<p>Like all posters on CC I am very sad about your illness and the challenges which lie ahead. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.</p>
<p>There are some veggies whose nutrients are more accessible to humans in the cooked state than the raw state, I believe. It sounds like you have a friend who is nutritionally oriented who wants to feed you, so thatâs good. Following your cravings might make sense too. Bananas are loaded with potassium and maybe your body needs that. There are also trace minerals and, I think, things we havenât even isolated yet in all of our foods, so a variety of whole foods is probably a good idea.</p>
<p>Thanks for the wonderful video!</p>
<p>Absolutely amazing video. Thanks so much for posting the link!</p>
<p>No worries about disagreements. You are the master of your ship. At all times.</p>
<p>However, I suggest that serious health care is a foreign culture that is quite difficult to understand at times. Academic medicine is once removed from that. When visiting foreign cultures, immigrants and tourists are well advised to adapt to the foreign countryârather than expecting vica versa. Getting over Culture Shock as quickly as possible is key to overseas moves. </p>
<p>The same holds true for finding success in the upper reaches of cutting edge medicine, has been my observation.</p>
<p>However blunt, your acquaintance may have been trying to explain the vagaries of her culture so that your cure might benefit.</p>
<p>Back to bananas with âŠgarlic??</p>
<p>Cheers, itâs not difficult to understand at all. I am having a bit of challenge with some of the abstracts on pubmed - phrases like âImmunohistochemical diagnosis of metastasesâ and âinappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretionâ and âIntravascular hemolysis as a complication of clostridium perfringens sepsisâ slow me down just a bit, but, I CAN look most of the stuff up, and figure out what it says and if the information is of any use. </p>
<p>As to the business and political side of it, thatâs a no-brainer. So no it is not difficult to understand at all. </p>
<p>As to my âacquaintanceâ, she was obnoxious, rude, and entirely inappropriate. </p>
<p>Let me share something with you that is a whole lot more appropriate: last night, another CC member sent to me a PM containing the profile of a specialist in my exact kind of cancer. She didnât offer to introduce me or offer her name or anything - just - hereâs a physician. Heâs on staff at a major cancer center in a city of interest to me. </p>
<p>So, since I didnât get the memo yesterday and I didnât wise up or get any smarter at this so-called âforeign cultureâ, I sent him the same sort of email, this one ice cold, no intro or reference of ANY recommendation, except that I said another physician in an unrelated field suggested that I reach out to him. </p>
<p>Guess what? One hour ago - on a Saturday evening no less - the doctor actually replied to my email, and copied FOUR members of his staff or rather four other persons in the cancer center, and told them to please contact me and get me in to see him ASAP. </p>
<p>Thatâs the sort of response that blows me away - it far exceeds expectations. (I would have been satisfied with a Monday response of some sort.) No weird fax numbers, no issues, no weirdness, no problems, no bizarre voicemail messages. Straightforward and simple. AND this is a VERY major cancer center - itâs ranked highly on USNWR, and, itâs a far superior institution than the one in central to yesterdayâs issue - and this doctor has quite a CV specific to what Iâm fighting. </p>
<p>Yeah, the bananas with garlic thing? The interesting thing is that you donât taste the garlic - the bananas must neutralize it or somethingâŠI was not expecting thatâŠI actually expected it to taste horrible. WeirdâŠ</p>
<p>Originaloog, thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it. Everything is going to be o.k. though. Might take lots more bananas though :)</p>
<p>LTS,
Some onc practices offer nutritional counseling for people on chemo â to help combat the nausea, maintain stable vitamin/mineral levels, to have good energy, and to just be as healthy as possible.</p>
<p>CountingDown, I havenât found a good resource locally. My onc just says no spicy food, and, in the hospital, my daughter and I went to the oncology resource center, we went through every book and every document there basically just looking for every piece of data we could find that might be of some use but especially looking information on nutrition, and, we couldnât find anything at all. </p>
<p>I read a book last weekend on nutrition for cancer patients, and one of the things that struck me is it said that 40% of deaths in cancer patients are actually caused by malnutrition vs. the cancer itself. I am not sure if this is true or not but I can see how it could become so - especially if any of the side effects of chemotherapy take hold.</p>
<p>Someone did send to me in PM a link to information from Sloan Kettering, and that is outstanding, however, itâs confusing to me how to put together the pieces of information about various herbs, vitamins, etc. Iâm having to really, really study it, and it is hard to make sense of what to buy. For example, green tea is supposed to be an antioxidant, but, there are like 40 varieties of green tea. How to know which one offers genuine antioxidizing benefits, and which one is just marketing fluff? </p>
<p>I have an appointment with my oncologist Monday and I am going to have another go at asking him about nutrition.</p>
<p>What a mensch. That responsive doctor sounds awesome. Good luck!</p>
<p>It might help to get a recommendation from a friend for a good nutritionist or health food store that can steer you in the right direction with regard to green tea or other herbal supplements. I make green tea for my H and actually the whole family likes it. I donât think the brand matters too much. My H used to not like the taste, but after giving it to him a few times, he got used to it. We use Lipton green tea.</p>
<p>LTS, I am so glad that you got a positive response this time. This is how it should be for patients.</p>
<p>You want your tea to be as fresh as possible. Teas that are packaged in bags have a shelf-life of only about 6 months. Loose teas, stored properly have a shelf life of up to 2 years.</p>
<p>Just saw this thread. My best wishes to you.</p>
<p>Re the crummy psychiatrist who didnât pay any attention to your prioritiesâŠthere are fabulous professionals out there who specialize in helping cancer patients enjoy greater quality of life and peace of mind. While I was an undergrad, I worked in the lab of an amazing psycho-oncologist (a PhD psychologist) at a great teaching hospital. Her work found great benefits in both quality and length of life from, for example, support-group interventions with other survivors. If you ever decide to seek this type of care, I can tell you first hand that there are practitioners who are very positive, good listeners, and have all the qualities you care about. Good luck!</p>
<p>LTS, that is great news you found a specialist. We found the specialist in lymphoma is much more excited about helping us than general onocologists. (And the experimental clinic doctor is off the chart helpful.)</p>
<p>My husband says there are tons of books on Amazon.com about nutrition for the cancer patient. He wasnât sure which ones to believe. Eating what you crave is a good thing.</p>
<p>LTSâŠYou have been very proactive and I admire you greatly. You have armed yourself with knowledge and are seeking the best resources. I also continue to be awed by the support of CC members not only on this thread with their posts but that a member provided you with the name of a specialist and that you may be able to seek help from that doctor. While CC is amazing in many ways related to college admissions stuff, it is really the members who make it special. You have a big support group right here for you and a big thank you to the member who reached out and gave you contact information for the doctor who specializes in treating your illness. Impressive that the doctor wrote you personally on a Saturday night and Iâm sending positive vibes your way. Youâre full speed ahead and in such a short time have a lot going for you to get to the next step. Good luck and let us know how that goes.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned earlier the book Grace and Grit by Ken Wilbur who relates the journey of his wifeâs cancer. I know the book had quite a bit of information about how she used nutrition to help fight the disease, and I from what I remember, it involved not only supplements, but eating foods in their most natural state. Unfortunately the book was written 1991, so many of the things they tried could be outdated with so much new information out about nutrition. But it demonstrates what a significant role nutrition played in their lives and that it became a life style change, too.</p>
<p>And Iâm sure that doctor would love to know that you shared this story about your interaction with him, because we all know now, that if anyone we know develops a similar cancer, weâre going to be PMing you and asking you for his name as a referral!</p>
<p>Ummmm⊠about antioxidants like green tea and vitamin C: a lot of cancer treatments are oxidants and you donât want to be taking massive doses of anti-oxidants, because you donât want to neutralize the treatments. </p>
<p>You will get a lot of advice from well-meaning non-scientists if you have cancer. For example, I read some garbage recently that purported to be from Johns Hopkins (itâs not) which stated that âdistilled water is acidicâ and therefore bad for you. (Distilled water has a neutral pH by definition.) </p>
<p>FWIW (and itâs free), both my oncologist (chondrosarcoma) and my husbandâs (non-Hodgkinâs lymphoma) recommend âa healthy diet with as few additives as possible, lots of fruit and vegetables, and it canât hurt to eat organic for most of it.â Strangely, they both recommend oatmeal for breakfast, which I think reflects an awareness of the role of fiber in colon cancer. Or maybe they just like oatmeal.</p>
<p>dmd, I think the green tea usefulness has to do with inducing apoptosis, not necessarily its antioxidant properties. That is a valid point about the antioxidants though.</p>
<p>It is always useful to check with oneâs oncologist prior to using any herbal remedies.</p>
<p>A friend and neighbor had non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She combined traditional western medicine with Chinese herbs. She also switched to a vegetarian diet, cut sugar drastically and introduced a lot more yucky stuff (IMO!) like wheat grass juice. I have no idea what the science is behind the decisions she made, but I think the most important thing is that she felt comfortable with them. All I know is sheâs in remission now - itâs been a few years.</p>