An Alternative approach to Stage IV Health and choices

Makmak, how long have you been following the diet plan? I just went a few weeks ago and am making small changes. I've cut out all sugar, I still do a tiny bit of diary in my coffee.  Do you get your chemo there? What chemo are you on?

Sweetbean, I love cheese too.  I got this rice cheese and it's not too bad.  I thought it would taste like cardboard but actually it taste better than the fat free regular cheese.  Giving up diary isn't too hard for me because I don't really care for dairy.  The hardest part of The Block Center diet is all the whole grains.  They told me to eat 7-8 servings a day and I am having trouble getting 3-4. 

Sweetbean, I am actually in the chemo chair right now and don't have my book they gave me so I will post on the whole grains later.  There are a bunch but right now my brain is mush!

Hope all who are doing chemo don't have too many SEs. I did just read that fish oil is a no-no with some chemo, cisplatin is what I recall. So if you're taking fish oil you should probably ask your onc about it.

As far as dietary energy restriction (DER) it seems you can push it too far so that the body tries to create more fat which ends up in your bone marrow. That's from a study done on anorexics (not mice) at Boston Children's Hospital. Back to mice, another study showed that exercise increases the production of blood stem cells, and that without a stem cell transplant!!! (quote below)

http://www.fasebj.org/content/early/2011/08/24/fj.11-189043.abstract

Depending on the cell type, endurance training increased medullary and mobilized                     hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell content from 50 to 800%. Training also reduced marrow cavity fat by 78%. Skeletal muscle hematopoietic cytokine expression was also increased at least 60% by training. Sedentary mice served as controls for the above  experiments. In conclusion, endurance exercise training greatly promotes hematopoiesis and does so through improvements in  medullary niche architecture as well as increased skeletal muscle hematopoietic cytokine production

???  eerrrr.... lol... same here.  My eyes nearly popped out at that sentence.  I assume it's a good thing?  

thanks Heidi, I was too lazy to look up so many definitions.  I'm too busy researching the DER (Dietary Energy Restriction) / strong anti-oxidant / anti-inflammatory diet which works in mice but is still awaiting full human trials.

Metformin is sometimes used in place of the DER as it's a Calorie Restriction Mimetic (CRM) which mimics the life prolonging potential of low calorie diets. One study compared Metformin and DER and the Metformin was inferior to the DER for mets.  I agree that intermittent fasting may be better for those with a low BMI.  It's clear you're way ahead of me in researching the role of exercise which is also a CRM.  I'm thinking of making my Microsoft OneNote notebook (part of MS Office) available to you and maybe those who can follow the studies and I can trust with my details.

I'm still checking studies on different strong anti-oxidants and I have yet to look into anti-inflammatories / cox-inhibitors which are essential to defeat mets. I'm looking for as many options as possible and for those substances which cover two of the three requirements.

There's so much to be checked before I start a new thread which may attract controversy and I want to be sure of my facts and have studies to refer to. This is a new and exciting area of research even though it goes back to Otto Warburg's 1924 discovery of glycolysis. Plenty of clues point to the possibility that this can work in some people to put cancer into remission and it seems I'm not the only one who's picked up on this.

Wow, I just spent nearly two hours on the phone to my aunt in Canada.  She has a mass in the centre of her pancreas but it's in the wrong position for an endoscopic biopsy so she's left hanging, not knowing if she has a deadly cancer.  There's a slight chance it's not malignant but the surgeon has ruled out an operation and she's adamant she doesn't want chemo or radiation.  She's interested in the low energy diet so she doesn't tax her pancreas and had already started it and wants me to pass the anti-oxidant/anti-inflammatory information on to her.  Also her daughter who is helping her due to her visual problems uses a naturopath successfully for lifelong problems so I hope she will be on the same page.

That's life, I tried to pass on enough clues and bits of information for those like yourself and Heidi who can follow the studies and logic, without giving away the whole formula as people seem to understand one part then say it doesn't work.  DER, strong anti-oxidant supplements, anti-inflammatories, they are the three main ingredients, but they need modification for those who may have contra-indications.

I was out all day yesterday and now I must work on my vegetable garden while the weather's good. Then I must ignore this forum    and work flat out on getting my research in some sort of order. 

My aunt was telling me how as part of her nursing experience, she went to China and was in the theatre when two operations were performed using only acupuncture and no anaesthetic. An anaesthetist was monitoring and ready to act if any pain was felt. One operation was a caeserian and the other a thyroidectomy. The slightest movement from the patient during the thyroidectomy could have resulted in vital arteries being cut.  Fortunately my aunt is level headed and like me is on the fence between evidence based medicine and alternatives, knowing that lack of proof is not proof of lack and also knowing the limitations of both medicine and alternatives.

I'm sorry to hear about your aunt, jlw....Looking forward to your new thread.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/intermittent-fasting/inflammation-and-intermittent-fasting/

I was going to wait for human trials for intermittent fasting before recommending a specific protocol.  But I see there is one already in relation to Ramadan fasting.

 I have been doing an intermittent fast of sorts since before Christmas last year. My last meal is usually at 7:00 pm and the next one at 12:30 pm the next day. That's more than the 16 hours for Ramadan fasters. I do have low CRP levels, an inflammatory marker used in the study. I'll have to check what it was before I started on this quasi-IF protocol. It's quasi because I have to have coffee with milk at around 8:00 am. I go exercise after my coffee boost. So I figure the coffee, which is an antioxidant, doesn't really count.

that's life, that diet sounds really good!  that's basically what I am doing, but without any dairy or meat at all.  (just special occasions -can't wait for American Thanksgiving!  lol!)  anyway,  your diet sounds awesome - go you!

that'slife.... I agree. I heard that you are leaving bco. I feel bad that you are leaving in that you have such a strong influence here at bco and this thread is so key for those who are stage IV.

You are a very special person! Thanks for all you've given all of us! YOU ARE LOVED!