According to Prostate Cancer UK[1] one in eight men will contract prostate cancer. After my prostate cancer diagnosis about a month ago I thought how ironic. Six months before, I was standing in the club house preparing with numerous other men to enjoy a day competing in a golf tournament. There were enough men to fill eighteen holes with a foursome each, consequently there were significantly more than eight men. The statistics were stacked in favor of prostate cancer. There were men older, younger, and close to my baby boomer age. For some reason the thought occurred to me how many of these men has, have had, or will have prostate cancer. Now with my positive cancer diagnosis I am one of the statistics.
The U.S. Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (CDC) reports the top ten cancers by rates in men. See the graph below.[2] Obviously, prostate cancer is significantly more common that all the rest.
So, what did I do to deserve this?
Many years ago, in a soil science class and then again in a chemistry class I learned about salts and impermeable cellular membranes. If you own a home with a grass yard you probably understand this situation.
When you fertilize your lawn, you must water the fertilizer in otherwise it will “burn” your grass. The fertilizer is a “salt” and without adequate water you will have an impermeable membrane that will not allow water to enter the cell of your grass. The gardening catch phrase when watering is “water well when you water.” Water well to leach the salts into the soil to enable your grass cells to accept the nutrients from the fertilizer.
A salt is formed when an element with a positive ion (cation) forms an ionic bond with an element having a negative ion (anion) becoming neutral. So, any two elements meeting that criteria becomes a salt, as in sodium (Na) and chlorine (Cl) or NaCl – sodium chloride/table salt. There are lots of other salts.
Your doctor will tell you to avoid salt in your diet or you may suffer high blood pressure. Your doctor is referring to NaCl. Too much NaCl/table salt will make an impermeable membrane as your cells struggle to move blood in and out of your cells. The more your heart has to push blood into and out of your cells determines how much pressure it must exert. The more pressure the higher your blood pressure.
Your blood pressure measures two factors systolic and diastolic. It is given as one number over another like 120 over 80 for example (written 120/80). The systolic number measures the amount of pressure your heart is exerting when it beats. The diastolic is the number measured when your heart is resting or between beats.
If you’ve ever had a radiator hose on your car bust under pressure or blown up a balloon where it explodes this is what will happen to your arteries over time and under high blood pressure. If you blow an artery it is not good.
To maintain a balance in your body down to your cellular level you must maintain an acid base balance or homeostasis.
“To maintain homeostasis, the human body employs many physiological adaptations. One of these is maintaining an acid-base balance. In the absence of pathological states, the pH of the human body ranges between 7.35 to 7.45, with the average at 7.40. Why this number? Why not a neutral number of 7.0 instead of a slightly alkaline 7.40? A pH at this level is ideal for many biological processes, 1 of the most important being blood oxygenation. Also, many of the intermediates of biochemical reactions in the body become ionized at a neutral pH, which makes the utilization of these intermediates more difficult.”[3]
pH is the “potential of hydrogen.” Our bodies, as the universe, are a dynamic chemical reaction. To familiarize you with dynamic it is a continuous change, activity, or progress.[4] To enable our body which includes our brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, etc. to function properly we must have the right chemicals in their proper percentages. Our body is like an orchestra with each instrument doing its part to create beautiful music. When instruments in our body are not tuned correctly your symphony is off key. To be tuned correctly you must have the proper chemical equilibrium for homeostasis.
We are inundated with food and drinks that create an imbalance within our body right down to each cell that makes up each organ. Acidic foods and drinks reduce your body’s pH. When the pH level in your body drops below 7 your organs are no longer in chemical balance and you are not in homeostasis. Your cells cannot move oxygen in and out efficiently which reduces your heart’s ability to force blood carrying oxygen into and out of your cells.
If your cells are not moving blood, oxygen, and nutrients in and out efficiently then the rest of your body is not operating efficiently. Your brain, kidneys, pancreas, muscles, et al are not performing at their maximum potential. So, when you’re working, competing, playing, or just enjoying life you are not getting the most from your life. Over time your body begins to show its age like an old car that hasn’t been maintained.
I’m certain that there is a direct correlation to the extent that your body has been maintained and the onset of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, inflammation, and cancer.
This is all very basic (no alkaline pun intended) as I am not a biologist or chemist. I’m trying to break it down to where I can understand it and provide a credible argument for you to understand.
Living to eat or eating to live
I’ve tried to eat to live but way too often I have lived to eat. How great are chips and salsa, Mexican food, combined with a pitcher of margaritas!? Or a big thick juicy T-bone steak (pink inside), baked potato with bacon bits and butter, and hot rolls with cinnamon butter slathered all over! Or an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet! Life is good until it isn’t.
Until we understand how our bodies work and how the food we eat determines our health and performance we will continue to deal with bloating, lethargy, at a minimum and diabetes, inflammation, and cancer at a max.
You are what you eat is the old saying. If you eat junk you feel like junk. You don’t put diesel fuel in your car’s gasoline engine or gasoline into your truck’s diesel engine. To get the best performance out of your vehicle you feed it the best fuel you can. You change your vehicles air and fuel filters to ensure that junk is not getting to your engine. All of this to maintain your vehicle so that it lasts a long time and operates smoothly and efficiently. So how do you begin to eat good healthy and good tasting food so that your body operates smoothly and efficiently? So that you are filtering out all of the bad stuff before it causes health issues and diseases.
When we are home and get hit with the munchies what do we eat? There’s that bag of chips that is open on the kitchen counter, or left over pizza in the fridge. That’s quick and easy and we need to not waste food that we’ve paid for. It’s all in the process.
Processes
Coach Nick Saban says, “There are two pains in life. There is the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you’ll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.” Discipline begins with a process. Everything in life involves a process and again Coach Saban nails it with, “A good process produces good results.” I can quote Coach Saban all day but let’s start here.
When you bring fruit and vegetables home instead of putting them in a refrigerator drawer where they will later be thrown away because they have rotted, prepare them. Make them ready to eat and make them more accessible than that bag of chips. It’s a simple process once you develop the habit. Once you’ve developed this habit, you’re good to go as in when you’re running out the door with no time, grab that bag of fruits and veggies that you prepared. You’ve replaced the bad with the good.
When you come home after an exhausting whatever don’t call door dash or run to the drive through, grab those fruits, nuts, and veggies that you’ve prepared and be comfortable that you are treating yourself to a proper pH.
Learn what to eat and what not to eat to maintain that proper pH balance in your body. Once you know what to eat you can then substitute what you’ve been eating for what you should be and will be eating.
Reading is fundamental
Reading is fundamental and developing a process to increase your reading is fundamental. You’re busy. Your life is full. You’ve got no time for anything more than what is currently taking your time. But then the doctor sticks his finger up your ass and tells you that you’ve got cancer. What’s going to change in your life now?
A wise man, Coy Morris, often says, “Life’s about choices.” Just as our body is a dynamic chemical reaction so to are our decisions. Our decisions are dynamically moving our life forward. Moving, talking, eating, drinking, working, resting, recreating everything happens because of a decision you have made. Your decisions are influenced by your discipline. Do you have the discipline to make the right decisions? Perhaps developing a process to build discipline would be a good decision.
Surely there’s a book or a YouTube video that will help you and as the Nike motto says, “Just do it.” So now is the time to take the road described by Robert Frost: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” If Robert Frost is not your cup of tea there is always my favorite Yogi-ism, “When you come to the fork in the road take it.”
Before you get the finger, make the decision to take the fork in the road or the road less traveled, and develop processes to easily and seamlessly make you life easier and more enriched.
Decisions decisions where to start
Whatever happens, one way or the other, we’re not getting out alive. To quote that great line from the movie Secondhand Lions, “Do you want us to die of old age?” The most important decision you will ever make is to read, live, believe, and accept John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
As we stumble through life from decision to decision or one meal to the next you will always find guidance, not in an Instagram or YouTube video but in a book. Philippians 4:6 from the Bible tells me, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Pray early and often as you develop your spiritual relationship and as Mark 11:24 tells us, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
For those fence stragglers or post turtles there’s C.S. Lewis, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true of infinite importance.” Don’t be a fence straggler or post turtle and if you don’t know what a post turtle is, it’s a turtle perched on top of a fence post. He didn’t get there by himself, he doesn’t belong there, he’s elevated above his ability to function, and you wonder who the idiot was that put him there in the first place, much like a politician. Develop discipline, and processes to begin a better more enriched and abundant life and when it’s over you’re just beginning. No worries.
[1] https://prostatecanceruk.org/prostate-information-and-support/risk-and-symptoms/about-prostate-cancer
[2] https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/AtAGlance/
Life with Cancer 
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