Knowledge is true power

As a part of my Life Coaching services, I provide both Medical blood tests-covering 47 various wide-ranging tests, ranging from Liver function to inflammation response markers to hormone levels within your body and I also provide a DNA test that studies your genotype to provide a thorough breakdown of what foods and types of exercise and lifestyle choices are optimal for your actual genetic makeup. These services allow me to provide a comprehensive plan to optimize my client’s health and fitness to increase their productivity and reach their true potential in life.

On talking with an acquaintance about these tests recently, he told me that he and some other people would never have their DNA tested in case they found out they had a genetic disposition to a certain disease!

What are you talking about? Obviously, I was ever so polite and did not rip him apart, as I am going to do now, due to social norms where we simply do not state the truth anymore for fear of hurting somebodies’ feelings. Whereas shouting and even screaming out your opinions without any facts is totally acceptable.

This seems to be an important issue in today’s modern society, you do not want to know the facts because it may scare you. Whatever happened to knowledge is power? And education is king?

If I have a genetic disposition to a certain disease, I want to know about it, why? So, I can do something about it. In fact, I already have had my DNA tested and know that I do have ‘Age-related macular degeneration’ which causes blindness as I age. Good, so now I can do everything in my power to offset this or at the very least delay it. I’m 46 years old and my eyesight is perfect!

What am I doing about it? Ensuring I live the very best, healthiest, fittest life I can live and take care of my eyesight the best I can. Simple really.

Let’s take another very scary disease, Cancer. Cancer is a genetic disease and so wouldn’t you want to know if you have ‘the’ gene? Actually, this understanding is false. Cancer is caused by gene mutations but it is not so genetic in it can be hereditary. At last check, apparently the total amount of cancer sufferers with this cancer gene is 7% of all the actual cancer patients out there! Yes, that’s correct, meaning 93% of ALL cancer patients do NOT have the cancer gene! What does this mean? It means something else is causing cancer.

Ok, so I’m going to get a bit morbid now, we ALL have cancer, every single one of us. As far as we know, please bear with me here as I am going to bastardize this to make it much simpler than it actually is. Cancer is generally caused by a mutation from damage to the DNA. Every Nanosecond our bodies are replacing cells with new ones or these cells are dying (depending on your age i.e. senescent cells) and due to a multitude of every day normal factors, environmental toxins, free radicals, oxidization, just merely being alive, your DNA undergoes massive amounts of damage, but your body has fantastic mechanisms to defend against and detect any mutations. Although, blue eyes, straight hair, increase in height, etc are all side effects from natural mutations. Basically, we wouldn’t be human beings if we didn’t have these mutations.

On the other side of the coin however, some of these mutations can and do lead to cancer.

In all probability, and as an old wise oncologist once said: “We are all going to get cancer at some point in our lives unless something else kills us first.” WONDERFUL. It is a fact of nature, not entirely genetic as such, but still a natural occurrence that all of us should be aware of.

People will tell you emphatically ‘Smoking causes cancer.” If this were the case then wouldn’t it show every single person smoking would have died or at the very least suffered from cancer and yet studies do not show us this. Only 15 to 20% of ALL smokers throughout the World suffer from cancer. Yes, smoking does massively increase your ‘probability’ of suffering from cancer. What does this mean? This means that your body is trying to protect and repair your DNA from all manner of things and attacks and it does a bloody good job of it too. Now imagine if we overload your system with a ton of extra toxins, what happens to that system? It has much more work to do and could miss something because it is massively overloaded. This is why smoking can increase your ‘probability’, it’s simple maths.

As the latest anti-obesity campaign from the Cancer Research UK organization, that has come under a huge amount of criticism, has stated obesity can cause cancer. The same applies as smoking, if you overload your system and make it inefficient from your own lifestyle, then you can increase your ‘probability’ of your body missing a mutation in your DNA and it can lead to cancer. What is so hard to grasp about this? So now Cancer Research UK has to defend itself against ‘Fat shaming.’ Really? No more facts then? In case you hurt someone’s feelings. Do you think Cancer gives a shit?

So, what should we do then? All hide in a soft bubble and never go outside.

My point here is this; Stop using your emotions and feelings to cloud your judgement. Knowledge really is power. Learn and study things, be inquisitive, always question things, be sceptical, and yet find the real information that is out there, don’t be so lazy. Don’t accept negative things simply because your friend told you it was so. Play the ‘Let’s Google that shall we’ game. Whereby any time you or your friends make a bold factual statement that you ‘know’ to be true say “Let’s Google that” and Google it to see if what they have said is true. It’s a great game and keeps you on your toes. It taught me to be very careful about what facts I give out, that I think I knew.

Just so you know my mother had cancer for eight years and underwent hours and hours of chemotherapy and my sister died from it. Therefore, I do have a vested interest in this subject. What did I do about it when it started to take my loved ones from me? I fought back, I researched as much as I could about the subject as I possibly could without becoming a full-time oncologist. Why did I want to learn so much about an awful subject? Because I wanted to understand it and not be afraid of it, I didn’t want to hate it anymore. I now know there are many steps you can take in your everyday lives to mitigate and lower the probability of ever having to suffer from cancer. Knowledge is true power.

If you are interested in learning more about the services, I provide for my clients to help them optimize their performance and lives, then check out my new website and give me a call. Perhaps I can be of service to you and possibly help you to fulfil your true potential.