Body

Body & Emotions

The story of my relationship with food, health, fitness and my body is probably very similar to many other people's stories and experiences. Although I have been obese for most of my adult life, I had been very active and fit until my late 30's. I biked, swam, hiked, skated, and went many years at different junctures commuting by bicycle instead of using a car. Raised on a Mediterranean diet, I only converted to the Standard American Diet (SAD) in 2003 when I moved in with someone who ate that way. Until then I rarely ate processed food or in restaurants. 
I have no idea if the things I am doing will have any effect on the cancer itself. I do know that I have trying for years to find a way to live the life I know is best for me. Now I am, and the things I'm writing about here have been so helpful. If I had accessed these ideas and resources years ago I might have still drawn the cancer card, but I would not have spent over a decade feeling so defeated and bad about myself. I might have spent that time as I do now, grateful and satisfied because the one thing I couldn't seem to master is finally on the mend. 
If you have this same feeling of frustration and thinking that you know what you SHOULD be doing but just can't seem to execute, maybe you'll realize, like I have, that that idea itself is the problem. You are not failing or lazy or undisciplined. You are perfectly fine exactly as you are. Health promoting behavior is not an act of will. Your body is your only permanent home and it has memories inside it of every version of yourself you've ever been. All those former selves need your attention and respect. After all, they got you this far. 
And your loyal, devoted, hard-working body deserves some credit too. It's been trying to do your brain's bidding your whole life! No matter how cruel or demanding your brain has been, no matter how it's deprived your body, ordered it, commanded it, and berated it, your ever-loyal and trusty body has tried, and tried and tried to meet every demand, no matter how hard, exhausting or painful. So as you read about the things I've been fortunate enough to find, I hope you'll find a self-compassion similar to what I'm learning. 

Whole-Foods Plant Based Diet

vegetables at a farmers market Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash

plant diet.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

One of the first things I discovered in my research

as soon as I was diagnosed is that

there are many, many people who, in addition

to whatever allopathic medicine

they're taking from their standard Western doctors,

are actually employing a lot of other strategies

to work with cancer.

And one of those strategies, kind of a main

trunk of those strategies among many,

many people who tackle cancer

or other metabolic diseases has

been a Whole Foods plant based diet.

And I have found that that particular step

has made a huge difference for me and my sense

of well-being and

my ability to get to a

start approaching a more normal body weight,

regain some sense of health and wellness.

And go through the treatments initially

that I was taking early on without

as much as.

Fear about what those treatments would do

to my body long term.

I'll be talking more about this in the

seminar webinar that I'm going to be giving next week.

But to put it very simply, there's

a mountain.

Absolute mountain of evidence

that human beings eating Whole Foods

plant based diet can

avoid almost all of the metabolic

disorders that are plaguing modern life.

Heart, heart disease, diabetes,

arthritis, lupus,

asthma, anxiety,

even mental health problems.

Autistic people also are

benefiting from this.

It turns out that a nutrient dense diet,

which can only come from being focused

mainly on fruits and vegetables and whole grains

and nuts and seeds, that that kind

of diet that takes away meat,

eggs and dairy and

processed food is really, really

powerful in restoring health

and allowing people to live to a healthy,

healthy old age, to live in to old age with health and vigor.

And I have

embraced this fully and completely,

and I will be talking more about it.

It sounds like a difficult thing to do when

you first look at it.

And perhaps if I did not have

a condition that required me to

address an illness, then I might

have been less motivated

to investigate this because I certainly certainly

wasn't a new idea.

But I don't think it requires

having the gun to your head of heart disease or diabetes

or cancer to be able to embrace this way of life.

Because once I started doing it,

I found out it's much easier and

I know a lot more fun and a lot

more satisfying than any

other way that I've eaten in the past.

So if you're not sick or

if you've just started to have the markers

of becoming sick.

This way of eating can really

do a 180 and turn you back around.

And I'll be talking more about that in the webinar.

But Whole Foods plant based diet

means not eating processed

food, not eating things that never go bad

or can't rot or can live in your cupboards

for months and months and months and still be edible.

Not eating white processed

things like white, processed flowers, white, processed

sugars, any food that's

more chemicals and more stripped down to its chemicals

basis, then kind of how it would naturally

arrive to you from nature is not what you want to be doing.

And there is an astounding

variety of fruits and vegetables.

And the great thing is that this diet as a lot

of carbs in it, a lot of starches.

And those of you who have been following the news

in the media about low carb diets and keto diets.

The evidence is not on the side

of those diets.

And in particular, Whole Foods plant

based diets are actually very pro-environmental.

So if you have any interest in the pollution

that's been destroying our environment

and causing these extreme weather conditions

and other situations that are getting more and

more dire by the decade,

the animal manufacturing

industry for animal food,

for food animals as food

is not only responsible for more

pollution on the planet than

any or all of the transportation

pollution put together.

So animal production creates more pollution

and CO2 emissions than all of the transportation

industries put together.

But it also

is responsible for a tremendous dive

in the human health population.

We are having skyrocketing

diabetes and heart disease and cancer

all over the world that has this

processed diet that's filled with meat and dairy

and cheese and excess of those things.

And the Whole Foods plant based diet

is a way to redress the health

concerns and take away

a lot of the environmental

damage that's being done by these industries

and restore your ability

to manage and influence

and treat your body.Back to you.

Give you that control back.

So I cannot recommend this

way of eating enough.

And the people who have been

promoting the Kito diet, most

of the research in that area

is funded by the meat industry, dairy

industry, the egg industry.

So it's quite suspect, whereas the research

that demonstrates the benefits of plant based diet

is either largely publicly funded

or funded by charitable organizations or individuals.

And so there's not quite that same axe to grind.

I'll be listing a lot of different resources in the note

here on the page that you can look at.

But overall, if you were to

embrace a 30 day challenge of doing

a Whole Foods plant based diet,

you would find an immediate result in your

cholesterol and your blood sugar

and all those kinds of things.

Now, in addition to Whole Foods plant based,

I also eat absolutely no sugar of any kind.

And that's specific to cancer,

because cancer does thrive

in a diet that's enhanced with sugars.

And so the only sugar that I

consume is whatever comes in the fruit.

I eat.

And for now, that has been mostly tart fruit.

I don't seek out very sweet fruit at all.

And so that has been my strategy.

And I'll be discussing that again in the webinar

and recording that webinar.

And then post that recording here as well.

But if you are interested, check out the links

below for what you

can go find out about it.

And also, I have listed the movies

on Netflix that you can watch that will

help you educate yourself about this way of eating.

Additionally, we are sitting here in

a time of great difficulty

because of the coded virus.

And you should be aware that almost all

of these flus, in fact, all not almost all, but

all of these pandemics.

From Merv's to TSAs

to the 1918

swine flu to all of these pandemics have all

been caused by

crowded conditions in animal production

facilities and the disease

that animals get when they're kept in inhumane and

crowded conditions being passed to the human

workers who process those animals for food.

So the animal food production

industry is also responsible for

all of these pandemics that

go around the globe and affect

us in particular like the one we're under now.

Lastly, there is no better diet

than a nutritionally dense diet to

boost your immune system to the max.

And cancer in particular is a disease

in which the immune system has been compromised.

I don't know if you realize this, but there are cancer cells

floating through our bodies all the time

and the immune system finds them and knocks

them out and kills them off.

And the reality is that once your

immune system becomes compromised for some length

of time, you will

likely wind up with some sort

of metabolic disorder, whether it's lupus

or rheumatoid arthritis or cancer

or one of these other things that doesn't have

the apparatus and say diabetes or heart disease.

And so these metabolic disorders definitely

compromise the immune system and a Whole Foods plant based diet.

It's fantastic.

And the only really natural in your in

your control, cheap, fast way.

That's not pill or chemical based.

Well, of course, chemical based, everything has chemicals, but

that's not a manufactured chemical based

to restore your immune system and keep

it strong and make it as robust

and healthy as possible.

And so that's the final reason why I

would recommend this diet to anyone.

There are a lot of concerns people have about protein,

but all plant foods have protein in them.

And if you're eating a diet comprised almost completely

from fruits and vegetables and grains and nuts and

seeds, then you will be getting plenty of protein.

There is no shortage of protein.

The last thing that you do want to do is take

a B12 supplement.

And what has happened in the last hundred years is

that with the advent of factory farming

and all the chemicals that we spray on our food

and all the things that we do to denude the soil

where we farm with these giant agricultural

companies, the B12 that used

to be in our food from the soil has

all been taken out of the soil or polluted

away or rent the way from runoff.

And so our food no longer has

dirt on it that we used to eat and get B12

and it no longer can take B12 from

the ground because we have so denuded

and impoverished the soil with factory

farming all over the world.

So B12 supplements now are necessary

and they're also necessary.

People who eat meat may not have

a deficit as as obvious

or may not may not have as little.

But even the animals that used to eat the grass

that had the B12 in it, even they do

not have the same amount of B12 that they used to.

So even people who do eat meat probably need

a B12 supplement.

So that's the human impact

on the soil has created a thing and B12

is created by micro bacteria

in the soil.

And we've been killing off those bacteria with

GMO is in

sprays and all kinds of things.

And so not only do we not get those

B-12 vitamins from the ground anymore,

but the animals that are eating the grass don't

either because they're not fed natural grass

from pastures.

And even if you eat pasture fed meat,

you're still there's still an impoverishment.

Still, the soil has all been so damaged

by our factory farming practices

that B12 no longer comes to us through our food.

So you need a supplement for that.

Most people need a supplement for vitamin

D because we simply are not spending enough

time outdoors without sunglasses and without sunblock.

In order for your body to make vitamin D.

You need direct exposure to U.V.

rays in the sunlight, on your skin

and through your eyes.

And we just don't do that anymore.

A lot of it scares about skin cancer.

A lot of it is just that we're becoming indoor cats.

And even when we go outside, we wear sunglasses and UVB protection.

And so we're not able to access

the apparatus in our bodies that make vitamin D as readily or soften.

So a vitamin D supplement is often necessary.

And this is, you know.

Generally true for people who eat meat as well.

It's not just vegetarians or vegan to have that limit.

Finally, the dangers of eating meat and

eggs and cheese

are unequivocal and difficult to

disprove.

Despite millions and millions and millions of dollars

being pumped into these research projects

to prove it by agricultural industry.

So if you think that the USDA is

protecting you or looking out for you, actually

if you look at the USDA website, you'll find that their goal

or their mission is to make sure

that agricultural businesses stay profitable.

That's their mission.

And so they are not a human

citizen protection agency.

They are there specifically to

make sure that agro business

stays profitable.

That's their mission.

And so they don't necessarily offer

you full access

to complete information.

And if you watch some of the movies that I'm going to add to the list

down below, you might get some insight into

why that would be or how that works.

So I hope this has been at least a little bit informative,

and I hope that I'll be able to

post the recording of my lecture next week here as well.Thank you.

Herbal & Nutritional Medicine

herbs with tea cup Photo by Lisa Hobbs on Unsplash

Roots of Wellness

In the movie "Heal" on Netflix I found a lot of ideas about curing disease. I had watched it long before I was diagnosed and went back to it. One thing that stuck out to me was that I would need to follow my own instincts. Everyone who had an astounding recovery from cancer had strong intuitions and they didn't just become passive patients. They took action, controlled what was theirs to control. 
I found an herbalist in Santa Cruz and met with him. I have never had a medical practitioner take more time to understand me personally, my health history. I work with Darren still and while, again, I don't know if this is going to help with cancer but it is helping with LIFE. I feel good. 

Emotional & Cognitive Regulation

abstract marbled painting green and purple colors Photo by Brandon Vázquez on Unsplash
Share by: