Wonderfully Made

Immune System And Cancer

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Timothy Howe and Sheryl McWilliams

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Series Code: WM

Program Code: WM000397


00:01 The following program presents principles
00:03 designed to promote good health
00:04 and is not intended to take the place of personalized
00:06 professional care. The opinions and ideas
00:09 expressed are those of the speaker.
00:11 Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions
00:14 about the information presented.
00:35 Hi and welcome to Wonderfully Made.
00:37 My name is Sheryl McWilliams.
00:39 Our guest today is Dr. Timothy Howe from Parkview
00:41 Adventist Medical Center. Welcome Doctor Howe.
00:44 Thank you Sheryl it's a pleasure
00:46 to be with you today. Good, we are gonna be talking
00:49 about the Immune System today which
00:50 I find intensely interesting.
00:52 It's a system that I don't know a lot about,
00:56 but I understand it works really hard to keep me
01:00 and all of our viewers healthy. Absolutely,
01:03 so help me understand how it works?
01:05 The Immune System is a very complex
01:09 and interesting system. I suppose the easiest way
01:14 to understand it is to think of your
01:16 Immune System as you are military.
01:19 As in the military, there are various branches
01:23 of your Immune System. You have the Command Center
01:28 that would be a specialized type of lymphocyte
01:33 called the T lymphocytes. You have the infantry
01:39 if you will. The ground forces called them
01:43 what you will those would be the phagocytes.
01:46 Phago means to eat, cyte means cell.
01:49 Those are the cell eaters or actually the cells
01:52 which eat neutrophils and macrophages.
01:55 Then you have B cells. They are type of lymphocyte
01:59 as well and they work under the direction
02:04 of the T cells and they manufacture antibodies.
02:08 Antibodies are very interesting compounds.
02:11 They have two arms and they have
02:15 if you will hands. These hands are very specialized.
02:19 They are particularly designed to identify one
02:25 and only one invader in from that would be coming
02:30 into your body. Let's say that someone comes
02:35 or a bacteria comes and tries to get into
02:38 your body. If your body has been exposed to that
02:42 before and made antibodies to that bacteria.
02:47 Once that bacteria is picked up by a macrophage,
02:51 which is really the macrophages or eaters,
02:54 but they are also border patrol.
02:57 The macrophages are found under our skin,
03:00 they are also found along the blood vessels
03:03 when they are inside the blood itself,
03:05 we give them a different name,
03:07 we call them monocytes, but they do the same thing.
03:10 They pick up these invaders,
03:13 these not you if you will. Bacteria, viruses,
03:18 pollen on occasion they take it in their hand
03:21 and present it to a T cell for identification
03:26 unless it's been there before. If it's been there
03:30 before the body recognize it almost instantly
03:34 and the B cells start turning out millions
03:39 and millions of antibodies. A B cell, one B cell
03:43 can make as many as ten million antibodies
03:47 in an hour. Wow. That flood into your system
03:50 any of those foreign invaders are tagged
03:54 as soon as the antibody latches on to them
03:59 they are marked for death. The antibody attaches
04:04 that marks them as an invader and then the host
04:06 of phagocytes come out and chew, chew, chew
04:10 and eat them up and destroy them.
04:13 Actually, they pull them inside and dissolve them
04:18 inside the macrophage or the neutrophil primarily.
04:23 It's a very interesting system.
04:26 It's important for the system to be able to tell
04:29 the difference between what you and what's not you
04:33 and in the not you category to tell the difference
04:37 between what's a danger and what's not a danger.
04:42 Of course, there are many things that find their way
04:45 inside that aren't danger like dust particles.
04:50 They are not a danger, but sometimes the immune system
04:54 gets a little bit confused and mounts a reaction
04:59 to that we call that allergies.
05:01 Allergies are really the immune system
05:04 on hyper alert and a little confused as to what is you
05:10 and not you and in that not you category
05:14 what's dangerous and not dangerous.
05:17 So it sounds like this is a pretty complex system,
05:21 but its one that is in very, very, very important
05:24 to keep me safe and to keep me well?
05:27 Absolutely you know Sheryl if you don't have
05:29 an immune system. If you are born without one,
05:32 you don't live long, even if you are in total
05:36 isolation from any bacteria or viral particles
05:41 and fungus or any other pathogens as we call them.
05:45 Even if you are in total isolation from those
05:48 you still have cancer and cancer is almost
05:52 you in fact it was you, but it has changed
05:56 and become something that is not good for you
05:59 and the immune system needs to identify that too.
06:03 Interesting, so how does the immune system
06:07 try to keep me free of cancer?
06:10 The immune system has specialized cells
06:14 that look throughout your body,
06:16 looking for aberrations in the coding of the cell,
06:21 the cell wall because when you have the mutation
06:24 inside the cell often you have a mutation outside
06:28 the cell as well. When you are small,
06:31 your body has to get to know you and it does
06:35 that primarily through the T Cells.
06:37 T Cells are lymphocytes that come
06:40 from the bone marrow and go to the thymus gland,
06:43 which is right here low in your neck
06:46 high in your chest and there they are instructed.
06:50 God knows how, we don't understand it completely
06:55 in what is you and what is not you
06:57 and for the rest of their lives which T cells
07:01 are very long life. They help us detect what's you,
07:06 what's not you, what's cancerous
07:09 and what's not cancerous, but if the immune system
07:12 gets depressed by anything and they loose
07:17 that sharp ability to detect the cells
07:21 in your bodies that have changed
07:23 or if on the other hand more and more cancer cells
07:27 are produced and they are overwhelmed
07:30 in their ability to identify the cancer cells
07:34 then we are at increased risk for cancer.
07:36 So whatever you are saying is that,
07:39 we are all exposed to cancer cells
07:43 on a fairly regular basis and something happens
07:47 that causes these cells to not be identified
07:51 by the immune system or to not work well?
07:53 That's correct they estimate that each of us
07:56 has a cell or two or three as many some people think
08:01 as six or more incidences per day of cells developing
08:06 a mutation and becoming potentially cancerous.
08:10 Fortunately our immune system gets the
08:14 majority of those and destroys them before
08:18 they can become a problem for us.
08:20 We are incredibly well made, well designed
08:24 and despite the multiple problems our immune system
08:29 can go in there, destroy the cell that's changed
08:33 and we keep living very well for many years.
08:37 Okay I now have a very strong respect
08:40 for my immune system. What can I do to strengthen it
08:44 or to make sure it stays healthy?
08:46 You know we talk a lot about diet
08:49 and diet is important, but let's start with an article
08:54 that was published in the summer issue
08:57 of Journal Advancement in Medicine in 1995,
09:00 a very interesting article. In this study,
09:05 they took a group of people and they wanted to test
09:09 their immune system function specifically
09:12 they wanted to look at an antibody called IgA.
09:16 IgA that they measured was found in the saliva,
09:20 but IgA is also found in the nasal secretions.
09:24 It's found in the tears of the tear ducts.
09:27 It's found in the alimentary canal
09:31 or in the GI tract, it's found under the skin.
09:34 In essence IgA is the first line of defense
09:38 against infection, so it's very, very important.
09:42 They took these people and they said to them,
09:45 we want you to think back to a time in your life
09:48 when you felt very distressed,
09:52 when you felt unloved, when you felt hurt,
09:56 someone had done something terrible to you
09:59 and it was just a very bad time in your life.
10:03 Now Sheryl I don't want you to think about a time
10:06 like that and you will see why shortly.
10:09 They measure their salivary IgA levels before this,
10:13 then they had them concentrate really get
10:16 into relieving that bad experience
10:18 for just five minutes, after five minutes
10:21 they measure their salivary IgA levels
10:24 and they found that within 15 minutes of that
10:27 five minute time when they thought back to that
10:30 bitter bad time in their life their salivary
10:33 IgA levels fell by 70 percent. Wow,
10:38 and did not return to baseline for five hours.
10:42 It's very important what you think about?
10:45 A Merry Heart Doeth Good Like a Medicine.
10:47 A Merry Heart Doeth Good Like a Medicine, you know,
10:49 they took the same group of people.
10:51 Fortunately, they didn't end with that study alone,
10:55 they took the same group of people and they said now
10:57 we want you to think back to a time in your life
11:00 when you felt really loved and it was just
11:03 a wonderful time. It was, you felt accepted
11:06 and it was just the best. Get into those feelings
11:11 for five minutes and relive that experience
11:14 and they found that their salivary IgA level
11:18 of the people that thought back to a time
11:20 like that in their lives went up by 80 percent
11:23 and didn't return to normal for five hours.
11:27 Now there are several very important things
11:30 in the study. One is of course its careful;
11:33 we need to be careful what we think about.
11:35 We need to chose our thoughts carefully
11:38 and the memories we have we need to be careful
11:42 that we don't take time reviewing all the bad stuff
11:47 in our life, now maybe some of you never
11:49 had a bad happening that's wonderful.
11:51 I have a few things its important for me
11:53 not to think about in my life because
11:56 I want my immune system healthy,
11:57 but the other interesting thing about the study
12:00 is it points out that every single while blood cell
12:06 has neurochemical receptors on it.
12:09 Every white cell is under the direct control
12:14 of our minds. As the Bible says as a man
12:19 think of in his heart so is he we could add as you
12:24 think in your heart or as you think
12:27 so is your immune system very, very important
12:32 and we find that many people come down
12:35 with cancer not just because of exposure,
12:38 but after a stressful time in their life,
12:41 when they instead of dealing with it
12:46 and moving on and concentrating
12:48 on the better things of life focused
12:51 on the negative. Their immune system
12:54 was depressed and cancer escaped surveillance
12:58 and grew very, very important for us
13:02 to be careful what we think about for our immune system
13:07 strength and health very important.
13:11 So there really is a connection then between
13:15 the mind and our body. I know we say this,
13:18 but there are very tangible connections there.
13:21 There are very close links between our mind
13:24 and our body. Sometimes we forget this,
13:27 but it's important that connection
13:31 is almost instantaneous. You think about
13:35 what happened, it's the B cells that were making
13:38 those antibodies. They got the signal from the brain
13:42 bad time, oh painful time and the B cells
13:48 stop making IgA. The IgA levels fell on the route
13:54 second experiment the B cells got the message
13:57 from the brain good times, wonderful times
14:01 and they started producing IgA and made lots more.
14:06 It reminds me of that wonderful chapter
14:10 in Ministry of Healing Mind Cure.
14:13 In that chapter Ellen White makes the statement,
14:17 nothing tends more to promote health of body
14:23 and soul than does a spirit of gratitude and praise.
14:28 You know, I used to need faith to believe
14:32 in that book Ministry of Healing.
14:34 I don't really need faith anymore
14:37 because I have science that shows me page after page
14:42 then what that book says is true today. Absolutely.
14:46 And that study shows it, but it's good for us
14:49 to remember if you wanna be healthy,
14:52 if you want to have a healthy vigorous
14:55 immune system think positively,
14:58 change the very cells in your body
15:03 with your thoughts. And I appreciated you bringing up
15:07 the Ministry of Healing for any of our viewers
15:09 who have not have the pleasure of reading
15:11 that book I highly recommend it.
15:14 I find it absolutely fascinating that it was
15:17 written more then a 100 years ago
15:18 and science is just now validating everything
15:21 that's in there, so very good information.
15:23 I recently had a family member who was diagnosed
15:27 with breast cancer and so this whole cancer
15:30 conversation is very interesting to me.
15:33 Tell me a little bit about breast cancer and maybe
15:37 how the immune system works with that?
15:40 Well Sheryl let's take a moment and step away
15:43 from the immune system and look at population
15:46 studies on breast cancer. Anyone with cancer
15:50 of course we want to have a vigorous immune system
15:53 even if you have been diagnosed with it,
15:56 if you take steps to improve your immune system
15:59 function with diet, with exercise,
16:02 with careful thoughts, you will improve your chance
16:05 of survival, if you don't have cancer
16:08 you will improve your risk or decrease
16:12 your risk to get cancer, but let's step away
16:15 from that for a moment and look a little more at diet
16:18 and what it does because it influences the rate
16:23 at which those cells become cancerous and of course
16:27 if you have a military in your body
16:31 the immune system and the world is at peace,
16:34 your immune system can rest. But even if you have
16:40 the best immune system in the world
16:42 they are going to be some casualties
16:45 if there is war broken out, so what can we do
16:47 to reduce the chance of a breakout of cancer
16:52 or if you will a conflict erupting in our body.
16:56 Let's look at that for a moment and look at it
16:59 with breast cancer. Breast cancer is very closely
17:04 linked to estrogen levels. Now, we know this
17:09 because men have breasts as well.
17:11 They are just not developed. The reason
17:14 they are not developed of course is because
17:16 men don't have the same level of estrogen
17:19 that women do and men have a 100 times less risk
17:23 of developing breast cancer than women.
17:26 In the last 20 years, I have diagnosed two men
17:30 with breast cancer, but many more women
17:33 unfortunately. Why is it of course that some women
17:38 get breast cancer and others don't?
17:40 We hear a lot about genetics today.
17:43 There is the BRCA that stands for
17:45 breast cancer gene. There is a BRCA 1
17:49 and the BRCA 2 genes and those are very important
17:54 if you have one of those genetic abnormalities
17:57 you have a 50 percent risk plus or minus in getting
18:01 breast cancer and some people say
18:04 well breast cancer is all in the genes not really.
18:08 In fact only about two to three percent
18:12 of all cancer, breast cancer included is genetic.
18:16 The BRCA gene occurs only in one in 500 women
18:22 another question to ask with that is why
18:25 do only 50 percent of people with the BRCA gene
18:30 get cancer. What about the 50 percent
18:34 that don't? What are they doing in their lives
18:37 not to get cancer? I think one of the most interesting
18:41 studies in breast cancer was done
18:43 by Dr. T. Colin Campbell it's called the China Study
18:47 and he found that in Chinese they had a much
18:51 lower risk Chinese women of breast cancer
18:55 than their Western counterparts that is you
18:58 take Chinese women and move them from China,
19:01 Rural China as where he did his studies
19:03 and move them to the west and the rates
19:06 of breast cancer go up markedly.
19:08 You don't change their genetics that fast,
19:11 but you do change their risk of breast cancer
19:14 and what he found is in the rural Chinese women,
19:19 he found about a 26 to 63 percent lower
19:27 estrogen level than in their Western counterparts
19:31 that is than in Chinese women who had moved
19:34 to the West and were eating our diets. Interesting.
19:37 If the estrogen level is lower the risk
19:41 of breast cancer is lower. The other thing
19:44 that was interesting about these people
19:47 is their menstruation started later.
19:50 The average age for a woman to start menstruating
19:54 in this country is 11 years of age. Wow. In China,
19:59 rural China the average age in T. Colin Campbell study
20:04 was 17. A huge difference if you think about it.
20:09 Six and more years without estrogen
20:11 and he found on the end of life, not the end,
20:15 but the end of menstruation,
20:17 the Chinese women stopped menstruating
20:20 or went through menopause about four to five years
20:24 earlier than their Western counterparts.
20:27 So you have two factors here in the Chinese study.
20:31 You have a shortening of the exposure to estrogen
20:35 and you have a lowering of the total
20:38 amount of estrogen. The interesting thing
20:42 that the Chinese study pointed out was it was diet
20:46 that made the difference in the estrogen levels.
20:49 If you change the diet, you change the estrogen level
20:54 and the biggest factor in breast cancer development
21:00 being estrogen, the biggest dietary factor
21:03 was animal protein. As the animal protein
21:08 intake increased, the estrogen level increased
21:12 as the estrogen level increased
21:15 the breast cancer risk increased.
21:20 The take home lesson from the Chinese study
21:22 isn't really about immune system that is
21:26 critically important it's about diet. Interestingly,
21:31 if you have a lower animal protein,
21:34 you also have a lower animal fat,
21:37 you are also eating more complex carbohydrates,
21:41 more fresh fruits, and fresh vegetables
21:44 and your immune system is doing better as well.
21:47 Cancer risk goes down and your ability to resist
21:52 cancer also goes down. That explains why in rural China
21:56 the breast cancer rates are much much lower
22:00 than they are in Western Chinese women
22:05 and in American women as well.
22:06 Interesting, I had a great fortunate living in China
22:10 for quite sometime and definitely found
22:12 the difference in the diet there compared to where
22:15 I grew up, in fact I don't think
22:17 I have ever eaten quite as healthfully as I did there
22:19 with the fresh fruits and vegetables,
22:23 very little animal protein and it was unaffordable
22:26 there so fascinating. Whenever I think of
22:31 breast cancer that generally also cause me
22:34 to think about prostate cancer in gentlemen so,
22:37 what is, what is effect or role there?
22:39 Well you know its interesting Sheryl,
22:41 not many men get breast cancer and not many women
22:45 get prostate cancer. That's right.
22:47 And that's a good thing you know.
22:49 Prostate cancer is another interesting disease
22:52 and it's also looked out in the China study
22:56 to some extent, but there are many studies
22:59 now on prostate cancer. Prostate cancer
23:02 is increasingly diagnosed in this country
23:05 because of a new enzyme as they called the prostate
23:10 specific antigen that's actually not so new today,
23:14 but is still used very widely and we can detect
23:17 cancer quite early with this. We also detect
23:21 the lot of things that aren't cancer,
23:23 prostate hypertrophy, prostate irritation,
23:27 but it's a good screening tool.
23:29 The question comes what can we do
23:32 to lower prostate cancer risk and the development
23:37 of prostate cancer because you know about 50 percent
23:41 of men 70 years of age have prostate cancer
23:44 that doesn't mean that all of them will die
23:47 with it. Fortunately not all of the men
23:50 70 years of age that have prostate cancer
23:54 will die from it. Many will die with it because
23:58 prostate cancer is different than breast cancer.
24:01 It's usually though not always,
24:04 it's usually slow growing and a chronic disease
24:08 that doesn't take your life, not always
24:11 and what they found in every study just
24:15 about is that there is one factor that increases
24:19 your risk for prostate cancer and it increases
24:23 your risk of having aggressive form
24:26 of prostate cancer. Harvard published
24:29 an interesting study review of all
24:33 the literature on prostate cancer and they said
24:36 there is one thing that is universally associated
24:41 with increased risk of prostate cancer
24:44 and increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer
24:48 and that one thing is dairy intake, diary intake,
24:54 if you want to avoid prostate cancer
24:58 avoid intake of dairy protein.
25:02 Now many people are vegetarian and think
25:05 well I'm fine I don't eat meat. Well no,
25:10 but how about dairy protein.
25:12 Dairy protein not only increases prostate cancer
25:16 in men it also increases breast cancer in women,
25:21 and as T. Colin Campbell found in his research
25:24 on liver cancer and on aflatoxins is that casein
25:30 the dairy protein that increases
25:32 your risk of liver cancer and many other cancers
25:35 because in milk not only do you have the protein,
25:39 you have an insulin like growth factor
25:42 that signals growth and frequently increases
25:47 your risk for developing any cancer.
25:50 Interesting, I recently had my very first colonoscopy
25:54 and it was not very exciting and I immediately
25:59 thought about colon cancer, so let's talk about
26:02 that briefly. You know as far as colonoscopy
26:05 is concerned many people come into my office
26:08 and they say I really don't want a colonoscopy.
26:11 I say good you are normal if you wanted a colonoscopy
26:14 I really worry about you, but as Tim Sample
26:18 in Maine says a colonoscopy is sort
26:21 of like a main winter. It's not fun,
26:23 but you will get through it. Colonoscopy is a really
26:27 important for screening, but more important
26:30 than screening is prevention, isn't it? Yes.
26:33 You know it's the same story again.
26:35 We use to think it was fiber.
26:38 Dr. Burkett many years ago did wonderful research
26:42 looking at fiber, but we now know that fiber
26:45 is really a marker for something else.
26:49 Same thing is in the other two cancers
26:52 its protein intake. Protein intake raises
26:57 your risk for colon cancer that was found very clearly
27:01 in a study done in South Africa.
27:03 A 17 fold increase in cancer in the
27:09 white South Africans because of the meat intake.
27:13 All we need to be careful what we eat,
27:16 we need to be careful what we think,
27:18 we need to remember God loves us,
27:22 he has given us the best diet possible in Genesis.
27:26 Fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains,
27:30 and nuts. If we eat those we will reduce our risk
27:35 of cancer. We will feel better now
27:37 and in the future. So, A Merry Heart Doeth Good
27:43 Like a Medicine and we have focused on the information
27:47 that we have been given not only in this program,
27:51 but in books like the Ministry of Healing
27:53 then we can prevent our risk of cancer
27:56 and other diseases as well, so thank you for being
28:01 with us today Dr. Howe and thank you
28:03 guests for joining us today on
28:05 Wonderfully Made and may God bless you.


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Revised 2014-12-17