 in an ecosystem, every species benefits due to the high degree of interconnectedness. Humans benefit when we come together, listen to one another and work towards building strong, inclusive communities anchored in diversity.
When our relationships are damaged or broken and the value we hold for others is limited, however, suffering increases and our collective intelligence is diminished. We stop hearing each other. We dismiss those not in our group. We value loyalty to our ‘political tribe’ over finding common ground, diminishing our collective intelligence and wisdom.
The same can be true for our relationship with nature. We forget our dependence on nature and do not pay attention to its decline at our own peril. At the most fundamental level, we are nature. By regularly connecting with community and nature in our daily lives, we also connect to ourselves and increase our ability to survive and thrive on this planet.
Populism and hate are still on the rise.
While Twitter and Facebook spread blatant lies.
In times like these, it’s easy to lose hope.
But the only answer is to stand firm and say nope.
Nope to the bullies and burning of trees.
The world isn’t yours to do with as you please.
Stop spreading division and cutting others down.
Step away from your screen and engage around town.
Only as a community can we truly be strong.
To push back against what we all know is wrong.
Living connected to place can help us push back against the systems that support our current ways of life and related environmental and social damage. We stand firm by being aware of the impact of our choices and making change in our own lives to be a positive force in our communities. When we step away from our screens and engage with local community and nature, we break down divisions and create hope for a better future.
Original article appeared in Medium.
Matt Biggar received a BS from UC Berkeley and then spent over fifteen years as a teacher and education administrator in schools and school districts in California. In 2015, he received a Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Department of Education and then launched Connected to Place (strategy consulting and research) in 2016.It's a secret oncologists rarely share with their patients: around 25 percent of all cancers are untreatable, and the prognosis is worse for colon (colorectal) and lung cancers, with half of cases immune to chemotherapy.
But the untreatable may soon be very treatable with a new therapy that blends two approaches that have always been relegated to the fringes of medicine: fasting and high-dose vitamin C, given intravenously. Both have had hit-and-miss research results when used independently, but combining the two seems to have a super-charging effect that kills these hard-to-treat cancer cells without affecting the surrounding healthy cells.
Longo and his team then tested the combined therapy on laboratory mice and saw the same positive results: their cancers started to reverse. Thanks to these exciting findings, five clinical trials on breast cancer and prostate cancer patients are now underway.
Although a variety of cancer cells were used in the experiment, the team discovered that the vitamin C/fasting combination was especially effective against cells that had a special mutation, one that makes cancer untreatable. This mutation protects the cancer cells from even the most powerful and toxic chemotherapy drugs—and when the mutation is detected, oncologists are told not to treat, as it will probably destroy the patient's quality of life for no good reason.
The mutation is on a gene called KRAS (Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog), but aside from smoking, researchers aren't sure why it happens. KRAS is responsible for signaling cells to grow and divide, but when it mutates, those signals can start the process of cancer.
The mutation creates a protective shield around the cancer cell. Chemotherapy drugs—such as panitumumab, cetuximab and erlotinib—have had no effect whatsoever in patients with KRAS-mutated colorectal and lung cancers.
Until Longo's discovery, oncologists have been at a loss as to how to treat around a quarter of all cancers they see. Fasting and vitamin C have been tantalizing options for years, but the research hasn't been consistent, with a positive finding soon being overtaken by a negative one, and, as a result, both have been added to the growing list of unproven cancer therapies.
There's a good scientific basis for fasting as a cancer therapy. While the American Cancer Society advises cancer patients to eat plenty of calories and protein, especially during chemotherapy, it's also known the diet feeds the cancer. In 1931, German doctor Otto Warburg noticed that cancer cells were relying on sugar rather than oxygen for their energy, a process known as the "Warburg effect."
Starve the body of sugars, and the cancer cell will also die, or so the theory goes, and the process has been witnessed in laboratory tests. In one, 17 lines of cancer cells including samples of melanoma, glioma and breast cancer were "starved," and the researchers said the results were as successful as anything achieved by chemotherapy.
But to really see a turnaround in the cancer, the patient would need to follow a strict diet, with a 40 percent reduction in protein, for months, and this is where the theory hits up against the hard wall of pragmatics. No oncologist would allow his patient to be on such a strict diet for so long during chemotherapy, indeed his ethical code would prevent him from even suggesting it, and so the fasting approach ran out of road.
A strict fast is just that: no food whatsoever other than regular sips of water, and this is extreme for even a healthy person, let alone someone with cancer. Seeing the dilemma, Longo has developed his own version of the fast, the fasting-mimicking diet (FMD), which he says delivers all the health benefits of a true fast without starving the patient (see box, right).
While fasting has been on the outer fringes of cancer treatment, vitamin C has at least flirted with the mainstream. Touted by American biochemist Linus Pauling more than 40 years ago, high-dose vitamin C (ascorbic acid) therapy was claimed to reverse end-stage cancers.
Why were the researchers coming up with such different results? High doses of the vitamin can trigger a biological process in KRAS-mutated cancer cells that makes them produce ferritin, a protein that binds iron.  There's a direct correlation between iron levels and survival in colon cancer; the higher the iron, the lower the survival rate.
And this could be why Longo's two-punch approach of fasting and vitamin C is working. Fasting reduces levels of ferritin in the body, and this allows the vitamin C into the cancer cell to kill it.
The approach could also make chemotherapy more effective, but that's a short-term gain. Longo sees the day when milder drugs without the neutron-bomb effects of chemo will be given to cancer patients. And, possibly, the day will come when cancer isn't treated with any drugs at all, but just with a short fast and vitamin C.
A true fast—no food and just sips of water—is extreme, and few can stay on it for very long, but it could be very good for us. Seeing the dilemma, Valter Longo at the University of Southern California's Longevity Institute has devised a five-day fast that delivers the benefits but avoids the agony.
He has developed his own commercially available fasting plan, L-Nutra, which he claims mimics a true fast, and consists of vegetable soups eaten twice a day, olives, vegetable chips, nuts and bars made of nuts. He's also developed supplements as well as drinks and teas to keep the body hydrated.
He recommends people fast for five days every six months or so, but there are some key dietary changes that he advocates everyone should follow most of the time.
Reduce your protein. Eat just 0.31 grams of protein per pound of body weight a day, meaning a person weighing 140 lb (63.5 kg) would be allowed 43 grams a day.
Cut down on fish. Eat just one to two servings a week. Replace with plant-based food such as vegetables.
Reduce sugars. An essential part of any diet, reduce your sugar intake to almost zero, and cut back on pasta and bread.
Take vitamins. The essential vitamins include omega-3 and -6 fatty acids and vitamin C.
Eat good fats. Get your fats from olive oil, nuts and fish.
Cut back on the booze. Try to eliminate alcohol as much as possible.
While fasting is good for almost everyone, Longo cautions that people over the age of 70 should check with their doctor before starting.
How much C?
Longo recommends going on a vitamin C "feast" for a few weeks every six months, when up to 6 g should be taken every day, or up to the level of bowel tolerance. Beyond that, the vitamin can cause diarrhea. But therapeutic doses for treating cancer and other chronic problems can be higher still. Doses given in clinical trials have ranged from 0.15 g to 0.7 g per kg of body weight every day. At the upper level, a person weighing 140 lb (63.5 kg) would be taking nearly 10 g a day.
That's 50 times the highest recommended dose of 200 mg, and a far cry from the recommended daily allowance of just 95 mg.
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I'm with Homer; I'd hit