VITAL LIFE!
by: APRIL DEL ROSARIO-LOPEZ, M.D.
Before the deceased Hollywood star Rock Hudson in the early 1980s openly admitted that he had AIDS, the “immune system” was rarely heard of by most people. The AIDS epidemic pointed to the public the threats associated with it. More researches all over the world were undertaken and are still ongoing to help us understand its nature.
What have these studies found out? A weakened immune system does not only cause AIDS, it also causes cancer and auto-immune diseases. We have varied antibodies inside us that recognize and engulf foreign invaders such as virus, bacteria, and fungi. With AIDs, a person can be sickly all the time because his antibodies become too weak to protect him.
With auto-immune disease, there seems to be a “civil war” from within when the person’s own antibodies fight its own rendering him high in inflammation and attacks a body organ or more.
We look at cancer now in another dimension. We no longer focus on just the tumor. Everyday, we have as much as 300 potential cancer cells going around our bodies. If our immune system is good, it destroys these cancer cells daily.
But with a weakened immune system, these mutated cells escape our blood stream and targets an organ and multiply uncontrollably producing the tumor.
Alternative cancer therapies go beyond surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. It goes further by employing means to boost the immune system. Unfortunately, chemotherapeutic drugs do not only hit the cancer cells but also destroy the healthy cells. It destroys further whatever is left of the immune system. That’s why people on chemotherapy are advised to isolate themselves from crowds and to wear masks so as not to catch any infection.
So, what then attacks our immune system ? In my many years of medical practice, from my observation, I would rate ST- R-E-S-S as the no. 1 enemy. We release many free radicals that fires on our immune system and weaken it. Everybody gets stressed out at one time or another. That’s ok. But if you get stressed out repetitively and continuously, then it’s just a matter of time before you get sick. The daily grind you have in facing crisis such as family issues, unhappiness at work, or financial problems will take its toll if you do not learn ways by which to de-stress and unburden yourself. Do you know that 5 minutes of stress weaken your immune system for 6 hours? Exhaustion from over-work, lack of sleep, worry, fears, hatred, grudge are just some of the negative emotions that add up to the stress. Negative feelings and thoughts compounded together is unhealthy.
How do we boost our immune system? Here are some effective strategies:
* Show love and receive love. Give yourself and everyone in your family some good old “touch therapy.” Hold hands more often. Walk arm in arm. Hug each other more often. Give each other a massage. Say “ I love you” and words of appreciation daily.
* Connect with friends and family. Cultivate same-sex friendships that form your support group that encourages you to talk about feelings, worries, concerns, and life in general.
* Laugh more often. “Laughter is the best medicine,” so they say. It makes you release a lot of “feel-good” hormones that increases your immune system.
* Exercise and sweat it out for at least 20 minutes five times a week. Exercise releases endorphin hormones which is a natural anti-depressant. Our skin is our biggest organ of detoxification. Sweat releases the toxins from our skin pores.
* Reach out and be of help to others. Finding meaning in life and being of significance greatly improves our immune system. You not only help others but you actually help yourself too.
* Find ways to relax and have time for yourself. It can be listening to your favorite music, communing with nature, marveling at God’s creation in watching the sunset or hearing the sound of the calming waves beside the beach, playing golf, reading an interesting book, or whatever activity that releases your tension and makes you feel happy.
* Eat less processed food and more of raw fruits and vegetables.
Cooking destroys much of the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes which are the important substrates in building a strong immune system. Over the week-end, I was amused to read a book titled “The Essential Guide to a Healthy Body, Mind and Soul” written by Australian author Amanda Gore. Below is her list of the Ten Commandments for Reducing Stress:
1. Thou shalt not be perfect or even try to be.
2. Thou shalt not try to be all things to all people.
3. Thou shalt always leave things undone that ought to be done.
4. Thou shalt not spread thyself too thin.
5. Thou shalt learn to say “No!”
6. Thou shalt schedule time for thyself and for thy supportive network.
7. Thou shalt switch off and do nothing regularly.
8. Thou shalt be boring, untidy, inelegant, and unattractive at times.
9. Thou shalt not even feel guilty. 10. Especially, thou shalt not be thine own worst enemy, but be thy best friend.
(Dr. April del Rosario-Lopez is a Family Medicine and Integrative Medicine Practitioner in Dipolog City. For comments and suggestions, email at arlopez_md@yahoo.com).
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The way the doctor is explaining what causes this disease, it would be safe to say that soon every one of us will be sick of cancer. If she happens to go out more and observe, she will be surprised to know that to ordinary folks, stress has become part of their everyday life.
Who by the way does not have any family issues nowadays? And who by the way has no financial problems today? I have yet to meet somebody who is happy at his work, public of private. In fact, these issues no longer concerns us. They are not a stressing matter as these unfortunately have become a part and parcel of our daily life.
However, if these issues incidentally are a problem to some, fortunately it is not to us poor ordinary folks. We have learned how to live with it, else we might get cancer, as what the doctor say.
But the doctor seems to miss something. The doctor is advising us to laugh and relax. Good for her, I’d say! But is it not ironic that the doctor is advising us to be happy when her profession on the other hand is what makes the majority of us most unhappy?
I have yet to meet someone who is happy and laughing when he’s just been diagnosed with a cancerous disease. Also, this person would be most unhappy and stressful knowing that he might not die of cancer but instead die of financial ruin, on how to pay for its expensive treatment!
In fact, this is what kills the majority of poor Filipino patients, not the cancer. We know that doctors demand astronomical fees. We know that only the rich, like our politicians and probably also doctors, who are the only people who can afford to pay for the treatment of any cancer diseases.
This is the reason why that it is not the lack of sleep, the worry, the fears, the hatred or the grudge, that concerns us most. We are not worried of a coming cancer disease. This happens to be not our pressing problem.
What concerns us most today is how to cope up with the next meal, how to bring the next food on the table. This is the realities of our daily life.
So if cancer comes or not, we are not worried about it. For us poor people, we have learned how to cope with it, painful as it may be. But who is not already suffering today?
We are not worried because we know that cancer is a rich man’s disease!
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