Pictured from left: Kym Gold, JVF Board member Dr. Janet Hranicky and JVF Founder Dianne Burnett

“We don’t want to wait until everyone in this room has cancer.”

Those were the words JVF Founder Dianne Burnett told the energetic and enthusiastic group of more than 30 men and women who gathered at her home Sunday to discuss plans for the inaugural Angel Heart Gala that will take place later this year to raise money for Joan Valentine – A Foundation for Natural Cures, Inc.

The gala will feature a dinner, silent and live auctions and live entertainment. Burnett, Founder of the charity named after her mother who succumbed to esophageal cancer in 2010, announced that JVF will partner with Florida-based Hippocrates Health Institute and a portion of funds from the gala will go toward the two forces opening a holistic healing center on the Westside. The center, the name and scope of it to be announced later, will give Hippocrates a permanent presence on the West Coast.

Cindy Landon (left), Bobi Leonard and Rod Summers

Hippocrates has been the preeminent leader in the field of natural and complementary health care and education since 1956. Under the direction of Drs. Brian Clement and Anna Maria-Gahns-Clement, Hippocrates follows the philosophy that a vegan, living, enzyme-rich diet — complemented by exercise, positive thinking and non-invasive therapies — are integral to optimum health.

“After a year’s research for cancer wellness and preventative, I felt that Brian Clement and his team were the closest to my philosophy,” Burnett said later. “It’s more about the way you feel about yourself. It’s what you’re putting into your body without taking pharmaceutical drugs. I don’t think we always need to do that. For cardiovascular, diabetes and cancer we can reverse it with our nutrition and our mind, body and spirit.”

Dr. Sharyn Winters talks about being diagnosed with cancer 40 years ago and surviving.

JVF stresses that positive thinking is one of the keys to fighting diseases and illnesses. “Unfortunately the medical community does not appreciate how the person is feeling mentally has everything to do with the outcome,” Dr. Janet Hranicky, a member of the JVF Board, said to her fellow committee members.

JVF Board member Sharyn Wynters, ND, who has traveled to China multiple times, spoke about how doctors in that country are paid to keep people well. If too many residents in a village become ill, the doctor is asked to leave. It was the apropos lead-in to a Chinese proverb read by Burnett to the group:

“The superior doctor prevents sickness. The mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness. The inferior doctor treats actual sickness.”

Guests feasted on a vegan buffet by Monrose Catering Company

That’s the message: don’t wait until you’re sick to take care of yourself. Instead, take care of yourself everyday to avoid illness. Another way of doing that is by eating healthy. To show JVF practices what it preaches, guests at the luncheon feasted on a delectable vegan buffet consisting of eggplant stuffed with artichoke, quinoa, Israeli cous cous, risotto cakes topped with mushrooms and onion, fresh seasonal vegetables and mixed greens with walnuts from Monrose Catering Company.

Check back soon to learn more about the Angel Heart Gala, which promises to be memorable event.

Vibrant health is the most valuable asset we can ever have. Yet, we all know that good health does not just happen. Like all things of great value, it needs to be nurtured and cultivated with care. This process can be both confusing and intimidating — especially to those who rely solely on hearsay and public information. The Hippocrates Health Institute was created over five decades ago in response to this need. Over the years, we have developed the Life Transformation Program into the definitive blueprint for transitioning to a healthier lifestyle. Our doors are wide open to guests with a wide array of intentions, whether it be curing themselves of devastating disease or simply learning to take their good health to an uplifted level. Hippocrates guests come to realize that excellent health is not only possible, but also definite and achievable!

Who was Hippocrates?

Photos by Austin  Daniels Photography

Joan Valentine - A Foundation for Natural Cures, Inc. - Provides education and integrative medicine solutions to those suffering from cancer and their families.

The list of cancer fighting foods is long with things like mulberries, teas with flavonoids, cruciferous vegetables and ginger. But the most powerful anti-cancer tool comes from within, says the notable Dr. Valerie V. Hunt, best known for her pioneering research in the field of bioenergy.

The 95-year-old dynamo, a research scientist, author, lecturer and Professor Emeritus of Physiological Science at UCLA, recently visited the home of Dianne Burnett to talk about cancer and what she calls the new health paradigm.

“As long as we have to treat (cancer) with something extra, we’re on the wrong track,” Hunt says. “Certain things will help the body to withstand and handle cancer but it never cures cancer. Cancer is created by the human being from lacks in his energy field and his emotional orientation. That’s my premise.

“Some things are better than others because they improve the health of the person. And when the health of the person is better, they endure cancer better. But that does not cure them because nothing cures them. It is a self-induced problem related to energy fields.”

Bioenergy is also the expertise of Dr. Janet Hranicky, Founder and President of the American Health Institute and a member of the Board for Joan Valentine  - A Foundation for Natural Cures, Inc. For 25 years she ran the longest-running Psychological Intervention Program for cancer in the world with Dr. O. Carl Simonton, a radiation oncologist best known for his pioneering insights and research in the field of psychosocial oncology.

Hranicky says, “Sometimes with these wonderful things, whether it be the mulberry or other marvelous things that we see that have come out of the jungles in different areas of the world, we will often see people improve and get better with their symptoms. And we will even see, from all clinical evidence, cancer go in remission and not even be picked up on any of the scans. But it doesn’t mean that the field has changed. If the field has not changed in this way of thinking, the person would still have a cancer field and that’s when we see a recurrence of disease often.

“It might be a year or two or three. The typical way to treat it has been to take the cancer out, to radiate the cancer, to use drugs to kill the cancer. While those can be very effective, what we know is there is not a not a shift in the field that Valerie is talking about. You’ve only short-termed cured it.”

That’s something Burnett knows all too well. When her mother, Joan Valentine, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer it basically came with a death sentence.

“They told my mother right from the beginning that she didn’t have a chance to go and get her stuff in order,” Burnett said. “You’re giving her radiation. You’re giving her chemo but you’re not giving her the hope and the chance for her to get better so she quickly declined and passed away nine months later.

“I was there every two weeks giving her that hope, and of course the family (was too) but when you’re seeing a doctor who she put all of her trust in is saying, ‘You don’t come back from Stage IV esophagus cancer,’ where is her hope and faith in getting better?

That, Hunt says, is why the responsibility falls upon the patient – not the doctors.

“When someone else is doing it for you, you’re not involved,” Hunt says. “You’re waiting on them to get it done. When you know you’re part and parcel of doing it, then it’s your responsibility and the doctors should say, ‘This is what we can do about it. You have to do this kind of thing.’ That’s an entirely different approach. When the doctors don’t do it and it doesn’t get better, what happens? Depression. They go downhill fast. But when there’s opportunity and there’s a little change, look what happens to a human being. As Jan said, responsibility now comes back to the human for their health. It comes back to them for assisting and that is the new medicine. That is the new health paradigm.”

(From left) Dr. Valerie Hunt, Dr. Janet Hranicky and JVF Founder Dianne Burnett discuss fighting cancer using one's spirit and energy.

Hranicky attends conferences around the country and notes that while there has been a shift in the desirable direction to substitute better, healthier external things to take and do than from the previous old model, people are still on an external-based platform and approach cancer with the thinking that something outside is going to change and cure them. She says it’s important to go back and re-educate the masses.

Burnett stresses that it is necessary to educate people to the benefits of alternative and integrative treatments that can help build their immune systems and not to rely solely on the poison of radiation and chemotherapy, surgery and drugs.

“More people will be living,” Hunt says. “More people will be happier and therefore that permeates the world that cancer is not death. Cancer is a process by which we are going to evolve.

“We have to start the education in elementary school so people assume responsibility for who they are. The new model of the human being gives us opportunities and capacities which we have never imagined. With those opportunities and capacities, we don’t ever have to have cancer. Ever. It starts early in life. It should be a part of all schooling. Not cancer, but what is the nature of the human being and what is our highest level and what is the greatest capacity that we have to live and to enjoy life and to experience the wonders of life. That’s the approach that we need in schools.”

Joan Valentine - A Foundation for Natural Cures, Inc. - Provides education and integrative medicine solutions to those suffering from cancer and their families.