[Dion]

A book that was given to us when my father was dying

He created a support group called Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP) “to help people mobilize their full resources against the disease”. The group’s motto was “In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope.”

According to Dr. Siegel, exceptional patients refuse to be victims. They educate themselves and become specialists in their own care. He notes a study from London that showed a better 10 year survival in patients who show a ‘fighting spirit’ as opposed to ‘stoic acceptance’.

He believes in a mind-body connection to disease and explains this in the “surveillance theory” which states that cancer cells are developing in our bodies all the time but are normally destroyed by white blood cells before they develop into dangerous tumors. Cancer appears when the immune system (controlled by the brain) becomes suppressed and can no longer deal with the cancer cells. This is because the brain becomes so disrupted by other concerns (like stress, or unfulfilled lives); it takes its attention away from the cancer cells.

He reminds us that the way we react to stress is more important that the actual stress itself. He quotes Elita Evans who wrote A Psychological Study of Cancer in 1926 “Cancer is a symbol, as most illness is, of something going wrong in the patient’s life a warning to him to take another road.” I think this must have been pretty ground breaking in 1926, because in 2014, I think there would still be many skeptics of this belief.

http://www.jeanlamantia.com/2014/04/...bernie-siegel/