014 Dr. Joachim Fluhrer – Cancer: The Basics and the Future - Unstress with Dr Ron Ehrlich



Cancer is pervasive. If we ourselves haven’t been touched by cancer we know someone that has. The statistics show that 1 in 2 men or 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer by the age of 65. It has also been said that 1 in 3 cancers are preventable. But how is our modern lifestyle contributing to the rise in cancer? What role does genetics play? Dr. Joachim Fluhrer joins me to answer these questions and talk about new early detection tools and the role of personalised medicine.
Download the PDF transcription
Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   Hello, and welcome to Unstress. I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Today we're going to discuss cancer. If there's anybody out there who hasn't been affected by cancer, either yourself a close relative or friend, well, I think you must be quite unique. It's not just that we're getting older, which I'll give you is a factor, but it's affecting children too. The incidence is rising over the last few decades and it's not just that we've got improved diagnosis. The incidence of cancer has gone up somewhere between 25 and 30% allowing for the increase in age.

So what is cancer? How common is it? I discuss this today with my guest Dr. Joachim Fluhrer who has been an integrative medical practitioner with over 40 years of clinical experience and has a specialized interest in cancer, specifically monitoring the progress positive or otherwise after diagnosis and in particular after treatment. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Joachim Fluhrer.

Welcome to the show Joachim.

Dr. Joachim Fluhrer:        Thank you Ron. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   Now Joachim, cancer is a pretty big topic I think that it would be unusual for any person listening to not either have had direct contact with it themselves or at least one degree of separation. Could we just go back to some basics. What is cancer? What's actually going on when someone has been diagnosed?

Dr. Joachim Fluhrer:        We use the term genetically for diseases, which involve malignant growth and then that means there's some growth of cells. Could be organs, could be tissue, could be brain, which grow uncontrollably. And that causes usually tumors. In the blood it causes plenty of cells, which crowd out other cells, but uncontrollable growth of cells, which then interfere with the normal function of the body and in some cases can cause the person to die as a result of it.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   So for example, within a liver there are cells that are specific to liver function but when a cancer comes in, it means they're taking what is normal functioning cells?

Dr. Joachim Fluhrer:        Yes. Any cell in the body. Like we know, for example, the liver. You can cut out part of the liver and the liver replaces back to its normal size and normal function. The skin can do that too. That's normal, and that's built into every cell. If that process of damage if you like, is not normal, like we could damage our skin for example, by getting out in the sun and getting white skin and getting damage, then we expect that these cells repair back to normal, but sometimes the damage is that much that the repairing process doesn't go normally and we have then damaged cells, which survive. And if they grow uncontrollably, then we can call it malignancy, or cancer, or tumor.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   And the difference between malignant and benign of course is, well?

Dr. Joachim Fluhrer:        Each one can produce a tumor, which means a growth, but a malignant growth is something that has got particular features when you look at the cells themselves but they cannot go and grow outside the cells and grow into a distant organ or a distant tissue and cause another tumor. We call that metastasis and that's malignant.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   When we hear about it and I heard this statistic where one in two men and one in three women contract cancer and all this.