I write skin cancer. What’s going on?
Illness and disease can all seem so complex on the outside, yet the simplicity of where this blog ends up Rebecca is stunning. The investment the drug companies have in things remaining unclear is substantial for sure, but it is time to start to see there is an investment we all have had equally in avoiding common sense of our own body.
“…What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed…” This seems to me to be the Holy Grail of the next generation or evolution of medicine.
So beautifully voiced on epigenetics Joanne – if people have eyes to see, ears to hear, feelings to feel, and will consent to truly observe life, epigenetics will prove to be the confirmation of that which we already know if we will cease to ignore the multidimensional wisdom and intelligence that is our birthright that is temporarily buried because of the abusive lifestyles we lead. Bring on true choice!
How beautiful is it when two professionals work together to understand what is really going on with the intention of supplying true answers to humanity. Not out of self-gain, but out of true care. It is super inspiring to read how Rebecca included Mina Bissell’s research to support her own valid points and view. To me this is gold! 1 + 1 = 3 (or even more!).
The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. Our body sends us messages every moment of the day but do we all make room for this communication?
It is very clear why this precious information hasn’t made it to front page news, for a number of reasons – the media are in the pockets of the big drug companies with their profits, the mental set of the scientific community resists hearing anything beyond their mindsets (remembering Galileo who tried to get people to look through telescopes but they wouldn’t), and the whole community are not ready to go there – the media being a reflection of the people who buy it and buy into it.
It is astonishing how many of us are affected by breast cancer, either directly or through a friend or relative. So much money is being spent on research but not on supporting women to self nurture.
The findings of epigenetics is fascinating and very inspiring, often highlighting wonderful possibilities for further expansion of research and discovery. This article shows brilliantly that there is plenty of scope offered where cancer is concerned. With the millions spent on cancer research and the amount of popular interest in this field how come epigenetics has not been looked into much more deeply?
What a brilliant sharing on the truth and facts behind Breast Cancer cells and the part we all play in this. Looking at illness and disease as part of our evolution and the way we care for ourselves by the way we live is amazingly refreshing and allows us to take so much more responsibility for our health, well being and working together with Medicine, Science and our true connection to support us all.
The key to our health really is in our hands. Full stop. I can see why this hasn’t made the front pages as it asks us to take responsibility for everything we say, do, eat. That is not going to be popular ! But it is ironic as you share Mina shared it is a more hopeful way of looking at disease.
I feel the last lines of this great blog are very pertinent, Mina Bissell’s research is not front page news, but is this because we don’t want to be sold the responsibility angle, and as you say Rebecca, there is no glamour or financial reward in making lifestyle changes. It won’t make a hollywood movie to simply change how we live. The huge desire for a breakthrough cancer beating pill we can pop mesmerises and dominates our global society, but it seems it does so at the expense of the very choices we all have that can transform our bodies and reduce our likelihood of contracting this disease.
Just re read your blog Rebecca and my feeling is some people may not like what Mina discovered or the fact that you have written about it as like you say, it exposes a lot and there is no money to be made from it yet it holds the key to healthy cells. It really should be front page news.
To consider ourselves as a single cell within the ECM of the world feels to be a very expansive and inclusive way to live. It means we have to take responsibility for the fact that whatever choices we make will either support mutation, ie. the development of illness and disease, or support our bodies to be clear of these mutations. It also beautifully illustrates how we live in connection with all others so whatever we do affects the ECM of all.
This takes accountability to a whole new level. At one level it can be daunting to think not only do we affect our own health and well-being through our choices, but we also impact the whole world through our actions, inactivity and the example we provide. At another level it shows that we are not a victim of circumstance, that we make a difference with every little choice, and so it is truly empowering.
Such an interesting read to help us consider the tone of our lifestyle vs our genes. Often we can blame conditions in genes but if there is a possibility that how we live impacts what happens to our body then I see this as An opportunity to be more responsible with my choices.
‘they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell’ – Why, is this not revolutionizing all cancer research? Why do they still keep solely searching for cancer ‘cures’ – when truth is, what we really need is to be educated in how to truly deeply care for ourselves in our day to day living.
Absolutely. So well said Eva.
Hi Rebecca, I listened to the talk by Mina Bissell when it first came out and was blown away by how powerful the implications of what she presents are. What also fascinates me is why this information is not commonplace within all medical treatment regimes?
It is really interesting that this research hasn’t made front page news, particularly if you look at how many people are being effected by breast cancer both directly and indirectly today, but as you’ve beautifully shared the answer is in our bodies and our own hands, so this only highlights the investment in money and recognition for being the company/organisation that ‘finds the answer’ and how truth is ignored by the media if it doesn’t gather consumers, attention or hits.
This understanding Rebecca, that ‘cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation’ makes total sense to me. It is a disease on the rise as the way people live with so much stress has also risen. This could be thought as a coincidence but the evidence with the epigenetic shows we influence our bodies by the way we live. When we live in a healthy and harmonious way, our bodies will become healthy and harmonious.
An exquisite piece highlighting many views that are often looked over or completely ignored altogether.
Even though our perceptions that science is free of biases and misleading ideals and beliefs. Mainstream science is actually full of them.
I love how slowly the evidence is emerging that illness and disease do have energetic causes that can be addressed. This should be front page news, but for now, we have to let women stories be heard, of how they approached their illness and how they felt challenged by the need to live differenly but did it, and now look at their outcomes long term. Not making it about just bare survival rates, but look at emotional health, satisfaction with life, self worth, empowerment, and the ease with which they pass over (if they do).
“What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer.” exactly- a huge breakthrough and so important that it is understood so people don’t have to feel like a ‘victim’ of a random event, but actually feel empowered to address it in full, and ensure they actually get the healing that is intended from the soul via the body.
‘And so they tested it – they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell.’ What happens in this scientific experiment is a testament to the fact of healing and energy.
This is brilliant writing Rebecca, I love your insights. What I have never understood is in this constant battle to fight cancer, we never question how it is that it is increasing at such a fast rate, and yet we have an argument for there possibly being a genetic cause and a constant search for a cure that will never arise. Epigenetics is where it is at surely, as how we are living, the stress, the diet, the disregard for our bodies leaves us unbalanced, cancer is surely a result of this imbalance. Restore the balance seem to make more sense than taking on an unwindable battle.
What an awesome, inspiring and fascinating read Rebecca. I have often wondered why, when I see people with the same cancer who have only western medicine, some have only complementary medicine, and some have a combination of both… and although 2 people may follow the same path one will get ‘better’ and the other will not – so there has to be something else going on … and here our lifestyle choices, the environment we choose, is shown to have a big impact on our health.
Reacting to other people, life and situations definitely plays a big if not huge part in illness and disease in our bodies.
This is quite a blog and thank you for writing it. Showing that a cancer cell reverts depending on its context is a huge clue to treating cancer – does it mean that getting rid of cancer cells may not be enough as new ones will be generated when the context remains the same plus a host of other questions come from this.
Brilliant article Rebecca, thank you. I love these questions ‘Could we possibly consider that our bodies are like one little cell in the environment that is life – and that our life gives us signals, that we can choose to respond or react to, either making our environment a healthy and harmonious one, or one that effectively ‘gives us cancer’? Could it be that the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc., has an effect on our smaller internal environments, that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous?’ They call for us to consider the bigger picture, how we are choosing to be in the world – how we interact with it and how we allow it to affect us. We may be aware of the effect diet and exercise have on our body but how much and how far are we prepared to look beyond this?
Thank you for putting into simple terms Rebecca a topic which can be very complex. It is fascinating to read how the cells in our bodies can mutate and then when introduced to a cell which is working correctly it can revert back to its original design – choices on a cellular level. Awesome.
Yes Julie this is a great point you have raised. There is always the potential to return to what the body knows is the true state of being.
Thank you for presenting the science behind this in such an accessible and understandable way Rebecca. It is amazing that this is not front page news because it is offering us the opportunity to feel how we can make positive changes in our lives rather than feeling powerless and worrying about becoming a victim of cancer.
This is so confirming Rebecca; when science is showing us that our cellular environments affect the cells around it, it is easy to make the macro jump to everything is everything – truly empowering and revelatory in terms or my responsibility for every move I make…
Agree Bernadette, a really empowering message for every stakeholder.
I feel your conclusion Rebecca really highlights where we are at collectively with making life all about security rather than with making life all about evolution. To know we have potentially got the answer to the issues around disease but it not be discussed far and wide exposes utterly the centric paradigm in which we view life!
I agree Michelle it really highlights that we want things to be fixed with cures and pills rather than our choices of how we live. I get it, I understand the desire to be able to carrying on as you want, irresponsible, free from consequences but that is not how life works no matter how we want it to be otherwise and this research demonstrates that.
I agree Michelle. The biggest evil is to perpetuate the myth that we don’t already have the answers to illness and disease.
“…perhaps the key to understanding cancer and possibly preventing and/or healing it will be found in the way we live.” This is a fascinating article on how our environment and choices can affect the health of our cells and that even though there might be a predisposition to contract cancer it might be averted by making different choices.
Brilliantly clear blog Rebecca – it is time we started putting ‘two and two together’ because the evidence is out there and it is all pointing towards the fact that our lifestyle choices directly affect our health and wellbeing.
Each day we are presented with newspaper headlines that do not present the whole truth about health. One such ‘ Jolie effect’ leading to needless mastectomies’ and this statistic: 4000 women in the UK opt for double mastectomies in the belief it will prevent the spread of cancer’. The article states that ‘there is no evidence that double mastectomies prevent cancer from spreading in women who do not have an underlying risk of cancer, as Jolie does’. We are also told that in America the rise in the number of double mastectomies is also attributable to physicians not fully advising women. Newspapers and physicians have a responsibility to do more. As Rebecca’s article confirms evidence is out there that the way we live is a major contributory factor in the growth of cancer cells. How come this is not making headline news stories and physicians are not sharing this vital piece of information with patients.
1. Daily Telegraph 30/12/16
Rebecca you have a natural ability to make what can be seen as complicated and difficult to understand very simple and easy to understand. I love how you were willing to ask the questions yourself. and not accept what is widely accepted by scientists and doctors, it is only by asking questions and in being willing to look past the information that is on hand that we learn and evolve. It doesn’t make sense that some people get cancer and others don’t and we have accepted that our genes are the main cause, but this has never sat well with me.
Thank you, Rebecca, for you clear and straightforward explanation of scientific evidence that our lifestyle and choices have on our health to the cellular level. How long will it take them to wake up and find that sometimes the easiest solution is the simplest!
I have the same questions you have Rebecca about our cellular development, I am in constant awe of the magic of the developing embryo. We might put it all down to genetics, but when a body begins with just one cell, what is the guiding factor that enables it to turn into a very organized, purposeful, multi-functional body containing billions of different cells? When we consider the possibility of the extra-cellular environment, the fluid and connecting fibres that surround the cells playing a key role in correct cellular development then the whole ball game changes. These extra-cellular environments are very sensitive to hormones, chemicals and toxins that can entirely change their relationship with the surrounding cells. It makes perfect sense to support our extra-cellular environment to ensure it remains in good health and to consider its condition in relation to cancer and many other diseases. To me its obvious that our lifestyle choices are a key factor in this equation, the quality of the substances we ingest, the rhythm of our sleep patterns that support a healthy hormone cycle or not, the quality of our internal thoughts and stressors. All these factors will affect the quality of the fluid that surrounds our cells, the fluid that nourishes them, cleanses them and supports them to hold true to their purpose. Mina Bissell’s research offers us an extraordinary window into a completely new understanding of health and illness, one that is not dependent on what we have inherited but emphasizes instead the importance of our daily lifestyle choices and how they can harm or heal us.
While the genetic predisposition to cancer does play its role, what this research gives people back, in my opinion, is the power of choice – the power to decide how you want your life to be and the trajectory you will follow. Will you become simply a product of your genetic code, playing out life and behaviours without considering their accumulative effect on the body? Or, do we choose to in every way possible take responsibility for the effect lifestyle has on our health. Then, even if the genetic predisposition still prevails and cancer develops, you know it is developing in a far healthier, more harmonious body than it otherwise would have. And from the research of Mina Bissel, a normal and health microenvironment can signal and out of control cancer call to come back to normal and healthy, and so the body will be far more receptive to treatment, healing and recovery.
As you’ve shared in the end I feel that by looking at Cancer in this way it would uncover much deeper ill conditions than we have for now classified as ill conditions. Such as why and what leads us to accepting environments within and around us that lead to such diseases like Cancer. But because we’ve accepted them as normal where can we go to even address or heal ills we haven’t considered to be ills for a very long time? This is where I feel Esoteric Medicine and Conventional Medicine can work together. Brilliant article Rebecca.
A truly fabulous article Rebecca in so many ways – the simplicity in which you explain complex biology to how everything affects everything from a scientific base and the fact that the pharmaceutical industry’s driving force is self-centred profit making.
There are many levels that can be explored here of in terms of how we live in the world. But it makes perfect sense that our relationship and context of how we live would affect our bodies either being in harmony or in disharmony.
This explanation of how breast malignant cancer cells return back to normal in the environment of healthy tissue (as seen in the lab research) highlights the way we live and the way we look after our body has a direct effect on our health and dis-ease formation. The responsibility of our health certainly does stop squarely with us and the choices we make.
The answer to every-thing is in the body.
Thank you for sharing Rebecca.
Oooof! Now that’s an article worth reading and getting out there! It makes perfect sense. But, perhaps we need to bury our heads in the sand for a little longer and let things get even worse before we’re willing to realise that what we’ve been doing so far, is not in fact working.
Great article and very well put together Rebecca. It is very disempowering to believe that we have no control over things like cancer. I know that everything happens for a reason so if we say end up with cancer, or bump our leg it is important we stop and ask ok so how am I living? What has led up to this? What I am not wanting to see? Etc. Then we can take respinsibility for our lives and live in harmony with our bodies and not fight them.
Great blog Rebecca, very insightful, it is so easy to connect the dots. But in our current state we don’t seem to truly want to know, it’s asking us to be responsible…
Brilliant and insightful read Rebecca, thank you for piecing all of that together. This should indeed be front page news but obviously, so many are not ready nor calling for that level of responsibility.
What a great article Rebecca, in the absence of any other significant understanding and cure for cancer this seems very plausible. The way we live, our external and internal environments have to influence our well-being in every area, and we accept this for certain situations. Therefore it has to apply to everything equally – that’s how systems work – cause and effect.
I have heard of epigenetics before, but never fully understood the science of how our genes are switched on or off until now. Thank you Rebecca. The fact that cancer is a product of its environment and that cancerous cells can become healthy again if put in a different setting is a huge discovery.
Wow Rebecca, thank you for putting together a well-researched article. clearly breast cancer is rising out of control and our current ways of dealing with are not sufficiently effective. If we start with the fact that: “cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation.” The environment of the body is affected on a cellular level by how we live so changing our way of life and our culture to be less stressful and more harmonious has got to make a big difference, possibly more than we’ve ever imagined.
And just want to say what an awesome article to read on the 1.1.17 a whole picture delivered of how much our choices of how we live make up the quality of your body.
Yes and how much a change can affect us – the sheer possibility of being able to revert cancer cells, perhaps even in our body.
I love how clearly you share what epigenetics is, I tried to understand it recently and just couldn’t quite get what you have clearly understood. I have watched that TED talk and it is amazing that it is not front page news. But as you astutely put together there is no money in responsibility.
The statistics in this blog are staggering Rebecca. 150 new cases of breast cancer each year in the UK alone. With such high figures, researchers should be exploring every avenue and what Mina Bissell has discovered ought to make international front-page news. If this information were made public, women could start making lifestyle changes without any cost to themselves or the health services.
Wonderfully researched and presented Rebecca. We have for far too long assumed that we are helpless where cancer is concerned and have been resigned to genetics being the one determining factor in the formation of cancerous cells. Yet as is described here there is a far bigger and more empowering picture to consider.
Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon has stated many times that Science will have some catching up to do in proving that everything we do affects everything around us. That means that every move we make affects our cells. If we consider healthy having a run each morning, eating well and only drinking on occasions, then do we have a real understanding of true health? The health that the body is really calling for goes beyond our current picture or if the current picture was it, we would not have these kinds of shocking stats when it comes to cancer.
To keep it simple, each move we make has a quality, we can pass the pepper or salt by slamming it down, sliding it over with no eye contact, not pass it cause you are too distracted, or pass it in a quality that communicates that every cell is present with this task, that you are with yourself and this move absolutely. You can actually be with the shaker as you pick it up and place it down and with the person that asked for the pepper, your eyes, your touch is 1 billion percent there, you are with your body, not isolated in the mind, now that is true vitality and health, for it is all organs working in harmony, not the brain dominating the body.
Very interesting Rebecca. Also interesting that this is not front page news. Perhaps we don’t want to know that the cure for cancer lies in our own responsibility.
Love your explanations Rebecca. If only science and more topics could be so easily explained we could all be more aware and realise that how we live and the environment we choose to live in is having a major effect on our health.
Rebecca, this is amazing and a must read for all of us who want to be truly responsible for our own health. It makes total sense to me – thank you.
’70 trillion cells within our body are constantly communicating!’ ‘But it’s what she did next that was really incredible. She formed the hypothesis that if context is the most dominant thing, then a cancer cell restored to normal context should revert back to a normal non-cancerous cell.’ What an awesome piece of work, our bodies are truly magical, what you have shared here is so fascinating and very easy to understand and read. I notice it says that you are a Receptionist and Politics Student no where does it mention scientist … however what you show here is just how capable every single one of us is of understanding and discussing science as well as doing some research; it is just the commitment, interest, purpose and passion that needs to be there, all of which you clearly have. This is such an interesting read thank you so much.
What a great, informative and revealing blog this is Rebecca. Living life simply and in connection with oneself seems like it could be a simple cure for cancer.
‘Unfortunately, this will not make drug companies millions, nor will it make anyone famous for finding a cure, and most radically, it will ask people to put their health before their ability to do as they like with their bodies, asking them to take responsibility for the scientifically confirmed effect our lifestyle has on our bodies.’
Taking responsibility will give people their bodies back, We have given our bodies away to ill-health and disease by the very the way we live .
Yes, I agree and understand that our cells are not going to respond well to stress and disharmony . . . it is obvious that there is a connection between illness and disease and lifestyle choices. It is a scientific fact that all cells, no matter how chaotic a state they are in, are always organising themselves to return to harmony, this being the true nature of the universe.vIt could be a possibility that part of that organising results in a cancer or a tumour pinpointing the root of disharmony.
An article that deserves front page news of all media platforms. One that scientifically shows the power our body holds, if we but give it an opportunity to be in that power. I find it so very amazing that it is not our cells from which disease arises, but from the extracellular fluid that holds the cells. This gives me a moment of pause, could how we hold ourselves have a direct link to our extra cellular fluid. If we hold ourselves with disregard, disdain and a general why bother in life, could this be how our extracellular fluid then ‘holds’ our cellular structure? If we hold ourselves with honour, grace and a steady confidence, could our internal environment of our bodies respond to this, by holding our cells in a harmonious way? Could this be the bit that is missed in health care as it is structured today?
One of the best and if not the best article I have read on cancer for a long time. I wasn’t a fan of biology at school but I love this lesson and what it brings. It certainly opens up the cancer world and gives us another look at what is, from all the stats, a wide reaching disease affecting us all. It’s great to read something that doesn’t pretend or claim to be an answer or solution, but gives us a possibility of being a part while also appreciating other parts. This is testament to the author and also to Serge Benhayon.
It is research like this that can change our understanding and management of illness. It may challenge many, but the truth that our general way of living life may not be the support that our bodies deserve needs to be openly and honestly discussed.
A great link between a cancer cell and its environment, and us as a whole body within our environment – the micro and the macro. If a cancer cell changes based on its environment then we have more control over our health than we think.
This is a very inspiring work that you have shared with us Rebecca. I believe that what you are saying makes a lot of sense and most certainly this research has a lot going for it. The fact is that at some point in time it maybe accepted that “the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body”.
The key point I took away was that the environment is inside you, you create the context and structure through the quality of your livungness, the environment is internal not external, the external factors contribute but what you eat how you are are big factors in how open and easy it is for your DNA to communicate.
Great observation Vanessa. Environment is often seen as something outside ourselves, as you say internal environment is equally, if not more important.
You open up the possibility that the reason why we get cancer has to do with the way we live – not something many people want to hear as it is much easier to blame a gene or the microwave or the overhead wires for it. As long as the cause is outside of us, we think we have permission to do as we like.
Thank you Rebecca for writing such an informative blog on the relationship between our lifestyle and illnesses and disease. There is such a long way for the world to go in being open to the simplicity that is offered in this research as science is so currently driven with data, testing and bucket loads of skepticism.
What a brilliant article! Thank you so much. I now understand more about my life. And to your question: “Could it be that the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc., has an effect on our smaller internal environments, that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous?” I can say: Yes, it can be! As I am a good example for this. My family (genes) is in general very over weight, has a tendency to the same illnesses like asthma, diabetes, Parkinson’s, back issues like lumbago and neck pain and depression and anxiety disorder. I had asthma as a child and teenager, lower back pain and was over weight since I was a teenager. As a young adult I did develop a depression and anxiety disorder. I nearly died 2 times because of my asthma and was in general bad health.
Then, I changed my life, my way of living, my surroundings so to speak. What I changed was the way I behaved and thought. I brought much more self-love into my daily living, changed the way I was eating and what I did eat. I changed my way of modeling my relationships, started to bring in what is needed instead of waiting for the other to bring it and so I did start to take more responsibility about my choices and way of living. And so I changed. And my illnesses changed as well. Beside I lost 40kg and had no asthma anymore, I did become joyful and very vital. Unfortunately my family felt not inspired to bring some huge changes into their life and so, if you would see a picture of me and my family, you would not think that we are related by blood and genes….
Beautifully and simply proposed insight Rebecca. – From this presentation on the relationship of cell mutation and environment it is definitely possible (if not crucial) to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, affects the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signalling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become not only cancer, but possibly other forms of disease also.
I agree Rosanna, we can apply this to everything in life that happens to us – there are no random occurrences or freak accidents – we have a direct relationship with the way we interact with our environment and essentially we can choose whether it is healthy or toxic.
Wow Rebecca this is an incredible article and offers a very different (and revolutionary!) way to look at/address breast cancer, and all cancers. I’m studying A Level Biology at the moment and we are just getting into the science of cells, nucleic acids, genomes and all of the wonderful ‘stuff’ that goes on in the body, and it’s so fascinating that the environment and surrounding cells play such a huge part in whether the interior cells function normally or become cancerous. Thank you for sharing an invaluable and incredible biology lesson.
I agree – I loved the greater insights of A-level biology – the tiny and perfectly precise working of each cell of the body, work together to produce he human body. It is for this reason, the fact that the human body is a collective thing and not an individual unit, that disease cannot be isolated away from the whole body
Wow! A very still wow Rebecca. I’ve never been really interested in science as I’ve been taught in school. I could feel myself quite resistant in the beginning of reading this magnificent piece of writing. As the subject has my dear interest, I actually read on. There’s so much to take into account in this piece of writing. What I love is the way it is written in. Facts, combined with wonderment. To me this is revealing how important it is to look after ourselves. As well as that, I realise that the less connection I have with myself, the more I am dependent on what is happening in my environment. Without me even realising that I am dependent. A cure might need to contain also support in making different life-style choices. After all, it seems as if we’re actually creating / contributing to cancer ourselves by making choices that are not so healthy. @Lancet, what are you waiting for? Is life about making money or about caring for people? Thank you dearly Rebecca Briant and Mina Bissell. Obviously women that care deeply about other women.
It is such a common thing that I hear – that people have been turned off science because of their experience in school, and I can understand why – it can often be presented in a very dry and boring way that somehow sucks all the beauty out of one of the most amazing subjects. Lucky for me, not only did I have family and friends who had a infectious love of science, I also had a few really passionate teachers who were able to share the wonder of the subject even within the tight boundaries of the curriculum. There is so much to marvel at in life and the way the body works is one of those amazing things that just blows me away, it is so organised and precise, it is real life magic!
What an amazing and revealing sharing Rebecca about cells and cancer cells and how they are transformed by the way the environment they are in changes. This is revolutionary information showing how we live can change cancer cells and reverse the process and is quite remarkable and really shows clearly what we all deep down know inside us that we are our choices and our livingness is everything. Thank you Rebecca for this great sharing for us all and the need for this to be listened to to help support us with the ever increasing rates of cancer, illnesses and disease we are facing as reality. Time to change our choices.
Thank you Rebecca for presenting the science behind epigenetics and how this can relate to our daily life. I think more and more people are waking up to the effect that our lifestyle or way of living has on the expression of our genes and ultimately our health. For me what Serge Benhayon presents on lifestyle is key here – the quality of living that he supports people to reconnect with, where it’s not just more knowledge about say healthy food or exercise but embracing these things from our own inner-wisdom and constantly developing what feels true for us from our whole body.
Wow, this is a great blog, it explains so simple what is an amazingly complex process in the body. I like the way you have linked the internal environment to the external environment and asked the question about us choosing our health over lifestyle.
I agree Carmel, the call to place our health before our lifestyle is growing in volume as the NHS struggles under unprecedented pressures and strain and throwing money at it can no longer fix the problem, a fundamental shift needs to occur.
Really insightful blog Rebecca! A clear and beautiful illustration confirming that the choices we make on a day to day level affect our health.
A beautifully presented article, thank you Rebecca. It brings us right back to the first environment we are responsible for: our bodies.
This is amazing Rebecca, thank you for presenting a very in depth topic and bringing simplicity to the content. It is vital that the researchers begin to talk with one another and as you say begin to ‘join up the dots’ in true support of humanity, so we all get to understand more fully the responsibility we have in our daily choices of how we live and how this directly affects our bodies.
I agree Beverley – what if we got around one table a cross section of humanity – researchers, doctors, nurses, complementary health practitioners, mothers and fathers, students and office works, lay people and teachers – what if we all sat down and looked honestly not only at the state of humanity, but what we can do about it. Look at the research and exchange our personal experiences and expertise. Illness and disease cannot be solved by one person or group of people in a lab looking down a microscope, because in real life that is not where illness and disease happens – it happens out in the world, in life and in people’s bodies as they go about living that life. The answer might just be found out there, in how we live and how the world is.
Stunning blog Rebecca thank you. One of the possibilities arising from this in my mind is that we are all contribute to the environment we live in and are we therefore all collectively responsible for the manifestation of disease like cancer? Something worth pondering in my view. How responsible are we willing to be if we know that our lifestyle is not just something that is self-contained, but that contributes to the generic ‘dis-ease’ of our race?
I love feeling how with all our millions of cells, we are still one cell in a vast universe. I can feel how all of our many cells, can only ever respond to what is occurring around it and within it, as our bodies do on larger scale. How we treat our bodies has a huge impact on a cellular level, it is so worth considering.
I agree Samantha – we are all a microcosmic version of that around us – scale up the tiny atom to the cell to the organ, the body, the planet and the universe – it is all connected
A great article Rebecca. “One such researcher is Mina Bissell, who has shown that cancer is not only caused by cancer cells and out of control growth, but by an interaction between cancer cells and their surrounding cellular microenvironment.” This woman is amazing – as is her TED talk – but of course Big Pharma aren’t interested in such developments as there is no money in it for them.
Complete and awe inspiring. This is one of the best and most profound blogs I have read all year. Thank you so much Rebecca, you have not only answered some very important questions, but also raised a fair few reality shaking questions yourself!
Thank you Rebecca for this clear, profound and very relatable blog. It makes total sense of the causes of breast cancer and the most supportive way to work with it by changing how we treat ourselves and thus, change our accepted and familiar way of living from old attitudes, ideals and belief.
“The cure for cancer is not a wonder drug or magic pill, but perhaps will be found in the very body we often fight against. By restoring our internal and external environment to one that is healthy and harmonious, and living in a way where the environment does not stray so far from being so, we can, in effect, play a part in our present and our future wellbeing”.
What a fascinating article Rebecca, which makes complete and absolute sense. As you say it is no wonder the research and scientific evidence that Mina Bissell has been working on and come to is not in the front pages of the news paper. You can’t ignore the fact any longer once you know this that it is completely down to every single choice that we make, how we respond and how we go about life. I know doctors through the process of supporting a patient will mention on the side the lifestyle is worth looking at but they don’t present the truth that because the way you have been living is what has caused the cancer. This is very liberating, the power is in our own hands – do we moisturise them and look after them or do we not even acknowledge that they are there?
Thank you Rebecca for un-shrouding the mystery behind genetic coding, epigenetics and cancer with such fabulous clarity. What your article has supported me to realize is that focusing on genetics is just a huge decoy on us facing our true responsibilities and power in the face of cancer. Mina Bissell’s research supports the growing awareness “that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation.” What we are being offered here is the opportunity to realize that cancer is not a random genetic accident, but a very precise reaction to the quality of life we are choosing to surround ourselves with both internally and externally and explains why even athletes, people we regard as fit and healthy people get breast cancer. A woman’s breast is a very delicate structure designed to nurture, so it makes sense that if our internal and external environments do not reflect this purpose, then the breast cells lose their direction and begin to mutate. Your article provides much food for thought and shows us that the way ahead is not necessarily dependent on immensely complicated scientific research, but lies in addressing the quality of our choices, self nurture and inner environment.
The life choices we make and how we live allows us to become the petri dish for illnesses! The drug companies are in denial for not wanting to believe this simple truth!
Well said Steve – our bodies are like a petri dish – a place where we can either foster healthy matter, or allow for infections and disease to take root and effect the enviroment.
A profound article Rebecca – I agree, why is this significant information not on the front page of every newspaper?
Thank you for this Rebecca, it seems that it is only a matter of time before people realise that their state of well-being depends on how they react to life, and take responsibility for those reactions.
Rebecca, this is super interesting, I love how you have very simply explained epigenetics and how the way we live affects whether we develop cancer or not, you make a subject that I have not understood before very simple and accessible, it is great to read this article without all the scientific language that can be so hard to understand, thank you.
I feel that this is so important – any subject should be accessible to everyone, because generally the basic understandings of most things can be made very simple. Complication is yet another sympotom of the way research has been typically published, so that it is not something we all actively take part in and talk about.
Even though companies, businesses and even each person won’t like hearing the obvious i.e. that the way we live and the choices we make directly influence our health, governments will as each government begins to face the skyrocketing costs of populations that self-abuse and bankruptcy. The truth is though, that everyone benefits when taking such responsibility as each person becomes more empowered with the choices they make and business then step from self-interest to genuine interest for the benefit of humanity.
The Way of The Livingness is the extracellular matrix of life.
Rebecca this is a brilliantly researched and written article that invites us to view the causes of cancer completely differently. Studies of epi-genetics and results of Mina Bissell’s research show us that cancer does not happen to us, we are not passive recipients of the disease, we play an active part in its onset and your article presents this clearly and powerfully. What is needed is massive re-education programmes so we all begin to understand that power lies is in our own hands and to live harmoniously with ourselves, other people and environment generates healthy bodies.
I agree Kehinde – there needs to be an injection of open curiosity into science, and the teaching of the subject. As I say in my blog, as a biology student I was always fascinated by the body, asking my teachers questions as to why it was this way or that, and often not getting a satisfactory answer. For example, studying the way our nervous system works and signals to the brain – we studied all the intricate and detailed functioning of the cell walls and the movement of substances in and out of the nerve cells that creates the little electrical impulse that gets fired to the brain. However there were some serious grey areas that got slightly skipped over – such as how it was that the nerves detect the changes in energy around them, like light and heat and pressure – and how it is that all the nerves signal in the same way and yet transmit different information – the nerves in my hand are registering pain and heat from touching the oven, but the nerves in my back are registering the touch of a person’s hand as they come to help – how can my brain read the difference in these signals – and, if as modern science suggests, it is these little electrical signals that form our ability to think, how does that work? So much is unknown, and yet there often feels like little space to explore out of the box of preconceived and approved ideas.
‘there needs to be an injection of open curiosity into science, and the teaching of the subject.’ This is the essence Rebecca. Science is a living subject and when presented in this way it inspires curiosity. When I was younger, I use to ask when given a tablet for pain I would to ask ‘how does the brain know where the pain is?’
I knew there has to be a simple answer that makes sense with cancer and I must say what you present and write about here is simple and does make sense. Cancer just arising out of nothing and only because of genes doe not make sense to me as all in life has a cause so too has illness and disease. Exploring the option that cancer is caused by the way we live and thus what environment we create in our bodies is such a simple understandable cause. We think we can eat anything, live emotional and stressed etc, and as long our bodies do not react to it straight away it is ok, but maybe it is time to consider the long term effect of some foods and behaviours onto the bodies tissues and that cancer might be one of them.
Rebecca, this is a brilliant and beautiful article. I just want it to be published in every medical journal on the earth. You make it all so simple and easy to understand through your transparent and powerful prose and illustrations. It certainly confirms the truth that everything is in relationship and nothing can be isolated or ignored – in other words it is the One Life, and this puts the power and responsibility back in our own hands. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this all down for everyone!
I agree Lyndy, we cannot zoom in on one cell and isolate it away from the whole body, and the whole world that body resides in. Eveything is in some way connected, and we do not have to look far to see where these connection link up and have affects.
Thank you Rebecca for your open research of breast cancer and illness and disease as such. What you present is groundbreaking and gives us the reins back into our hands over our own life as it clearly shows that we do have the power to influence everything that happens to us greatly.
A very powerful and enlightening article thank you Rebecca.
Thank you Rebecca for a very clear description of the effect of epigenetics and that the choices we make in the way we live influences the interactions of the cells in our body which is relevant for cancer and every other illness and disease.
Thank you for this powerful blog Rebecca, as it is giving us a way of living that can help us to restore our natural health of bodies from the inside out by taking responsibility for our own wellbeing instead of to only put our faith in the medical system and that of the pharmaceutical industry.
Brilliant blog Rebecca, one that has given me much to ponder on, and definitely asks for another read or two. But what became very obvious from what I read is that we are like that one cell in the body which can either remain healthy or become cancerous, depending on what is going on in its ‘life’; so in the same way our health is dependent on how we choose to live our lives and especially how we treat our bodies. As it is now becoming clear that our life style choices are the biggest factor in the rising rates of illness and disease, it is therefore possible that if we begin to make different life style choices we will be able to prevent some of these debilitating illnesses and diseases. The power to do so is in our hands – in our choices.
Rebecca, this is one of the best blogs I’ve read…stunning and it brought me to tears. Tears because I see the diagnosis for cancer on the increase and what is offered by these studies is an opportunity for us all, every one of us to stop and see that what is happening with the increase in cancer can be prevented. No pink ribbons needed, just an honest look at the environment we have created for ourselves and if there is disharmony, being willing to look at and change it.
The word that sticks out in all that you share Rebecca is ‘balance’. If we just brought our lives and bodies into a place that felt this way, surely we would start to see the malignant thing is not just the cell or the growth, but the harsh and demanding way we are with ourselves. It is just common sense to me.
I agree Joseph, balance is a great place to start because of how far away from it in our day to day lives.
What you’ve written here Rebecca deserves to be shared widely – on platforms such as Medium for a start… We simply cannot have enough exposure of what is being avoided, by and large, in cancer research and public viewpoint – even though there are clearly researchers who are going there and explaining the epigenetic factor with such deft simplicity (as you yourself have done here).
This will only be front page news when we are willing to acknowledge our own part in the illness and disease story of humanity. Whether we are ill ourselves or not, matters nought, for we are all a part of the widespread refusal “to take responsibility for the scientifically confirmed effect our lifestyle has on our bodies”, that has been allowed to dominate our way of life, to our own detriment. It’s most definitely time to stand up. Thank-you for writing this.
Is there a single one of us who could not take greater responsibility for the way we live? What you’ve shared here Rebecca makes absolute sense and offers much food for thought and pondering by us all.
Do we choose to live in a harmonious way? Not only in relationship with ourselves and our own bodies, but with all? Dare we ‘think that big’ – and at once, so very personally?
This is just brilliant. Thank you Rebecca. It’s amazing to know that our potentials rely on the context to be activated or not, and even though it may get overridden by the context, the potentials remain and can be reignited.
A superb sharing here Rebecca, thank you!…”they placed a malignant out of control breast cancer cell into a normal extracellular matrix context, and it reverted back to being a normal, functioning breast cell…” The dawn of understanding how our environment and our relationship with it can make changes in the way we approach breast cancer and even all other dis-eases.
The way how I choose to live directly affects how I feel. Even a few different choices in lifestyle will greatly affect whether I feel vital or not. The way I choose to live harmoniously is first and foremost a harmony I can bring to the relationships around me, otherwise, I am holding back myself and that would definitely be harmful to myself and to others. It is true that being in the world, the environment we are in could be stressful, but if we can first establish an environment within ourselves to be harmonious in, we are much more equipped to deal with life.
I love how you presented the micro and the macro here Rebecca, how on a minute scale a cell behaves in a particular way and how the context around it can change how it behaves and how that cell can go back to how it was if the context is changed again, so environment and our choices impact us on a cellular level and of course taking this wider life and our outer environments do the same. This is huge and shows how much we impact ourselves in minute and large ways. There is more to consider here as at times our bodies provide a needed correction to bring us back to the harmony we can be, and often that correction is an illness or a disease and our healing can be in having these conditions, as they allow us to see and understand patterns and ways of being which are not supportive, a stop if you will. We have amazing bodies which show us very clearly in both sickness and health how we are and offer us always an opportunity to heal and be all we are.
I agree Monica, at times we can sometimes lose sight of the fact it is our bodies that make us up – so therefore, if there is something that is true for every cell, that the context or environment it is in signal to it how to behave, then times this by the billions and trillions of cells in the human body and how is it not possible that the same thing is true for the body as a whole – that the environment around us, the one we choose to create, is constantly signalling to us and it is how we react or respond that gives us our behaviour and our feelings. The emphasis here is choice – that there is a choice of environment being made on some level. We can all make choices that lessen the amount of drama, stress, anxiousness and frustration we experience in our lives – for me it has been through the teachings of Serge Benhayon on how to swim in the sea and not get wet, how to live in life and not always take everything on. The gentle breath meditation also builds that needed space over time where you can learn to respond so a situation rather than going instantly from a reaction.
“What epigenetics offers us is that the way we live and the environment we live in, can literally affect the way our DNA is read and expressed. What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation. If we put those two pieces of evidence together, it is possible to consider that the way we live, or the environment we live in, may affect the environment inside the body, and that this might cause it to stop signaling cells to be healthy, and instead signal them to become cancer.”
This makes sense to me and given medicine know very little about why certain women get breast cancer and not others and the fact that the numbers are rising each year we need to come to a greater understanding of what is going on and it seems Mina’s research is beginning to uncover this.
Rebecca this is absolutely brilliant, I love the way in which you simply present the truth and the facts that are hidden away because they are not “widely” understood or accepted. Furthermore taking a complex topic such as EpiGenetics for us all to understand. Perhaps as you say because there is no financial benefit for the corporations that are behind many of the worlds health systems, and also due to the fact that this clearly shows we have the answer to the prevention of many cancers already and have been ignoring this. What I find also interesting is that from what I understand genetic counsellors also know that they can’t link up genetic mutations and cancers in the vast majority of cases so there has to be something far more important that needs looking at.
The behaviour of the wayward milk duct cells when placed alongside their well-functioning peers was fascinating. This has implications not only for cancer but role modelling in general. Much could be changed in society – and in a non-imposing way – through exercise of this simple principle.
Thank you for expanding this, it is so true. If a out of control or cancerous cell can be restored to harmony by being placed in a healthy, harmonious environment then scale that up to the whole human body and the same must be true. What then is our responsibility? To ensure that our space, be it our desk at the office, our house or our room within the house we live, our care and our bodies are healthy and harmonious because of what this as an environment would have the potential to offer other people who may have wondered or be struggling. I know for me that whenever I wobbled or felt I was struggling, it was spending time with other people would command and hold the space with such love that you yourself find you are aligning to it. What role models we could be to people.
It’s not surprising (although it is sad) that Mina Bissell’s findings are not front page news. Why? Because ultimately it points to responsibility – us taking responsibility for our own health and well-being. As demonstrated here, cancer is not about luck of the genetic draw but a reaction to environment and context… both of which we are, for the most part, able to influence.
A real stop moment blog Rebecca, I love the way you write, very clear and precise. We have often heard that our environment such as the microwave our mobiles or chemicals in our food can cause cancer but what you are showing here that it is much deeper than this. “Could it be that the interaction in our environment on a large scale – the stress we are under, the diet we eat, how we react in situations etc., has an effect on our smaller internal environments, that in turn signal to our cells, either to be healthy or to be cancerous?” This to me makes sense, I know when I am stressed or anxious, I can feel my body change and along with the tension I can feel there is an internal vibration within that signals to me I am no longer harmonious, if I can feel this then what is this doing to my body right down to the cellular level.
Well said Alison, I would say that nearly everyone would be able to relate to feeling the tension after a long day that was stressful or after an argument where you feel shaken up or boiling inside with anger. All these emotions come with physiological responses, triggering our immune systems, increasing our breathing and heart rate, releasing adrenaline and other hormones, which in turn cranks up prodcution in our cells – the whole body goes into over drive just to maintain the feeling of stress, anxiousness or anger etc – but in all honesty we can feel these things multiple times a day – how long does it take for this out of balance state to take its toll on the body?
This is brilliant reading, how is it that selective information and research is front news which may not be 100 % true, sounds like it serves another agenda and one that’s not based humanity but $$ signs.
Well said Jamie, we have to look at the very real possibility that just as greed is corrupting many other areas, the area of medical research and pharmaceuticals are not immune.
Rebecca, thank you for this brilliantly simple and clear understanding to cancer. It is indeed a very empowering approach, a ‘hopeful one’ as Mina Bissell suggests, for everyone of us with and without cancer, or in fact any other illness or disease.
No, the drug companies will not like this approach as the trillions they make from sick people is very very likely if not probable to be in jeapardy. But seriously, for how much longer do we really want to be profiting off sick and suffering people?
Thank you Rebecca for such an interesting blog and call to responsibility – what you share is actually very empowering.
I agree Carmin, this was what I felt when researching this topic – it takes breast cancer away from being the fearful unknown that could strike at any moment, to something more within our power to affect through the way we live.
This article really spells out that there is a relationship occurring between every part of our body – an interactivity – and when that breaks down the body cannot operate in a natural and harmonious way. The answer is really summed up in Rebecca’s closing paragraph as to why Mina Bissell’s research is not yet front page news as it won’t make anyone famous and it won’t make drugs companies any money. There would be no more blaming the microwave for the cause of cancer as it would ask us to take our own health and well-being into our own hands through the way that we live and how we take care of both our internal and external environments. Thank you Rebecca for sharing this research.
It often seems as if we would rather throw money at breast cancer and make a lot of noise and activity rather than truly look at ourselves, how we are living our life and what our personal contribution and responsibility in the whole thing is. Our bodies are lovingly and clearly giving us messages but we are not listening.
This is a brilliant presentation Rebecca, thankyou. The truth and thus the ‘cure’ to what ails us is always very simple, it is we who, crazy as it seems, bring in the complication so as to bide us more time to live in the mess we have created and therefore seek solace in. We are divine beings fashioned from a universal love that know no bounds, thus it can be stated that we live as part of a Universal Order that, although it is in a continuous state of expansion, adheres strictly to universal laws that help to ensure nothing gets too out of hand. Yet here we have us, now in physical form, behaving in a way that is completely at odds to this divine symmetry we are continually reminded of every time we peer up at the night sky or marvel at the intricacy of design in a leaf’s veins, a spider’s web, the flight path of a bird…
We as humans have created a life that pushes us to breaking point, fuelled by emotions and any substance that can promise us any sort of quick ‘up’, rapidly and inevitably followed by a crushing ‘down’ that has us living in such extreme exhaustion we should be on the brink of extinction! The truth is we are killing ourselves with the way we are choosing to live, and because we know this and choose not to deal with it, we then invent various methods whereby we can check out of the equation via countless forms of entertainment, foods etc until such a time as we can ignore it no more. Enter cancer…the irresponsibility of our loveless ways made visible, that serves as a blessing and not a curse in that it highlights what happens when we choose to live in separation to our universal essence, the love that we are, and let the chaos of our own creation reign.
You bring in a very needed dimension to the world of scientific research, but really to the whole world in general. Our history can be seen a story of people fascinated with the stars and ‘what is out there’ or what our place is in the universe. It is thanks to so many people all those years ago, looking up and wondering that we have many of the scientific understandings of the universe we do now. And yet is there more to the universe than simply a subject for quantitative study? Is it possible humans love of the stars and the cosmos, and our every present reminder of it every night and day, is because it is not to be left out of our lives – we need to look at the perfect balance of the universe – something so vast and powerful that we haven’t scratched its surface, and yet despite the seemingly destructive and violent nature of a star imploding, being born or a black hole forming, in truth there is an ever prevailing balance, a harmony if you will, that keeps all these huge forces of nature from destroying one another – there is undeniable beauty in the intricate working of the universe, and the same can be seen within the human body. What would the consequences be if a star or planet began to behave out of the order of the universe, imploding before its time or suddenly moving to another spot. The consequences would be that the whole universe would be disrupted – for us on earth, one of our constellations has suddenly shifted, and perhaps it sets of a chain reaction – a ridiculous idea perhaps, but could it be the same of earth and the beings living on it. Is our way of life so far from the natural order, with its war and turmoil and suffering and self-destruction, creating all the ills and imbalances we cannot seemingly explain?
So the environment I live in causes me to be a certain way or it could be seen that I react to my environment and the outcome is what others observe. This then becomes my perception of (what I see) the world reflecting to me – so we are at risk of forgetting who we truly are when we get absorbed into what the world dictates around us. Rebecca your comment – ‘What Mina’s research offers us is an understanding that cancer is a product of its environment, not a random genetic mutation’. ‘Wow’ this offers an opportunity for pondering as does – ‘Could we possibly consider that our bodies are like one little cell in the environment that is life – and that our life gives us signals, that we can choose to respond or react to, either making our environment a healthy and harmonious one, or one that effectively ‘gives us cancer’?. This needs to be front-page news to allow humanity to feel the choices available to them and to reclaim the long forgotten truth of who we truly are.
I agree Christine, and even when it comes to the environment of the world, we cannot point fingers and blame it for the causing a ‘bad’ environment of our bodies. Firstly, the environment of the world, with all its current turmoil and ever present issues, is a product of how we have all chosen to live in it and accepted it to be. Secondly, we are never at the mercy of these outer stimulus – for me one of Serge’s more amazing teachings is to swim in the sea without getting wet – to be able to live fully in life, without taking it all in, learning to observe life and not absorb it into the body.
We all know the feeling when something – a person, situation, argument or even a topic in the news has ‘gotten under our skin’ (clue is in the wording) where we can feel it in our bodies, perhaps we are feeling upset or angry, frustrated and worked up and this can stay with us for some time. But what if in different ways we are reacting to everything we encounter in life, from the trip to the shops, to work, to being with family and friends and each reaction shifts the internal environment.
Informative and an eye opener.
Wow Rebecca, thanks so much for sharing this. Mina’s and your research demonstrates a huge shift in how we perceive cancer – from something we inherit to something we can create or dissolve. But with that latter discovery comes a great responsibility to live a harmonious life(style).
I agree Nick, responsability is a historically touchy issue, something that generally we have a slight aversion to taking. And yet what if it is not a weighty burden at all, but the key to resolving many of the issues we face
Absolutely awesome Rebecca. Perhaps this study is far too confronting for many to swallow and comprehend in full but it makes absolute sense. If we have so much corruption, deceit, lies, murder, war, aggression, conflict, holding back and emotional disorders than ever before then is this not the environment that our bodies are constantly living in… and if what this study is showing is in fact the case, then it would make complete sense that our bodies are responding in ways we do not like such as with cancer or other forms of illness and disease.
Thank you for raising this Joshua – it is true, the planet is very much like a cell or a body and we create the environment on earth. And as you have shared, the current climate of our planet contains a lot of suffering and disharmony – what signals is this sending to our bodies, let alone our own personal choices that create stress in our internal environments.
Firstly congratulations on this clear, powerful and extremely well written blog! As a woman with a family history of breast cancer I cannot help but feel messages like this need to go out to the world, so that instead of feeling at the mercy of our genetics, we know we have a part to play in how we live. Thank you again.
Heather – I totally agree, this research and way of viewing cancer needs to become a part of our everyday language and way of living. I too have friends with family history of the disease, and it is for people like that, who often feel there is an inevitability of getting cancer, when in fact there are at least steps that can be taken to reduce this risk.