Fund (WCRF) took five years to produce the most authoritative report we have on the role played by food, drink, obesity, and exercise in causing cancer. Their conclusion was that a third of cancers worldwide are caused by lifestyle choices—the quality of what we eat and how much or how little we exercise.
A study of nearly 45,000 sets of twins found that environment and lifestyle were stronger predictors than genetic factors when determining who might get prostate, colorectal and breast cancer.
A recent Cancer Research UK report found that 40% of cancers can be blamed on personal lifestyle. The study says that more than 100,000 cancers in Britain each year are caused by smoking, unhealthy diet (a lack of fruit and vegetables), misuse of alcohol, and being overweight.
In many cases, a cancer patient is indeed blameless in having created the situation that ended with a diseased body. Accidents, issues of heredity, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time can cause cancer, notwithstanding precautions taken or preventions exercised. But, that said, we need to take responsibility for what we eat, drink, smoke, how we move and, in general, how we live our lives.
Admitting our own part in illness is the first step toward adopting a healthy lifestyle, one that is grounded in eating whole foods, drinking vitality-enhancing beverages, exercising regularly, and refraining from bad habits such as smoking, overworking, not getting enough sleep.
Working through this program requires a commitment to a healthy way of living. That can be done by owning up to how we have taken care of ourselves in the past and resolving to take better care now and in the future.
What follows is a practical way to augment the healing process begun by the oncologist and other specialists. Their job is to eradicate cancer cells using highly toxic chemicals. The job of the cancer patient and the caregiver is to pick up the process where that leaves off, using sensible eating plans, supplements, natural herbal powders, juices, and teas combined with detoxifications and exercise—all designed to build up the immune system, help lessen the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy, keep the cancer patient healthy and more energetic during treatment, and speed up the healing process.
My guide throughout is to work hand-in-hand with nature and with the body's own healing powers. This program is for anyone who has been diagnosed as having cancer, regardless of gender, type of cancer, or the stage of the disease.
As I have said before, anyone wanting to embark on this parallel journey of natural healing will need to check with the oncologist who prescribed chemotherapy. You may want to ask how much nutritional training the oncologist in charge of your healing has had. Knowing that can help you understand where the doctor's recommendations about diet and supplementation originate.
This is not only the usual disclaimer made in all matters pertaining to health and healing, it is also a caution for the cancer patient to be aware that certain foods or vitamins, minerals, or other supplements may counteract the effectiveness of the medical treatment. These cases are rare, but they can happen. Please practice due diligence and go the extra step to ensure that this program for healing is entirely successful.
PART TWO
The 5-Step Chemotherapy Diet Program
We must turn to nature itself, to the observations of the body in health and in disease to learn the truth.
Hippocrates
The Chemotherapy Diet
Here is a quick summary of the 5-step program I developed for cancer patients and their caregivers. I will go through each step and say why it is important. Then, the rest of this section will be devoted to the actual nuts-and-bolts of the diet—what to do, how to do it, when, and why.
Step 1: Change your thinking and develop an attitude focused on healing
Step 2: Detoxify to promote healing from the inside out
Step 3: Eat the best foods to create a healing chemistry in your body
Step 4: Supplement your diet correctly to support the healing momentum
Step 5: Exercise and rest to speed the healing process.
Let me explain that I am laying these steps out this way, each building on the one before it, as a way of fully engaging in the process of staying healthy during chemotherapy. Reading through these steps, you may be tempted to go directly to the list of foods to enjoy or avoid and begin there, skipping the detox step. Or you may want to start by taking supplements, leaving behind the all-important dietary guidelines. But if you look closely at each step, you will see that there is logic to the progression. If the program is followed as it is set out, you should have excellent results—staying healthy during treatment and beyond.
Step 1: Change Your Thinking and Develop an Attitude Focused on Healing
Healing is a matter
of time, but it is
sometimes also a
matter of opportunity.
Hippocrates
This step comes first, because an attitude that focuses on vibrant well-being creates the mental and emotional framework for the entire healing process. Expecting a successful outcome of the chemotherapy experience, and what you are adding to it with this program, will help to bring about that result.
It goes without saying that the reverse is also true. Cancer patients who begin a healing journey weighted down with fear, anxiety, self-pity, and an expectation of failure will find the road to wellness rocky, slippery, and barely navigable. Focus on failure, in other words, and you are bound to fail; focus on success, and you must surely succeed.
A re-identification is required here from cancer “victim” to cancer “victor”—and the body from diseased organism to healing machine.
Welcome to a new way of thinking about your relationship to cancer and chemotherapy! Whereas before you may have been dwelling on the “why me, why now?” part of being a cancer patient, the time has come to get positive and begin to develop an attitude focused on healing—your healing.
This really is the first step on the path of healing, no matter how you look at it. Diet, supplements, exercise—anything else you do for yourself to stay healthy during chemo—will be tougher and seem more scattered without this positive framework for the healing process.
I strongly urge you to engage these practices at the outset of the program, and to keep them going throughout. If you don't feel up to handling all of the suggestions below, try at least some of them. Tremendous benefits can be derived from “getting your head on straight” about who you are (not a victim, but a person on a healing journey) and where you are (exactly in the right place) in the process of getting and staying well.
Use Daily Affirmations
Affirmations are highly effective ways to turn around your thinking, and from there to turn around behavior. They have been used for centuries in one way or another to support goals and aspirations.
Affirmations are statements that you make to yourself, about yourself. You say them aloud and keep printed copies of them around (on your computer monitor, for instance) where you can see them and repeat them often during the day.
It's best to come up with an affirmation or two that you adopt as your own. Avoid using negative words, such as “no” or “not”—it is better to say “I am healthy” than to say “I