Of the many varieties of cancer, lung cancer affects my universe more than all others combined. Seven people I’ve known personally received the deadly diagnosis, and cigarettes instigated most cases. Two primary causes of lung cancer are cigarette smoking and asbestos exposure.

As a former health insurance broker/counselor, I observed a common root in tobacco-induced lung cancers and would warn clients addicted enough to still be smoking in middle age. Age 50-ish is do-or-die time! Even smokers who quit cold-turkey by the end of their fifth decade had good odds of preventing lung cancer. Smokers who continued past that age were often diagnosed early in their sixties. The pattern isn’t carved in stone. A client’s son-in-law, who smoked three packs a day, died quickly at age 36.

If diagnosed very early, while cancer is still confined to the lung, odds are slightly better than 50/50 of surviving five years. Reasonably good odds, one would think, but not so for the majority. The catch is that only 15% of lung cancers are diagnosed early. With late diagnosis, when cancer has spread to other organs, there’s only a 4% survival chance. This diagnostic snag nets an average survival rate of merely 11.5%, infuriating statistics when the American Cancer Society has been hunting a cure for one hundred thirteen (113) years!

The richest not-for-profit agency in the world ($1 billion in assets) hasn’t cured a single type of cancer in more than a century. The American Cancer Society organized as a not-for-profit entity (rather than non-profit), because that tax status allows them to net hundreds of millions $$$ and never pay a dollar in taxes, providing they invest profits back into the business of finding a cure – easily done, when almost one million is spent every year just on the CEO’s salary ($863,304).

So why isn’t lung cancer diagnosed early, since typical symptoms are a persistent cough and low-grade fever? It’s complicated. Lungs are deep within the body, and gaining access to affected tissue is problematic and dangerous. After 113 years of research, ACS should have invented a sure-fire diagnostic test, but last year a dear friend underwent the same diagnostic procedures as those used twenty years ago, when another friend died of lung cancer.

Lungs are initially x-rayed. If a “spot” is found on the x-ray, the spot is monitored over time – time that certainly shouldn’t be wasted on monitoring if cancer is growing inside. My friend Debbie, who still smoked at age 63, consulted a pulmonary specialist (lung doctor) in December 1995 for a stubborn cough and slight fever. Her lung x-ray indicated a suspicious spot. The doctor ordered a second x-ray one month later, to determine if the spot had grown. But the January x-ray was inconclusive, as were February, March and April x-rays. Meanwhile the bronchitis never cleared. Debbie finally contacted a lung specialty hospital to secure an appointment in June, where she immediately underwent surgery to obtain tissue samples. Cancer was confirmed and, in July, two of five lobes of her lungs were removed, followed by administration of heavy radiation. She died four months later.

Debbie waited six full months for a diagnosis, while cancer destroyed her body. How can a lung cancer patient obtain early diagnosis and at least 50/50 odds of surviving, when this ridiculous protocol is still in use today?

My friend Anna hasn’t smoked in decades but has suffered lung weakness her entire life. Last October during a pulmonary consult, a “hot spot” was discovered, and biopsy was recommended. During the procedure, both lungs collapsed, and Anna was three seconds from respiratory arrest before the lungs were reinflated. The tissue sample was never obtained, and Anna refused to undergo a second procedure because her weakened heart might not survive. A month later, a scan indicated a star-shaped mass, indicative of cancer that easily spreads beyond the lungs.

I urged Anna to begin an aggressive regimen of natural treatment before doctors killed her, but Anna’s nature demands she explore every imaginable option and evaluate each to the moon and back twice, before making a decision.

Alternative Treatments for Cancer

Anna began tossing all manner of nutritional remedies at the cancer. Her late December x-ray showed cancer growth, and the doctor advised her to expect limited remaining time. Her weakened immune system couldn’t tolerate radiation or chemo, thank heavens, so it was never considered. I begged her to get on a regimen of apricot kernel consumption. Anna had made a prior attempt at ingesting apricot kernels, but she suffers digestive issues and had difficulty tolerating them.

After hearing her doctor’s post-Christmas verdict, Anna got serious in her war on cancer. A new grandson was on the way, and she dearly hoped to watch him grow up. Anna chose organic raw bitter apricot kernels as her primary weapon. She avoided digestive distress by introducing one kernel per day, wrapped in an olive, and every third day adding another kernel. A month later, Anna finally achieved her optimal dose – 16 kernels daily based on body weight. Immediately after attaining the goal, in early February her lung scan confirmed that the mass had stopped growing – the first time in four months. She’d barely begun treating the cancer and already its growth had come to a halt. Her next scan is scheduled for early May, and we’re confident of the outcome, based on several other recent cancer cures I witnessed, all facilitated by the miracle kernels. Anna’s cancer, instead of Anna herself, has been handed a death sentence.

Apricot kernels are, by no means, the only natural cure for cancer. Tahitian Noni (the authentic brand ) cures cancer, as does cannabis oil, if you can obtain it. The US Food and Drug Administration’s Board of Directors is staffed with pharmaceutical company CEOs, who keep a watchful eye on products that might reduce drug industry profits, even outlawing natural cancer cures within the US.

A friend of Anna’s has survived ten years beyond her cancer diagnosis by following guidelines recommended in the book “8 Weeks to Optimum Health” by holistic health guru, Dr. Andrew Weil. The first step in surviving cancer is refusing cancer-causing western protocols – radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, drugs – which severely damage the body and often kill a patient before cancer does. Do your own research and formulate a treatment plan with the assistance of a naturopathic practitioner.

I’m always incredulous when someone is given mere months to live and still refuses to consider options outside the arena of western medicine. Dying people will persevere in following doctors’ orders to the grave, rather than considering alternative cures. What have they got to lose?

My father-in-law died of tobacco-induced lung cancer, a month shy of his 62nd birthday. I’d tried to steer him away from doctors by shipping him a box of natural cancer-fighting supplements. My mother-in-law returned them a few weeks later, advising me that they caused an upset stomach!!! Let’s consider options here… tolerate a little nausea or die? I just don’t get it. Even end stage cancers can be killed, if the patient will utilize real cures.

This discussion can’t end without mention of malignant mesothelioma, a deadly lung cancer having no correlation to tobacco use. People who’ve had the great misfortune of being exposed to “safe” asbestos forty years prior, suddenly develop this devastating cancer late in life. The five year survival rate for patients diagnosed at age 65-plus is a mere 5.7%. Rarely is someone diagnosed at a younger age because the disease remains in a latent phase for decades before manifesting symptoms. Two of my clients were diagnosed months apart at the dawn of this century. Both died within three months.

Asbestos-induced cancer is born when razor-sharp asbestos particles slice open lung cells, allowing microbes in the bloodstream to enter. The microbes convert normal cells into cancer cells. Since there’s no way to remove asbestos fibers from the lungs, the approach to fighting this cancer is different. In addition to natural cancer-killing treatment upon diagnosis, microbes in the blood must be continually killed off afterward via nutritional supplementation to prevent recurrence. The patient must adhere to a lifelong regimen of preventive nutrition.

Western medicine has proven itself a stunning failure in its 113-year lack of progress in curing lung cancer, or even in improving survival odds. But like any other cancer curable via nutrition, lung cancer isn’t a death sentence, unless you refuse to consider alternative therapies.