THE SOVEREIGN DROP 047 — On P53

Not a newsletter, but a ritual. One drop each week. Distilled wisdom for the whole man.

Field Note: On P53

I’ve spent the last two weeks being deeply educated on cancer by Cornell University. Because of you.

1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime

2 in 5 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime

That’s 13% diagnosed with prostate cancer and 39% diagnosed with some type of cancer.

When the opportunity came to take a course on how cancer works, I took it. Some of you are going to need that info at some point in the future. I’ve got you covered.

• What is happening on a molecular level to activate and allow the growth of damaged and mutated cells?

• What does “treatment” actually do to the cells in the body?

• What factors are considered for treatment and realistically how many options do we have on the table?

(Yes, I had flashes of switching to a career in oncology then remembered Chemistry in 11th grade was one of my worst classes ever. God bless, Mr. Haak. He was so patient with me. I’ll stick with advising.)

I surely wish I had this information 6 years ago when my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer, and 2 months ago when my uncle was diagnosed.

The PSA here is that if you are ever diagnosed with cancer, come find me. I have much to share that will deepen your understanding and guide your decisions for treatment.‍ ‍

You didn’t think I would leave it there though, did you? 😉 I’ve got about 5 Sovereign Drops I could write with cancer analogies.

This one is about p53.

Protein, 53.

“The guardian of the genome.”

There’s a protein in every single cell of your body and its only job is to notice. It doesn’t build, produce energy, divide cells, or drive growth. It hawk eyes everything in the cell cycle. If/when something goes wrong, p53 stops the process.

This protein holds the cell in place until it’s repaired, or if it’s too damaged, it ends the cell entirely. Hence “guardian of the genome.”

Its job is to make sure that all of your beautiful cells carry forward and any of the broken ones are held on the line until repaired, and for the real duds, they get obliterated.

The work of p53 is invisible. Unless it fails.

We’ll never know how many cells it caught, corrected, or killed off in a given day. We won’t know how many errors it ended before it became anything severe. The only time you hear about p53 is when it fails. (Poor guy.)

When p53 fails, damaged cells get through, errors start duplicating and at some point this gets labeled as cancer. (Please note that p53 failure is not a single-factor cancer creator. Cancer typically takes a stack of things going sideways, but when the guardian of the genome goes down, the system can’t recover on its own.)

Bringing it around to the Sovereign Drop —

Your version of p53 is the part of you that’s suppose to notice your first compromise...

When you allowed that one thing you shouldn’t have.

That one glance.

That one misleading comment.

That one mini step out of integrity.

That one little deviation.

Yep, that one.

Most men don’t lose everything in one poor-choice catastrophic event.

They lose it because the thing that was supposed to notice stopped working years before anyone else could see it.

What we can learn from the guardian p53...

P53 intervenes at the FIRST error. It lets NOTHING damaged, compromised, or broken pass by. NOTHING.

The junky cells gets fixed or obliterated.

Time to shore up your p53. And, as you may have guessed, you can’t outsource this to anyone. Not me, not your team, not your partner. It’s all you.

Get back to intervening at your first error.

Hold yourself in high account on all accounts.

Question

Where are you letting yourself live the error over and over again?

Integration

Check yourself today.

Be p53 in full force - guardian of your genome.

Halt the line to fix what needs to be fixed or obliterate what needs to disappear altogether.

Benediction

The “check” you skip doesn’t disappear. It compounds. Here’s to you being your best guardian.

I believe in what you are becoming.

— Amy

If you know a man who would benefit from reading this, feel free to forward it to him. One drop each week. Distilled wisdom for the whole man