CANCER - THE BIGGEST BOOGEYMAN OF THEM ALL

In the Spring of 1980, I graduated high school as excited as any 18 year old could be to head off to college in the Fall.  I was scheduled to move into a Freshman dorm in late August.  In July, I discovered I was pregnant.  I was no longer in a relationship with the baby's father, although he has been a wonderful father to our daughter, Bonni, and a good friend to me all these years.   Needless to say, I was not allowed to move into the dorm and had to cancel my classes.  I did make it to OSU.  I just started later than planned.  My gorgeous and amazing daughter has been an incredible gift in my life and is the one with me in the picture of the 5K I ran last month.  I don't regret having that baby for one second.  But let me tell you, being completely single and pregnant at 18 is no picnic.  Believe it or not, I was not "that" kind of girl but the stigma was certainly there.
Of course, none of the boys I hung around with were comfortable hanging around with me as they didn't want people to think it was their kid.  There were two exceptions to that, John and Don.  This post is about Don.  Don was 21 and a student of my mother's.  He was Mexican-American and very good-looking.  We were only friends but he was always there for me.  He didn't care if people thought it was his baby.  When people assumed that he just went along with it and winked at me.  Don had not had an easy life.  He had been on his own, quite literally, since he was 12.  He was really smart in the important ways but wasn't really "educated."  He had gone to job corps to learn a trade and was an ideal student there.  He made sure not to cause any trouble if he could help it because he was so appreciative of the chance he had to make his life better.  He graduated job corps the same Spring that I graduated high school.  He spent weekends and holidays at our house because he didn't have any family and Mom had become a mentor to him.  He was like a brother to me.
We lived in Guthrie at this time and in the Summer, Don got a job in Oklahoma City.  He stayed with us until he got his job and an apartment.  He found a roommate to share expenses and was so proud that he had pulled himself up out of homelessness and was now earning a good living.   I missed him so much that Fall but he would come for weekends and since I was babysitting a lot during that time, he would just hang out and help me babysit. He was fantastic with kids.  I knew he would be a really wonderful "Uncle Don" to my baby and a wonderful father someday.
But none of that was meant to be.
My baby was due on my 19th birthday, Feb 11, 1981.  She didn't come.  Don was planning to spend Valentine's Day with me and be at the hospital with me when she was born but on the 13th, late in the evening, he went to the Emergency Room with severe abdominal pain.  The doctors initially thought pancreatitis.  As it turned out, Don had cancer in his liver.  He was admitted to the hospital on Valentine's Day and I went into labor that day a few hours later.  We didn't know his diagnosis at that point.  I gave birth to my beautiful baby girl on February 15 and on the 16th I expected to go home.  But they had me stay an extra day.  My mom worked at this hospital and my doctor was my best friend, Patti's, dad.  They had chosen to keep me an extra day pending Don's test results so they could tell me he had liver cancer before I was sent home.  They were that worried about my reaction.
I went home with my baby, Bonni, on the 17th and was chomping at the bit to get to the hospital in the City to see Don.  I had a birthday gift for him and he was dying to see the baby.  We had talked on the phone several times and I could tell his spirits were low and I knew Bonni would cheer him right up.  Did I mention that Valentine's Day was Don's birthday?  He was 22.
When I finally got the okay from the doctors to visit him, it had only been a couple of weeks since I had seen him and yet he didn't even look like the same person.  His abdomen was distended and the rest of him looked skeletal.  They had already started him on chemotherapy and he was so sick he could barely sit up.  When he held the baby, his face lit up and all I could think was that this was death saying farewell to life.  I wasn't wrong.
People who know me often wonder why someone as pragmatic as I am absolutely hates Friday the 13th.  I stay home with my family on any Friday the 13th if AT ALL possible.  February 13, 1981 when Don was admitted to the hospital was a Friday.  And on Friday, March 13, they told us (we were put down as his next of kin, much to the fury of him mother who had arrived from Mexico) that the cancer had metastacized throughout his entire body and he was beyond their help.  They sent him home with us to die.  Don died in April.
This was the first time I had ever seen cancer up close and personal.  It happened during an already emotional time for me and left a deep, enduring scar.  I become terrified of cancer.  I lived in mortal fear of cancer touching the lives of my family again and viewed it as my ultimate worst nightmare.  When I was diagnosed with Pagets disease less than 2 years ago, the doctor was concerned about the possibility of cancer and it sent me into an absolute tailspin.  I always knew that if I ever got any kind of cancer that I would want them to treat it VERY aggressively to the bitter end.
My how time changes things.  Over the past year of learning and changing my life, my diet, my health, my outlook, I have read more research, watched more documentaries, read more books concerning cancer than I ever would have thought possible.  I always avoided anything that mentioned cancer.  Some weird fear that if I thought about it, I would be inviting it in somehow.  Nobody ever said phobias were rational.  But I started hearing stories here and there about cancer being halted or healed with the diet I had chosen.  (Actually, it chose me but that is another story.)  So I gave in to my curiosity and watched "The Gerson Miracle."  I was flabbergasted.  Then I watched, "Crazy, Sexy Cancer."  I looked around and started seeing story after story of cancer healed.  Doctors saying, chemotherapy or die.  But they refused chemotherapy and lived!
This week, thanks to referrals from the good people on my favorite facebook group, Let Food Be Thy Medicine, I watched two more amazing documentaries, "Eating" and "Healing Cancer from the Inside Out."  The second one, my 18 year old watched with me growing more furious by the minute.  She is becoming a regular warrior for Whole-Food, Plant-Based nutrition which makes me a very proud mama.
I have spoken many times about all the benefits I've gained from my new lifestyle but one I haven't mentioned because I couldn't think how to make you understand what it means to me, is that I no longer fear cancer.  I could NEVER have said that a year ago.  I would have felt that it was an absolutely certain way to make sure that I was diagnosed with it very soon.  But it holds no terrors for me now.  Don's body was so eaten up with aggressive cancer cells by the time it was discovered that it is entirely likely that no protocol on the planet would have saved him.  But it sure would have been worth a try and I have NO doubt that it would have made his last weeks or months on this earth less horrific than the chemotherapy did.  But the things that I have learned about cancer from these films has removed that horrible, nagging fear that was always there in the back of my mind placing a shadow over every day of my life.
Just a few of the things that I learned from these films.
1.  Everyone has cancer cells in their body.  The question is why does it grow and become deadly in some people and not others.
2.  Animal protein is far and away cancer's favorite food, especially dairy.
3.  Deny the human body animal protein and cancer cells stop growing.  Yes.  It really is that simple.  Why hasn't the public been made aware of that fact with trumpets and whistles and dancing in the streets?  Politics and money baby.  Meat and dairy lobbies are HUGE in Washington, not to mention big pharma.  Do you think the big 3 want people to know that giving up meat and dairy and NOT taking poison from the multi-billion dollar cancer drug industry is the real answer?  Think that is "conspiracy theory?"  Would you like to buy some ocean front property in Oklahoma? Seriously, does anyone out there still doubt that the big money industries pull the strings in Washington?  Really?
4.  Chemotherapy is poison.  It is my personal belief that many of the people who supposedly die of cancer actually die with cancer but they die OF chemotherapy.
5.  There is a reason that clinics like The Gerson Institute are in Mexico or Europe.  In the good old U.S. of A, doctors will lose their license and go to jail if they even suggest there is an answer to cancer other than surgery or drug protocols.
6.  The AMA is just as much a criminal organization as the FDA.  When one of the ladies in Healing Cancer from the Inside Out said that her doctors informed her that if she refused chemotherapy, they would refuse her disability claim, I just about dropped the jug of juice I was making and I thought Harmoni (my 18 year old) was going to choke.  "You have stage 4 cancer and mere months to live but if you refuse chemopoisoning, we will deny your disability claim."  Yes.  That happened.

There is SO much more but you just really really really owe it to yourself and your family to at least watch these videos.  Be open-minded.  Don't allow the crap that has been fed to us by the FDA and marketing experts over decades to stop you from at least thinking about what they have to say.  Is it really scarier to think of giving up your barbecued ribs and milkshakes than it is to think of chemotherapy and radiation?
Cancer is a tricky thing.  There are many, many carcinogenic agents in the world we live in today so nobody can say for certain that they will never get cancer.  I'm not saying that I have suddenly become certain that I can never be diagnosed with cancer.  I did pretty much everything wrong for 50 years so a year on a new diet lifestyle is not insurance.  But I fully believe my risk factor goes down every day.   I know that I am creating an environment in my body that facilitates it's ability to defeat cancer cells as all our bodies are meant to do.  And I promise you, I will NEVER undergo chemotherapy.  If I ever did have to battle cancer I would do it on my own terms with my dignity and quality of life as intact as possible.  I'll take the Gerson protocol over chemo hands down. And the thought of the mere word cancer doesn't terrify me anymore now than the words car wreck.   Sure those things happen but I am doing everything in my power to avoid them.  I am giving my body the tools it needs to win that battle.

Plateaus, Set Points and Other Boogeymen

I have said many times that even if I never lost another pound, I would continue to eat a plant-based diet and drink green juice because it has given me back my health.  I would reassure others who hit weight plateaus for a week or two to just keep at it and the weight would start to go down again.  Our bodies sometimes need time to adjust to this new way of being and doing, especially if we have been very overweight for a very long time.  I had been from 280 to 340 for a couple of decades.  So mid-March when I hit a plateau, I had to put my money where my mouth is so to speak.  I hit a plateau.  I hit 265 and my body froze, looked at me in horror and said, "Are you kidding me?  We're melting like the wicked witch after she got watered down by Dorothy! This ain't right!!!  Do you WANT to disappear?  What if there's a famine?  This is dangerous!  You can't just go losing weight willy nilly I tell you!"  
It didn't help that I had several extra-curricular stress activities pop up during this same time frame.  If you don't know or understand what the stress hormone, Cortisol, can do to weight loss efforts, look up Dr. John Bergman on youtube.  He explains it better than anyone else I've seen.  
So for a couple of weeks, I was totally zen about this plateau.  Seriously.  I really didn't let it bother me because I understood what was happening.  I had hit a lower weight than I'd seen in at least 15 years.  When it had been a month, I started to get worried in that scared, secret, small place inside me that has always feared this new found health and energy will be ripped away.  Right at this same time I was getting super busy trying to pack and clean to move out of this house finally.  After several months of planning to move, we are finally actually moving.  We HAVE to be out of this house by the end of the month even if it means camping out at the lake until we can find something else.  Long story....  anyway, I was extremely busy and having to use every coping mechanism I had not to let the stress get to me.  We had a very, very hard winter financially along with some other life stressors so it was no surprise, really, that the weight loss stalled.  Knowing and understanding that and dealing with seeing that number stay the same every day are two different things.  Actually, it didn't stay exactly the same.  My weight, as with most people, can fluctuate 3-5 pounds in any given week which is the main reason I usually weigh daily. So I had hit that 265 for about 2 days when my weight started doing a gentle rollercoaster up and down and up and down from 266 to 269 for weeks.  So I put the scale away.  I didn't want worry over that number to pull my focus away from the main thing which is my health.  I just played Dory and kept on swimming... and eating my plants and making my juice.  As Spring came on strong, I did what I had always planned to do and shifted more to raw fruits and salads and less soups and starches. Not a big shift but just a bit more of this and a bit less of that.  It felt right.  I felt a boost in energy almost immediately.  
I was out of town for over a week and got home last Wednesday night.  Thursday morning I decided to pull out the scale and see where I was at and it said 266.  Okay.  Saturday morning, 264.  Hey!  Monday morning, today, 261!  Yeah!  Bye-bye plateau!  I learned from you.  I let you be and you let me be and now we must part ways.  See ya!
That plateau lasted nearly two months.  I learned that I really do have the power of my convictions within me to put my health first.  I really felt that my body would eventually begin to seek a healthier weight once again.  But I knew that if it didn't or if it took a year or two for that to happen, I would be okay in the meantime as long as I continued to flood my body with real nutrition.  I learned some valuable lessons about myself.  I have said many times that how I feel is far more important than how I look and I proved to myself that this was true.  I've said that I have learned to trust my body.  Now I've proven it.  I've also proved to myself that if the scale becomes a detriment, I can just put it away.  
I recently watched a video shared by my friend, Lori.  It was posted by a bariatric surgeon and explained how our bodies will establish "set points" at a very high weight.  He went into the anthropology of it all.  His point was to make us feel hopeless to lose the weight without surgery.  FALSE.  The problem is that most people hit those points where their body is trying to adjust to the changes you've made, the weight loss slows or stops so they tighten down on the calories even more.  They starve their cells which makes the body freak out even more.  "Starvation!  She's trying to kill us!"  If you hit your plateau - or your new "set point" - and you just keep FLOODING your body with amazing nutrition, your body WILL relax and realize that it is safe to allow more of that weight to go.  Truth.  Doctors selling hopelessness to line their pockets make me sick.  Right up until I drink my green juice or eat my bowl of fruit or salad.  THAT makes me very, very well:)
JUICE ON YA'LL.  WE GOT THIS!!

The Fox Guarding the Hen House?

Am I the only one who just feels like the world has really gone insane?  I mean, first off, we've already learned that medical schools do not teach nutrition.  Period.  They just don't.  Maybe 1 in 4 requires even 1 full credit class in nutritition.  We already know this and while this is disturbing, I really have no problem owning my own health and well-being.  Okay, I'll go to the doctor when I get exposed to a communicable disease that really responds well to antibiotics (those are a lot more few and far between than you think they are though... just saying.)  I'll go to the doctor if I break a bone.  When I'm deciding what foods are going to nourish me, I'll go elsewhere.  But it gets crazier.  For real.
I like my doctor.  She is pretty cool.  I'm not trying to bash doctors but people, what you need to remember is that your doctor is a regular human being just like you.  Their pants go on one leg at a time just like you.  They may or may not have spent a few more years in school than you but I question the true value of that even.  During those years they are under extreme stress, they are sleep-deprived, they are overwhelmed with more information than they could possibly realistically absorb in the short span of time they are there.  It is a miracle they learn and retain as much as they do.  Well, thank goodness for ongoing education, right?  All doctors go through regular courses of ongoing education to keep them on top of things.  I mean after all, how long of never using your high school trigonometry did it take before you forgot how to do trigonometry?  Use it or lose it....  So, it's great that they have ongoing education resources and opportunities.  Right?
Well... not-so-much.  It would be great if not for the fact that most of those classes are sponsored (paid for) and/or provided by pharmaceutical companies and food and drink manufacturers.  Pepsico, Merck, The Dairy Council....  Yup.  Your doctor probably took time from his or her busy schedule to attend a class taught by a doctor or scientist paid by Pepsico to explain why there is no problem with HFCS  (High fructose corn syrup.)  Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?  See when I was growing up we called that setting the fox to guard the hen house.  And in case you aren't sure... that's a bad thing.

There Are No Magic Bullets, But There Are Miracles

Every time I find myself describing my journey to someone new, I realize just how much I sound like an infomercial or like I'm just caught up in the pink fluffy honeymoon cloud of a "new diet" but I've never in my life stuck to a diet for this long much less been in the "honeymoon" phase of it for several months and going strong.  This has most definitely settled into lifestyle mode.  

 So that begs the question, how can a simple change of diet create the incredible changes I've experienced.  Well, lets look at a few things.  First, getting the disgusting mess the local grocer passes off as meat and animal products that I was eating - hormones, puss in the milk etc - out of my body.  Just removing those has to help. If I had changed to homegrown, grass fed, lean cuts and healthy prep and still ate the meat, I would be better off but still not as good as just getting the animal protein out of my diet. (If you aren't following me here, read the China Study and/or watch Forks Over Knives.)  I'm 90% animal protein free.  I still eat a serving of fish 2 or 3 times a month, have a bit of organic chicken or turkey in the crockpot soup once or twice a month and I have an organic, cage-free, hormone free, preferably locally grown boiled egg a couple times a week.  I don't know if I will eventually eliminate those or not.  Even the China Study noted that the cancer growth and other bad effects weren't triggered with a low intake of animal protein.  So I'm good with this for now.  

 Next, let's note that my diet went from very near zero fresh fruit and veggies to a good 75% freggies.  That alone had to be a huge shock (of the good variety) to my system.  At this point, every system and cell in my body has to be singing for joy.  It's like, "Halleleujah! She's finally giving us something to work with!"  
Now let's add the fact that I juice and blend a lot of freggies and add really nutrient dense, natural additives like ground flax etc.  Now you are taking the great nutrients that your average healthy eater would consume in a day and putting all those nutrients into one serving.  You are literally just FLOODING your system with nutrients it's been deprived of for decades.  

 Our bodies are amazing self-healing machines but we take a machine that has the ability to repair itself and even regenerate on its own but we deny it the building blocks it require to do that.  And then we wonder why we fall apart.  So what do we do?  Instead of handing it those high-quality, sound and solid building blocks that God gave us in abundance, we give it man made imitations made of cardboard and chemicals.  And then we wonder why we fall apart!

 One last thing to consider that really just makes our body sing is that even when I was eating a salad or drinking juice before, it was made and packaged and stored and shipped and stored again before I ate it.  If I had ever gotten ground flax in something, it had probably lost most of it's nutritional value before it got to me.  Now, I grind my flax seeds, throw that into the soup or smoothie and consume it.  No nutrional loss there.  Again, tons more nutrients hitting my body than it is used to.  And next year is really going to take it up a notch as I will be able to just go to my own garden and pick the veggies as fresh as fresh gets:)

 So if I sound like a crazy infomercial sometimes; if it sounds crazy to say that I went from depressed, barely able to walk across a room, in constant pain and a mental fog every day of my life and then literally became pain free, regained my energy, improved health conditions dramatically, started losing weight at a steady pace and regained a much higher degree of mental clarity all within days of starting a juice fast and now I'm still feeling fantastic just as much after 4 months of a clean, plant-based diet, you can understand that I'm not promoting the latest fad or a magic bullet or even a "diet."  I'm just saying to eat the way God meant you to.  Eat the abundance of things he gave us to thrive on.  If that includes meat for you then at least make that a smaller ratio of your calories and make it fresh, untainted by a disgusting industry and prepare it in a healthy way.  
 It's not a miracle... and yet it is the biggest miracle of all.  How miraculous that those plants include all those crazy nutrients that really can heal, regrow, vitalize and maximize the potential of every cell in your body.  The things your doctor throws his hands in the air over and just writes another script for?  Your creator gave you the cure.  When the few doctors who have actually studied the topic of healing through nutrition say, "Sure, a plant based diet would help my patients but they won't follow it so I just give them a pill instead."  You can shout, "I'll do it!  I'll heal myself with nutrition!"  Maybe more doctors will seek out that information and share it with their other patients if they have patients coming in with dramatic improvements and telling them, "I don't need those pills, doc.  I stopped taking those months ago."  I am praying that by the time my grandkids are grown, they will defy all those predictions about the newest generation of children dying younger than their parents did. 

Dear Doctor, Why?

I have spoken many times about all the medical issues I faced before starting my journey to self-healing and weight loss.  It was pretty grim.  Over the last few decades, I (and my insurance companies) have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make my life bearable.  In all those years, I found pretty much zero help or relief.  I just got progressively worse and worse.  The answer to many if not all the problems I was having was as simple as changing my grocery list.  Yes, I spend a little more on groceries now but, recall that "hundreds of thousands" I mentioned?  Not hyperbole folks. So there's expensive and then there's expeeensive.  And there is more than one sort of "cost."  Basically, what's it worth to you?  Expensive is a relative term  A $50k house is a bargain basement find!  But a $50k car is expensive!  What's the value of the thing is a a better question that what is the cost.  So to me, my new diet is not expensive.  For it's value, it is quite cheap.  How much do you spend on perscriptions?  What if your food was your food and your medicine?

First off, I find it laughable when people say to me that they can't afford all this "expensive" produce but it is actually a serious issue for many so let's talk about that for a moment.  I understand tight budgets.  No really, I do.  We have been on the nothing-but-ramen-noodles-all-week diet more than a few times.  I know from broke.  But most of the time in recent months, before becoming whole foods/plant based and juicing (WFPB from now on) we spent around $125-175 per month on food for the family.  We also ate out at least once, often two or three times every week.  It was our payday ritual.   We usually got pizza or Sonic or Arby's or Taco Bell.  Taco Bell and Little Caesars are cheap for those weeks we had a more limited food budget.  But that was an additional $15 to $60 per week or more.  And then let's add up all the stops at Quick Trip for soda and a "snack."  Am I the only one who would routinely spend $5 on #%$!* every time I filled up the gas tank of my car?  I think not.  So I was spending $150-200 per week on crap that was killing me.  Literally.  Literally crap and literally killing me.  Not to mention the money I was spending on medications I no longer need. Nowadays, I routinely spend $180 a week on food.  I haven't spent a solitary dime on fast food, packaged junk or convenience store snacks in 4 months.  Yup, that WFPB diet is just too expensive.  Still think it is too expensive?  Check out Ellen Jaffe Jones.  You can find her on facebook and youtube.  I am not sure if her website is working but she also wrote a book called Vegan on $4 a day.  And then there is this blog: http://homelessformyhealth.blogspot.com/.   Go read it.  Seriously.  AFTER reading that blog, you come tell me that a healthy diet is too expensive.

Now, on to the things that are really on my mind today.  A couple of things I have been hearing lately really have me pissed.   Both have to do with doctors.  First off, why the holy heck in all the years I've been to doctor after doctor, spent many weeks in hospitals and had dozens of very expensive tests done and been lectured about my weight continuously, has no doctor ever, once suggested that I had a leaky gut or gluten intolerance.  Never once has any of them suggested I try eliminating sugar or dairy.  Not ONE medical professional has ever suggested that people who eat primarily a plant based diet have little to no heart disease, cancer or diabetes.  You know why?  Because they know squat about nutrition.  Seriously.  They can't tell you what they don't know.  There is, of course,  the problem of  the bought and paid for research they are being fed by USDA, FDA and Big Pharma plus there is the absolute absence of any real education.  In medical school, our future physicians get a few hours of training in nutrition.  Hours.  NOT class hours or credit hours.  As in your history class counts as 4 credit hours.  No.  A few actual clock hours of their entire education.  Don't believe me? Check this out:

The approximate time devoted to nutrition science over the first two years of my medical education is a measly 6 hours....  James Haddad  [http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/12/nutrition-taught-medical-school.html]  After the first two years they are in actual medical settings as interns and residents.  With live patients.

Your doctor was not taught nutrition unless he went out on his own time and dollar and researched it himself.  Since doctors in training have all that.. ya know... spare time.  And since becoming a doctor, he is consistently fed the SAD conventional wisdom that is killing us all by degrees.  So when people ask me if my doctor is on board with me going WFPB and all the juicing, my response is, "I don't give a rat's tail."  My nutrition is up to me.  

The other thing that set me off was several instances of hearing that what few doctors actually got the memo that WFPB diets can prevent a host of diseases dropped the ball anyway.  Mostly.  There are those few voices in the wilderness but your average physician in your average town or city?  Well, the prevailing attitude seems to be that they don't bother recommending any radical change in diet because patients will likely find it too challenging and won't follow through.  Changing your way of eating is too hard.  Why bother when weight loss surgery is so much easier.  And heck, many insurance plans are starting to cover it now too!  Bonus!  (In case you missed it, insert heavy sarcasm there.)  So if even one doctor over the years looked at me and thought, "Damn woman!  All you need to do is make salad the main dish!  Throw out the cheese and the bread and eat some veggie stew instead."  he or she then decided that I couldn't possibly have the physical or mental fortitude to deal with such advice so they just scheduled the next MRI or bone scan, filled out another perscription and sent me home.  We are being treated like idiots and fools by the people we trust with our lives.  Weak idiots and fools.  Sure lots of people say, "Oh I couldn't do that!"  But the problem is that they don't really believe in it.  If our doctors were educated enough and committed enough to our health to really teach it to their patients, a LOT of them would say, "It will actually give me my health and energy back?! I can do that!"  Some wouldn't.  So for them, doctor, go ahead and schedule that next scan and write that next prescription.  Do what you can to prepare them for the fact that their lives will be shorter and more painful and miserable.  But at least learn what you need to know to give as many of us as possible a shot at real health.  I know the first rule is supposed to be "do no harm" but shouldn't that be closely followed by "do as much good as you possibly can?"