surviving-disease

Using nutrition to survive disease

Category: Cancer

Surviving Cancer

Cancer

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Part 2 – Weight loss, Exercise and Intermittent Fasting

In the last blog, I talked about fighting disease using diet and weight loss. In particular, I talked about fighting cancer. That was only two of the pieces to fighting cancer. It is also important to include exercise (especially when using a Keto diet as an adjunct for cancer treatment or weight loss) and intermittent fasting.  Exercise is linked to the immune system. Recent research suggests that cytotoxic T cells (white blood cells that specialize in killing cancer cells) are activated with exercise and improve their ability to attack cancer cells. Regular exercise has an important role in almost every disease.   In the Keto diet, it is really important to avoid saturated fats as much as possible and include things like fatty fish, olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oils. Lean proteins such as chicken and some cuts of pork are great choices. To offset the “bad cholesterol”, as when...

Cancer

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Surviving Disease – One Cancer Diet Option Along With Weight Loss

According to the CDC, just by being overweight or obese, you are at risk for 13 types of cancers which make up about 40% (684,000 people) of all cancers diagnosed in the US each year.  Being overweight or having obesity doesn’t mean that someone will definitely get cancer. But it does mean that they are more likely to get cancer than if they kept a healthy weight. In health care, we use a tool called the BMI (Body Mass Index) calculated by height and weight to determine if you are overweight (BMI of 25 to 29.9) or obese (BMI of > 30).  Being overweight and obese causes changes in the body including long-lasting inflammation, much higher than normal levels of insulin, insulin-like growth factor, insulin resistance and sex hormones. These changes may lead to cancer. The longer you are overweight and the more overweight you are, both increase your risk....

Cancer

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Surviving Cancer Part 2 – Cancer cells versus normal cells 

I promised that I would come back to tell you what I learned about cancer. Please remember to always work with your primary physician or specialist before doing anything independently.   Here we go! This is such a very technical area of cytology (how cells work). I will do my best to make it as simple as possible so that everyone will understand. I have to say that this is my most challenging post so far to explain. I want people to understand, at a very basic level, what is going on with cancerous cells.   To help you improve your understanding of a normal cell versus a cancer cell, I want to talk about how the body makes energy on a cellular level (both healthy and unhealthy cells) and where it gets its energy. There are many different types of cells in the body and different types of cancer, some are...

Cancer

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Surviving Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer

One of the worst days of my life was receiving a call from the ER physician telling me that my youngest sister has metastatic lung cancer. She went to the ER after she had developed a severe cough that would not resolve and had been recently diagnosed with Covid-19. The ER doctor had been worried about a possible blood clot in her lungs as her lab showed elevated D-dimer which is a blood test that detects a protein your body makes to break down blood clots. Her number was extremely high.  He mentioned seeing something concerning in her abdomen; however, due to the CT being done primarily for the lungs they could not exactly tell what it was but advised getting an abdominal CT as soon as possible.  Now the scrambling began. Her primary care doctor had left the practice, so she did not have anyone immediately available to order...