Advent

The approaching season of Christmas is preceded, in the Christian calendar, by a period of preparation called Advent. In practical terms it is less well known than the season of Lent, preceding Easter, which is associated with penance and sacrifice. Instead it is a marketer’s dream; a time of year when traders thrive and advertising budgets are unleashed on the world to stimulate sales of everything from toys, to cologne and alcohol. This is undoubtedly a perversion of the original intention. It has long been known that sugar plays a central role in the development of cancer but this aspect of the disease is little spoken of. There is constant discussion of the genetic research that will one day provide a cure for the disease and millions of people around the world contribute their time and energies raising funds to fight it. Many, or most, of its victims will be lost to the disease after fighting heroically for years. As in the mindless trench warfare of World War One, choosing not to fight is not an option. We are told that not to submit to surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy is to hasten our death. That we return home maimed is just the cost of doing business. When Geoffrey Howe resigned from Margaret Thatcher’s government he delivered a speech in Parliament in which he likened ministerial life under Thatcher to a team of cricketers whose captain had broken their bats before the game. It seems to me that any Prime Minister who commissions a study into the possible health benefits of introducing a sugar tax but then dismisses the medical report without even reading it is doing the same thing – but on a national scale. After 30 years of painstaking research into the genetic fingerprints of cancer, which was hoped would herald the arrival of new targeted chemotherapy drugs, little progress has been made. The research has revealed cancer to be the ultimate chameleon. It is an extremely complex disease with many types of cell permutation even within the same tumour. Targeted therapies like Herceptin have proven to be less of a ‘smart bomb’ and more like an ineffective single bullet against the rapidly growing threat of cancer around the world. Yet other researchers exploring the metabolic nature of cancer have struggled to gain the funding their research needs. Since the 1931 Nobel prizewinner, Otto Warburg, discovered the anaerobic nature of the cancer cell and its prodigious demands for glucose many others have continued his work. Their proposed therapies are comparatively simple yet staggeringly effective. So simple in fact that it puts cancer prevention firmly in the hands of the public. The calorie restricted Ketone Diet starves cancer cells by cutting off their supply of glucose while promoting the growth of healthy cells by converting their fuel source to Ketone bodies, from simple fats, which cancer cells cannot use. The cellular use of ketone bodies is stimulated by fasting which prompts the cells to hunt for fuel. In all major religions fasting has been known to be good for health and for centuries this has been enshrined in observances such as Ramadan, Lent and Advent. It is a scandal that the benefits of fasting are misunderstood and squandered in the sugar fuelled binges that follow these seasons. It’s even worse that the benefits are masked from future generations by the now ubiquitous Advent Calendar which counts down to Christmas with their daily chocolate sugar fixes. The seasonal observance of fasting can indeed usher in new life, not only spiritually but mentally and physically as well. Health is God’s gift. It’s freely given to those who want it.