Before undertaking any of the suggestions I put forth in this book, a cancer patient and caregiver should check with the oncologist or other medical professional who is mainly responsible for treatment.
A Note about Our Website
All the information I assembled about staying healthy while undergoing chemotherapy could not fit in this book, so my team and I expanded the essential material you will find here into a website.
On the site you will see more recipes, charts that can be printed out for posting around the kitchen, sources for the highest quality supplements, educational articles, free downloads, and more.
The new field of staying healthy during cancer treatment is changing rapidly, with new research appearing virtually every day. I encourage you to visit our website frequently for up-to-the-minute information and inspiration.
PART ONE
Chemotherapy Is Only Part of the Healing Process
The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
Thomas A. Edison
Cancer and Chemo
In recent years, according to the American Cancer Society's Global Cancer Facts & Figures, over 12 million new cancer cases were diagnosed each year and 7.6 million cancer deaths—about 20,000 cancer deaths a day—occurred worldwide.
Around 150 people are diagnosed with cancer every hour in the United States. Over a year, that amounts to almost 1.6 million people in the United States alone.
One out of every four Americans is diagnosed with cancer each year. This year about 564,800 Americans are expected to die of cancer—more than 1,500 people a day, day after day, week after week.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease.
One of every four deaths in the United States is from cancer.
Cancer is expensive: the health care industry in the United States—which includes doctors, hospitals and clinics, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers of medical technology, insurance companies, and so on—comprises around 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or around $1.5 trillion in 2011.
Of the million and a half plus American people with cancer, the vast majority opts for treatment by conventional medicine...and at least 75% receives chemotherapy as part of the routine method for dealing with the disease.
Chemotherapy, either by itself or in conjunction with radiation and surgery, has become the standard treatment for most cancers in conventional medical practice.
We Can't Rely on Chemo Alone
Many cancer patients seem to have attached themselves to the idea that chemotherapy solves all the problems that cancer poses. They believe that between chemo and radiation treatments, everything that can be done to destroy the cancer and bring the patient back to good health is automatically being done.
Call it the antibiotic mind-set. When we take antibiotics, we assume that they are combating an infection in the body brought on by bacteria or fungi or parasites, and we don't need to do anything else to push the process of infection-fighting further. The antibiotics are taking care of everything.
Let me say immediately that chemotherapy is not the same as antibiotic or antibacterial therapy. The medications are quite different and so are the processes of how they work. But the mind-set of “let medicine do the work while I just sit back and wait” is the same with chemo as it is with antibiotics for many people.
Cancer patients who are not suffering from a cancer related to the digestive process—such as stomach, pancreatic or colon cancer—are usually allowed an “unrestricted diet” by their oncologists. For instance, my partner who was diagnosed with lymphoma needed to be hospitalized for his first round of chemotherapy because he had a history of hepatitis-B and his doctor did not want to risk a flare-up of that disease during the chemo treatments. Chemo would suppress the immune system, leaving the door open for other diseases to come out of hiding. So the first chemo cocktail was administered as a round-the-clock drip over five days.
All during that week in the hospital, since his diet was officially “unrestricted,” he was served the same kinds of food available to anyone eating in the cafeteria-style restaurant down the street. A typical dinner was Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, a salad with ranch dressing, bread roll and butter, a glass of milk, a cup of coffee, and for dessert, a generous slice of chocolate cake.
During the time that chemo was being administered—his entire stay in the hospital—he was not allowed supplements of any kind, because of the concern that vitamins, minerals, and amino acids might have interfered with the intended effects of chemotherapy, and in some cases might have actually caused dangerous chemical reactions in the body. This, in spite of the fact that most foods naturally contain vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
So my partner was left with chemo and an “unrestricted diet,” which is to say that there was precious little to rely on for healing beyond chemotherapy and a business-as-usual eating plan.
Once out of the hospital, he was put on a regular schedule of chemotherapy treatments every three weeks. His prescription was for five day-long treatments following the week-long drip in the hospital—making six rounds of chemo over eighteen weeks, a period of five months, six counting follow-up blood work and PET scans.
All during that critical half-year period, he was left in chemo treatment only with the usual unrestricted diet directive and the admonition to avoid all supplements on the chemo days. Nothing was said about adding or subtracting foods and beverages from his diet or engaging in some gentle exercise such as walking or yoga, or anything else beyond getting chemo and, as best he could, recovering from one round in time to take another round.
Left with this regimen for healing, which is no regimen at all, a cancer patient can look forward to weeks and months of feeling bad from the side effects of chemotherapy as the body processes and then finally eliminates the toxic chemicals along with the dead cancer cells. Meanwhile, the body is left in such a weakened state that the patient often becomes a professional sick person, open to all kinds of lesser diseases that a compromised immune system lets in.
Something is missing. There must be a way for a cancer patient to withstand the forceful work of chemo in the body and feel good at the same time. There must be a way to speed up the process of healing from cancer and enjoy high energy and a sense of well-being while the healing is taking its course.
There is a way, of course, and it is nature's way.
What Chemo Is Designed
