Cancer

Understanding the Condition

A Word That Brings Fear

Few words stop us cold the way “cancer” does. The fear is understandable, but fear is a poor guide. Understanding what cancer is, and what has to happen inside a body before it can take hold, takes away much of the fear and shows the way to clearing it. Dr. Christopher preferred the words “cell deterioration,” because they describe what is really happening better than the word “cancer” does.

How Healthy Cells Live

Your body is made of trillions of cells, and every one of them is born, does its work, wears out and is replaced in an orderly way. Skin, the lining of the bowel and the blood are renewed constantly. Healthy cells grow only when the body needs them, stay in their own place, and die off when they are damaged or no longer needed. To do this, every cell needs three things every day: good nutrition carried in by the blood, oxygen, and a clean way for its waste to be carried off through the lymph, the liver, the kidneys, the bowel, the lungs and the skin.

The body also keeps its own guard. Every day a few cells are copied wrong. The immune system, including the white blood cells called natural killer cells, finds these abnormal cells and clears them away long before they can cause trouble. Researchers call this immune surveillance. A body with a strong immune system and open channels of elimination handles these mistakes quietly, every day of our lives.

What Cancer Is

Cancer is cells growing out of order. A group of cells stops listening to the body’s signals. They keep dividing when they should rest, they do not die when they should, and they crowd into a mass. Unlike a benign tumor, a cancer has no smooth wall around it. It reaches into the tissue around it like roots, and cells can break away into the blood or lymph and start new growths somewhere else (Medline Plus; American Cancer Society). Cancer is named by where it begins: breast, colon, prostate, lung, skin, blood and so on.

Not every lump is cancer, and most are not. The Tumors & Lumps sheet explains benign and malignant tumors and the lumps that are not tumors at all, and it gives the full directions for the poultices and packs mentioned on this sheet.

What Allows Cancer to Form

Natural healing asks a different question than “How do we kill it?” It asks, “What happened in this body that the guard could no longer keep up?” Dr. Christopher taught that cancer is not an isolated problem. It shows up in an old injury or a weakened part of the body because the whole bloodstream is carrying more waste than the body can clear, and it settles where the tissue is weakest. In his words, it “is a systematic disease. It depends on filth in the bowel and the blood stream.” That is why cutting it out, by itself, so often fails: the cancer “breaks out in another place.” The bloodstream must be cleaned.

Dr. Joel Robbins’ article Health Through Nutrition gives one of the clearest pictures I know of how a body travels down to cancer. I have shared it with my members for years. Here is the heart of it in plain words.

The road down to cancer and the way back up, after Dr. Joel Robbins’ “The Disease Process” in Health Through Nutrition. Diagram drawn for H.E.A.L.

• Disease is the body’s effort to keep us alive. The body is designed only for health. When we break the laws it runs by, it does not quit; it makes the best adjustment it can to survive. That adjustment is what we call disease. “We do not ‘catch’ a disease or illness, we earn it.”
• Waste comes in by mouth and by breath. At first the body refuses it: we cough, sneeze, gag or turn away from what burns. Sugar and habit override those warnings, and the bowel takes over, throwing waste out by vomiting and diarrhea.
• The liver takes the load. When the bowel can no longer keep the waste out, it is absorbed, and the liver must neutralize it before it reaches the blood. To protect itself and the blood, the liver begins to store what it cannot clear. It becomes congested, and everything it does for the body slows down.
• The blood and tissues take the overflow. When the liver can hold no more, waste slips into the blood, and the body moves it out of the blood and into the tissues to keep the blood clean enough to live. Robbins calls a pocket of stored waste “a localized area of constipation.”
• Acute cleansing. While the body still has strength, it pushes this waste out through the skin and mucous membranes: colds, fevers, rashes, sinus and ear trouble. These are cleansing efforts. When they are suppressed again and again and the waste keeps coming, the body loses the energy to throw it off.
• Chronic, then stored. The cleansing becomes weak and lingering, a chronic disease. At last the body can only pack the waste deeper into the tissues. Robbins names arthritis, diabetes, senility and cancer as diseases of this deepest level.
• Degeneration. Tissue that has been starved of nutrition and buried in its own waste for years begins to change from its designed structure. “The tissues, in essence, are mutated from their normal state.” This is the soil where cancer grows.

Robbins also explains why two people living the same way get different diseases. Four things decide it: our attitude, the kind and weight of the stress we put on the body, the body’s vitality, and our genetic tendency. A tendency is passed down from parents, but it is only a weak spot, not a sentence. It shows itself only when we break the laws of health, and then the trouble shows up in our weakest tissue first.

Source: Dr. Joel Robbins, D.C., N.D., M.D., Health Through Nutrition (Tulsa, Oklahoma). Quotations are his words.

Rabbits and Cigarette Tar

In the 1950s, Dr. Ernest Wynder and his colleagues produced cancers on rabbits’ ears and necks by painting them with tar from cigarette smoke over the animals’ life spans. The cancers came only after long, steady exposure. The study looked at the skin, not the inner organs, but what I take from it, and from what I have seen in my own work, is that before a tumor or cancer can form, the eliminative organs (the liver, kidneys and bowel) have already been worn down until they can no longer clear the waste. The cancer is not the real issue. It is a symptom of a degraded internal system. Not until those organs are rebuilt and able to carry out waste again can a body be truly free from cancer.

Study: E. L. Wynder (Sloan-Kettering Institute), E. A. Graham and A. B. Croninger (Washington University, St. Louis); rabbits painted with cigarette-smoke tar over their life spans (reported December 1957). The conclusion about the eliminative organs is my own teaching, not a finding of the study.

What Science Has Found

Much of what the old natural healers taught is now being described by researchers in their own words:

• Cancer takes years to build. Most cancers grow slowly from the first changed cells. In the colon, “a polyp can take as many as 10 to 15 years to develop into cancer” (American Cancer Society). There is time to change the soil.
• Cancer cells live in a starved, low-oxygen, acid place. Nearly a century ago, Dr. Otto Warburg found that cancer cells burn sugar by fermentation even when oxygen is present, leaving lactic acid behind. The tissue around a tumor becomes acid, about pH 6.0 to 6.5, and that acid weakens the immune cells sent to clear it (Warburg, Science, 1956; Barba and others, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2024).
• Long-standing inflammation feeds cancer. The National Cancer Institute states that “over time, chronic inflammation can cause DNA damage and lead to cancer,” and people with long-term inflammatory bowel disease have more colon cancer.
• Much cancer is preventable. The World Health Organization says “between 30–50% of all cancer cases are preventable,” naming tobacco, alcohol, poor diet, low activity, excess weight, infections, polluted air, workplace chemicals and radiation.
• What we eat matters. In 2015 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency classed processed meat as a cause of cancer in humans (Group 1), mainly colon cancer, and red meat as a probable cause (Group 2A).

How Cancer Progresses

The medical picture and the natural healing picture describe the same road from two sides.

How cancer grows out of order, from changed cells to spread. Simplified diagram drawn for H.E.A.L.

• Pre-cancer. Some cells in a tissue begin to look and act wrong. A doctor may call this dysplasia, atypical cells, or a precancerous polyp or spot. This is the easiest place to turn things around.
• Cancer in place. The changed cells have become cancer but are still sitting in the lining where they began (“in situ”). They have not broken through.
• Invasive cancer. The cells break through the floor of the tissue and grow into the tissue around them.
• Spread. Cells travel in the lymph or blood. They often lodge first in the nearby lymph nodes, then in distant places, most often the bones, liver, lungs or brain. By now the whole body is deeply involved.

In natural healing terms, each stage is the body losing more ground: less vitality, more stored waste, and an immune guard that can no longer keep up. Some cancers move quickly. Among the most serious and fast moving are pancreatic and lung cancer. With these, the window for clearing is often very narrow, and even with the most aggressive natural programs the diagnosis can come too late. Others linger for years. The individual’s constitution matters too: someone strong in body, mind and spirit will usually have a much easier time clearing the disease.

The Emotional Side: the Energy Work

Healing the whole person. We are body, mind and spirit, and all three must heal together. When one part is neglected, the other two cannot find complete healing. A person can follow a perfect herbal program, but if she stays in a life that keeps wearing her down, or never makes time to care for herself, the body will keep losing ground. Healing the body often means facing what is happening in the heart and spirit as well.

I have seen this again and again with breast cancer. The breast represents the nurturing of the self (Louise Hay also writes that the breast represents mothering, nurturing and nourishment). Women have done the perfect herbal program and still not healed because they stayed in abusive or degrading marriages, or never learned to nurture themselves. Dr. Robbins lists the same things among what decides how long healing takes: freedom from pent-up emotional scars, freedom from ongoing anxiety, spiritual alignment, and the amount of “want to” a person brings. Dr. Christopher often said, “There are no incurable diseases, but at times there are incurable patients.”

Louise Hay, in her book Heal Your Body, describes this pattern:

• Cancer: “Deep hurt. Longstanding resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at the self. Carrying hatreds. ‘What’s the use?’” Turn it around: “I lovingly forgive and release all of the past. I choose to fill my world with joy. I love and approve of myself.”

Emotional pattern quoted from Louise Hay, Heal Your Body (Hay House). This is not a fault to blame anyone for; it is a reminder of how much the heart is carrying. Forgiving everyone in your past, including your doctors, is part of the work.

Areas Affected & Opening the Way to Healing

Cancer shows itself in one place, but it was built by the whole body. The work starts with the channels that carry waste out: the bowel, the liver (the vacuum cleaner of the body), the kidneys, the lymph, the skin and the lungs. Open those channels first. At the same time, flood the body with living nutrition so the immune system can do the work it was designed for. Then work directly on the site where the cancer is.

The Foundational Programs

Three programs must be established first and continued all through the healing: boosting the system with Echinacea, bowel cleansing, and nutritional support. Begin with these before you do a liver flush.

• Bowel: the Lower Bowel Formula (LBF). Start with 1 capsule just after dinner and add one capsule each day until the bowels move two or three times a day. Once the bowel is working, add LBF #2, the drawing and detoxifying formula, to keep it clean.
• Castor oil pack over the front of the body. Soak a flannel in castor oil, lay it over the whole front of the body (neck to groin), and put a hot water bottle over the liver for about 1½ hours. It turns years of “cement” in the bowel into soft mud that is easily evacuated, and softens the waste in the liver so the flushes work better.
• Echinacea to build the immune guard: 2 dropperfuls four times a day on the full program. Echinacea is never alternated or rotated out. It is a steady-use formula that keeps the immune system fired up and able to deal with the healing process from beginning to end.

Clearing the Liver and Kidneys

Keeping your liver actively pulling and dumping waste is the key to removing any major disease. The liver is the organ that carries the waste of a tumor out of the body, through the bowel. On the full program:

• A castor oil pack over the liver every night.
• A week of liver flushing every other week, with a week of kidney flushing between, so the kidneys stay on top of what the liver releases.
• An ELF (Emergency Liver Flush) three nights a week during both the liver and the kidney flushing weeks.

When what was working stops working, it is time to flush the liver again. The vacuum bag is full.

Cleansing the Blood and Lymph

• The detox formulas: Blood Purifying or Detox Formula. H.E.A.L. has two anti-cancer detox formulas, and either one will do the work of supporting the liver to detox the blood and tissues. Use one; switching between them is fine if you can use both, but it isn’t necessary. The Blood Purifying Formula is free of cayenne and black walnut, so it is the one for anyone who should not use cayenne or has a nut allergy. It is Dr. Christopher’s Red Clover Combination, built on red clover, chaparral, burdock and poke root; he called it the same type of formula Harry Hoxsey used for years. Dr. Christopher taught that “the bloodstream must be cleaned,” and this is his formula for it. In my practice, many members have used it over the years to clear tumors. Take it as directed on its formula sheet, traditionally 2 dropperfuls 4 to 6 times a day during a cleanse week, in a few ounces of grape juice.
• Essiac Tea. I use Essiac for cancer only. Its four herbs, burdock root, sheep sorrel, slippery elm and Turkish rhubarb root, cleanse the blood and lymph and keep the waste moving out through the bowel. For serious conditions, take up to 3 ounces three times a day, warmed or in hot water. The recipe and brewing directions are on the Essiac page.
• Red clover tea for sipping through the day, with a very small amount of raw honey if desired.
• Garlic. At least 3 cloves of fresh raw garlic every day, eaten, swallowed whole, chopped into food or put through the juicer. The hotter the better. If you take a blood thinner, or have surgery coming up, talk with your doctor first.
• Move the lymph. The lymph has no heart to pump it; it depends heavily on movement and breathing. Rebound or walk every day, and keep M&L Salve over any swollen lymph nodes.

Feeding the Body

Cleanse and feed: clear the waste out while flooding the body with nutrients at the level of the cell. Raw fruits and vegetables come to us as complete packages, with their enzymes, minerals and water still alive. Every step of processing takes more away, until fried, canned and additive-laden food gives nothing and adds toxins. Robbins urges a diet of 70 to 80 percent alkaline (mostly raw plant) foods.

• The food program. For the first 30 days, all food is raw and vegan: vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, and soaked or sprouted beans and grains, as fresh, organic and local as you can get. No meat, eggs, milk or milk products, no cooked foods, and no alcohol, coffee, black tea or sugar. If you are seriously ill, a fresh juice fast for the full 30 days is stronger still: 8 to 10 ounces of fresh juice every hour, about a gallon a day. A juice fast is not for someone who is thin, frail or losing weight, or who has kidney disease or takes blood-pressure or heart medicine that raises potassium, without their doctor. Either way, juice fast at least one day each week. If you cannot get organic, don’t let that stop you; do the very best you can.
• Fresh juice. At least 32 ounces of fresh carrot juice a day on the full program, or carrot, apple and parsley. Sip it slowly, by itself, not with food. A juicer is not an option; if you don’t have one, buy one.
• Superfood. 2 tablespoons twice a day (a double dose), blended into 8 ounces of fresh juice, 8 ounces of distilled water and ½ to 1 cup of fresh fruit.
• Potassium Broth. 1 to 3 cups a day between meals. The recipe is on the Tumors & Lumps sheet.
• Protein in the morning only. Dr. Christopher taught that a person with cancer should not overdo protein, which he said overworks the pancreas. Eat 8 to 10 almonds in the morning and again at noon, no peanuts, and no protein from evening until the next morning, giving the body 16 to 18 hours of rest. No meat at all. If you are losing weight or muscle, work with your practitioner to be sure you are getting enough protein from plant foods.

Use distilled water for all teas, and when taking your extracts in hot water. If you use a hot water dispenser for your teas, using only distilled water greatly adds to the life of the unit.

Water, Sun, Air and Movement

• Hot and cold showers. One minute hot, then one minute cold, seven times over, about 15 minutes, finishing cold. Do two or three a day for the first 60 days, paying special attention to the affected area, then at least one a day. A person too weak to stand can have it given while lying in the tub.
• The Cold Sheet Treatment twice a week while on the program, then once a week after you have turned a corner.
• High enema with distilled water, using a tea of equal parts chaparral, Oregon grape root and red clover. How often depends on how well the bowels are working. Three times a week (every other day) is good. Once a day takes time, but it has its benefits: done first thing in the morning, it clears the bowels so you will likely not need to go again until the afternoon. If you do it daily, use BF&C Salve as the lubricant to protect the skin around the rectum.
• Follow with an implant. After the high enema, put in a small amount to be held and absorbed. Soothing: 8 ounces of aloe vera gel with 8 ounces of distilled water. Detoxifying: 2 ounces of wheatgrass juice with 16 ounces of distilled water. Anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal: 1 to 2 cloves of garlic blended into 8 ounces of raw apple cider vinegar and 8 ounces of distilled water; this one is an excellent healing aid but can be very intense. Red clover tea for blood cleansing and Echinacea root tea for the immune system also make good implants. Step-by-step directions are on the How to Do a High Enema page.
• The skullcap and catnip liver dump. A really good herbal mix for getting the liver to release. Put 1 rounded tablespoon of skullcap and 1 rounded tablespoon of catnip in a 32-ounce jar, fill it with boiling distilled water, set a saucer or loose lid on top, and leave it in the bathroom overnight. In the morning, strain it into your final enema bag of water: a small strainer that fits over the mouth of the enema bag works perfectly, or strain it into another glass first and then add it to the bag. Hold it until the need to let it out is clear. It normally takes effect in 5 to 10 minutes, and the liver will release a good amount of toxic waste, so stay close to the bathroom. A wonderful way to start the day with a cleared-out liver. I find it better than a coffee enema: it gets the liver to release without stressing the endocrine system with too much stimulation from the caffeine.
• Sun and air bath daily, built up slowly so you never burn (see The Sun: the Great Doctor below). Walk barefoot on grass or earth and breathe deeply outdoors. Sleep with the window open in summer and cracked in winter.
• Skin brushing and massage. Brush the whole body daily with a natural-bristle brush, toward the heart. Massage daily, and don’t be afraid to touch the sore or sick area; put some life back there.
• Exercise every day, as much as you are able, with a walker if you need one. Wear and sleep in natural fibers only: cotton, wool, linen or silk.

The Sun: the Great Doctor

Dr. Christopher called the sun “the Great Doctor of all times,” but warned that it “is like fire, which can either provide gentle warmth or it can burn a city down.” Used gradually and wisely, he taught, it heals where herbs and other procedures are slower, and it helps the skin with acne, eczema and other troubles. He saw skin cancer as coming from the inside: “it is the putrid condition of the body that is poisoning the tonsil, or the skin!” The sun, he said, does not create the cancer but can “ripen and bring the cancer that is already there to the surface, wherein the waste matter can slough off, so that the body may heal. This is why we must work inside the body with herbs, as well as outside the body with the sun.”

His rule was always to build up slowly and never burn:

• Never at midday. No sunbathing between 11 and 1, when the sun is harshest. Bare skin in the direct sun, not through glass.
• Fair skin: start with 1 minute the first day, timed by a clock, and add a minute each day. The sun feels so good that you will want to stay longer, and that is where the trouble starts.
• Darker skin: start with 2 minutes front and 2 minutes back, and add a little each day. On his Incurables routine, the patient builds up to 12 minutes front and 12 minutes back by the end of the first week.
• Experienced sunbathers who sun every season may start with a little more.
• Help from inside. Drinking burdock root or burdock seed tea, which works on the lymph and the oil glands, makes the sunbath more beneficial.

Some chemotherapy drugs and other medicines make the skin burn very easily in the sun. Ask your doctor or pharmacist before sunbathing while you take them.

Within about thirty days of gradual building, a person can be sunning up to an hour. A burn is the opposite of healing: it can cause third-degree burns, shock and even death.

Source: Dr. John R. Christopher, Helios-therapy and the Incurables sunbath. The sun is a true healer, and there is no need to fear it. But wisdom must be used, or anything, no matter how healing, can become toxic. Some people go overboard with sunshine, and sunburn is linked to skin cancer (World Health Organization), so keep Dr. Christopher’s rule: build up slowly and never burn.

Working at the Site

• Castor oil packs over the cancer every night. Spread a layer of M&L Salve over the area first to open it so waste can move out through the lymph, then lay the castor-oil-soaked flannel over it and leave it on all night. Several packs can be used on different parts of the body. Castor oil packs nightly are critical; there’s no excuse for skipping them. For a deep area such as the prostate or pelvis, the pack can be alternated hot (10 minutes) and cold (5 to 10 minutes with an ice bag) to drive circulation through the stagnant area.
• The poultices. For skin cancer and breast tumors, the Black Cancer Poultice and the Poke Root Poultice draw the waste out through the skin. They belong with the full program, never on their own, and the complete directions, with care notes, are on the Tumors & Lumps sheet. The Black Cancer Poultice contains bloodroot, a strong herb: keep it away from the eyes, and stop if the healthy skin around the spot becomes raw, blistered or very painful. When bleeders begin, add cayenne to the poultice; if a bleed breaks through, pack it with cayenne powder.
• Watch, don’t guess. As a growth loosens, it often softens first, and it can look larger for a time before it shrinks. Have your doctor measure it so you know what is really happening.
• Rebuild with BF&C. As the waste leaves, BF&C (Bone, Flesh & Cartilage) feeds and knits the tissue back together: the extract at 1 teaspoon three times a day, and the BF&C Salve as an overnight pack once the area has softened, leaving the skin open and clear of salves for at least 6 hours each day.

Level of Commitment

Cancer is the deepest level of disease, and it calls for the deepest level of work. Be honest with yourself about where you are:

• Gentle support. For keeping well after you have cleared, or for anyone with a family tendency who wants to stay ahead of it: an 80/20 food program (80 percent raw, 20 percent cooked vegan food), daily juice and Superfood, and a seasonal bowel cleanse with liver and kidney flushing.
• Focused cleansing. For precancerous findings: an abnormal Pap test, precancerous polyps, suspicious skin spots. Bowel cleansing, a raw food program, a week of liver flushing followed by a week of kidney flushing, the Blood Purifying or Detox Formula during cleanse weeks, and castor oil packs over the area. Repeat the cycle and have the area rechecked.
• Incurables Program. For any diagnosed cancer. The full program, full time: the food program, juice, Superfood, Echinacea, bowel cleansing, repeated liver and kidney flushing with ELFs, the Blood Purifying or Detox Formula, Essiac, garlic, castor oil packs nightly, high enemas, hydrotherapy, sun, air and exercise, and the heart work. Plan on at least 30 days, and for cancer usually six months or longer. In severe cases, a break in the routine may not be wise.

Don’t stop when it looks better. Do not discontinue the program the minute your symptoms disappear. Continue until long after they are gone, or you may be only partially healed. After that, the 80/20 program is a good way to eat for the rest of your life. The 30-day program can also be used as a touch-up whenever your health starts running down again.

An honest word. Some people change their whole way of living and still do not win. Dr. Robbins names two reasons: either they were not ready in heart to take responsibility for their health and learn the lesson the disease was pointing to, or the disease had such momentum that there was not enough time for a tired, toxic body to use the new nutrition before the disease overtook it. Healing takes time. Robbins estimates about a year of healing for every seven years of toxic living, though many improvements come along the way. Even when time is short, the natural program can ease pain and bring comfort. An elderly or very frail person can do a strong program with great benefit, but begin slowly and watch how the body responds.

A Loose Healing Plan

• First: know what you are working with. Get the diagnosis: the type of cancer, where it is, and its stage. Make your treatment choices with your eyes open, and tell your doctor what you are doing.
• Before you start: have everything you need for the next 30 days on hand, including a juicer. Read the program through, take a deep breath, and read it again. Line up a good support person, someone who will help you along and not give in to the “why me?” days.
• Week 1: the foundation. Begin the food program or juice fast, fresh juice and Superfood every day. Echinacea. LBF, building up until the bowels move two or three times a day. High enemas three times a week or daily, with the skullcap and catnip liver dump in the morning when you want a good liver release. Castor oil pack over the front of the body. Garlic. Hot and cold showers, sun and air, movement.
• Week 1 onward: the site. M&L Salve and a castor oil pack over the cancer every night.
• Week 2: liver flushing. A week of liver flushing with the Blood Purifying or Detox Formula, and ELFs three nights. Essiac every day.
• Week 3: kidney flushing. A week of kidney flushing, still with ELFs three nights.
• Week 4 onward: repeat the cycle. Liver flushing every other week, kidney flushing between. Add the poultices if the site calls for them. BF&C to rebuild.
• All along: the heart work. Forgive, let go, rest, and fill your days with what brings you joy.
• Every month: take stock. Have the cancer measured. Expect six months or longer. Keep going long after the symptoms are gone, then settle into the 80/20 program for life.

Stories from the Work

More on Cancer

• Tumors & Lumps
• How to Do a High Enema
• “INCURABLES” Program: FIRST 30 Days
• Essiac: A Four-Herb Cleansing Tea with a Long History
• Eleven Herbs for a Deep Blood Cleanse
• A Strong Formula for Cleansing the Blood and Lymph
• Understanding Dis-ease
• Understanding Breast Cancer
• Natural Support for Pancreatic Cancer
• Prostate Health Naturally