YouTube video: Unravelling the biological basis of cancer after 30 years in oncology - & stopping cancer coming back again. Dr Anna Goodwin.

'The science of cancer knows that it’s an injury response, but the clinical management of cancer has not yet figured this out for the most part.'

By JR Bruning (MA Sociology).

Since the 1971 ‘War on Cancer’ … it’s still an ongoing war. We have more cancer than ever before. We have more people living with cancer than ever before. But we have not, by any stretch of the imagination either cured cancer or stopped cancer. We’ve created more cancer because we have failed to address the underlying causes.

When patients, colleagues and loved ones are first diagnosed with cancer, they and their families are flung into a world of research and uncertainty. The research involves brushing up on biology and learning a seemingly endless array of new medical terms.

A cancer diagnosis involves understanding what the diagnosis means for people and their loved ones in their day-to-day lives. The journey is something that approximates an ongoing and often stressful educational process which traverses treatments, surgery, adverse risks and effects, healing and timelines.

It’s hard not to be stressed and fearful. However, like so many of lifes’ greatest challenges, it can be about turning non-knowledge into knowledge to reduce the fear and uncertainty.

There is so much that can be done by the patients. People often take a good, hard look at the environment surrounding them, and make changes that support healing.

This remarkable interview covers many of the questions people seek to answer concerning the biology of cancer, the predominant drivers of pro-cancer environments, how treatment can work and how patients can do their utmost to prevent secondary cancer. As Dr Goodwin states:

‘We want to stop cancer coming back again.’

In the video, which is also available in audio form on PSGR’s Substack Podcast page, US trained Dr Goodwin, a retired oncologist discusses:

• Tumour streams, common and rare.

• The biological basis of cancer - and why cancer cells aren’t cunning or conspiratorial, but quite dumb!

• How stem cells are involved in the aetiology of cancer.

• Surgery, and why Goodwin likes to see patients before surgery.

• How the metastatic process works and why some secondary cancers end up in commonly recognised places.

• The keto and glucose factor.

• The multifactorial nature of cancer: Including immune tolerance, chronic inflammation and disrupted cell signalling.

• Epigenetics.

• Why conventional medical oncologists tend to dismiss nutritional science - and why they (ethically) shouldn’t.

• Simple hacks to promote cell health and improve cell signalling pathways.

• Recognising that healing is biological, chemical & emotional/spiritual.

• The microbiome and diet (this is covered more extensively in a second interview).

• Allied health professionals that might follow the diabetes model of reversing health risk.

‘One little boring decision at time pays off three years down the track!’

Secondary prevention is critical. All too often, if the biological drivers of the original cancer haven’t been addressed, it can be difficult, as Goodwin says, to

‘stop cancer coming back again.’

It was almost inevitable that Goodwin would bump up against ‘the settled science’ and the exclusively medical approaches that are taken by the majority of her medical colleagues.

Retired oncologist Dr Anna Goodwin was inevitably going to think differently from her oncologist colleagues that attended conventional medical school. Today she operates as a telehealth consultant, specialising in secondary prevention and wellness. Her training as a US-based osteopathic ensured that from the get-go, Goodwin’s oncology training uniquely incorporated a systems biology and nutritional biochemistry approach. Training that conventional oncologists tend to lack.

Very simply, clinical oncology, historically, hasn’t tended to equip oncologists with the skills to bring integrative nutrition and secondary prevention into their medical clinics.

Today, Dr Goodwin uses her skills to support patients in ensuring that their bodies and minds are as fit and healthy as they possibly can be through the entire cancer process. Her focus is on secondary prevention and wellness, and her work complements conventional clinical protocols offered by the patients’ medical oncologist.

Her work contrasts deeply with conventional medical ideology - she considers that the personal work cancer patients put into altering their physiology is often (but not always) primary to their prognosis, and particularly, to their long-term outcome, rather than secondary.

‘The science of cancer knows that it’s an injury response but the clinical management of cancer has not yet figured this out for the most part. Hence no-one is instructing the patient to take the food (I.e. foot) off the gas pedal.’

Goodwin upends traditional assumptions that exclusively rely on medical treatment and surgery, which can dismiss the personal changes patients make as ‘nice’, but possibly unnecessary.

The conservative culture of traditional oncology; the absence of support from medical councils; the paucity of research pathways for medical academics to review the nutritional literature and mesh this science into academia; the failure of medical schools to meaningfully draw nutritional science into medical curriculums, helps explain why Goodwin is largely an outsider - or as she calls it, an oddity, in her profession.

These barriers are somewhat sociological, but they produce a chilling effect on nutritional science and education. It’s not surprising that colleagues might regard her with some circumspection; particularly when private patients elected to be treated by a specialist with both medical and nutritional expertise.

Her fluency ease in discussing and addressing faith-based and spiritual matters in medical and academic environs which often prefer to remain in the biological, chemical and toxicological realms, further mark her as an outsider.

I had wanted to interview Dr Goodwin for some time, our PSGR conversations had touched on many of the issues we traverse in this interview. This is it.

We’re allowed to recover from injury that otherwise would have been lethal. … It’s all a very delicate balance between oxidation, anti-oxidation, degradation, programmed cell death and regeneration. We are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made.

Find the full recorded interview on your favourite channel: YouTube, Rumble or Odysee.