Readers, please notice the dates on all entries. Part I of My Bladder Cancer Showdown took place in 2018 and 2019. Part II, titled Long-term Recovery, took place through most of 2019. Now we’re into January 2020, and it’s time to bring this blog to a conclusion.
January, 2020: I am truly blessed by the remission of my bladder cancer. I can’t claim complete cure because high-risk cancer like this can return years later, but that is unlikely as long as I continue my anti-cancer diet. I enjoy this diet so much that I won’t stray from it.
I’m continuing to recover very slowly from the complications of my repeated UTIs and life-threatening sepsis. I don’t know if I’ll ever regain full strength, but I’m thankful for the progress I’ve made so far.
The anticancer benefit of vegetables and fruit has been reported in good medical journals, but few physicians know about it. They are not likely to recommend an anticancer diet to their patients. That is sad, because it has some major advantages.Anticancer Diet Advantages: Compared to most cancer treatments, it is safe, convenient, and cost-effective. It doesn’t work as dramatically for all cancers as it did for my bladder cancer, but it is helpful for many kinds of cancer even if it doesn’t stop them completely.
There’s nothing much safer than good healthy food. Organic food is best, so it may cost a tad more than your regular grocery bill, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the high cost of most cancer treatments. It’s convenient because you can find healthy food in most grocery stores.
There are major side-benefits to following an anticancer diet. It is known to dramatically lower the risk of diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and obesity. It may also decrease the risk of several other chronic diseases that plague the West. This is in sharp contrast to most kinds of cancer treatment, which often carry undesirable or hazardous side-effects.
The main drawback cited for the anticancer diet is that some patients won’t accept it because it’s such a change from their usual way of eating. It’s true that some patients won’t even try it, but many who give it a good trial find it’s not as hard to adopt as they feared. Many eventually like it as much as I do.
My report is anecdotal because it’s an individual story, not part of a clinical research project. Even though my experience of beating bladder cancer is good, it’s not a useful reference for doctors because it’s only anecdotal.
The Challenge: Research is needed to establish a good anticancer diet as part of the protocol offered for treatment of relevant cancers. The benefits of this diet are so great that it’s a shame not to offer it as an option to patients.
The large pharmaceutical companies are not doing this kind of research because they won’t ever reap any profits from it. Academic research centers and the National Institutes of Health do some work in this area, but in my view, there is an urgent need for much more research.
If the appropriate selection of a healthy diet can be proven to be healing for some kinds of cancer, it should become an official treatment option as soon as possible. Patients can refuse to accept it, just as they may refuse any other treatment, but they should at least be offered the choice.
The challenge today is to do the research needed to establish healthy food as a good treatment choice!
Note: This concludes my “bladder cancer showdown” series of blog posts. I will start a new series next month. If you simply wait until then, you will automatically get the new blog when it starts. (No need to re-subscribe.) On the other hand, if you want to stop receiving my posts, you can use the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of every email, anytime. My thanks goes to everyone for your interest!
