I highly recommend the fascinating account of a glioblastoma multiforme (aka ‘the terminator’) long-term cancer survivor Ben A. Williams (and science literate). The patient advocacy film on topic, is a must watch: https://www.survivingterminalcancer.com/ (I fully support the combination approach – as you might have guessed – as opposed to the ”silver bullet” or single drug or mono-approach)
Other books that I found useful: Radical remission by Kelly A. Turner and ‘the metabolic approach to cancer’ by Nasha Winters (cancer survivor)
Note: Nasha Winters is also a long-term stage 4 cancer survivor and again, her life story is fascinating which is why I bought her book (pictured below). A superb interview with her is here:
and yes, I read Jane Mclellands book (also a long-term cancer survivor) which remains fascinating account albeit that Jane is not a scientist.,
The next building block I added to my protocol alongside immunotherapy/chemotherapy was fasting.
My initial research took me to Naomi Whittle who has been researching all things wellness for decades, initially for her own auto-immune condition.
Later I discovered the ground breaking work of Dr Valter Longo with the fasting mimicking diet and bought his book: ‘The longevity diet’. In which he goes into depth about how it works for healthy, but also for people in treatment for cancer.
I decided on ‘intermittent fasting’ (16/8) as it seems to me, if I learned this I could likely up my game later on when I was used to it, if need be,.
I began by gradually adding an extra hour a day to my wait for the first meal. Starting with 12 hours.. and gradually each week adding an hour until I reached my average of 16-18 hours per day (6-8 hour eating window).
My point was among other things to stabilize my blood insulin sugar levels (when I began in 2020 I was pre-diabetic) and assist my bodies ability to target cancer cells, and lessen the side-effects of chemotherapy at the same time.
Among an incredibly complex long list of benefits that fasting has on the body, besides.. balancing weight, hormones, switch on longevity genes (sirtuins), and assist the bodies ability for detoxification. If done properly and not to extremes fasting can ultimately be one of the most powerful interventions that can improve your chances of overall survival from cancer -not just improving overall health,.
The year is now 2022 and although I no longer religiously fast 16+ hours every day, I still do for 5 days a week.
Below are some brilliant scientists who I advise you read before embarking:
Research into fasting and cancer by Valter Longo
Dr. Valter Longo – Fasting Cycles Retard Growth of Tumors (2012)
The MAIN CAUSES Of Cancer & How To PREVENT IT | Dr. Jason Fung
E 14 | The Science of Autophagy – EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Naomi Whittel
Yoshinori Ohsumi: What is autophagy? A dynamic cellular recycling process
It turns out that one of the most important changes I made to my life, was the one thing I’d never thought I’d ever be able to do. Meditation. For me meditation meant sitting still – a thing I’ve dreaded for most of my life – and sitting still was hard. It meant listening to my breath, my blood and my heart pumping the blood through my heart. For some reason this was for decades the most terrifying thing to have to experience.
Until coincidence intervened. An old friend I hadn’t seen in years turned up on my doorstep the same day as my diagnosis from the hospital – it had taken nearly 8 weeks for all the tests to be done to get there. – Here she was, she said, in ‘one final attempt’ to preserve our friendship.
In the weeks that followed she gave me a book that she couldn’t seem to use herself. The book was by Jon Kabat-Zinn – ‘Full catastrophe living’. Who knew this book would get me to meditate for the first time in my life?
What did I have to lose? I devoured that book. The first of many on how to cope with extreme stress, and extreme life situations.
So began my adventure to thrive regardless of stage 4 breast cancer that had metastasized to my sacrum bone. Or notably, as its technically referred to: oligo-metastasis – the only breast cancer at stage 4 considered ‘curable’ in conventional medicine.
At that time of course, I hadn’t yet learned why my oncologist had said on the day of my diagnosis: ‘we’re going to cure you’ (a statement the surgeon later corrected) Which, I learned many months later, is one of the best situations statistically speaking you can get if cancer has already metastasized. Living up to that prognosis however, being a test of time.
During my research as I embarked on my first rounds of immunotherapy and chemotherapy. I wanted to understand how to enhance the ‘kill’ effect or effect the mechanisms of apoptosis (‘kill’ effect) of the cancer cells.
I came across the work of Professor Rob Newton and colleges extensive research into targeted physiotherapy &/or strength training when used as an adjunct to conventional cancer treatment. The outcomes of human trials were so successful that the Australian government decided to integrate this into their basic insurance model so that targeted exercise therapies are available to all Australian cancer patients.
Targeted/tailored exercise has multiple benefits that are specifically helpful when added alongside conventional treatment for cancer(s) including a much needed lessening of chemo side-effects eg. improved energy levels, mood, lessening nausea. On average muscle and bone loss is the norm following high-dose chemotherapy but when targeted and resistance exercise is added, the results were rather spectacular; improved muscle and bone mass and even no bone loss has been observed in human clinical studies. Though the most incredible bonus is the added ‘kill’ effect to cancer cells, when targeted and resistance exercise is added adjunct to chemotherapy &/or radiotherapy treatment it can assist in reducing solid tumors.
Sources/ research:
Documentary from ABC Science: Exercise & Cancer | How Targeted Exercise Can Help Fight Cancer (2016)
Industry-Presented Webinar: Exercise as Medicine for Cancer by Professor Rob Newton (2020)
Professor Robert Newton, PhD, DSc, AEP, CSCS*D, FACSM, FESSA, FNSCA is Professor of Exercise Medicine and Deputy Director of ECU’s Exercise Medicine Research Institute.
Weeks before I was supposed to start immunotherapy/chemotherapy (29th of September 2020) I sent my mother an article and video to watch that seemed to point to cancer being a sign of cellular metabolic dysfunction. This as opposed to it being caused by genetic mutation(s) of DNA; as has been the conventional view of cancer.
My cancer wasn’t genetic (confirmed by my oncologist and surgeon), and there was no history of cancer in my family so it made sense there could be another cause, and by extention another way to approach my recovery.
Initially I was trying to find out how to assist my body to get through conventional treatment. But also, was there some way to adapt my body to become stronger? -the latter because I’d already read so much about the damage e.g. chemotherapy, radiation, and all the extra medications that go with cancer treatment can do to the body.
There had to be a way.. the human body after-all is adapted for survival. All I had to do was support my body to get through it.
I started by investigating the *hypoxic environment that cancers seem able to grow in – how was this possible when oxygen gives life to all living cells in our body(?) Why then, but more so.. How could these cells be proliferating at such a high rate without enough oxygen?
I typed into google.. ‘oxygen and cancer’ and immediately stumbled upon an article from an unexpected place. Integrative cancer treatment (see video (1) below)
The most critical take-away from this was that less than 15% of cancers are caused by genetic mutations in the DNA cell nucleus, but rather originate in the cells mitochondria (mtDNA) and/or in the communication between the two (see links/research (1) below)
Furthermore, conventional cancer treatment is premised to only address part of the problem by using strategies that target the DNA nucleus part of that equation (such as chemotherapy and radiation therapies). Chemotherapy, is known to not target cancer cells directly and is thus referred to as ”systemic therapy” (put another way; chemotherapy can harm cancer cells, but also normal/healthy cells) thus, is more-often coupled with other treatments in a multi-targeted approach in an effort to target cancer cells. Put another way, the body has to be fit and ironically ‘healthy’ enough to go through chemotherapy thus liver/kidney function are consistently monitored throughout and when the latter aren’t ‘healthy’ enough, patients can even be considered ‘untreatable’ by conventional methods.
The key here is to understand that chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery are all premised on trying to remove/control damaged DNA cells that have developed through genetic mutation (the premise for their use -somatic mutation theory (SMT)) instead of understanding the link to dysfunctional cellular metabolism of the mitochondria (the latter being the more recent developing body of cancer research but also in longevity science).
The takeaway (for me) was that conventional modes of treatment could be combined with treatments that address the metabolic dysfunction of the mitochondria e.g. lifestyle, dietary and fitness but also by using supplements and offlabel medication, as a growing body of evidence are suggesting; outcomes could be extensively improved – in some cases – extraordinarily (see books of long-term survivors)
Caveat: and yes, I preferably would have opted out of chemotherapy, but because this was the only way to recieve immunotherapy I didn’t have much choice (+ studies were favorable towards it assisting immunotherapy to target the HER2 receptors; a diagnosis I requested to test multiple times to make sure)
The afore mentioned combined ”metabolic” approach is the basis of what I researched and applied to my life(style). The result of which is how I attribute to my being alive and extremely well today.
See references below for more on this fascinating area of the new science of cancer and cancer’s metabolism.
