New readers, please notice the dates on all entries. Part I of My Bladder Cancer Story took place in 2018. I use the actual dateline framework so the story will unfold for the reader as it happened to me.
September 5, 2018: We’ve been applying my anti-cancer diet for the past week, and we like it. I’ll list the principal elements of my anti-cancer diet, and then I’ll show how we put them into practice.
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Avoid foods that favor cancer. These include sugar, refined white flour, most dairy products, and most factory-farmed meat. Since most processed foods on the grocery store shelves contain one or more of these products, we avoid them. - Enjoy lots of organic fruits and vegetables, aiming for at least 10-12 servings daily. (My personal goal is to enjoy 15 or more servings daily.)
- Enjoy organic whole grains, along with organic beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds.
- Limited amounts of pasture-raised organic meats and wild seafoods are permissible, but I avoid them except for a rare serving of wild seafood.
We’ve been mostly vegetarian for several years, making our adjustment easy. My breakfast of steel-cut oatmeal is topped with 4 kinds of sliced fruit, walnut pieces, and almond milk. I have lightly stewed prunes and a slice of sprouted whole-grain toast on the side with a cup of green tea. The only new “food” for me is a small glass of unsweetened cranberry juice to start my breakfast. This is truly tart, but my taste buds adjusted, and now I like starting my breakfast with this “wake-up” call.
My lunch is usually an organic hummus sandwich with walnut pieces covered by organic romaine lettuce leaves. I have two pieces of fruit with this, and my wife Carol often prepares a blended super-green “smoothie” to go with it. Her super-green smoothies are great!
Incidentally, a blender is preferable to a juicer in preparing most foods and drinks. The reason is that a blender brings all part of the food into the final product, whereas a juicer extracts the juice, but discards most of the fiber and roughage. That throws out a lot of great value. Because of this, we switched from a juicer to a blender several years ago.
Our supper this evening featured kale greens cooked with home-grown organic cowpeas and a can of organic diced tomatoes. Steamed veggies included cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and mushrooms – all good. Carol’s garden salad included romaine lettuce, organic cherry tomatoes, and organic radishes, organic celery, organic sweet bell pepper, and salad onions, all cut into bite-sized pieces. Topped with sliced avocado, this is always a great salad. I use organic balsamic vinegar for my dressing.
The main differences between my anti-cancer diet now and my previous diet is that I have doubled up on veggies and fruit, and I have eliminated all ultra-processed refined foods. In the past, I liked having one or two tablespoons of strawberry jam on my toast, even though I knew that a tablespoon of strawberry jam is half sugar. I had other sweetened treats occasionally. I excused myself by thinking that I avoided most other added sugars. I don’t accept that excuse now, and I avoid all added sugars.
It’s worth noting here that it is only added sugar that is problematic. Sugar that’s in fruit or food naturally is not a problem. This has been carefully researched. The scientific verdict is that sugar in naturally sweet foods is buffered by the surrounding texture and fiber. Added sugars are not buffered or protected in this way, and that’s why added sugar can wreak havoc with long-term health. Added sugar is pro-inflammatory in many diseases, and it feeds cancerous growths like nothing else can. Sugar feeds cancer!
It will be two months before we find out if this is having any favorable effect on my bladder cancer. Meantime, we are enjoying this trial run. Carol is an immense help with all of this. I couldn’t do it without her.
[Blog to be continued next week.]
