Whole-Food Guide for Breast Cancer Survivors (2 page)

In addition, we would like to acknowledge Ralph Moss, PhD, whose writings on cancer have informed so many people, and whose books and website have been a wealth of information that has helped to shape and inform this book.

Several students from Bauman College volunteered to take on various assignments, for which we are most grateful. We send thanks to Gail Gummin, Maria Quintana, Debbie Miller, Tara Miller, Mia Rosingana, Leyla Bilge, and the supertalented Sela Seleska and Laura Halpin, for their valued contributions. Thanks also to Alana Kivowitz of UCSC.

Many thanks to Wendy Millstine and Jess O’Brien at New Harbinger Publications for their help, encouragement, and enthusiasm for this project. Thanks also to Nelda Street for her meticulous copyediting.

I would like to specifically acknowledge my mother, Jane Mann Bauman, who passed away from breast cancer thirty years ago. Her loss prompted me to make a lifelong commitment to helping women with this issue to receive both medical and complementary health care to improve their quality and duration of life.

I am grateful for the love and support of my wife, Chris Clay Bauman, my lifelong sweetheart and partner in health who created the Eating for Health graphic, and to my daughter, Jessica, who is an inspiring young woman and devoted daughter.

Thanks, too, to my colleagues and students at Bauman College and clients at Bauman Nutrition clinic, who are eating and living for health day in and day out, touching the lives of their friends, families, and community both near and far.

—Ed Bauman, MEd, PhD

Sometimes help comes in the form of “virtual angels,” people whom you have never met but who, through the magic of cyberspace, have become friends, guides, and wonderful fountains of wisdom. D’Ann Smith has been one such remarkable angel, along with other cyberspace wisewomen: Marilyn Holasek Lloyd, Karla Jones, Sally Gould, and Carole Berlin.

It is impossible to put together a project of this scope and magnitude without the support of friends and family. Warmest gratitude to Susan Gordon, Margaret Wyles, Miriam Kook, Ken Schulman, Leah Shelleda, and Justin Isaacs for their invaluable feedback and support, with a special shout-out to Deanna Gould, Fran Glushakow Gould, and Jill Arnel, who went the extra mile to help make critical things happen.

Extraordinary thanks are due Mira Dessy, who started as an intern and has become a close friend and colleague, helping with every aspect of writing and editing this book.

Finally, thank you to Julie Preston for being the wonderful daughter, researcher, and editor that you are, and to my husband, Rob Kavet, without whom this book could not have been born.

—Helayne Waldman, MS, EdD

Introduction

Few things are more devastating to a person’s peace of mind than a cancer diagnosis. It brings up fears not only for our own health but also for the well-being of our families, friends, and loved ones. For this reason and because it takes the lives of thousands of Americans every day, cancer has been the subject of intense scrutiny for half a century and has been studied for more than one hundred years.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that cancer is a chronic disease of the genome that can appear in anyone at any time, triggered by genetic predisposition
and
a confluence of interactions with the environment. Yet not everyone with the breast cancer gene develops the disease. Whether a woman avoids developing breast cancer, genetics notwithstanding, has everything to do with a myriad of other factors, including exposure to environmental factors, diet, lifestyle, stress, and more.

Once a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, an inevitable fear permeates her body and mind, and her friends and family are affected as well. Alarming questions emerge:
Why did this happen to me? Why now? How serious is this illness? What treatment will be suggested? What can I do to improve my chances of having a happy and healthy life after treatment? If this cancer goes away, how can I minimize the risk of recurrence?
Too often, some of these important questions go unanswered.

Despite doctors’ best intentions and high level of skill at diagnosing and treating cancer, there is still a great deal that we don’t know about this most frightening of diseases. Fortunately, there is a new movement within medicine that addresses the health of the whole person, not just the presence of cancer. This movement,
integrative oncology
, draws on traditional and contemporary natural health and wellness philosophies in addition to conventional cancer treatment modalities, resulting in a multifaceted approach to supporting the well-being of women with breast cancer.

Prominent among the wellness factors that a woman can proactively address every day of her life is nutrition. Good nutrition is the very foundation of cancer resistance, a vital, life-enhancing component of lifelong tissue growth as well as tissue damage, repair, and recovery. Emphasizing certain foods while avoiding others is a powerful self-care practice, and the healthy food choices presented in this book for that purpose are delicious and satisfying to boot.

For the woman whose life has been turned upside down by a cancer diagnosis and treatment, optimal nutrition is key. This book offers an Eating for Health approach, which supports a healthy liver; digestive, immune, and hormone balance; nutrient sufficiency; and positive genetic expression. We explain the mechanisms of cancer, provide evidence-based information on how to prevent or delay its onset or recurrence, and offer suggestions for supporting sustained recovery. Dr. Bernie Siegel, who, along with his wife, Bobbie, founded the Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP) center in New Haven, Connecticut, articulates the whole-person approach we share. In working with people who have cancer, he writes (quoted in Hughes and Hughes 2006):

…your actions depend on your attitude. If you listen to a doctor who tells you, “You have two months to live,” you can go home and be dead in a week. You just turn off everything. But what if you got angry at the doctor and said, “Who are you to tell me when I’m going to die?” Then you might go home and start fighting for your life to prove the doctor wrong. What a difference! So that’s why I began to learn from people who didn’t die when they were supposed to. They all have stories to tell you. They were not denying their mortality, but they were using it to truly begin to experience life and do what felt good before they died. However, once you’re feeling good, it’s a benefit to your body and the healing process, and this is why we have spontaneous remission. It’s crazy to me that we don’t study success. Somebody has an incurable disease but survives, but we don’t rush to them and say, “How did you manage this?” We just say it’s a miracle.

Our book aims to give women who are dealing with breast cancer instruction and support about risk and diagnosis, both before and after treatment. This information can enable integrative oncologists to share the care of cancer patients with nutrition consultants, natural chefs, and other healing arts and mental health professionals. We seek to create a network of health professionals who provide coordinated nutritional and personal support, elegantly blended with medical treatment.

Nutrition Is Power

The Eating for Health approach to improving eating habits and food choices supports health and contributes to protecting healthy cells from becoming cancerous; it doesn’t claim to be curative. If we assume that cancer is a genetic disorder, our focus is on which foods support cancer-protective gene expression versus which foods promote cancer proliferation. The research on this nutrition-based approach is still emerging, because foods have not been studied as exhaustively as botanical and, especially, pharmaceutical medicines.

Because few researchers have tested the healing power of diet alone for breast cancer, we see the role of food and nutrients as promoting health and peace of mind, and supporting life. Jeffrey Bland, a pioneering biochemist in the field of nutrigenomics, has stated (2010) that fresh, whole plant foods speak to our genes in a language they understand, encouraging them to function in a health-promoting way (more on this in chapter 3). It is logical to conclude that consuming foods that were grown in poor soil, and then overprocessed and blended with chemical additives, colors, and preservatives, is less conducive to health in general due to such foods’ low nutrient content and tendency to arouse inflammation at a cellular level. We will explore this premise in detail in the chapters to come.

Engaging the Whole Person in Healing

For healthy women, this book provides reliable nutritional information that can help you to stay cancer free. If you have had breast cancer, we explain how to use nutrition and lifestyle practices to minimize the chance of a recurrence.

Nutrition for the body comes from food; nutrition for the soul comes from hope, faith, and love. Combining optimal bodily nutrition from fresh, whole foods with soul nutrition from kindness and compassion communicates to our genes that we are committed to making the most of life. Whatever toxicity, trauma, or malnutrition may have contributed to the altered gene expression that we call cancer, these patterns may shift as we surround ourselves with love and good wishes while undergoing treatment. If indeed an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, then our intention is to provide you with information, skills, and Eating for Health guidelines and recipes that you can use to foster vibrant health. May you live a long, full life knowing that the “C” word stands for many things besides cancer, including courage and commitment to change and growth.

A Message from a Survivor

To those facing diagnosis or recurrence, I’m delighted to welcome you to this book by Ed Bauman and Helayne Waldman. Being a breast cancer survivor myself and having worked with hundreds of breast cancer patients over the last fifteen years, I think I have a pretty good idea of what goes through someone’s mind when she is dealing with a cancer diagnosis or is concerned about recurrence. You may first experience some panic and fear, but I hope learning and enlightenment will quickly follow. Everyone who has been through this experience is overwhelmed at first.

If you are currently in a place of panic or fear, it will pass, and you will be ready to move on to educating yourself. The most exciting part about learning about breast cancer is that there is so much to learn, and there are so many aspects of this disease we can take into our own hands to improve our own outcomes. This book provides a road map to these steps.

A lot of information is contained herein, so do not expect to read this book as quickly as you might read a book-club selection. Go through this book at a pace that’s comfortable for you; you may sometimes have to put down the book and pick it up the next day where you left off. The book isn’t going anywhere, nor is the information. Take your time with the material, reading and rereading the parts that pertain especially to you.

The speakers who come to my conference each year and the authors of this book talk a lot about
biochemical individuality
, which means that some risk factors discussed here may pertain to you and others may not. The point of individualized care and self-care is to recognize and understand your individual differences and to work with them first and foremost. So concentrate on the chapters that call your name. There is no right or wrong way; there is your way. Making informed decisions is what works best.

It may help to take notes along the way on issues you may want to discuss with your practitioner. I encourage you to discuss what you read with your practitioner to get his or her perspective and to share yours (you are
so
important to the decision-making process). The “To Do” list at the end of each chapter is your guide to taking action. Refer to each list as many times as you need to help put your personal plan in motion. The material will become second nature to you before you know it. Refer to the appendixes for all sorts of backup information, such as pantry lists, recipes, and suggested testing. This is not a one-time read; rather, it is a resource that you can refer to again and again. Remember that the “Last Word” sections are all from women who have successfully taken the same journey as you—women like me.

Finally, I suggest using this book not as a stopping place, but as a jumping-off place. Find areas that are relevant, and follow up with your own research. There’s nothing more empowering than walking into your practitioner’s office with a wallop of data, and an open and curious mind. Best of luck on your journey from one who has been there and back!

—
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REAST CANCER SURVIVOR, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF THE
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1.
Reviewing Traditional Risk Factors

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.

—Louisa May Alcott

Chapter Goal: Review well-known risk factors

Learning how to sail your ship is what this book is all about. Amid the troubled waters of a breast cancer diagnosis or the risk of one, there is great hope, because every year, we learn more about sailing our ships.

In this first chapter, we’ll start by reviewing risk factors that have been well documented over the past several decades. Except where otherwise indicated, all of the data contained in this chapter were provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) (2011) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) (2011b). Some of these risk factors cannot be changed. In subsequent chapters, however, we’ll look at more recently discovered risk factors and their profound implications. These new discoveries are especially exciting, because they are
modifiable risk factors
, meaning that your
own
dietary and lifestyle choices can have a profound impact on your ability to modify your risk level. And that’s great news to anyone with concerns about breast cancer.