My quest for better health began on January 6, 2020, when I received the news no one ever wants to hear: You have cancer. A flood of emotions overwhelmed me as the doctor began to explain the diagnosis. It was triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), and the prognosis was not good. At the time, I didn’t know there were different kinds of breast cancer, but I would soon learn that the type I had was the most aggressive variety with the highest recurrence rate. To this day, I have a hard time typing those words. As a wife and mother of three adult children, I still have weddings to witness, future grandchildren to cuddle and a bucket list of travels to experience with the love of my life. So the battle begins!
The next few weeks was a whirlwind of doctors’ appointments as we pursued a second opinion, met with the team of physicians charged with my care, researched treatment options and consulted with plastic surgeons to consider reconstructive surgery. There was so much information to absorb and so many critical decisions to make. As a journalist and former homeschool mom, I did a deep dive for information, reading everything I could get my eyes on. I needed to understand what I was up against and how to tackle it. After evaluating the pros and cons of the various options and since my tumor was relatively small at 1.3 cm, I opted to have a lumpectomy followed by chemotherapy and radiation. Not all forms of breast cancer require chemotherapy, but since TNBC does not respond to other forms of treatment, chemotherapy is the standard of care.
I couldn’t get this tumor out of me fast enough and pushed to schedule the procedure as soon as possible before the cancer could spread. For all of this, we needed prayer! Pushing out of my comfort zone, I posted the news on Facebook, requesting prayer for the surgery and that the cancer would not have spread to my lymph nodes. Gratefully that prayer was answered, and it also ushered in support from unexpected places. The friend-of-a-friend who texted me weekly while I was undergoing chemo infusions, the old friend who called out of the blue, offering to sit with me at the cancer center (even though COVID made that impossible) and the business acquaintance who shared her own experience, including links to resources I had not yet encountered from an integrative oncologist, promoting complementary therapies along with conventional medicine.
I began to realize, there are a lot of things I can do to reduce my risk of recurrence that are scientifically based. For example, according to Dr. Lisa Schwartz, integrative oncologist, intermittent fasting 13 hours a day can reduce your risk of recurrence by 35 percent and getting enough exercise can reduce your risks by 50 percent. While she also recommends a Mediterranean diet of whole foods, I began to encounter more and more information on the benefits of a Whole Food Plant Based Diet for optimal health and longevity.
I encountered the work of Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a physician and best-selling author who created what he calls the Nutritarian diet, as explained in his books Eat to Live and Super Immunity. Dr. Fuhrman developed the nutritarian equation H=N/C, which identifies the health of a food as equal to the nutrients it delivers per calorie. He also coined the acronym G-BOMBS, which stands for Greens, Beans, Onions, Mushrooms, Berries and Seeds to identify the anti-cancer foods that should be in your diet daily.
As I dug deeper into plant-based eating, I began to follow the work of Dr. Michael Greger at NutritionFacts.org, who shares the latest in peer-reviewed nutrition research delivered in easy-to-understand videos, blog posts and podcasts. I ordered his book, The How Not to Die Cookbook, and started experimenting with healthy plant-based recipes. I also downloaded his free app for the Daily Dozen checklist of all the things he tries to fit into his daily routine for optimal health.
Several documentaries opened my eyes even more. The first documentary I watched was Forks Over Knives. One of the most watched documentaries of all time, “Forks Over Knives examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the chronic diseases that afflict us can be controlled or even reversed by rejecting animal-based and processed foods. The major storyline traces the personal journeys of Dr. T. Colin Campbell, a nutritional biochemist from Cornell University, and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, a former top surgeon at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic.”
I wanted to learn more, so I was drawn to The Gamer Changers. “Presented by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic and Chris Paul, The Game Changers is a revolutionary new film about meat, protein and strength.” It helped me understand that if elite athletes can get enough protein on a plant-based diet, then I could too. I just needed to learn how.
Then I discovered What The Health, a documentary that brings attention to the conflicts of interest that exist between the medical establishment, pharmaceutical industry and the media that tends to keep most people in the dark about how the standard American diet is making us sick.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
While the famous Greek physician Hippocrates is often quoted as saying, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” nutrition is surprisingly not emphasized in medical schools. Although, I’ve read of a few cases recently where that is beginning to change.
After I shared my breast cancer diagnosis online, one more unexpected source of support came from an old homeschool friend who shared her own struggle with stage III lung cancer. After being told that her tumors were inoperable and chemotherapy would be ineffective, she turned to The Gerson Therapy. In the 1920s, Dr. Max Gerson’s research led him to the simple conclusion that cancer and most chronic diseases take hold in your body because of a compromised immune system that is damaged by nutritional deficiency and toxicity. The Gerson Method “floods the body with critical vitamins, minerals, nutrients and enzymes contained in fresh organic fruits and vegetables and flushes toxins from the liver.” It was the testimony of my friend that really caught my attention, however. After only nine months on Gerson’s strict juicing regimen, she had lowered her cancer markers and shrunk the tumors in her lungs significantly.
Cancer survivor Chris Wark, author of Chris Beat Cancer, is another strong advocate for healing cancer holistically. “Diagnosed with stage IIIc colon cancer in 2003, after surgery Chris opted-out of chemo and used nutrition and natural therapies to heal.” Today he is cancer free and offers a coaching program to help others heal. While some find his rejection of traditional medical standards of care to be controversial, he still shares many educational resources on his blog that I have found to be helpful to rebuild a strong immune system and avoid recurrence. He also emphasizes the importance of exercise, stress reduction and the removal of toxins in your environment.
All of the factors mentioned above have influenced my journey and sparked a passion to uncover more healthy discoveries. There is so much to learn and apply that it sometimes seems overwhelming, but I try to remember that the path to better health begins with the first step. I don’t always make the healthiest choices, but I’m taking better care of my body now than I did before my unwelcome diagnosis. As I share the things I’ve learned, I hope it also inspires you to better health.
