Why You Get Cancer And What You Can Do About It

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Hello and welcome to another special episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, once again brought to you straight from the wellness, nutrition and fitness getaway I'm on over in the country of Israel. Now if you get a chance to listen into last week's episode in which I gave you the five top things that you could learn from the burgeoning health, nutrition and wellness scene in Israel, you should check it out. Well, today I have a pretty life changing podcast episode for you and I gotta tell you, this one really struck a chord with me. Specifically the interview that you are going to hear in just a moment. Now, before I delve into what you're about to hear, I want to tell you right now now that the show notes for today's episode are over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com why Cancer? That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com whyCancer and that link is going to make sense here in a second because a couple weeks ago I caught a lot of online flack, if you will, for publishing this kind of controversial article about how professional basketball player LeBron James constant use of a cell phone held up to his head probably contributed pretty heavily to his recent development of mouth cancer. Well, just yesterday here on my visit to Israel, I visited the home of another professional basketball player. This guy's name was Doron Scheffer and I have a photo of him over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com ycancer of me and Doran in his backyard garden as I interview him. Now Doran doesn't tell this story in the interview, so I'm going to give you a little bit of background to what you're about to hear. Doran was an amazing basketball player. He was an achiever. He was a hard charger. He was a professional. As a guard for the College basketball team UConn, he was pretty amazing. He led the Huskies to an 89 win 13 loss record. They had multiple NCAA tournament appearances. He hit something like four 40% of his three point assists or his three point attempts. He averaged five assists a game, 13 points a game. He was actually the first Israeli ever drafted by the NBA and he wound up eventually signing a pretty lucrative contract with an Israeli professional basketball team and playing with them, leading them to four consecutive national championships. But then he got cancer. Doran got testicular cancer. And all of the pressure and tension and the difficulties and the frustrations, the pent up emotions and the stress from the life of a hard charging professional athlete eventually built up inside him and culminated in disease. At least this was kind of the way that he told it in his story that preceded the interview that you're about to hear. Well, you may think that that's a little bit woo woo, but scientists have actually discovered, and I'll put the studies for you in the show notes, that emotional stress similar to what Doran experienced can be a trigger for the growth of tumors. As a matter of fact, any kind of trauma, emotional or physical stress can act as a literal pathway between cancerous mutations and it brings them together in this potentially fatal combination. We're not going to get into the science right now. I'm going to save that and you can actually go read some of the research that I do have over in the show notes. What I'm getting at here is that your risk for developing cancer or any other chronic disease can be positively or negatively affected by your emotional environment. And that can include everyday work, physical and relationship stress. Well, here's why this struck a chord with me and here's why I wanted to give you this interview and the prelude to this interview I'm recording for you right now. I'm personally a pretty hard charging guy. I know a lot of my listeners like you are pretty hard charging too. I'm focused on personal and professional achievement in just about everything I do. And as I noted to Doron in the audio that you're about to hear, I truly believe that unless you're able to relax, to breathe, to de stress and to just kind of stop and smell the roses every now and again, you're going to be the kind of person who eventually develops a disease that puts your fast forward life into slow motion. So you have to put the brakes on before your body puts the brakes on your body and forces you to stop. And that might be with the flu, that might be with low back pain, that might even be with something like cancer. So the ultimate question is how do you do this? How do you slow down down before your body forces you to slow down? How can you kind of dig yourself out of this constant barrage of emails and text messages and phone calls and over exercising and overeating or going to bed late or 247 self quantified anal type A biohacking, trying to have everything, getting up early and still somehow trying to squeeze in some semblance of quality in your friend and your family relationships and on and on. Well, eventually, this is exactly what dorms figure it out. And his new approach to life, his answers, and his aura of peace and calm spoke really, really heavily to me. And again, that's why I'm sharing this story with you now. He defied conventional medicine. He naturally healed his body of cancer. And his approach to life is just really refreshing and relaxed and incredibly peaceful. And we really did hang out in his backyard garden in Amorim, which is in the mountains of northern Israel. And Amorim is this retreat and it's kind of a hot spot for aromatherapists and massage therap therapists and herb gardens and spas and organic olive oil shops and stuff like that. But these mountains are where Doran reinvigorated his body and he underwent his own kind of spiritual cleanse after winning his battle against testicular cancer. And these mountains are where we talked for about 30 minutes about his new perspective on life. These 30 minutes are some of the most valuable content I think you'll ever listen to or watch if you are one of those hard charging people who is also serious about living happy and living disease free. So I'm gonna play this interview now, but just do me a quick favor, okay? Don't listen to this one, because I have a video of it available on YouTube or watch it, watch that video while you're out pounding the pavement or you're punishing the gym or you're doing hardcore intervals on your bike. For this one, go ahead and take a break, okay? Go sit in your backyard or at the park or in some comfortable chair in your living room and just breathe. And so in the message that you're about to hear. Okay, are you ready? Here we go.

As we entered the court, I started to feel a strong pain on my lower stomach. And then I told my father that I'm going to the toilet, I will join you. But the pain got stronger. I went to a first aid place room, took a pill and it didn't help. And unfortunately we had to go to hospital to see what's the story. And in hospital, the doctors didn't diagnose exactly, but it was very clear that something doesn't look good. They told me immediately when I come back to Israel to make an exam. And then obviously I remember the night after, not sleeping much and a lot of fears, a lot of questions, not much answers, and not Much sleeping. As I came to Israel, I went to the hospital to make an exam. So if somebody, God forbid, get the tumor, there's two options. One is a relatively better option. Better news that the tumor doesn't spread. You call it. How was the name? And there's ligament, and how do you call it? Benign. And the other one is malignant. Okay, Benign is the one that does spread and malignant. Malignant is the one. Okay, so the bad news, if it's malignant, and in my case, it didn't spread it, but it was malignant, it had the potential to spread. And as soon, you know, in Hebrew, in the Torah, there's word that they say, they call it the pardes. Pardes. They say that in the Torah, there's different kind of layers and angles. You can watch the Torah in life. It's. The Torah is, Torah is life. So any situation in life we can look at in different kind of angles and layers. So in this. In this. In this story, there's also a lot of layers, a lot of ways to look and to deal with it. So on the simple level, obviously, it was. I got bad news. Yeah, entered tumor and a malignant. But on the hidden part or the secret part of the story, something that I couldn't see back then, but it got more and more clear along that I dealt with the situation. It became one of the biggest gift that I got to my life. It changed my life. And what I did at the beginning, first of all, I was way before, you know, I went through a process also coming close to the Torah in the last few years. I won't tell you about it now because of the time, but even before that, before the yarmulke and before getting close to the world of the Torah, I was with a lot of very fundamental and basic faith that there's one God to this story, that things doesn't just happen like that. There's a reason to everything. There is something to learn from everything and a potential to grow. And I didn't just want to take that tumor out of my body and continue my life as is, because I said that if, you know, I won't learn my lesson from this story and take responsibility, change the bad habits and add good habits. So even if I'm taking it out, it will come back again even bigger and stronger. You know, you can learn about a tree. When you take a branch off a tree, it's growing again, but if you go to the root, it won't grow again. And that's what my goal was. To go to the root, to understand what's my part of the story, where can I take responsibility and to change what I have to change. And I went to what I define as the training camp of my life, looking and searching in all levels, how can I live more happy, healthy and more balanced way, physical level, mental, spiritual level. And at the first point, I decided not to make an operation. Not that I have anything against conventional doctors or hospitals, they have their place and blessing. But in my story, I decided at that part to take different kind of routes. And the first thing that the healer, the the doctors and people told me was regarding nutrition, that until that point, they never put any too much emphasize on what I eat and how much I eat. Even though I played basketball, you know, I didn't take care too much about my nutrition. Pretty much ate a lot of junk. And at that point they told me, look, if you want to be more healthy, you have to take responsibility on that part. So in Hebrew, it's very nice. You can learn about that aspect from the word, the initial of the word machal. Machal in Hebrew is a food, what I eat. But if you break it down, the first letter, mem is for what I eat. The aleph is eh is how I eat. The mem is ma. Sorry, the kaf is kama is how much I eat. And the lamed is lama is why I eat. Okay, so you break it down. So what I eat. I learned that there's more healthy and natural food. Yeah. Rather than food that they put poison on or chicken, they abuse and they inject them sterile poison to make them more fat and then to sell them in more money. And then I buy it, I eat it, and it becomes a part of my body and blood. Obviously it's not healthy. I started to eat more healthy how I eat. So for this we don't need doctors or healers to know that to eat slowly, take our time, chew good. If we rush, it's not healthy. Same with how much we eat. You know, everybody can know when we eat too much, we're heavy, we're tired, it doesn't digest good. So how much and why I eat. Maybe the most important part that I notice that a lot of time I eat only because there's food on the table or there's now a certain time arrive, or maybe I'm now bored or a little bit anxious or worried. So I go to the fridge and eat something and the body is not hungry at all. So at that point in my life, I made some major changes. Basic Changes that are with me until today. And I very fast saw how it impacts my body and mind health to a positive way. I say that regarding the food. It's something that I deal with until today. It's a way of life. Finding the right balance, finding my place. It's not easy. Need a lot of, you know, consistency and always checking, always looking. I always say that we have to be careful not to be too healthy. A lot of time you hear stories that people are getting new nutrition and they're so worried about what I eat, how much. If I eat more or less, it becomes a disease itself. You know, the pressure and the anxiety. So it's always about the balance and seeing that you become more happy and more healthy. Not only on all aspects. So that's one thing, another thing told me the doctors and here is regarding what I wear. So also here I learned that there's a more friendly and healthy material to the body as wool, as natural cotton rather than synthetics. Material that are not healthy, doesn't let the skin breathe and can cause diseases. So obviously I took responsibility on that part. On the aspect of all the mobile phones, computers, whatever is make radiation. I try to moderate how I use them and when I use them, we took television out of our bedroom. Then regarding physical activity, sports, you know, I made sure, you know, at that time I was. I didn't play professional, but I made sure three, four, five times a week I make either yoga or jogging or bicycling or bicycle swimming. Something for the body as we know how important it is, how to feel, how it's good for the body to move it, to sweat a little bit. The nature. You know, obviously people go to the beach, to the ocean, to the. To the mountains, to the desert, something usually it has a good impact on the soul, on the body, on the mind, something relaxed, more balanced. I try to be a lot in the nature, to live in places with the clean air and a lot of merchavim. Wide. How do you call when it's wide? Open space, open sky. So that's one part on the mental level. So on emotion level, I learned and I practice different ways and see how being worried, being under stress, being under tension causes diseases. Rather than being happy, being patient, being a giving person. The Rambam Rambam is one of the biggest rabbis in our history that lived 800 years ago. He talked about the initial. The initial of the word berut briut is health. And he break it down to three major parts of health. One in Hebrew is very Nice to see is dealing with the anger, but it's the foundation of the emotional part. Okay. And then Yamatenukh law is regarding the food is the food issue. And then yagbirt moto yagbirat motor is the motion. Now I talked about the motion and the movement, the physical movement. But more important is the spiritual and mental movement. We all know that sometimes people did something to us and they caused us to be anger, angry or. And then it was a year ago, five years ago and 10 years ago, and still something in my heart is not clean, is not closed and it's stuck. You know, life is one of the biggest foundations of life is flowing, is motion, is movement. And we have to not only the physical level, but on the mental. And once we're angry about something or we're jealous or something, we get ourselves stuck. And we don't let that life energy to move and to flow through us. So those are three big foundations of being healthy. I will add and say I'm also talking about it obviously a lot about maybe the most important and the highest level that help us to be more healthy and more balanced is the spiritual level. And this is something that for a lot of people it's not easy to connect, especially if they're not people that believe. And I'm not talking about now practicing religion, but I'm talking about that faith that is within all of us. Doesn't matter what religion or where we live or what we do. And this is something the faith for me dealing with cancer gave me a lot of strength during my, you know, knowing that I'm not alone and praying a lot to get the strength to make the changes that are not easy to get the wisdom to know what to do and in what way. And it gave me a lot of strength. I've been recently in a very fascinating lecture of the Chief Rabbi of Israel that was lecturing before psychologists and different kind of healers and the issues was dealing with traumas. And he said that he was in the Galil many years ago when there was a war, after the war and he visited families that lost their kids. And he said that you could see very clear that the difference between each family and each mother, the way they dealt with the trauma, obviously it wasn't easy. But you can see that the one that have more faith, they dealt it in a much more healthy way. And not only surviving the trauma, but utilizing and growing it. So that's a big, big foundation, big thing to deal with with diseases. During dealing with my disease, I Went for three weeks for a good friend in a commune in Costa Rica. You saw in the movie a little bit. I went through a very intense process there with a shaman woman, learned a lot from her. One of the most important thing was regarding taking responsibility. She told me that the shaman in South America, in the tribes, when somebody comes with a disease, so they would explain him and make sure he knows why it happens. And they suggest and think with him together about ways to come out from it. And the emphasis was that he was choosing the way, you know, rather than I go to a doctor and he gives me some prescription for appeal. And I have no idea what I have exactly and what the pill does. And I'm very passive. So taking responsibility was a big part of me getting more healthy. Another thing that helped me a lot, that during my disease, I already saw in my mind that I'm gonna play basketball, professional basketball. So I saw myself healthy, thought positive. And this is something, a big secret today that people know you think good and good things happen. So that gave me a lot of strength. And then at the end, that was the reason also I decided to make. To make. I also went through microbiotic, changing the diet and cleaning the diet. I met with Micho Cush in Boston and he told me, look, you come sit with me for four months. You don't have to make the operation, take it very strict diet. But I already wanted to come back and play basketball, and four months was too much for me. I said, I'll do the operation and get the diet as well and do whatever I have to do. And today I'm 12 years after 12. 12 years after that disease. And you know, obviously I'm not taking anything for granted, but thank God I'm healthy. And mainly I'm grateful for that incident in my life because it forced me to take responsibility, to ask the right question, to change very bad habits that I used to do for years and to come to a place that today I live in a much more happy and balanced and healthy way. So this is the part of the disease dealing with the cancer. Another good thing that happened through that, that two years ago, me and my wife, we opened this center that we're now sitting in. She is in the natural health issue as well. She's a nutrition and she treat with the. I don't know if you say in English, It's with imagination. Working the imagination to heal people. To go to the. Imagination. Yeah. Session nlp. I don't know how you call it in English. Maybe she comes to tell me but anyway, working on that part and I went through a coaching process, life coaching. And when people come here, rather than just coming and staying for the weekend or holiday, many people come with diseases that have problems and we try to give them good food for the body, mind and soul. And very fascinating people with cancer, people with different problems, mentally, physically. We try to explain and show how everything is connected and we have to treat ourselves not only on the body part, but also on the mind, on the spirit, on the soul, all levels, get them together, get them on the same page. We try to give them hope. A lot of people lose hope and that's the foundation to make a change. We call this place Uni. Uni is the Torah. They explain it's the force that it's like the big bang, big boom and they call the big when the first the world was created. Like it's the potential to start everything. A new beginning, a change. We aim at that thing that people come here a lot. They're seeking for a change, for a new beginning. So that's why we called it. And then people come and go, some stay for a few days, some for a week, some for 10 days. And they go through a very beautiful and exciting and fascinating transformation in a very short time. Obviously what we try to say as well, that it's a way of life, it's not starting and ending in one week or dealing with one disease. But we have to try to live. And the real challenge is when they live here, to go back home and in their day to day life try to live more healthy and more balanced. And my wife always, when she feels tired that she doesn't have energy, she goes and reads the book of the guests, what they write after they've been there and she gets more strength. And for us it's really, we feel like it's a big honor, a big privilege to do what we do. And that's the way we try to, to live as well and to find our balance in our life. Obviously it's a never ending journey, never always challenging, but learning to be happy where we are and what we do. And today what I do, I lecture by my life story. I told you only about dealing with cancer, but also through the basketball and the fame and the challenges there and through a journey to India, South America and then until the world of the Torah. And what I do as well in the last several years is after I ended up my professional career, I started to take basketball to a more educational tool and not rather than the issue is winning or losing. And how much I score or this score, but rather to try to work on courtesy and values. I call basketball with courtesy and making sure that, you know, try to get. I say, I quote Michael Jordan. He said that basketball for him was the visa to the heart of the fans. And I see that this is for me today the tool to get to a lot of people, kids and adults. And I try to use it in a positive way because unfortunately, the professional game today, because of the stress and running after the victory and the winning, it's not healthy. Not to the body, not to the mind. So I try to balance that word as well and use it in clinics that I do and sessions. And recently I got the fortune to publish an autobiography that I'm telling the story. It's not in English yet. If it was in English, I would be happy to give you a copy. I'm working on that. But I published it and it was a big, big healing process to write it as well. This is something I recommend. You know, when you write your own story and you go through all the narrow bridges that you went through and you write and you think about it and it's really a healing process. Very fascinating. And that's about it. If you have question, you know, now the ball is. Is in your hands, so you can. If question, think that, you know, we are not clear. Please, I'm. Feel free.

How I'll talk a little bit loud because I know you're mic'd and we're recording, but how many people come to you when they are sick versus people who come to you before they're sick? Because. Because to me, this is a message that people like me who are hard charging, always busy, always striving for the next big thing and not slowing down. And eventually something slows you down, whether it's cancer, injury or illness or something. How many people come to you before versus come to you after it's already happened?

I would say in many ways it might be 50. 50, because what people come here before, you know, it's a little tricky because a lot don't come. They come for vacation on weekends, on holidays. It becomes like a place that it's more vacation. This is the major room that there's a treatment room there and then the major kitchen. But when there's no people that come to go through processes, we get all the area for people and they go through. Not many. No, not many people. You call it, I think preventional medicine. No, preventive medicine. Preventive medicine. And this is. They say that the wise guys are a step ahead. They don't wait that the life will slow them down and they won't have a choice. They working on them before. And unfortunately, as you said, a lot of people don't do it until something happens. And what we try to say and explain people that this place is not only for people that are on the edge or got to a point that they don't have a choice, but it's for people to come. Also that things are good, but like you take a car to the garage, you know, once in a few months to get, you know, oil change and get everything checked. So we invite them to come as well. I think more are coming, you know, to make a really process, deep process people only when they come to a point that they feel that they got to the end.

Now again, because this is on audio and this will be on the web, do you have like a website that people can go to or a place where people can go learn more, find out more or you know, inquire about what we do?

Unfortunately it's, you know, we just started and we have our, we have our, how do you say? Attar? Attar. That's the website, but not in English, but yeah, it's in Hebrew. We hopefully will, you know, we'll translate soon and we'll start opening to a more various crowd and it's not ready at this point, but people always can contact us, you know, through the mail or through the phone and ask and you know, people have been here from abroad and from France and from the US and obviously it's open for everybody. And obviously as we do what we do and we still feel that we are, you know, learning and getting not less than, than people that come here. You know, it's always a never ending learning process. It's always remembering that, you know, there's one God that is deciding when it's our time to leave this planet. And we don't try to tell people that we promise, we can promise something, but there's things that it's common sense and it's very easy to see and explain and to see that it works, but very individual. Each one has to find. This is also something we talked a lot about, about the right measure, the balance, you know, it's a lot of balance and the balance change from each person and from time to time with the same person. What was good for me yesterday, tomorrow may not be good. Okay, it's good for one person, for the other one, it's not good. So it's a very individual process.

And Here, unlike the US you don't have something like the FDA that would come shut you down or tell you to stop doing what you're doing because you're not a doctor or something like this.

Okay? So obviously it is an issue. But as far as we don't try to act like doctors and take responsibility as doctors, and it's very clear that we're not and we have that understanding, so it's okay. The problem is, I think when somebody is taking responsibility on things that we shouldn't, so we work with people that come and work with the hospital and with the doctors and this is another way and another angle to work with and alternative way. And so far, Mo Hashem, all is good. Very cool.

So that's it. And you know, obviously the message is pretty clear there. I really told you everything I wanted to tell you in the introduction about why I think that this is important. But now I want to hear what you think. What do you think after listening to this audio or perhaps if you, if you watch the video version, Watching the video, what are you going to change in, in your own hard charging life so that you can slow down before you're forced to, so you can find that peace that Dorin found? I'm curious what your thoughts are about this and I'm going to leave the comments section totally open over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ycancer that's why cancer. I'll also put a link if you want to, you know, for some reason go over to Doran's health Resort. You know, and it's really almost exactly what Jessa and I are trying to achieve at our own home where we've got a little farm and a garden and it's just kind of unplugged and out in the wilderness. But he kind of has the same thing going on in Israel. It's open for visitations, it's open for retreat. So if you're listening and you want to go over there and engage in things like tai chi and yoga and qigong and farming and water therapy and solar healing and just kind of playing up in the mountains of Israel, I'll put a link to his little health resort that he has over there as well. So thanks so much for listening. I know this was kind of a serious episode, but it's a serious topic and I think that this is really important stuff for all of us to think about. So again, you can check out the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com whycancer and this week try and have a peaceful week. All right. It I'm Ben Greenfield and I'll be back Wednesday with our normal podcast programming later. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge.

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