A Daydreamer

Fifteen years ago when I was attending chiropractic college near Atlanta, Georgia, a fellow student shared with me that had doctor had discovered a small tumor in one of her breasts. I asked her what she intended to do about it. After all, we’d just spent two years studying the amazing powers of chiropractic treatment, but there was nothing in what we’d learned that indicated that it had any efficacy in eliminating tumors. She said, to my surprise, that she’d decided to “leave it alone for now,” even though her doctor told her that she was “dreaming” if she thought that the tumor would just disappear.  So, a recent paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association, and reported in the New York Times online, was particularly exciting for me. The paper noted findings, over a period of two decades, that indicated that many small tumors would likely not be a problem if they were left alone, undiscovered by screening. It stated, in fact, that many of these small tumors were destined to stop growing on their own or shrink, or even, at least in the case of some breast cancers, disappear.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that cancers require more than mutations to progress,” said Dr. Barnett Kramer, associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health. “They need the cooperation of surrounding cells and even,” he said, “the whole organism, the person.” He said that the immune system or hormone levels, for example, can squelch or fuel a tumor.

Cancer cells and precancerous cells are so common that nearly everyone by middle age or old age is riddled with them, according to Thea Tlsty, a professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. She said that that fact was discovered in autopsy studies of people who died of other causes, with no idea that they had cancer cells or precancerous cells. They didn’t have large tumors or symptoms of cancer. “The really interesting question,” Dr. Tlsty said, “is not so much why do we get cancer as why don’t we get cancer?”

For much more on these exceptional findings, go to nytimes.com.  My friend, by the way? She’s a happy, healthy chiropractor in Los Angeles, California, these days, and the mother of a beautiful two-year-old girl!

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