Seed and Soil: With Cancer We Need To Focus on Both

This important article in the New Yorker reinforces my approach to prevention and health.  Siddhartha Mukherjee makes the point that cancer and its treatment should not just be focused on the cancer itself, but the body where it is housed.  He draws the analogy of the recent mussel invasion of Lake Michigan. This type of mussel found its way to Lake Michigan from Russia.  In Russia, it remains a species like any other due to the temperature of the water, salinity and other factors.  In Lake Michigan it has totally taken over.
This is a way to explain what happens to the body when it comes to cancer metastasis.  Some people succumb to metasasis after the primary cancer is treated and some don’t.  We know that cancers shed millions of cells, but most die as soon as they hit the blood stream, but some do not.  So why is this?  This is the focus of recent oncological research.
So he says “We’ve tended to focus on the cancer, but its host tissue–“soil”, rather than “seed”– could help us predict the danger it poses.”

This is the importance of finding therapies that improve resilience and overall health, especially in the aftermath of a primary cancer diagnosis.  That is the purpose of the research I’m doing, to try to show the improvement in resilience by showing reduction in stress levels with HRV.