Wheatgrass and Overcoming Cancer - Dr. Ann Wigmore

For many years I have taken a great interest in the problem of cancer. My reasoning has been that if wheatgrass and live foods can help the most feared and uncontrollable medical problem, cancer, no questions should remain about its ability to heal, nourish, and balance the body. With twenty years of teaching cancer patients behind me, I know that—contrary to popular belief—all types of cancer can be overcome. However, my own opinion is that we will never find a "cure" for this dreaded problem because it can't be cured.

The body of the cancer patient must heal itself in the very same way any body rebounds from a cut, bruise, or common cold. Although there are drugs which seem to help by destroying this or that cancer cell, all they can do is help. The body must replace the lost cells with new cancer-free ones.

Once you understand the logic of self-healing and self- cleansing it is easy to understand how the body can reverse even a serious problem like cancer. All that is needed is sufficient will to live and fight the disease, and enough life energy in the body—a strong enough immune system.

How do you build up the immune system to overcome or prevent cancer? First, by eliminating the things that reduce your immunity: stress at home or at work, and processed and cooked foods. Once you have taken some of the pressure off your immune system in this way, you must learn how to rebuild it. Thus, your second task is to cleanse the toxic residues of stress and bad food choice from your system with a cleansing live food diet and wheatgrass.

Live foods and wheatgrass juice will begin the process of cleansing and rebuilding the immune system as long as you stay clear of the stresses and foods that create a high risk of cancer in the first place. If you do not avoid stresses, you are like a person with a broken leg who continues to walk on the leg without a cast and crutches.

You won't heal regardless of how calm you are or how well you eat. Until you get off the leg and rest it nothing will help. Similarly, if you don't take a vacation (I recommend a permanent one) from the foods that congest and clog your body, your chances of recovery will be that much poorer.While wheatgrass juice helps to build immunity, its beneficial effects range much further.

Preliminary studies have identified a number of substances in wheatgrass juice that are formidable anti-cancer agents. One of these is called abscisic acid. I first learned of abscisic acid from Eydie Mae Hunsberger, a former Hippocrates guest who used the Hippocrates Diet and wheatgrass juice to heal herself of malignant breast cancer.

As she relates in How I Conquered Cancer Naturally, her doctor took an interest in her case and researched many past studies to find the active ingredient in wheatgrass that helped make her well.
What he discovered was abscisic acid, a plant hormone known to prevent seeds from germinating until environmental conditions are just right.

In tests on laboratory animals, he found that even small amounts of abscisic acid proved to be "deadly against any form of cancer." Tumors disappeared quickly in animals given injections of abscisic acid. Eydie Mae did mention, however, that research with abscisic acid is in its infant stages and it is still too early to tell whether it will become a "cure." But as she says, "Poor eating habits cause more diseases than cancer.

We may be able to reverse cancer with abscisic acid pills, but then die from a heart attack or something else." Only sound preventive nutrition and a healthful lifestyle can save us from all illness. Eydie Mae's decision to switch from the "condemned person's diet" to wheatgrass and other live foods on the Hippocrates Diet certainly paid off for her—within one year after she was given up by the medical establishment, the cancer was in remission—and it remained that way.

Another possible anti-cancer property of wheatgrass juice, first brought to my attention in a lecture given by the well- known biochemist and researcher, Dr. Ernst Krebs, Jr., is Vitamin B17 (laetrile). In his research, Dr. Krebs extracted laetrile from apricot pits, but it is also found in whole foods and especially wheatgrass. This vitamin has shown the ability to selectively destroy cancer cells, while leaving non-cancerous ones alone. While laetrile as a cancer treatment is still hotly debated in this country, the facts speak for themselves: the modern American diet contains about four hundred times less Vitamin B17 than the diet of the natives in countries where the incidence of cancer is extremely low.
At the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, Dr. Arthur Robinson studied the various effects of live foods, wheatgrass, and synthetic Vitamin C on cancer in laboratory mice. Skin cancer was induced in the mice through exposure to ultraviolet radiation.

The control group received the standard laboratory chow diet. Two other groups of mice were given the chow diet and different dosages of Vitamin C. Another two groups of mice received a raw foods diet restricted to apples, pears, carrots, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, bananas, and wheatgrass. One of these groups was also given one hundred grams of Vitamin C.

In a March, 1984 article entitled "Living Foods and Cancer," Dr. Robinson summarized the findings of his research as follows: "The results were spectacular. Living foods [including wheatgrass] alone decreased the incidence and severity of cancer lesions by about 75 percent.

This result was better than that of any nutritional program that was tried. It was possible to duplicate this cancer suppression with ascorbic acid [Vitamin C] only by giving doses so high as to be nearly lethal for the mice and far beyond any rational range of human consumption. In fact, ascorbic acid in the amounts usually recommended for colds and cancer doubled, increased by 100 percent, the incidence and severity of the cancer."

In my own opinion, if the group of mice receiving only wheatgrass and raw foods had been given sprouts rather than fruits and vegetables, the decrease in cancer would have been even more dramatic.

The severity of cancerous lesions in Robinson's mice was caused to vary greatly by nutritional means alone. I believe that this indicates that cancer research of the future must look to diet for the answers.

The cancer-nutrition connection is becoming more evident to researchers and physicians. Recently, the prestigious National Cancer Institute commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to study the relationship between diet and cancer. The study pointed out many carcinogenic foods and their link to cancer. You may already be aware of some of them—processed items such as luncheon meats, smoked meats, high-fat cheeses, and refined oils.

The study also found that some vegetables, especially green and yellow varieties, seem to have anti-cancer properties. Nevertheless, many of the foods singled out by the National Academy of Science, including carrots, squashes, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and leafy greens, are less potent in overall nutrition than wheatgrass—and none of them contain active enzymes when they are eaten cooked.

- by Dr.Ann Wigmore "The Wheatgrass Book"