I am seriously at odds with strict and heavy dieting for cancer for patients undergoing orthodox cytotoxic medical treatment because of the considerable real dangers and negatives, both physical and mental, that can result from certain cancer diet regimes. My reasoning for which I shall fully explain and justify, with true examples in this article.
Now I am all for a balanced old fashioned healthy diet, free of chemicals and bad sugars. I fully support those who choose a radical diet in complete isolation of any medical treatment, because they feel this is the best choice for them and they understand the risks and consequences of taking on such a diet. I absolutely do not advocate any very strict, harsh diet for patients receiving toxin based medical treatment and I shall now shed some very real light, from experience on the cancer dieting minefield that cancer patients find themselves in soon after diagnosis. So here I have chosen to thrash out the reasons for my view here, my rationale and provide some true examples behind this well considered statement.
Now I am all for a balanced old fashioned healthy diet, free of chemicals and bad sugars. I fully support those who choose a radical diet in complete isolation of any medical treatment, because they feel this is the best choice for them and they understand the risks and consequences of taking on such a diet. I absolutely do not advocate any very strict, harsh diet for patients receiving toxin based medical treatment and I shall now shed some very real light, from experience on the cancer dieting minefield that cancer patients find themselves in soon after diagnosis. So here I have chosen to thrash out the reasons for my view here, my rationale and provide some true examples behind this well considered statement.
The first and main consideration about how to diet for and with cancer in my view is this; are you going to be doing a cancer diet in isolation without any medical treatment and therefore exclusively? Or, are you aiming to be dieting together with having orthodox medical treatment? This consideration is absolutely vital to how radical or heavy and strict a diet or regime you should choose!
If you are doing a diet without any form of orthodox medicine then that is absolutely fine and you
could opt to do a very bold and brave diet and that may work for you brilliantly, some radical cancer diets really do. You may not be suitable for a cancer diet like this though, if you have had any previous medical treatment that causes toxicity, even years before, so if you have you would need to talk to your doctors and the diet people, as some radical diets can, done too quickly, release the toxins from previous treatments out of your body's cells too fast and can land you and your liver in real trouble. There are some very good cancer diets instead of medical treatment out there like the Gerson diet that apparently have excellent results; although the considerable downside is that you have to do something like a juice every hour of the day and also several enemas a day, and do this for 2 years without any guarantees. Is that for you?! Maybe it is.
So what about cancer diets with orthodox medical treatment? Most of the success stories of cancer diets you hear about are stories of people who have done exclusive and radical cancer diets, without any medical treatment, and most of these successes are where people have had no prior orthodox cancer treatment, so the exclusive diet is the treatment, its radical, its tough and has the best chance of working also because its for a body where the organs, blood and immune system have not had any damage from toxicity due to previous medical treatment.
In my view the Chemo/radiotherapy patient must be treated just like you would treat a top prize fighter. The prize fighter crucially needs their fighting spirit, their energy to fight, they need their sleep, their fruit, veg, protein and supplements. This is really important because many tough diets can cause sleep problems. Prize fighters must balance their weight and muscle mass. So I reiterate this point, you the cancer patient must be "treated" just like a prize fighter, your head has to be right and you need to be in the shape and mental form to really want to fight this battle, for it is a battle of will as well as a battle for body. For some Formula one drivers that win their races and the championship, visualisation is a key part of winning - it's seeing the fight or the race won. The thought is the deed some say, although I think there is a lot of thought needed!! Visualisation can help you with or without orthodox medical treatment, think of it basically as positive thinking if that helps, rather than some looney meditation. It works for golfers and racing drivers and incredibly well with children with cancer! I have a true success story about this later on here.
So what about cancer diets with orthodox medical treatment? Most of the success stories of cancer diets you hear about are stories of people who have done exclusive and radical cancer diets, without any medical treatment, and most of these successes are where people have had no prior orthodox cancer treatment, so the exclusive diet is the treatment, its radical, its tough and has the best chance of working also because its for a body where the organs, blood and immune system have not had any damage from toxicity due to previous medical treatment.
In my view the Chemo/radiotherapy patient must be treated just like you would treat a top prize fighter. The prize fighter crucially needs their fighting spirit, their energy to fight, they need their sleep, their fruit, veg, protein and supplements. This is really important because many tough diets can cause sleep problems. Prize fighters must balance their weight and muscle mass. So I reiterate this point, you the cancer patient must be "treated" just like a prize fighter, your head has to be right and you need to be in the shape and mental form to really want to fight this battle, for it is a battle of will as well as a battle for body. For some Formula one drivers that win their races and the championship, visualisation is a key part of winning - it's seeing the fight or the race won. The thought is the deed some say, although I think there is a lot of thought needed!! Visualisation can help you with or without orthodox medical treatment, think of it basically as positive thinking if that helps, rather than some looney meditation. It works for golfers and racing drivers and incredibly well with children with cancer! I have a true success story about this later on here.
If you are doing a major diet in conjunction with orthodox
medicine, then you have to be very careful for a few good reasons. Many people will tell you what you must eat and avoid ,which can be incredibly stressful and daunting for you and your family. So here are my views on it all and how to handle the cancer diet minefield that you are bound to encounter and probably be pushed into by someone if not yourself at some point!
I was in no uncertain terms told by my oncologist that you must not lose too much weight if you have cancer, as you need this internal
energy and strength to fight the cancer. Now some people will say, well what do doctors know about diet? Here is the the thing, getting too thin in itself has major consequences and one of the side effects of the cancer itself for many patients is cancer related weight loss, known as cachexia. So you do not want to compound or exacerbate this already vociferous side effect of cancer. You also really have to consider the impact on you mentally and the impact it will have on your quality of life, with whatever choice of diet or regime you go for.
As an example of this caution, back in 2000 I tried a radical cancer diet recommended by the grandson of Albert Schweizer, a diet without any medical treatment at the same time, that was promoted as preventing g the cancer from being able to feed and therefore starve the cancer to death. On this particular diet, and I am not saying this can happen with all radical diets, but I ended up loosing 4.5 stone, weighing just 7.5 stone, I could barely walk upstairs, I felt totally emasculated, as a man and became really depressed, I had no energy to fight the cancer at all. So the diet had completely the reverse effect on me, and the only possible small benefit was that the cancer just didn't grow very quickly. I ended up just putting off the inevitable need for proper medical treatment, by which time I was in terrible shape physically for it. So what was the moral of that story I learned? It was totally the wrong thing to do. Too radical, too negative, because it induced too much weight loss and there was no balanced upside. So I strongly suggest really thinking about what level you are going to do your diet to and be aware of what you will gain and lose by doing it. That's my tip for the day. A moderate diet I believe is best and here I say why, not least for the reason of everything in moderation! How did Napoleon defeat many of his enemies? He forced starvation upon them, so they were too weak to fight.
As an example of this caution, back in 2000 I tried a radical cancer diet recommended by the grandson of Albert Schweizer, a diet without any medical treatment at the same time, that was promoted as preventing g the cancer from being able to feed and therefore starve the cancer to death. On this particular diet, and I am not saying this can happen with all radical diets, but I ended up loosing 4.5 stone, weighing just 7.5 stone, I could barely walk upstairs, I felt totally emasculated, as a man and became really depressed, I had no energy to fight the cancer at all. So the diet had completely the reverse effect on me, and the only possible small benefit was that the cancer just didn't grow very quickly. I ended up just putting off the inevitable need for proper medical treatment, by which time I was in terrible shape physically for it. So what was the moral of that story I learned? It was totally the wrong thing to do. Too radical, too negative, because it induced too much weight loss and there was no balanced upside. So I strongly suggest really thinking about what level you are going to do your diet to and be aware of what you will gain and lose by doing it. That's my tip for the day. A moderate diet I believe is best and here I say why, not least for the reason of everything in moderation! How did Napoleon defeat many of his enemies? He forced starvation upon them, so they were too weak to fight.
I think anyone with cancer, they need to ask the question,
"What am I basically hoping to achieve by dieting and reducing my exposure to chemicals whilst receiving medical treatment?"
I believe we are trying to achieve the following whilst being treated for cancer:-
We are aiming to have and maintain a good quality of life, whilst receiving tough medical treatment and therefore the decision is to watch what you eat and what chemicals you come into contact with, in order to help yourself as best you can, in order to achieve the best result which is best possible physical form with the least rubbish side effects possible throughout the process.
This for me is first and foremost need, then my aim is to try and slow down the cancer and give the medicine a better chance to work, limit toxicity in the body, in order to reduce the horrid side effects. Boost energy and feel better than facing up to the effects of the medicine alone. So damage limitation, reducing side effects and speeding up recovery and enjoying the good days is my strategy and recommendation!
We are aiming to have and maintain a good quality of life, whilst receiving tough medical treatment and therefore the decision is to watch what you eat and what chemicals you come into contact with, in order to help yourself as best you can, in order to achieve the best result which is best possible physical form with the least rubbish side effects possible throughout the process.
This for me is first and foremost need, then my aim is to try and slow down the cancer and give the medicine a better chance to work, limit toxicity in the body, in order to reduce the horrid side effects. Boost energy and feel better than facing up to the effects of the medicine alone. So damage limitation, reducing side effects and speeding up recovery and enjoying the good days is my strategy and recommendation!
Okay so how? What do we really know about the point and benefit of
"dieting" for cancer? Answer, in my view, limiting the amount of high GI (high
glycemic) foods means we can reduce the flow of sugar, which we know feeds
cancer allowing it to proliferate; hence why the PET scan uses radioactive sugar (FDG - flurodeoxyglucose)
to show the metabolic activity of cancer. So therefore we need to reduce the simple
carbohydrates in the blood stream and therefore ideally choose low GI foods
where possible.That's what we should aim to do with our food, agreed?
Avoiding white sugar, white flour we know reduces blood acidity
and therefore overall toxicity from simple sugars and these have the highest GI index. We're getting plenty of toxicity from the medicine, so we need to reduce and minimise that toxicity to reduce the side effects of toxicity, like feeling weak, tired and basically awful and how long that feeling lasts, which can be lessened greatly by reducing overall body blood toxicity.
Fructose , i.e. fruit juice without fibre is a very high
GI indexed food, so this needs to be considered when having fruit juice as it
can be as high GI in the blood as Coke. So fruit juice needs to have the fibre with it and from the whole fruit to reduce the GI availability of the fructose in the
blood, so as not to feed the cancer. Ok Tick! Buying organic food, where possible reduces chemicals in the blood and therefore blood toxicity, so another tick! Remember the vitamins in fruit juice only last minutes after juicing so there's no point buying it off the shelf or where its being sitting around! Using traditional juicers also strips out the food's fibre, so consider this fact when juicing as your blood sugar will just spike after drinking a freshly made juice effectively being bad for your cancer. Blended juice with the fibre is much better for you.
Why avoid chemicals? Answer to lower blood, organ toxicity, to reduce the side effects of basically feeling shit and how long for! I use Aloe
Vera toothpaste, natural based washing up powders, soaps, shampoos, anything
that goes on the skin and hair basically.
Coffee Enemas apparently detox the liver better than it
does on its own. If you are happy doing this then fine, but your liver does
detox itself and there are more pleasant ways to detox your liver, although probably nothing like as effectively. A must really during treatment is to drink loads of water and other fluids this is the key to flushing out the toxins and diluting them in the blood. It's really the five days after Chemo that the toxicity is at its worst. I take something from Germany to help
and it’s called Hepa Merz. Probably not as good as a coffee enema, but
my life is better without enemas in it since for me they are horrid, I have tried it several times in Australia and for me they simply did not balance quality of life with the marginal difference of how I felt from not doing them. Quality of life is my main motivation here, what's yours? This is probably what matters most in your decision making here.Do you hate it, are you fine with it, what? If it makes you miserable doing it, forget it, its counterproductive.
I run my dietary life kind of by the 80:20 rule: 80% good and 20% bad - in sugar terms that is, because I feel you need to enjoy life while you have it. I cannot be consumed by the negative stress of treatment couple with the stress of what you must and mustn't eat. I can't understand those that believe in the unproven merits of strict dieting whilst having medical treatment. People that do are simply blending radical diet success information and or stories and applying that information as the best thing to do for cancer whilst undergoing medical treatment. Many of these people are mistakenly believing that the benefits are that they are treating the cancer itself with the treatment. The answer is, no they are not, that's hogwash! But the right diet will limit and even reduce the severity of the side effects, that's the point of the cancer diet with medical treatment!! Take heed, cancer diet beware with your cancer treatment. Choose it wisely, just keep it simple!
Why I advocate alternative medicine! I managed successfully to get a remission from my cancer for 4 full years with Acupuncture twice a week, some Chinese pills and some Qi Gong visualisation alone, no orthodox drugs, no diet or anything else at all! I was doing visualisation of being healthy and happy whilst in "Standing like a tree" a stance in Qi Gong, for about 10-15 minutes in the garden every day in the Summer for about 2 months. That was back in 1996. I had had no prior orthodox cancer treatment, so my immune system was kicked back into shape, and able to see and target the cancer as a foreign enemy to gobble up with this method, somehow! The cancer was visible on CT scans before my radical Chinese approach and 3 months later the lymph nodes had completely disappeared from the CT scans, baffling my physicians. My amazing Chinese acupuncturist was sadly not available when it did come back some 4 years later after ruining my immune system from not sleeping for a fortnight whilst on holiday in Bali with mates! That was a bad move.
I have accepted I needed and still need orthodox treatment, given all that's happened to my system over the years from having orthodox medicine in the first place, starting in 2000, albeit being given the wrong Chemo. So today I mix diet and treatment together in some sort of balance to try
to ensure I have a good quality of life and am not running to the bathroom to
do bloody coffee enemas or making juices every 5 minutes and wishing to God I could have a burger or a pint. Personally I would hate to live my life like that for a hopeful "chance of a cure" with absolutely no guarantees or statistics for my disease of what that chance might be as their simply isn't any data on it. yes yes its all the drug companies that prevent it, I hear. No its that they make money to pay for 10 years worth of research and red tape to provide the information of how well their drugs work. That's business, that's economics. If the alternative health players could provide the evidence by charging for their treatments and got the investment to get them out there, then they could put up a fight against the drug companies. Until then they are just hopefuls - providing hope, giving hope to those without options with measurable success and failure rates, and that's what it comes down to, hit and hope.
Back to me! I have some sugar each week, like a
cake or some chocolate or a crumpet and a glass of wine, Why? you may ask? To be honest I think it is just as important to
treat the head as it is the body, and back in 2004 when I was treated for my last cancer recurrence and
had a wonderful remission for 8 years, I barely did any diet at all, I just ate good food,
and my amazing oncologist Dr Jacob, who got me my 8 year remission, even took me out to bars to drink caipirinhas (Brazilian rum cocktail
with lime, v.high in simple sugar, although with lime, which is alkaline forming
in the blood,. As Dr Jacob said, you need to treat the head as well as the body. So in conclusion, I do think
all the diet advice in world is pointless if you feel it's going to be, or is bad for your head. If
it's good for your head then great, that's amazing for you, that is a lucky place to be, it's just not for everyone. For me dieting exclusively or too strictly is totally counterproductive. If a regime is too difficult, too harsh, its not the answer! No treatment or regime is the answer if its too harsh or too difficult to manage! That's common sense.
At the beginning of my treatment I did a 100% strict no
high GI foods I thought it would be for a short time so i was prepared to do it. I was also having chemo. After 2 months of treatment, 2 cycles of treatment in the summer last year, the tumour went away completely, on a high dose of the chemo Brentuximab. I had a clear PET
scan after just two treatments. So I stuck with the diet and then they reduced the
dose of chemo due to peripheral neuropathy, which had reached the tipping point for their ability to give me the full dose. 2 treatments later at a lower dose, the PET scan
showed the tumour had grown back a third of the size it was; bearing in mind I
was still on a 100% strict no sugar diet in those 2 months, as best I could do. So what did I conclude,
well the low GI diet is certainly no magic bullet for the cancer with drugs that can work in the right dose. Did it slow down its growth?
Maybe maybe not! So in conclusion and after this insight, I decided to only limit the high GI sugars and not to cut them out completely or my head will explode with the negative stress of it. I needed some normality back after 4 months, who wouldn't?!!!
If you think about it good research and scientific evidence have prompted some dieticians and people to say curcumin can cure cancer! However the actual scientific factual evidence from research is that it can kill cancer cells,
including mine, in a petri dish. When it comes to treating the human body with cancer, that is a different matter! The simple fact here is, like so many things said to be able to cure cancer, the issue is you cannot ingest and digest
enough, in this case curcumin, to gobble up solid or blood cancers, due to its low bio-availability. So many diets created by dietitians are formulated from compartmentalised
ideas, researched reports like that on Curcumin and theoretical outcomes, that work
in theory or in dishes but not actually or necessarily in large practice in humans or we would have the cure for cancer.
Exclusive extreme dieting and detoxing like Gerson's diet
may well provide a cure for some, but the treatment there is as hard as chemo itself, if
you ask me! If not harder and probably has about the same odds of success. I
would perhaps do this diet only as last resort, certainly not first, given how hard it really is to do both practically and mentally, and
only if there was really no orthodox medical option left open to me. But for me at least this is!
That's my two
pennies worth. Anyway I'm still here, I have no symptoms of my disease
yet, even a year later and I having been mixing together treatments both orthox, alternative and moderately diet based since last year; so
far I have avoided the dreaded donor stem cell transplant and I may not be able to forever, but
I still have a quality of life from what I'm doing!!!!
Hope that helps and puts it in a bit of perspective
anyway if you didn't have it before!
Best Wishes
Ollie
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