Life after Cancer: Overall Health Plan

Fol­lowed by me to pre­vent recur­rence and/or cure cancer

window Life after Cancer: Overall Health PlanI am not a med­ical doc­tor, only a grate­ful patient who after hav­ing under­gone the removal of a can­cer tumor on my left lung, which implied remov­ing the com­plete upper lobe, is now, after almost 5 years, doing very well.

With­out pre­tend­ing to sub­sti­tute or con­tra­dict any med­ical rec­om­men­da­tions, I am pleased to shared what has saved my life and my qual­ity of life.

The accom­pa­ny­ing doc­u­ment Pro­found Grat­i­tude tells a brief his­tory of my case, thus I will not repeat it here.

I will sum­ma­rize the things that I have found to be very valuable:

1. Vegan Alka­line Diet

The trick here is to com­bine a vegan diet with a diet that helps con­trol the acid­ity in the body. I am very grate­ful that I lost 35 pounds with no effort, feel­ing healthy and well nour­ished. I most regret­fully inform that as I resumed much of my old life style of trav­el­ling and eat­ing out I have gained some of it back. The one rule is plant based food and no ani­mal based prod­ucts (this means no meat or fish, no dairy prod­ucts, no eggs, and avoid­ance of all processed prod­ucts, flour and white rice). Please make sure to bal­ance your pro­tein. I use: Vegan Rice Pow­der, Tofu and the frozen prod­ucts of Qorn, which are made from mush­room stems to ensure a good pro­tein bal­ance, as well as Ultra Meal 360 and Ultra Inflam X 360 from Meta­gen­ics. And by all means con­trol the acidity.

Foods specif­i­cally rec­om­mended for can­cer prevention/cure are:

  1. Broc­colli and other cruciferous
  2. Berries, par­tic­u­larly rasp­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, blackberries
  3. Green leafy veg­eta­bles (the rule the darker the color the better)
  4. Green tea
  5. Apples, make sure not to peel
  6. Gar­lic and onion
  7. High fiber foods: lentils are highly alka­line thus very good
  8. Toma­toes par­tic­u­larly in juice and sauce are rec­om­mended by some studies.
  9. Omega oil (there are good sup­ple­men­tal sources for this)‘

2. Sup­ple­ments

There are a num­ber of stud­ies that indi­cate the value of dif­fer­ent sup­ple­ments. My own list is at the end of this document.

  • Good Breath­ing
  • Large Amounts of Clear Water
  • Meditation/Visualization/Relaxation Exer­cises
  • Exer­cise [par­tic­u­larly rec­om­mended Qgong and/or Pilates]
    While I am not a model on this, I know well its impor­tance. On the ini­tial months I did some Qgong. On recent months I have been walk­ing reg­u­larly 2 miles/day and I have been going to Pilates ses­sions at Pilates of Marin in Corte Madera that has a pro­gram specif­i­cally for can­cer patients. I have found Pilates a won­der­ful experience.
  • Fresh Air / Out­door Experience
  • Grat­i­tude towards all of life’s gifts
  • Pos­i­tive Think­ing and a Lov­ing Atti­tude towards one’s own body.
  • A Good Sup­port Sys­tem, which we our­selves can enhance with good read­ings, good music, the view­ing of out­stand­ing art.

I strongly rec­om­mend the book Anti Can­cer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD. This is the most enlight­ened book I have found on can­cer. The author, both a med­ical doc­tor and a can­cer patient, writes with great clar­ity and sim­plic­ity, mak­ing the most com­plex med­ical issues highly under­stand­able by all. His reflec­tions about his own expe­ri­ence with brain can­cer four­teen years ago are very illu­mi­nat­ing and his sug­ges­tions, not very dif­fer­ent from what I have out­lined, very prac­ti­cal and easy to fol­low. Of par­tic­u­lar use­ful­ness are his dietary recommendations.

My grat­i­tude to Jane Hille­man, the vision­ary edu­ca­tor cre­ator of Amer­i­can Read­ing Com­pany, for the gift of this book.

With the hope that these ideas that have helped me so well will be equally ben­e­fi­cial to you.

Resources

These resources are rather eclec­tic, but they have worked for me, and I’m very grate­ful for all of them. For exam­ple, I found the videos by Loraine Day very use­ful. Yet she is a devout Chris­t­ian who sug­gests that Med­i­ta­tion should not be used. I do not know whether what she calls Med­i­ta­tion is what I call Med­i­ta­tion and do not under­stand why any­one could pos­si­ble oppose it. Thus, with great appre­ci­a­tion and grat­i­tude for what I learned from her and the strength I derived from see­ing her process of heal­ing her­self, Med­i­ta­tion con­tin­ues to be a very impor­tant aspect of my life and heal­ing. I share this to sug­gest that each indi­vid­ual must find their own path.

For guid­ance on sup­ple­ments sug­gested with a great deal of knowledge:

Michael Broff­man
Pine Street Clinic. San Anselmo, Cal­i­for­nia
124 Pine St. San Anselmo, CA 94960 Ph: 415/455‑5878, fax:415/485‑1065
email: contact@pinestreetfoundation.org

For onco­log­i­cal treat­ment that com­bines tra­di­tional med­i­cine and alter­na­tive practices:

Golden Gate Cen­ter for Inte­gra­tive Can­cer Care
Dr. Gar­rett A. Smith, M.D.
UCSF 350 Par­nas­sus Ave. Suite 701, San Fran­cisco, CA 94117
ph: 415/682‑0843, fax: 415/682‑0880

For sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion on the value of a Vegan diet, the book:

The China Study by T. Colin Camp­bell, Ph.D

For Qigong and other Well­ness Exer­cises, and an excep­tional heal­ing experience:

Paul D. Pick­ens II Research Foun­da­tion
Rubbo Inter­nal Arts
Don­ald Rubbo, Pres­i­dent and Cheryl Lynne Rubbo,
Exec­u­tive direc­tor

Classes, Work­shops, Retreats and Pri­vate Appoint­ments
415.456.9095
Web­site: www.CultivateChi.com

Email: info@.CultivateChi.com
They pro­duce a video that can be ordered and prac­ticed at home.

Another use­ful video from a dif­fer­ent source is Strength­en­ing Your Immune Sys­tem Through Mind and Move­ment.

For good breath­ing exer­cises and a beau­ti­ful guided med­i­ta­tion:
The Quan­tum Light Breath­ing by Jeru Kabbal.

For a med­i­ta­tion cre­ated by a med­ical doc­tor with a long expe­ri­ence work­ing with can­cer patients, Dr. Mar­tin Ross­man, author of Cur­ing Can­cer from Within. His book, video and numer­ous CDs can be found by vis­it­ing his web­site:
www.thehealingmind.org
Dr. Ross­man is presently my pri­mary doctor.

For an excel­lent sup­port group, see Heal­ing Jour­neys. [Not to be con­fused with above]

For a video show­ing an exam­ple of a med­ical doc­tor who chose to cure her­self from can­cer through alter­na­tive means:

Can­cer Doesn’t Scare Me Any­more video by Loraine Day

Good inspi­ra­tional read­ings:
My Grandfather’s Bless­ings and Kitchen Table Wis­dom, by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

This has been one of my own per­sonal Sup­ple­ment Sched­ule pro­posed by Michael Broff­man. Each per­son needs his/her own sug­gested by their prac­ti­tioner.  He changed mine from visit to visit so this is just an example.

Before break­fast
Omega 3 Oil [Life exten­sion EPA/DHA]
IP-6 For­mula — 2 caps

Break­fast
Chi­nese Herbal Tea – 2 caps
Saven­taro – 1 cap
Cordy­ceps Extract — 2 caps
Vit­a­min D-3 — 1 cap – 1,000 mg
Ocu­vite – 1 cap
Resveratrol/carbinol/Quercetin – 1cap
Turmeric Force or Life exten­sion SODzyne For­mula – 1 cap
Cal­trate For­mula 1 cap
Glu­cos­samine or Life Exten­sions Arthro­Pro For­mula 2 caps
Mega Green Tea Extract (Life Exten­sion) 1 cap

Mid morn­ing
IP-6 For­mula — 2 caps

Lunch
Chi­nese Herbal Tea – 2 caps
Cordy­ceps Extract — 2 caps
Sele­nium – 1 cap
Turmeric Force or Life exten­sion SODzyne For­mula – 1 cap

Mid-afternoon
IP-6 For­mula — 2 caps
Emer­ald Energy – 1 tsp w/juice

Din­ner
Chi­nese Herbal Tea – 2 caps
Saven­taro – 1 cap
Cody­ceps Extract — 2 caps
Sele­nium – 1 cap – 200 mcg
Ocu­vite – 1 cap
Resveratrol/carbinol/Quercetin (polyphe­nols from red wine grapes)- 1cap
Cal­trate For­mula 1 cap
Glu­cos­samine or Life Exten­sions Arthro­Pro For­mula 2 caps
Mega Green Tea Extract (Life Exten­sion) 1 cap

Bed­time
Mela­tonin — 10mg.

EMERAL ENERGY – DEFENSE

While I am sure all these sup­ple­ments are nec­es­sary and they work well together, and I will not change any of them, unless advised, I find that I can tell the pos­i­tive effects of Emeral Energy – Defense pro­duced by the Pine Street Clinic. It con­tains among sev­eral other prod­ucts: Spir­ulina (Pes­ti­cide Free), Reishi and Shi­itaki mush­rooms, Blue-green algae, Royal Jelly… It’s an amaz­ing product.

ULTRA MEAL360 & ULTRAINFLAMX360 [Metagenics]

Dr. Ross­man has rec­om­mended tak­ing these two excel­lent pow­ders [1 mea­sure of each mixed together with water], accom­pa­nied by 2 tablets of Insi­nase [also from Meta­gen­ics] twice a day [mid-morning and mid-afternoon] with half a cup of blueberries.

I must con­fess it is hard to do all of this. But I have learned to pack my pills in small bags that I carry with me, and do the same with the Meta­genic prod­ucts. Usu­ally I do all the pills faith­fully and man­age to do the Meta­gen­ics at least once a day. But it cer­tainly is not as dif­fi­cult as other processes and the results are fantastic.

Food rec­om­mended by Michael Broffman

  • Alka­line Vegan diet
  • Adzuki beans
  • Apples (includ­ing baked and sauce)
  • Bas­mati rice
  • Black sesame seeds
  • Bur­dock root
  • Car­rots
  • Cher­ries (frozen OK)
  • Chi­nese cabbage
  • Coconut meat
  • Dates
  • Figs
  • Gar­lic
  • Lotus root
  • Mango
  • Pears
  • Peas
  • Pis­ta­chio nuts
  • Rasp­berry (frozen OK)
  • Red or black grapes
  • Shi­take mushrooms
  • Sweet pota­toes
  • Wal­nuts (if you are hav­ing prob­lems con­trol­ling the acid­ity watch out with these)
  • If cheese is eaten occa­sion­ally it should be goat cheese