Reducing Your Cancer Risk (A Holistic Approach)

Thank you Carl O Helvie for sending us this book to review!

Carl O Helvie is currently eighty-five years old and a forty-three year lung cancer survivor. When Carl was diagnosed, he was only given six months to live. He has incorporated many holistic lifestyle changes and techniques and has shared them in this 152-page book. Not only is the advice for quitting smoking mentioned but steps of how to do so successfully are also shared. Along with Carl’s advice and sixty years of nurse practitioner experience, several interviews with doctors, and case studies are also provided. Although I normally prefer hard copies of books, because of the amount of links to interviews, products, and websites, I would recommend the digital format which is nearly half the price of the paperback edition.

As new case studies come out, the author plans on revising the book and the digital version is easier to update than the physical copies. Hopefully, future revisions will fix a couple of the typos I spotted. Aside from the typos and drawn out doctor bios, this book is easy to read, informative, and hard to put down.

Most of the advice I was aware of such as avoiding sugar substitutes, pesticides and GMO enhanced produce. Avoiding excess minerals like fluoride requires some changes like switching to a toothpaste without it. I like how this book recommends several brands and where to purchase them. Avoiding EMF waves is trickier since I doubt my family will be up for disabling the WiFi at night. When possible the claims are backed up by case studies and interviews with physician specialists. There is some safety lingo stating that this book is not meant to be used in lieu of visiting a doctor and so on.

One bit of advice was a bit contradictory. It’s well known that fish, especially larger ones contain a lot of mercury. It makes sense to avoid eating too much salmon yet the book recommends eating it twice a week in another section.

I like how faith, serving others, prayer and meditation are all recommended for a healthy lifestyle. Many faiths are represented and there are quotes from the Dali Lama and President Monson from the church of Latter Day Saints. Many Bible verses are referenced in the prayer section so I was happy to see those there.

Overall, Reducing Your Cancer Risk (A Holistic Approach) has some great advice and lots of information and web links to check out. Reading the interviews takes more work in the physical format, but it’s not impossible. Most of the information can be found at the author’s website: www.HolisticCancerFoundation.com.

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