August 25, 2008 Beyond Statistics: Getting to the Long Tail David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PHD

The median survival associated with any given cancer is just that: a median. We can all learn how to boost our physiology to do better than the median, and, hopefully, reach the (very) long tail of the survival curve.

I was a successful and ambitious physician and neuroscience researcher. At the age of 31, I discovered in my own brain scanning experiment that I had brain cancer.

Being a physician and scientist is no protection from getting cancer. But it allowed me to dig deeply into the medical and scientific literature to find out everything I could do to help my body resist the disease most efficiently and try to beat the odds.

The first thing I learned is that we all carry cancer cells in us. But I also learned we all have natural defenses that generally prevent these cells from turning into an aggressive disease. In the West, one out of three people will die of cancer. But 2/3 will not. For these 2/3, their natural defenses will have kept cancer at bay. I understood it would be essential for me to learn how to strengthen my defenses if I wanted to beat the odds against me.

I found hope in the story of Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard professor who was one of the greatest life sciences researchers of the 20th century.

He learned at the age of 40 that he had a mesothelioma of the abdomen. He was told the median survival was 8 months for his type of cancer. He reasoned that this meant that half of the people died before 8 months, but also that half lived longer than that. Being young, in good health (aside from having cancer!), a non-smoker and a light drinker, he had every reason to be in the good half.

A typical survival curve. Though the median is 8 months, at the tail end of the curve some people survive dramatically longer. What are they doing differently?

He also reasoned that within that good half, there is always a small number who live much longer than the dreaded median of 8 months. And indeed, there always are. At then end of any such survival curve, there is a small, but ever present, number of people who live an exceptionally long time. Stephen Jay Gould lived 20 years beyond his diagnosis and died of another disease.

When faced with a serious condition such as cancer, the question is not what the median outcome is, but what we can do to help ourselves do better, perhaps much better, than the median. And there is no better way to that tail end of the curve than combine the best of conventional treatments with a different attitude about our life. An new way of living through which we begin to nourish every aspect of health within our bodies. This can be done by paying attention to five key areas of our life:

1. Cleaning up our immediate environment: indoor pollutants, parabens and phthalates in cosmetics, aluminum in antiperspirants, scratched Teflon pans, PVCs from heated plastics, long cell phone exposures.

2. Cleaning up our diet: reducing sugar (which feeds cancer growth) abundant in desserts, soft drinks (one can of Coke contains 15 coffee-size packs of sugar), dressings (Ketchup, ready-made salad dressing, etc.), white flour (equivalent to sugar as far as the body is concerned), and reducing omega-6 fatty acids (from red meats, corn, sunflower, soybean and safflower oils, and trans-fats).

3. Adding anti-cancer foods: including foods every day, three times a day, that help fight cancer. Such as green tea, the spices turmeric or ginger, omega-3 rich fatty fish (salmon, sardines, mackerel, etc.), cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, or cabbage, flavoring herbs (thyme, rosemary, mint, basil, sage, etc.), berries for dessert, dark chocolate, and even a little bit of red wine.

4. Engaging in physical activity: it doesn't have to be marathon training, not even jogging. Just walking 30 minutes six times a week already dramatically reduces the chances of a relapse after breast cancer treatment. And physical activity has been found to help survival with many different types of cancer.

5. Managing our response to stress: we can't avoid stress in our life, but we can learn to respond differently than with clenched teeth, stone-hard back muscles and pressure in our chest. Basic breathing techniques that have been around as part of oriental mental and physical hygiene techniques for thousands of years (Yoga, Chi Gong, mindfulness meditation) can transform our response to stress and strengthen our resistance to disease.

Now, just imagine how your own personal statistics may change if you engage in all five health habits. Once we begin to nourish our health in every aspect, nobody can tell us any longer what odds apply to our individual situation.

David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PHD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh
Cancer survivor for 16 years
Author of International Best-Seller Anticancer -- A New Way of Life, Viking, to be published Sep 8, 2008

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