Blog / The China Study

this question wasn't directed to me personally but to a whole group of people. I did respond to it and wanted to post it here. I'm hoping it is helpful to the questioner and potentially to others as well... QUESTION: Anyone know of any good resources for supplements/herbal medicines/foods/anything else that can support you while you're taking chemo? My aunt has just been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the lymph nodes and starts chemo next week. ANSWER: Hi there, This is an interesting email for me to see personally and I'm going to speak candidly here from my experience and what I would do if I was in your aunt's shoes and then in your shoes. My journey to food, health etc began when I watched my mother have cancer, be on chemotherapy, radiation and not yet FDA approved drugs also while watching my neighbor and who I considered to be a "surrogate second dad" on the end stages of diabetes simultaneously. To answer your question below, I'd recommend herbs that support the liver first and foremost, however, being on chemotherapy is literally taking poison in one pill and then taking other drugs to make sure that vital organs don't shut down so that the poison can do its thing. So adding herbs to the mix will take a lot more care and planning so that they really support and don't complicate matters. Since this is in the lymph system, more care needs to be directed to draining/caring/supporting the immune system and the lymph. I'd actually recommend having her get a "scholarship" and going to Hippocrates in Florida for their healing program but if she doesn't want to, she can do many things to support and care for herself. I recently met a woman who refused chemotherapy - she's a fellow "jersey girl" who now lives in VT if your aunt wants to interview her. Her doctor gave her 3 months to live and told her to take chemotherapy. She refused. She did have surgery though and she supported herself with herbs and food and other modalities. She used things like essiac tea for the liver and still takes it and swears by it to this day. That was 15 years ago for her. I love her story. If your aunt wants, I can connect her to you. Her doctor who had threatened to refuse to be her doctor because she refused treatment then asked her to go "on the road" with him to universities to show how alternative treatments can be more than complimentary. I also am friends with a woman who, on her 2nd bout of breast cancer and while on radiation went on raw/living food. Her oncologist told her that fresh fruits and vegetables were bad for her while on radiation. She not only made it through 30+ days of radiation and still was able to function and work (and felt good which is something people say is not possible while on radiation - even her oncologist was floored), she has continued on over 6 years now in a healthy body. She says her body is alkaline now and no disease can enter because her inner environment is no longer conducive for disease to thrive. I can connect you to her as well. Her story is also amazing because she did the mainstream modalities along with her own and has succeeded (and then some!) She's in her 50s and has more energy than me! Other than that, I'd recommend greens superfoods for the supplement question - something like VitaMineral green or Pure Synergy (although Pure Synergy has potent herbs in it.) I'd recommend eating fermented miso and eating seaweeds to help pull the junk out of the body. I'd recommend green juices/smoothies to be on the top choices for food support and HEALTH. Not eating sugar, meat, dairy, stimulants or refined anything would be top on the list too. Meat/dairy acts as a fertilizer for disease, illness, obesity, heart disease, etc (please refer to "The China Study" for the longest, largest and only peer reviewed nutritional study out there.) Sugar and refined foods and processed foods also feed/fuel cancer cells (and other illnesses, too.) It's something like 1 TBSP sugar shuts down the immune system for 2 hours so if you ever want to know where your cold or flu came from, check your diet first... Cultured veggies are good but in a cancer environment, it's recommended to keep the cultured veggies simple (only fermented cabbage or only fermented radishes but not mixing them into a kim chee type thing.) Diet would have to change. People can say that that is too hard for them but for me, cutting me open or giving me pills with horrific side effects is too hard for me. My head/heart tells me I'll do a green juice fast first and feel uncomfortable in the short term because it is the least invasive thing that might/would produce long term benefit. It's also the cheapest medication/treatment/prevention, out there. A wise elderly woman recently stated at a showing we did of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead that she always thought organic food was too expensive until she went to the hospital and got a $10,000 bill - she said, "suddenly organic food seemed cheap to me!" It's all about choices and priorities and more choices. :-) If this were me, I'd do this first before invasive and potentially devastating "therapies" like chemotherapy. (I had always said that I would eat raw/living foods if I ever got cancer and wondered why I would wait until a major illness set in to begin. So I began my living foods journey 10 years ago... We all have cancer cells in us so why wait until we've fertilized and flourished them to then decide to change and have that change be that much harder? Saying this, though, whenever the change is made is ultimately the right time to make it.) All this being said, whatever you aunt chooses to do is *her* choice and the best thing for you and her family to do is to fully support her in whatever she chooses to do. Your loving email and concern for her is just lovely to see and I wish you all the best in this journey. It was difficult for me to watch my mother's "buy in" on western medicine only. I watched my conservative brothers and I try to get her to juice and try things like shark cartilage (we never were raised on this, although we were raised on food from scratch and local foods.) I was impressed to see my one brother do research for her on complimentary medicine. He actually pointed me in that direction, bless him. My mother's full trust was in western medicine only. She could swallow the horse chemotherapy pills but choked and gagged on supplements, vitamins and juices. I'm saying this because a person's openness and beliefs plays a big important role here. My mother, it turned out, was resigned to die and she picked out the dress she was going to be buried in from the moment she was diagnosed. That was her choice and when we finally let her be in her choice, the journey for her was a lot more graceful and honoring. I obviously don't know you or your aunt. I don't know what her wishes are or her openness or willingness to try other things and it's not in anyone's best interest to push things on her that she doesn't want. It's not easy (and I speak from much experience here) to offer things to family/friends as alternatives and then just let them be to do whatever they choose to do. I'm doing this with my family all the time and I'm not always successful in the letting them be part. If your aunt wants this, she will find it for herself, and then you can help her in whatever ways it aligns with you the best. I hope this helps. I'm here to help and not harm. I always realize that my lifestyle can be "threatening" to a good many people and I email/speak from the place of my heart and my own experiences. Everyone is free to do what they want. Free will. With any and all recommendations that I write here, they are best made when the person needing the information does their own research and makes their own decisions. That's better than taking what I or others say as the be all and end all of everything. I wouldn't want anyone to do exactly what I say. Your aunt's situation is specific to her and her body and she needs to find out what will work best for her. My best to you, Linda

I received an email with some questions and I wrote back with my thoughts and my personal experience. I want to say that there's a lot of information out there and I don't admit to be an expert nutritionist. I do have a number of years in this raw food journey and certainly a lifetime on emotional eating and releasing weight and healing myself. I read a lot and I experiment. Mostly I use my intuition to help myself and it proves to be the best "doctor" I've ever had. OK, here are the questions. I'm posting it here thinking you might find it useful. I hope that you do. I'm eternally grateful to be able to do this kind of work. I'm also posting this to see if there are answers to some of the questions that I don't have information on... +++++++++++++++++++ Hi there, I've just been shown your site, and it's great. I'm a raw dieter who's interested in making nut milks, but I have a few questions. Why strain out the blended nuts in a bag? What effect does that have on the protein content? Do you have any numbers on this? I'm lactating for 2 kids, and protein is a serious matter for me. Do you know the effect of adding sweeteners to the digestibility of it? If I understand food combining theory correctly, it seems that any sort of sweetener would compromise the protein digestion and be contraindicated. Any help is appreciated. Thanks, M... +++++++++++++++++++ Hi there M...! Thanks for your questions! There's no reason why you can't make a nut milk and keep the pulp in it. Most people really just think of milk as milky and not thick with something to chew on. Some people just blend the nuts, water and whatever sweetener and just enjoy it that way. For some recipes, it calls for the milk and so filtering it out is good. It's a good question that you have concerning the protein. And the fat too, I'm guessing. To date, I haven't found any information on the nutritional data of separating out the fibrous parts of the nuts after filtering it out of the nut milk bag. But I'm still searching. If you find anything, please share it with me and I'll post it up. I'm also quite interested just to know... Does soaking the nuts change any of the nutritional content? Does straining out the pulp change any of the nutritional content? This I don't know. I'm sure you are getting protein with the strained nut milk, I just don't have the numbers. I know many nursing woman who add a bit of hemp or bio-fermented rice protein powders to their nut milks/smoothies if they are concerned with protein. They will add chia or other sources to get essential fatty acids. Lots of greens is very beneficial to a nursing mother. Remember, that protein doesn't make protein. Eating a varied diet full of greens and a wide variety of other foods is what is going to be most beneficial to you and your young ones. I nursed 2 kids too. Remember to have lots of water and good fats and you will feel very good while you are lactating. Some beneficial teas are great to help you too: Mother's Milk tea is incredible. Love & Tea Co (a VT company) makes a version of it that is beautiful. Digestibility with regards to the sweeteners is really a personal matter. For me, I couldn't handle honey because when I first started, I had a lot of sugar related issues. I chose dates because it seemed to work better for me in the beginning and then used agave when it came out. Others will use a bit of stevia or lucuma to sweeten. Some don't sweeten their milks at all. There's no real need to sweeten, it's really just a matter of taste. There is a lot of information on food combining and I read it all and take a lot of it with a grain of Celtic sea salt! :-) Start listening to your body. Your body has the wisdom to know what it likes and how it likes it. If you are just beginning to this way of eating, chances are, you're coming to this eating a very complex diet - complex in the sense that there's cooked foods, meats, dairy, many ingredients all at once and possibly processed foods. So in the beginning, eat what appeals to you. As you go on, your body will adjust to knowing what it likes and what it doesn't like. As you remove the addictive foods, heavy foods and hard-to-digest foods, your body will become quite happy and will willingly tell you "do more of this" and "do less of that." I hope that helps! Be gentle with yourself. Love yourself. Many blessings, Linda +++++++++++++++++++ I'm adding some links on the issue of protein: • http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm • http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html - We sell this book, I think it is so important to read!