Paul K. Branch, M.D. - Holistic Medicine and Classical Homeopathy

Dr. Susan Love, well-known expert on breast cancer, has been in the news recently.  A lot of what she has to say is not positive.

•    No real improvement in the number of breast cancers in the last 20 years.
•    No progress in discovering the cause of breast cancer.

Below find my response and a summary of my current understanding of this highly complex disease:

1)  Breast cancer is caused by persistent toxic energy in the pericardium meridian of Chinese medicine.

In my measurements with the Digimeridian machine, this has been a consistent finding, and my belief is that the Digimeridian points the way to prevention of breast cancer, both through screening of women, and a basis for treatment through methods of relieving the toxicity, e.g. targeted acupuncture.  The pericardium energy meridian originates a couple centimeters lateral to the nipples and flows down the arm and forearm.  Heavy toxicity in the pericardium meridian leads to inflammation of breast tissue and mutations in cellular DNA of breast cells.

As for Dr. Love’s comment that “we are no closer to finding the cause of breast cancer,” using her current investigative methods, she never will find a cause.  That is because the causes lie at the energetic level, not the physical level, i.e. the causes are invisible.

As a general rule of thumb for government and life, if you spend billions of dollars to find a solution to a problem, and still find no success, change your assumptions and your approach.  Currently breast cancer research operates under certain wrong assumptions.   Billions more dollars spent on the same approach will yield the same conclusion.

There are a couple other situations where I see toxicity in the pericardium meridian that relate to breast cancer.  The first is high prolactin levels secondary to a prolactin secreting tumor in the pituitary.  In this condition, the nipple may inappropriately release a milky discharge (prolactin is the hormone that stimulates milk production).  Not surprisingly, breast cancer incidence goes up with prolactinomas.  From a TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) standpoint, if you suppress the milky discharge (e.g. through medicines such as bromocriptine), the risk of cancer increases dramatically.  This is because the breast releases toxicity through the milky discharge.  Suppress this release and the retained toxicity can explode into breast cancer.

The second situation is in younger women.  You can tell if she is going to get a heavy period because toxicity shows up in the pericardium meridian on the Digimeridian measurement.  This is important to consider, because if she would not bleed for some reason (e.g. menopause), there may be difficulty in unloading the toxicity.  It helps us understand why menopause can be a dangerous time.  Toxicity can be loaded in the pericardium meridian, and if the woman’s immune system is not strong enough to push it out, inflammatory changes can occur in the breast.

2) Stage I cancer confined to the breast is not necessarily life-threatening.

I have had breast cancers in my practice that I have treated in collaboration with TCM experts that have disappeared on follow-up radiography.  It is questionable whether such cancers ever would have become dangerous.  A major challenge now is learning to distinguish dangerous cancers from those that are not. 

More disturbingly, a pharmacist friend recently told me the story of a woman diagnosed with breast cancer. Doctors recommended the usual invasive treatments–surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. This woman had a level of suspicion and flew to Great Britain to see a leading breast cancer specialist. This specialist told her that she did not have breast cancer. Talk about a close call!

This story comes to me second hand. Nevertheless, my friend has the highest ethical standards. I have no doubt it is true based on her credibility and what I have seen in my clinical practice. It is problematic for women, because there is no economic reward for finding the non-dangerous cancers. The system probably lost out on $100,000 in treatment because this woman chose to seek a second opinion.

3)  Left-sided breast Cancer and right-side breast cancer are different diseases.  Cancer in the right breast is likely to be more dangerous than breast cancer in the left breast.

Because the left side of the body and right side of the body are energetically different, left-sided breast cancer and right-sided breast cancer are not the same disease.  From a TCM perspective, the right side is the yin or feminine side, the left side is the yang or masculine side.  For a woman to have breast cancer in the right breast represents a more virulent intrusion into her feminine energy.

I have not been able to find studies on left-sided vs right-sided breast cancer.  I am more cautious in cases of right-sided breast cancer, because they frequently appear to be more aggressive than left-sided.

4) Metastatic breast cancer represents an entirely different, much more dangerous disease.

The critical questions in breast cancer are what causes it to metastisize and how to stop it.  There are definite energies that drive breast cancer metastisis.  It is not accidental or arbitrary that breast cancer ends up in the brain or the liver, for example.  An important line of inquiry should be to track the energies that drive metastasis.  A firm understanding of TCM theory, in conjunction with a Digimeridian assessment as well as a study of the emotional state of the woman, should allow insight into the cause and prevention of metastasis.  This will take effort and money, but it would likely yield far more exciting results than we currently have.

Nevertheless, one of the harsh realities of cancer is that there will always be cases that defy understanding.  Cancers are an explosion of toxicity into disease.  The source of that toxicity, particularly in certain aggressive, virulent cases, we will not always be able to understand.  This is especially true in cases of children, where cancer usually makes no sense.  In certain situations, we can speculate that the biblical idea “the sins of the father are visited upon the son” applies, only in this case it likely relates more to the mother.  Toxicity can trace back through a dysfunctional and stuck family history, which an individual is heir to.

5)  If you are diagnosed with breast cancer, detoxification is necessary–at all levels, the emotional above all.

I have taken the homeopathic case of quite a few breast cancer cases over the years.  That means I have had the luxury of 3-4 hour, in-depth investigations of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of the disease.

The most common theme I have seen in breast cancer cases is a toxic, intimate relationship.  Quite frequently a woman feels she needs to leave the relationship and cannot.  Generally such cases carry deep, unresolved resentment.  I have seen another case where a woman developed breast cancer during a period of uncontrolled anger towards her adopted children.   The themes of nurturing or codependency, often at the expense of one’s individual values, appear to be central to the disease of the breast.

Commonly, the diagnosis of breast cancer forces a woman into an examination of toxic emotions.  There is the feeling that, if one is going to survive, one needs to “clean house” and face up to emotions and situations that have been damaging.  All cancer brings  the search for peace, because at root, its “beyond my control” character, not to mention the harsh treatments, mean exactly the loss of peace.

TCM doctor Yongli Ni has made the observation:  In Chinese medicine, the woman cleans up for the man.  Therefore, if they are mismatched, there is trouble for the woman. I consider it highly possible that certain cases of breast cancer originate because of such a “cleaning up” process.  I consider cleaning up the primary relationship–and ideally that would include getting the husband or mate as healthy as possible–an integral part of recovery from breast cancer.

6)   If you are diagnosed with breast cancer, you need to pay special attention to the liver, and its associated emotion, anger.

Anger, often deeply suppressed, is something I have seen in every case of breast cancer.  From a TCM perspective, anger that is unexpressed brings energy stagnation to the liver,   Although difficult to prove, in my understanding this plays a role in bringing about the spread of breast cancer to other organs, not least of which because proper functioning of the liver is critical for good immune function.   Confronting the issues that are causing anger, releasing anger through meditation, exercising a few times weekly (ideally getting the pulse rate up near maximum for short intervals of time), and herbal medicine to release heat and stagnation from the liver all should play a role.

Summing up, a purely physical level approach to breast cancer–or any cancer–is not enough.  It is a disease that involves all dimensions of the human, and all dimensions need to be involved in the treatment plan.  Most important is addressing the energy toxicity in the upper meridians of the body, as defined in TCM, with focus on the pericardial meridian above all.  Also key is the triple warmer meridian, which is associated with the upper body immune system.  The triple warmer energy is responsible for “pushing out” dampness and toxicity.  The corresponding meridians in the lower body (stomach and gallbladder) also play an important role.  The stomach may be particularly important in certain breast cancer cases,  because the stomach meridian travels directly across the nipple.

Share on Facebook

This entry was posted is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.