https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/junk-dna-may-help-yeast-survive-stress image by Steve Gschmeissner
If it wasn’t enough to endure yet another surgery, a month of antibiotics left my already radiated body with yet more yeast.
The good is I made several discoveries.
One, you ever hear of post nasal drip? Well I had this on and off for many years. It came back again during radiation. Little did I know, radiation wipes out your gut flora. Even if you only have radiation to one part of your body.
Killing yeast in your body is no easy task.
My yeast had gotten to the point where I was having night sweats and fevers. As soon as I started Candicin by Genestra my night sweats went away and fever never came back.
Unfortunately, this alone wasn’t strong enough. I then went on to try caprylic acid, MCT, olive leaf, Candibactin by Metagenics at night. After 3 months I had improved a lot but still it kept coming back.
Diet is also another important aspect but not entirely.
After 2 years of trying everything I could find, I received advice from a health food store, they recommended ParaGone instead of focusing on Candida related products, especially after having this issue for so long.
Guess what?! It worked.
For 6 weeks I didn’t change my diet drastically just maintained no gluten, no white processed foods (white rice), and no dairy. I still had honey and some other sweets in small amounts. I took a 2 week course of ParaGone and took a 5 day break before starting another 2 week course. I use garlic supplements and probiotics to maintain the balance now and feeling better than I have in 2 years.
This is what I followed. It helped me get back to basics.
Water
Drinking water should be distilled / or reverse osmosis. I did the for about 2 years. After which I switched to a filter that removed all the usual plus fluoride.
Avoid plastics, especially water bottles.
Filter your bath and shower water. Your skin absorbs more water than you can drink.
Food & Eating
Intermittent fasting aim for 13-16 hours every day. A must!
Mediterranean diet is an overall healthy diet mainly whole fruits and vegetables with very occasional beef, lamb, or dairy (once a month or less). This is perhaps one of the safest diets and has data to prove longevity.
Ketogenic diet I have to mention this diet, ONLY because it is a hot topic. But after 6 months on the Keto Diet my cancer started growing faster. SO take caution, this diet is only for some cancers while and specifically only studied while on treatment. It is not ideal off of treatment and for long term use. Get keto strips to check your body for keytones. The beginning is hard, you will feel terrible. After 2 months your body will become accustomed to keytones and will not show on the strips anymore. By that point you will be able to tell by your sleep and energy levels if you are still in ketosis.
To eat meats or not? If you do stick to: Grass-fed beef or lamb. Very occasionally. Pastured eggs and chicken. Limited. Eat wild fish, salmon is best.
Going Vegan. I recommend mainly sticking to a mediterranean / vegan diet to avoid any unwanted animal byproducts. However, make sure you body can assimilate omega 3’s and other essential nutrients, if your like me my body cannot break down omega 3 from chia seeds or other vegan products so I need to supplement with fish oils or eat fish.
Organic fruits and vegetables only. Pesticides must be avoided as much as possible.
Very low carbohydrates and starches. This includes quinoa, millet, brown rice, beans, spelt bread, potatoes, yams.
Absolutely no dairy. Use organic unsweetened coconut milk, other dairy milks are too high in carbohydrates and additives. Or try making your own almond milk. Just soak almonds overnight in filtered salted water. Rinse, remove skins and place in high speed blender with water.
Soy products must be organic non-GMO. There is a lot of controversy around soy, so just keep things in moderation.
No caffeine. Stick to green tea for a boost, chamomile, peppermint, or ginger.
Aim to keep your urine alkaline 7.0. Use test strips to check your urine first thing in the morning and through out the day. If you are unable to get your body to a consistent alkaline state with food, then start off every day with drinking sauerkraut juice on an empty stomach. The shift will take about 2 months. Remember cancer releases lactic acid and like attracts like. Sauerkraut juices are high in lactic acid and help remove excess acid from the body.
Exercise
15-20 mins of cardio exercise daily – rebounding is best for lymphatic drainage. Whatever exercise you choose you must work up a sweat.
In addition to cardio, aim for 10,000 steps a day or more on top of cardio exercise.
Sleep & Rest
Sleep by 10-11pm and aim for 8 – 10 hours sleep. This is crucial for healing, as the liver works to clean the body from 11 to 3am.
Rest. Outside of exercising the other time should be spent resting.
Take care of yourself as you would a baby.
Detoxification
Keep a high body temperature. You can do this through taking hot baths in filtered water, using an infrared mats or infrared sauna daily.
Remove toxicity. This includes eating clean, stress, people, thoughts/emotions.
Stop any bad habits. Smoking, drinking, working long hours…
Emotional healing. Work on healing past emotions through therapy. Look for practitioners that heal past emotions using tapping or through healing journeys.
Aim for 2 to 3 bowel movements daily. You want to keep things moving. Eating a high fibre diet will help get things moving along with drinking plenty of water. Another aid, is using far infrared heat, this helps stimulate the bowel especially in the morning. I also recommend enemas, to help keep things moving and cleared out. To start do a 10 day enema detox and then maintain 2 times per week. See The Famous Coffee Enema for details.
Spend time in nature gaining negative ions. You can do this by walking barefoot on grass, resting by trees or being on water.
Daily Supplementation Backed by Research
Firstly, always take breaks from your supplements and change them up. If you have had or live with cancer, your cancer will learn them and start to ignore them… rotating your supplements every several months will help avoid this. When ever possible try getting your nutrients from food rather than through supplements.
Vitamin D3 with K2 – 20 mins of sun a day on skin, face and eyelids, if no access to sun use 3000 UI per day. Get a blood test to check your vitamin D levels, if low increase supplementation until they reach the high normal range.
Modified Citrus Pectin, PectaSol-C by ecoNugenics – 15 grams daily. Shown to help combat cancer from spreading pre-and post- surgically and keeps your electrolyte balance and potassium levels up.
Vitamin C – 2000mg with bioflavonoids daily minimum and high-dose vitamin C IVs minimum 50,000mg via vein or if you have a port-line higher doses are more beneficial. A blood test is required before starting. This works to boost your immune system and is cytotoxic to cancer cells. However, the benefit is lost when you stop.
Mushrooms – not all mushrooms are equal, look for high beta-glucans, 30% or more.
Resveratrol – Found on skin of grapes this is shown to combat cancer.
Curcumin – CurQFen – combats inflammation associated with cancer.
CoQ10 – must be ubiquinol form – increases energy and cellular health.
Zinc – minimum 25mg – 50 mg daily immune function and healing.
Vitamin E8 – 400mg cellular health and healing.
Selenium 200mcg as essential as magnesium. Take 2 brazil nuts daily or supplement. Shown to work synergistically with tamoxifen to increase efficacy of the drug.
Probiotic taken before bed and should contain Bacillus Subtilis gut health is your foundation for cellular health. Include fermented foods as sauerkraut in your diet as prebiotic nutrition.
Digestive enzymes – Hypo-Zymase by Physica Energetics with each meal or minimum with dinner. Get this from your naturopath.
Melatonin 15-20 mg time-released an hour before bed – build up from 3mg over time and stick with what you can tolerate, for me 15mg is my maximum more than that and it wakes me up. Shown to inhibit breast cancer cells and works synergistically with tamoxifen.
Magnesium 400 – 600mg daily 10pm essential for health and wellbeing.
Calcium D-Glucarate part of your daily detox regime.
BioResponse DIM/ or I3C– 400mg daily – shown to reduce breast cancer risk and recurrence. If you have low testosterone levels I caution with DIM. This lowers testosterone and increases oestrogen levels. Many are not aware of this!
Alpha-Liopic Acid – Detoxes heavy metals in the body, start with 150 – 300mg and build up over time as part of your detox process.
Inositol hexaphosphate(IP6). Good to increase your immune system. Fast to increase your serum lymphocytes counts. One month of use increased mine by .3.
Note: Do not take vitamin B12, Iron, Glutathione, NAC or any precursorto glutathione unless this is part of your treatment plan. These can drive cancer not every naturopathy or physician knows this so do your research.
Hand Picked European Mushrooms from the Tatras by Lindsay
β-glucans are the most important aspects to look for when sourcing mushroom supplements.
β-glucan is higher in mushroom extracts from “fruiting body” than the more commercially known mycelium”.
Many supplements use extracts from “mycelium”, which are significantly less in β-glucan than fruiting body extracts!
It is also extremely important for mushrooms to be cultivated in their natural environments.
Each mushroom has a particular source in which it likes to grows on. Some only grow on birch bark, while others on moss or manure.
Cultivated mushrooms on the other hand, are typically grown on rice or cereal grains, depleting β-glucan by more than 50%.
We should also consider increasing absorption of mushroom extracts.
Vitamin C or ascorbic acid should also be taking in combination with the extracts to increase absorption.
Mushrooms are a powerhouse to our immune system and in order to make sure you are getting the maximum benefit, use the quick list below next time you are looking for mushroom supplements.
Checklist:
Also look for mushroom extracts from “fruiting body”
Take your supplements with Vitamin C
Source your mushrooms from North America or Europe to reduce toxin exposure
Eat plenty of fresh mushrooms from organic sources in your diet
I am a very deep and good sleeper but anything can throw me off as my body is so hyper-sensitive.
The one thing I have learn’t over the last year is nothing is more important than good sleep! I am very mindful during the day of what will help me get good sleep.
At the top of my list is being careful about what I put into my body past 4pm. Supplements and medications can activate the body so profoundly that you just are mentally too active to sleep. So as a general rule, I finish all my supplements before 4pm and avoid green tea or 100% cacao. If you a supplement, it’s better to wait until the next day.
Next is keeping my sleep environment cool and relaxing. It should be as zen as possible, with calming colours and no distractions, as cellphones, televisions or clutter.
Keeping my body at a cooler temperature before bed. This means no Far infared saunas before bed or taking any medications that heat the body. Far infared heats the body for 8 hours after an hour of use. So make sure you have enough time to cool down before sleeping.
This has been the most challenging for me: sleeping at the same time and by 10pm every night. I do try, but this is a difficult one for me. At the very least I have started waking up at 8am everyday… more work to do in this area.
Supplements that really help with sleep are magnesium, melatonin, probiotics, vitamin C, and GABA. I take these, with or without GABA, an hour or more before I head to bed.
Teas. Lemon balm, lemongrass, and chamomile are at the top of my list. Try to have them at least an hour before bed… otherwise they wake you up to go to bathroom…
Bed time activities. Reading a spiritual “book” before bed as the Bible really helps your mind shut down and gives you some food for thought, keeping you attention above yourself or your situation.
Stopping electronic use 1 hour before bed. Need I say more… I think we hear enough about this one.
Enough exercise during the day. I find if I have not done at least 60 minutes of moving around during the day, I have a hard time sleeping. Aim to do your cardio in the morning and keep it to walking closer to bed time.
Too full or too hungry. If you are doing intermitted fasting as I am, I find that I can’t sleep if I am hungry so I have my last meal by 8pm and first by noon. This way I am not hungry before I sleep.
Dark sleeping area. Block out light as best as you can. There are some good drapes out there, and even better… get to bed early and wake up with the sun.
There are 4 basic aspects to epidemiology: figuring out the cause of the disease of concern, the incidence or frequency (how often it occurs), distribution (who it affects and where), and ways to control or treat the disease.
Of anything I have ever studied, breast cancer seems to be the most vaguely touched on when it comes the “cause”. As far as my physicians are concerned the cause is not important, it’s getting rid of it that is.
However, if we are truly offering individualized care, as it so clearly says on the side of the hospital I have been attending, then as an epidemiologist, in order to prevent a disease we must know the cause for each person in order to prevent recurrence. Even more importantly what we learn from these individuals we can extrapolate to family practice to prevent our society from ever getting cancer. This to me, is what continues to attract me to epidemiology and what I feel is my responsibility to others.
As a side note, one huge missing link is getting this information back to primary care providers… so that we can prevent the disease from occurring. In my opinion, family medicine should require more years of training and also should be defined or sub-specialised in terms of male or female, and age. With the amount of information that is out there it is virtually impossible for a family doctor to be able to help keep society healthy with so many differing variables.
I do not see individualized care when it comes to breast cancer and I don’t see anything being done in regards to prevention.
There are many such “approved” tests available, that still at the doctors discretion are employed; as OnchoType Dx, a test that examines a sample of your tumour post surgically to assess whether the risks of chemotherapy out weight the benefits.
For me it was crucial to understand the cause of my disease. This is truly the only way to prevent it.
Cancer is not simple and there is definitely more than one contributing factor in order to develop this disease, but knowing the triggers can help you take control from ever being sick again.
From my research there where several tests that led me to understand how I developed breast cancer including emotional manifestations that impact these ‘weaknesses in my DNA’, when I didn’t have any of the ‘so called’ associated risks: smoking, drinking, BRCA1/2 gene mutation, and family history.
So then how did I get this? A relatively young 40 year old women. I would have also included healthy, but for me there were so many warning signs from the age of 20 that to me I didn’t feel healthy, even though doctors would have described me as healthy.
At first glance I thought the best place to first look was at my hormones,
considering I was diagnosed with estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) positive cancer. The dutch test, is the only test I would recommend for hormone investigation. This test on me clearly showed that my hormones had taken a walk down a dangerous path that would make them carcinogenic. However, they also showed that my testosterone was low which is caused by increased cortisol levels. Combined with my years of insomnia, I knew this was correct and one very crucial piece of the puzzle in learning about my risk factors in developing breast cancer.
Second, was understanding my body’s genetic capabilities.
This can be done though DNA testing from 23andMe or Ancestry.com and then requesting the raw data and sending it to your naturopath to analyse in PureGenome free software.
After learning that I am unable to methylate estrogen, it become clear to me that my cancer could be prevented through B vitamins, magnesium and other supplements that encourage detoxification of hormones as Indole 3 Carbinol, Calcium D Glucarate, glutathione, and a diet rich in cruciferous vegetables.
Knowing all this, I feel it is important to educate other women in hopes they can avoid ever having to walk this path…
