Tip #12: Consult the experts

In this week's tip, I would like to emphasize how important it is not to do things because you just read about them on the internet, although I will be the first to admit, I sometimes (often?) do, and, by the title of my blog, I may want you to do that too.

But, as I say in the "about me" area, I'm not a medical doctor, or a nutritionist, so you do need to take everything I write here with a grain of salt and then decide for yourself. Although that seems like something totally obvious, I think it can never be emphasized enough. Not only that, I feel like we are all very different and one diet or one supplement will probably not be good for everyone.

Thus, when I was diagnosed with my recurrence, of course, I started doing lots of research about cancer, treatments and nutrition. I had already eliminated animal products from my diet (for the most part), but I felt that that had not been enough so I had to be even more strict. So I eliminated all sugar and tried to eat mostly raw. I had also read that juicing was good, so I started juicing carrots. But then, I learned that carrots are very sweet, so I stopped juicing carrots. I started reading about vitamin D, but my bones were damaged, so maybe I needed calcium. And so on. Luckily, the angels that I always have helping me, sent me through different means information about a wonderful nutritionist who specializes in cancer and how to maximize your conventional treatment. Her name is Jeanne Wallace and, in my view, she has to be the best in her field in this country. She is actually now quite famous and only deals with doctors, so I work with another nutritionist in her group, Michelle Gerencser, who is, not only extremely knowledgeable but also caring and kind and a pleasure to deal with. Their group is called Nutritional Solutions and they are located in Utah, but we meet through Skype or the phone. Once you become their client, they put together a plan specific for you, based on many blood tests and questionnaires. Then, they recommend a special diet and certain supplements, but they give you the research behind all of them. The plan for me will be very different than the plan for someone who has a brain tumor.

I have to say that I love having Michelle as my nutritionist. She is an important part of the team that is helping me on my path to wellness. I take now lots of supplements (I never took any before), but I know that each one is part of a puzzle. And I also feel like a movie star with my own nutritionist, :)

For anyone diagnosed with cancer, I highly recommend them, but for everyone else, I do think that having a naturopath or an integrative doctor is a very wise decision if you feel you need to start taking any supplements or need to tweak your diet. Leave it to the experts. The same can be said about doctors. Find one you really believe in, and work with him or her as a team.

And, if you do have cancer, I'm going to leave you with some links to talks given by Dr. Wallace about the role of nutrition in the treatment of cancer. I used to listen to these talks over and over, because they gave me so much hope. Enjoy!

• Integrative diet and nutrition to complement cancer care. Part I (37 minutes)
• Integrative diet and nutrition to complement cancer care. Part II (38 minutes)
• Dairy products and cancer (7 minutes)
• Vitamin D and cancer (6:35 minutes)
• Tests to have, plus agave controversy (5:37)

Can you also recommend any professional who has helped you as well? Let me know and thanks for reading!

Tip #11: Discover new ingredients

When you decide to start eating healthier, sometimes you get stuck because you just don't know what to cook, or even how to cook. How am I going to make my wonderful carbonara sauce without dairy or bacon? How can I substitute my commercial salad dressing (full of unhealthy oils)?

I remember that, after reading The China Study, being totally convinced not to use animal products any more in my house, I felt like my dishes were bland, boring and not great at all. I have to admit I was extremely embarrassed to invite people over, as I really felt that 1) my food choices were "weird" to begin with, and 2) nothing I made could be liked that much. Yes, it was edible, and yes, probably very healthy, but that was it. I realize now that I definitely had a complex then, don't ask me why.

Little by little, I started finding great recipe blogs and books (I'll talk more about them in another post), and  begun enjoying what I was cooking. I feel my family did too. (My husband will say, though, that he always liked what I made and it's true. My kids I think would agree with me that now things are tastier).

But one thing that I really think made a big difference was to overcome the fear of new ingredients. You read any vegan cookbook and you start seeing mentions of nutritional yeast. What the heck was that? It sounded weird and it looked weird (in the pictures that I found online about it, because no grocery stores near me had it, to begin with). So, one day I just decided to order it from Amazon and now it is one of my basic ingredients that I love using.

So, I'm just going to tell you about four things that maybe you're not familiar with, but that have helped me make my dishes much tastier and maybe even healthier.

1) Nutritional Yeast. Like I've already said, I found this ingredient puzzling at first. But it is a good source of B vitamins, folic acid, selenium, zinc, and protein and it gives a slight cheesy taste to most everything. In this blog post from one of my favorite food bloggers, you can learn everything about it. I now buy it at a Whole Foods that just opened near my home. Just remember not to confuse it with brewer's yeast or other yeasts. Sometimes, when you ask in a store, they may not know the difference themselves. I use it to make vegan macaroni and "cheese," scrambled tofu and many sauces, soups and dressings.

2) Spanish Paprika. I'm sure many of you are already familiar and use papikra but I'm talking here about the paprika that comes from Spain. It is sometimes called smoked paprika. I recommend you always buy the one from Spain. There are at least three variations, either hot or mild (sometimes called sweet) and it is what gives chorizo sausage its wonderful flavor and red color. You can now find it at Whole Foods, or you can also get it at LaTienda.com. I find that just a little bit goes a long way. I love using it in soups and salad dressings for an extra chorizo flavor without the guilt. And for information about the powerful health benefits of paprika, including anti-inflammation, you can read this post.

3) Miso Paste. Although I have had miso soup in restaurants for a long while now, this is another ingredient that I was afraid of. It just looked mysterious and strange and I really thought it was only used in soups. Well, again, it took a bit to even find it (Whole Foods again), but I now love using it, sometimes instead of salt in some of my dishes. It is also full of health benefits, including the fact that it is a fermented food (the kind you definitely should be eating everyday) with probiotic properties. To know more about it, here's 20 benefits and uses of miso.

4) Cashews. OK, I know you already knew about this one, but what I have discovered is that cashews can be extremely versatile and now I use them often to make my dishes creamier or when I want to replace dairy in recipes. For example I cannot make the same carbonara sauce I used to make for spaghetti, so rich with heavy cream and cheese, but I now use cashews, water, garlic, a raw tomato and nutritional yeast, all blended in the Vitamix and, granted, it is not the same, but it is very, very good and extremely creamy. By the way, if you don't have a Vitamix, you can still use cashews as cream in a regular blender, but you need to soak them in water at least four hours before hand. Also, I use raw cashews for this use. I don't know if you would get the creaminess with roasted ones. Cashews are also very healthy, as you can read here.

And let me finish with one of my favorite recipes which combines all these ingredients and it is of my own creation. Four years ago I could not have dreamed of one day posting a recipe of my own on a public blog.
I have come a long way. :)

Pink Salad Dressing

1 and 1/2 cup water

1/2 cup raw cashews

1 Tablespoon packed sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)

1 Tablespoon miso (not white) paste

1 Tablespoons nutritional yeast

1 garlic clove (or more to taste)

1/4 teaspoon Spanish Paprika

Blend everything in a Vitamix or regular blender (soak cashews for 4 hours beforehand) for about 1 minute.

Enjoy!!

What other ingredients do you recommend I try next? Thanks for letting me know!

Tip #10: Always have hope

What is hope? Let's see:

Expectation, desire, trust. Expectations that things will get better. Desire that our situation will change. And trust that, somehow, maybe through a miracle, those two things will be true.

We are often confronted with situations that just seem insurmountable at that moment. But we always have two options, no matter what we have to face: we either move on or succumb. In order to move on we do need a special fuel. And that is hope. How do we find it?

At the time of my diagnosis, looking for other things, as always, I found this wonderful article by Katherine Russell Rich. This is a journalist and author who has had metastatic breast cancer for 19 years now, and who was given just 2 years to live when her cancer came back. In that article she says the following:

"I tell the women how deeply I believe there’s no such thing as false hope: all hope is valid, even for people like us, even when hope would no longer appear to be sensible.
Life itself isn’t sensible, I say. No one can say with ultimate authority what will happen — with cancer, with a job that appears shaky, with all reversed fortunes — so you may as well seize all glimmers that appear"

That's what I try to do, as you probably have already noticed if you have read my past tips or if you know me: I seize all glimmer that appear. It can be a scientific article I read, it can be an inspirational story, it can just be by focusing on the now, realizing that, now, as of this moment, I'm filled with gratitude for my well being, and that gives me hope for a tomorrow that may be as good as today. But you need those three steps: have expectation, desire and then trust.

As I have also mentioned before, this year I'm trying to watch a TED talk a day. I recently saw this one called "An unexpected place of healing". Ramona Pierson tells us her incredible story. Here she was, 22 years old, in a coma and blind after a a terrible car accident, with no family or anyone who wanted to take care of her, left there in the hospital to, basically, die. And how, against all odds, she not only recovered but went on to become incredibly successful. Her story is just unbelievable, and it gave me so much hope. Not only hope for myself, but also hope for humanity, for the power of cooperation, and also it showed me how we can all bring something to this table, even if we are really old or have a condition like Alzheimer.

Without hope, I cannot offer much to anyone. If you feel I'm done, why should you listen to me?  But believe me, there are glimmers of hope everywhere, you just have to seize them.

(The video is just 11 minutes long. You'll love it. I promise).

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UPDATE: Unfortunately, Katherine Russell Rich died from her cancer on April this year. Here's her obituary. This was personally a huge emotional blow, but now I have learned that her message still prevails, as she survived 18 years with metastatic breast cancer (almost 25 years from her first cancer diagnosis).

Tip #9: Remember the Power of Now

Some years ago I bought the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It was when he was in Oprah and it seemed like everyone was talking about it. I didn't have time to actually watch Oprah, but I found the title intriguing enough to buy the book. I started reading it, felt totally lost and bored after 10 pages and that was that. Still, the words in the title, the power of "right" now, were very alluring. I just had a bit problem with the idea of "But what if "now"actually sucks?" In any case, I decided to give it a try last year. I needed to know there was power somewhere, and the power of now started to sound good again.

Well, I have to say that now I'm a convinced believer and that book  is one I love to recommend. I think everyone should read it, at least give it a try (more than 10 pages). But you should particularly read it if you are going through a crisis.

I will tell you now my super short version of what I learned from it, with the hope that you find it interesting enough so you read it, or at least consider it. Here it goes.

In our daily lives, we tend to be accompanied by a voice inside our heads that is constantly talking like a mad person. The voice tells us things like "You should do that instead," "Who do you think you are," "I cannot believe she said that. She really is pushy," "Does this dress make me fat?," "What are we going to have for dinner? I forgot to buy the salad dressing." Or, much, much worse things. You all know what I'm talking about. Well, we need to pay attention to that voice (who he calls "ego"), listen to it as if it were other person talking and realize that it is not reality, and then proceed to stop it completely or minimize it as much as possible. Reality is what's in front of you, in my case the computer where I'm typing. Nothing hurts me as I type. Nothing bothers me as I type. And, as I'm quite distracted with this activity, that is, I am consciously typing, there are no voices in my head telling me anything. Of course, I can stop typing and then I can hear it: "Writing a blog post? How stupid is that? I still have to make dinner. I forgot the laundry. How can I make plans for the summer? My PET scan is in May, I'm getting nervous already. What if I'm not in remission any more?" We need to learn to say STOP to this voice that we all have. What we have is now, pure and simple. The past is not there any more. We can remember it, if we want to, but we cannot go back. And the future does not really exist either. No one can assure us tomorrow (or even five seconds from now).

So, what to do? I have trained myself now, more or less, to be in the moment as much as possible. I love that sentence: "be in the moment" (my yoga teacher says it in every class and it is such a great reminder). In this "moment" you can plan for the future, for things like "I need to go to the grocery store before I go to school." Maybe even retirement, or long term plans like that. But make those plans part of your now, that is, enjoy making them as much as getting there.

Remember this one thing: make this moment count as much as possible. It is what we have. Don't waste it listening to that voice that teaches you nothing. In my weekly walks to school, I often hear that voice telling me a million things. I then remember to say: STOP! And you know what happens every time? I see my surrounding with new eyes. I notice the trees, or a flower, or a bird, or a cloud and I see their beauty and wisdom and I feel peace.


And, together with this idea of the power of now, come the concepts of acceptance (instead of resistance) and surrender. But I will talk about them in other tips.

PS: What do you think of the sign my eleven year old son made me for this post on Photoshop? Pretty cool, isn't it? I love it!

Let me know if you have read the book and what you thought about it!

Tip #8: Learn about inflammation, maybe even yours

Before last year, I had never really heard of inflammation. Or if I had, I don't remember. But I instantly perked up when I read the following:

 "At the Glasgow Hospital in Scotland, oncologists have been measuring inflammation markers in the blood of patients with various cancers since the nineties. They have shown that patients with the lowest level of inflammation were twice as likely as the others to live through the next several years. These markers are easy to measure, and to the astonishment of the Glasgow oncologists, they are a better indicator of the chances of survival than the patient’s general state of health at the time of diagnosis".  

Servan-Schreiber MD PhD, David (2009-12-31). Anticancer, A New Way of Life, New Edition (Kindle Locations 926-931).

In fact, I found out that your level of inflammation (as measured according to the The Glasgow Prognostic Score) at the time of diagnosis is a better indicator of survival than the stage of your cancer. Thus, you may be diagnosed with a Stage IV cancer but, if you have low inflammation, you will probably live longer than somebody with Stage I with high inflammation. This was great news! There was something I could do: Keep my inflammation low. I learned most of this through my nutritionist (I'll talk more about her in another tip) and, with her help, I follow now a plan to control my inflammation.


So, what is inflammation? The way I understand it, your body has an inflammatory reaction when you get a bruise or a cut and this is good, as it your body's way to heal that bruise or cut. But, in our modern world, we attack our own bodies with the food we eat, the little exercise we do, with stress, etc and cause systemic inflammation that affects the whole body. This inflammation is actually at the root cause of many diseases: Type II diabetes, heart disease, some autoimmune diseases and, possibly, also cancer.


From what I've learned, I feel that everyone should have an idea of how "inflamed" they actually are. There is a simple blood test that can actually tell you. It is called the C-Reactive Protein test (or CRP). I'm not suggesting that you go to your doctor right now to have it done. But maybe, next time you have a check up, you can ask for this. It is normally used to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease, but I think it is good to know for all the other things mentioned. If you have a high CRP it may indicate an underlying problem you may not even be aware of.

Here is some more information about it:

• From the Huffington Post, from Dr. Mark Hyman: Is your body burning up with hidden inflammation?
• From (yes) Oprah.com :The simple blood test that can save your life

And to keep your inflammation low, the same things that you always hear apply here too: have a healthy diet (lots of greens, organic products, not processed foods), avoid stress, cultivate friendships and connections with others, you know, everything I've been telling you. :)

And, just for reinforcement, here's a 2 minute video about it:

You know, you still can have low inflammation AND cancer, like it happened to me. The first time I was tested for the CRP, about three months after my diagnosis last year, my inflammation was extremely low. But, that number still gave me lots of hope, and, who knows, maybe that's one of the reasons why I'm responding so well to my treatment. 

To your health(y CRP)!!

Tip #7: Love

As next week is Valentine's day, I decided to write about love. In my own life, this past year I have re-discovered the unbelievable power of love. The love of my husband, the love of my family, the love of my old friends, the love of my new friends (whom I met in my new journey, in my online support group, in my yoga for cancer patients class), the love of strangers in many countries praying for me. All this love carried me through in the hard times, gave me the strength I needed and provided me with an immense joy. I now know that I matter to so many people and I am extremely thankful for it.

Scientifically too, this power that I felt this year has been studied. Here's the Amazon review for Dr. Dean Ornish's book Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy:

"Ornish demonstrates that personal intimacy and other aspects of emotional well-being--all the elements that make up what we call "love"--are as important to our physical condition as to our mental health. Not only do these positive emotions motivate us to make better lifestyle choices, Ornish argues, they also have a powerful direct effect on our bodies, giving us stronger immune systems, better cardiovascular functioning, and longer life expectancies. But the benefits of opening our hearts to others go beyond curing our bodies of disease; it's also the first step toward healing our entire lives".

And, in his website, there are more resources where we can learn about the importance of creating connections, by spending more time with family and friends, listening, touching and meditating, among many things.

This week I also listened to a story on NPR that made me reflect on how love is, indeed, powerful. It is part of StoryCorps, where anyone can record another person so they can tell the story of their lives. You can hear them on the radio every Friday morning, or you can just go to their website. All the stories are preserved at the Library of Congress. I have always loved this project, and every single time I hear one of these stories I learn something, about love, about strength, about faith in humanity.

So, for all of you, here's a 3 minute story that teaches us that, if we have love, we should never give up. I hope you like it.

This week go ahead and give hugs, kisses and love. To your kids, family, friends and everyone. What you give, you'll get back, I promise, in health and in happiness.

Tip #6: Walk

Exercise is one of those things everyone agrees on: we need to do more of it. The human body was not built to sit around all day. But that's just the problem. Our modern world makes us sit around for huge chunks of our days. We sit at the office and then, we sit at home, exhausted from sitting at the office all day. Here's an article I read just last week about how by living in the suburbs our lives have become much more sedentary and the risky implications to our health that this has ("Communities learn the good life can be a killer"). During my own research about cancer, one thing I discovered is that exercise is as important as diet when it comes to preventing and slowing the disease, if not even more important. For middle-aged women, it is particularly important, as estrogen can hide in fat cells (but not in muscle) and excess estrogen can provoke breast cancer (like the type I have).

But now the question is, what kind of exercise and how much of it. In the book Anticancer (see Tip#5), I learned about the fascinating studies of Dr Ornish on early prostrate cancer (PDF link), and how some lifestyle changes were able to affect very favorably the progression of the disease. In that study, the patients were recommended, among some other changes, like a vegan diet, stress management techniques, etc, to walk 30 minutes 6 times a week. The more the patients adhered to their programs, the better their results.

And in this other article from the New York Times, "What's the single best exercise?" one of the answers is this: brisk, interval-style walking: three minutes of fast walking, followed by three minutes of slower walking, repeated 10 times. That is, 30 minutes walking.

So, armed with this information, I started going to the gym around 5 days a week and did the 30 minute interval in the treadmill (as in the pic) and then I would take a stroll with my family on weekends. But that was when I took the semester off and had a lot of time. When I went back to work, this was not going to work, so this is what I have been doing now. Three days a week, I park my car about a bit less than a mile from work. I then HAVE TO walk about 15 minutes to get to work and 15 minutes back to my car. I bought a cute, little backpack for my laptop and books, so I'm also doing some weight bearing exercise for my bones at the same time (more on this on another tip). Then, on two days I go to the gym and do the 30 minute interval. One day a week, I do yoga.

Last semester, this wasn't easy and I ended up not going to the gym at all. So, this year I learned about an iPhone App called GymPact and you make a "pact" with your own money to go the gym as much as you decide or you lose that money. I have to say, it has worked for me so far (I've been using it for 5 weeks now).

One more thing I'll say about walking is that I definitely feel an improvement in my mood when I'm able to walk like this. There is also a very strong link between exercise and mild depression and if not for anything else, I do believe it can really help to make you happier. Here's some more information about it.

I think this is easy and can be rewarding. So, remember, just walk!

Do you have any other tips we may all use?

Thanks for reading!