Hemorrhoidal bleeding is anxious, but relatively benign and not urgent. The spill returned her attention to her son’s imminent childbirth.
When the bleeding continued after childbirth, she noticed something was wrong, but she visited several different doctors to convince her to do it. Finally, nine months after the birth of her son, and after seeing many doctors thereafter, Spill was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. This is a disease that has become more and more common among young people in recent years.
Initially, Spill was said to be facing surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. This is a series of treatments that make it impossible for another child to become pregnant. But when that happened, her doctor discovered she was eligible for a clinical trial of a new immunotherapeutic treatment.
The treatment remitted her cancer.
Now she says. “I can live my life. I love every day. To be honest, it’s just a miracle.”
As she progressed past diagnosis and treatment, the question of how to live healthy, the most helpful way to keep cancer away, came to the forefront. For Spill, that meant focusing on her diet first and foremost.
Her oncologist told her to reduce lean meat and cold cuts, and she made those changes. But spill wants to do more. And her instinct is good, says Joseph Foyerstein, MD, an assistant professor at Columbia University in New York City and an integrated physician in Connecticut.
It is difficult to conduct diet-based clinical trials, many cancers can develop over a long period of time, and it is difficult to definitively point out the factors that promote or slow the growth of cancer.
That said, Dr. Feuerstein said the evidence so far points to three key points regarding nutrition and cancer: inflammation, epigenetics, and, in the case of immunotherapy, additional diet-related opportunities. I have.
“An inflammatory diet is more likely to cause cell turnover and can lead to abnormal cancerous cells,” he said, saying that an anti-inflammatory diet may prevent it to some extent. I have.
In addition, according to Feuerstein, studies show that epigenetic effects (environmental factors such as food) can switch off genes that contribute to the formation of cancer. Finally, Feuerstein says there are certain foods, such as immunotherapy, that down-regulate the cellular signals that cause cancer cells to grow. Translation: Immunotherapy and diet are mutually beneficial.
Feuerstein talks about an ideal anti-cancer diet with Spill, Rachel Wong, and RD, who provide oncology patients with nutritional therapy from diagnosis to survival at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, DC, and chef Daniel Green eats a healthy diet. I specialize in it. Transform their dietary insights into three anti-inflammatory plant-based fiber-rich recipes.
