Precision Cancer Prevention: How to Keep Cancer at Bay? (B-3)

Know Your Number one Enemy!

To Me, cancer is a personal foe. My brother was my childhood Hero. He took big steps in his life and achieved big milestones as an entrepreneur. He started from literally zero and died as a millionaire. He didn’t only shine in his own life but also supported many to reach their goals, including myself. To make the long story short, I am telling you the iconic rise and early demise of my brother from a deadly cancer. The tragedy that moved me to write this blog so that you may make efforts to avoid the same.

As I said, he was my hero. It is not because he taught me the first lesson in English, guided and supported me all the way from a primary village school to the medical college but also his brave initiatives inspired me how to take risk, put efforts to crack the hardest nuts and secure success. It is due to his inspiration, I always think big, chose to embrace challenges, never afraid of solving the knotty problems and set my goal at the highest possible pinnacle.

Earlier, I was working as a physician at the UN clinic when my brother-in-law died of esophageal cancer. He used to chew a lot of betel leaves with processed sweet tobacco. Despite taking all medical treatment he died in a matter of few months. I felt to be failed doctor. I resigned from my job at the UN clinic, completed master’s in public health and started to raise community health awareness working with three international organizations one after another. I ended up working with the World Health Organization doing the same in a greater context.

My motto was to raise public health understanding on how to stay healthy at the first hand and do something so that people know how to prevent diseases before they get it. While enjoying my work with the WHO, my brother diagnosed with cancer. I again felt that I was not doing enough, and I resigned from my job with the WHO and plan to come back to a doctoral program to study cancer prevention in general. Unfortunately, my brothers’ health condition deteriorated too fast, cancer cells spread out and he had to take chemotherapy. I was beside him watching how a person can endure endless pain and taking hourly shots of pain clear. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep but still trying to maintain a smile on his face surrounded by the near and dear ones. He was not overweight, he never smoked, he lived in Vancouver, one of the healthiest cities of Canada. Still, he got a cancer. By the time it was diagnosed, the cancer cells already disseminated to multiple niches of his body. We tried with the most effective chemotherapy as well as whatever alternatives we could hear about but his health deteriorated day by day and he died in about six months. Alas! he was only 59 then.

One phrase he urged still ringing in my mind all the time: ‘Is not there a way to survive (from this cancer)?’ This one phrase of my brother trembled me. That’s what changed my thoughts, the direction of my study and carrier paths. And the same phrase forces me to work for raising public health awareness on cancer prevention.

Resetting The Goal!

I was working with obesity – how it leads to chronic diseases including cancer. But the demise of my brother moved me to reset my goal and focus more closely on cancer prevention. I started researching on a common carcinogen that is present in all our homes and causing lung cancer in non-smoking people. It’s radon gas that is killing thousands of our fellow citizens silently. Currently, I am working at the University of Calgary in an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Cumming School of Medicine and School of Architecture. This is also an international collaboration between Canada and Sweden. We took Sweden as a model case study as they excelled in controlling indoor radon among all the countries in Europe.

Anyone interested to learn more about our articles published in this regard and captured by Google Scholar can read here. Although my research is on cancer prevention, in this book, I treasured evidence from research conducted with the focus to prevent cancers of all types in the natural ways. No chemo, no radio, no surgery. Only healthy lifestyle, without any potential side effects. As I strive to do for myself, I urge you to embrace a healthy lifestyle. This is the way to enjoy every day and moment of your healthy life. This is the way to extend your lifespan up to the best possible limit of it.

So, it is my bold claim as it is based on evidence from research in the field that there is a natural way of preventing cancer. Although for obvious reason, this area of research has never got enough funds, there are convincing evidence from research done with alternate initiatives and supports. During my doctoral and postdoctoral research, I came across many healthy people as well as cancer patients, cancer survivors, caregivers and relatives of cancer victims. I talked to them in detail while conducting my mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) research. Open ended discussions revealed the lifestyle they used to have. I am a witness of the reactions people have when they get diagnosed, the pain they suffer while taking chemotherapy and the impacts these deadly cancers have on their body and mind. Their families, jobs, businesses and social circles – none remain out of the touch of these awful consequences.

After completing my doctorate program from the University of Ottawa, I engaged in cancer prevention research as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Calgary. Currently, with the second fellowship received from the Canadian Institute of Health Research and Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, I am engaging my full time in cancer prevention research. I noticed in the market and social media, there are a lot of fake news, mis- and disinformation and scientifically unfounded messages that are creating panic and most of the time misguiding people. So, I made my mind to clarify the matter as I learned from my background as a practising medical doctor working in different parts of the world with the national and international organizations and agencies; at both clinical and public health settings, at the filed level as well as in the academic research arena.

As I said, I have had the privilege to work as a public health expert with the World Health Organization when I gathered extensive hands-on experience in the preventive aspect of public health at the grass-root level. And currently researching at the Cumming School of Medicine, a tertiary teaching and research hospital linked to the University of Calgary. Therefore, my goal is to provide you with the latest evidence-based guidelines curated both from my practice and rigorous quality research of mine and many others so that you get the clues on how to remain healthy and stay away from cancer. In the next blog, before going into the details of cancer, we will know something more about health what does it mean in its holistic sense.

Thanks for having time to read my blog. I would appreciate your leaving a comment on what you liked or disliked, and if you have any suggestion for me on what more you may expect in the upcoming blogs.