Stress, emotion and cancer | David Khayat | TEDxEindhovenSalon

I'm going to tell you a relatively sad story. Her name is Miriam. She was a light-skinned woman who was quite young and beautiful. I was an oncologist and together we had been fighting her

cancer

for almost seven years, going from relapse to remission and then from relapse again from chemotherapy to another chemotherapy suddenly one day the

cancer

completely changed its behavior it began to grow at an extreme speed becoming resistant to everything every type of treatment we have tried everything we have tried anything all the tests the cancer did not respond Furthermore, the cancer that was perfectly controlled during almost seven years in a matter of weeks it became completely uncontrollable and began to spread and metastasize throughout our body a few days before she died, we had a talk about which we argued, it was one of the saddest talks I had in my life . my life because we were talking about her death and while we were talking she said that she told me that a few weeks before the cancer began to grow again and become resistant, she has probably lost her hair due to fatigue due to lack of libido. .

Because of the treatments she felt that she had no more value for her husband and at the same time she had no more value for herself she felt that she was not strong enough to continue fighting and fighting for her life she wanted to die and in reality this en What happened? She finally died at the age of 31 after those four years i.e. 45 years. I have been treating cancer patients for years. I have been trying to understand if there was a relationship between what happened to him a few days and a few weeks before the cancer.

She changed completely, it's natural and the fact that she was so sad because they left her, could it be possible that there was a relationship between sadness,

stress

and cancer? So says a professor of oncology at Pierre and Marie Curie University as director of one of the largest universities. important department of medical oncology in Paris, I was responsible for the national cancer plan that we had in France from 2002 to 2007 and the former president of the French National Cancer Institute, as you can imagine, had wide and very frequent access to the media. giving interviews about the cause of cancer about the revolutionary discoveries that can give hope to patients affected by this disease and during all these years when I have been explaining cancer in the media I have always refused to accept the idea that there was a relationship between

stress

and cancer why because as a scientist due to my efficient social status I consider myself someone who could not say anything about anything in science that has not been demonstrated then through what we call the scientific method what is the scientific method ? method that has been established by a French scientist in the mid-19th century called Claude Bernard, what he said in summary is that for every cause there is an effect and for every effect there is a cause and the relationship between the cause and the effect is reproducible, but Can we prove the relationship, if any, between stress, sadness and cancer through the scientific method?

Let me tell you that there are several things that cannot actually be proven, but all of them through the scientific method, for example, if we all have the deep intuition that the parachute will save the lives of people who jump out of a plane. Can we prove it through the scientific method? If we want to do it, we have to take about 20 volunteers, 10 with the parachute and then without parachutes and push. Get the 20 out of a flying plane and see how many survivors in the two groups we can make. Not that, if we want to think about stress and cancer, can we take, for example, 2,000 women, one with a small baby, divide them into two groups? kill the baby in front of its mother for the first group and see if in the next few years these women these mothers are going to have more cancer than the model we have kept her baby alive obviously we can't, that means that parachute no. not saving people jumping out of the tank, no, in fact, these are things that are true, but it cannot be proven by the scientific method now, if it cannot be proven by the scientific method, how can we move forward in my latest book about stress, sadness and cancer?

I explained that there are many non-randomized prospective studies that are killing babies in both groups of mothers, but retrospective studies and experimental studies in animals have shown that there is a very strong relationship between stress, sadness and cancer, for example . I give you two studies, one is a very interesting Israeli study that has shown that survivors of Nazi camps have a higher risk of cancer, which was a stress. It really is possible. There is another very beautiful study from Scandinavia that has shown that the multitude that widows will have. to the husband, but we are alone, completely alone, without babies, without relatives, without friends, we have a higher risk of cancer - and we know the mechanism, how can stress or sadness contribute to the development of cancer or the relaxation of cancer, For example? that stress can increase the secretion of some hormones that are not very good for your hands, such as cortisone or adrenaline, we know that stress can decrease the activity and efficiency of your immune system, that system that is made of antibodies and white blood cells that can protect yourself from any threat including viruses, bacteria and also probably cancerous cells, we all know that if you are very stressed or very tired due to that stress, you can have the onset of herpes lobar passage and this is you because your immune system is less efficient due to stress.

We know that stress can decrease the capacity of your cells. You know that the human body is made of 1 million trillion cells every day of your life. You lose about 70 million cells every day of your life. You don't want to shrink, you have to build 70 million new cells to replace the ones that have died, but is it possible that every day of your life you produce 70 million of anything and never do anything wrong? Impossible, there is no industry in the world that can produce 70 million of something every day and never do anything wrong, so some wrong cells are made, but there are absolutely mechanisms to regulate the danger of these wrong cells, for example, they are can repair the mutation. that can occur in the DNA of your cells and by preventing these cells from becoming malignant we can also cause suicide, which is called apoptosis, the suicide of mutated cells that, in order not to be a threat to other cells, prefer to commit suicide. die and we know it very well, there are many studies that have shown that stress and sadness can decrease the ability of your DNA to repair itself from this mutation that can occur spontaneously every day of your life and that can decrease the capacity of a cell mutated. commit suicide to protect the other cells, that's how, but getting to that point, let me make two things very clear.

First, I never said that sadness or stress can cause cancer, that is, compared to smoking tobacco. poor nutrition, viruses and bacteria, stress, sadness, can have a very small contribution to cancer, but you know, an effect of cancer on one man in two and one that we create in three in our countries, Trying to reduce that risk a little is not uncertain. What I want to make clear is that cancer is not that all types of stress or sadness can induce an increased risk of cancer. All studies have shown that stress can induce that increase in cancer risk only if it is to a point where you can no longer bear that stress.

The same thing happens with sadness, when sadness is so important and so long-lasting that one day you wake up in the morning thinking that it will never end and at that moment you said you know, in your head you say I. I would rather die it is very difficult to continue living with that sadness with that stress when it gets to that point then it can induce a higher risk of cancer why how do you get to that point? I want to tell you about a very interesting experiment that has been carried out. done by a French scientist about 30 years ago called professor laboratory or what he did is a three phase experiment in the first phase he took a rat alone in a cage with a bridge that reached a second cage every time he put electricity on it from the floor from the first cage the right escapes and goes to the second cage and he puts the electricity on in the second cage in the right escapes in the first cage after the end of at the end of the experiments these rats are actually very tired but not they have cancer second part of the experiment he took two rats he put them in the same cage without a bridge each time he put some electricity from stress on them what happens is that the real rat starts fighting against each other at the end of the experiments they are getting very tired but they don't have cancer in the last part of the experiment we take only one rat we put it in a single catch again without jumper every time you put the electricity on the floor that rat can't escape or fight at the end of the experiment these rats have a higher risk of cancer, how can that tell us?

There is actually a very good theory that can be summarized that way. Men like men, women, human beings of Hanwen have always been preys for which they have been praised. wild animals, but even more often they fall prey to violent men who try to kill them and to survive that risk, humanity has developed a strategy that can be called fight or flight, in fact, if a lion is going to jump on you, don't do it. you do. You have no other chance, so prepare to fight or start running. This is not the time to think about that book you read about how lions attack people and so on.

This is not the time for that, so it has to be something very intuitive. instinctive and this can be summed up as fight or flight, as long as you can fight or fly, stress will not create any risk of disease or risk of cancer, but when there comes a point where you can't fight or fly. then it becomes dangerous to health, this is what the experiments of dr. elaborately told us when the heart could escape when the heart could fight they did not have cancer when the third part arrived with the rats the right the rat alone could neither fight nor fly it began to have cancer then we explained how cancer how stress or sadness they are going to increase your risk of cancer now we can try to answer the question of why if you are a prey and you can't write or fly why do you have cancer and then a very personal idea comes up for a very personal theory I want to conclude with you know like I said a human body is made of 1 million trillion cells everyone will sleep everything that lives on that earth plants animals or human beings we are made of cells human body 1 million trillion well we can all very easily accept the idea that when I move my arm This is due to the contraction of my muscle cells to the order that comes from my brain through the nerve and so on and I move I can have a glass and drink some water whatever when it comes to spirituality as human beings it is difficult for us to understand that you accept I did this is also to make 100% of myself why because I am my million body cells and my million body cells are myself, there is no part of me that is outside of that million billion of cells and there is no self that belongs to me that is outside of me we are exactly the same, so even when it comes to spirituality, faith, freedom of choice, loving, whatever it is. that with your spirituality it is actually you yourself who are experiencing that feeling if I love someone because my cells love this person if I had someone because my cells hate that body and at the same time if I feel stressed or sad it is because my cells feel sadness or stress and when there comes a point where I say, you wake up in the morning and say you know it's too hard, I'd rather die and we all know people and yourself, maybe one day we have thought about it . something like that you yourself are so stressed so sad that you want to die and that's how cancer can happen.

So when we say what can we conclude? In fact, as an oncologist, my advice is not to smoke, improve your diet, do some exercise to get vaccinated against HPV and everything, but at the same time try to control to have better control of your

emotion

s and your stress, if you can avoid it. , it's even better, but if you have to quit, try to help yourself and control your stress better. your sadness for psychotherapy sociology meditation square breathing and there are many other possibilities, but keep in mind that as you try to improve your diet and you try to improve because you want to improve your health, which means lowering the risk of having cancer, please try to work also in your

emotion

and all your stress thank you very much