It's been a year since this healthy, happy-go-lucky wellness guy was admitted to the hospital for urgent exploratory surgery to remove what was discovered to be a malignant tumor the size of a baseball. The "anniversary" has prompted me to get back onto my writing horse and share some insight. I have to admit that the incident quashed my desire to blog about health. "Who would want wellness advice from a guy who got cancer?" was my fear.
The good news, praise God, is that the cancer hasn't spread, and I'm 100% back to normal - or at least how I was before. So what have I learned, and what am I doing differently you may ask?
Let me remind you that my views come through the prism of natural health. More than ever, I'm convinced that the cures to everything that ails us is available in nature. The adage that food is medicine means a lot more to me now. This is why I ignored my doctor's and oncologist's advice to go on an adjuvant (that's medical lingo for preventative) oral chemo treatment.
While I can just hear the "oooo's" from my readers for how brave I was, let me admit that this experiment would have ended, and I would've undergone chemo had any tumors returned. That was my deal with the hot brunette. Without turning this into a spiritual piece, I would like to give God the credit for keeping me well and thank all of you for praying for me. You're awesome!
A disappointing discovery from the recovery process is that no one knows where that ugly baseball thing came from. Don't get me wrong, I have wonderful doctors, and I'm not knocking them for their lack of a causative narrative for how this happened - but they just don't know. The only concrete advice I received from my GP was to avoid simple sugars and keep my immunity up. "Our immunity begins in the gut" he told me. So he suggested two over-the-counter supplements: Align and Emergen-C. So I'm taking those (actually I'm taking Ester-C because Wal Mart didn't have Emergen-C - but it's the same stuff). Align is a probiotic and the Ester-C is a (you guessed it) vitamin C supplement intended to boost our immunity. Incidentally, I still take an omega-3 (fish oil) supplement, and a daily multivitamin.
While I'm following through on my doctor's limited advice, I'm not really convinced that those products are all I (we) need. Fact is, I ate plenty of yogurt and occasional fermented vegetables, both good sources of the healthy bacteria we need, and I avoid antibiotics - so my gut flora should have looked like an overstocked greenhouse. As for the vitamin C supplement, I was taking (and hawking) a daily multivitamin that had a good dose of C and my diet included decent quantities of fresh fruit and veggies.
Another minor modification has been the addition of more organic produce. You may have read The Dirty Dozen piece about the worst produce to buy due to the pesticide residues. As a result, the hot brunette and I (and the dog Grace)
have adopted the habit of going to the Bradenton Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. Here we can talk to local farmers who claim to grow their stuff without poison. It's a treat to be shopping outdoors in the winter in Florida (my Northern friends are sooo jealous). Plus, it's pretty cool to know who grew your food.
Having promoted organic here, I'll still eat non-organic fresh produce over no produce - advice that's generally accepted among the wellness authors I follow. I don't think I'll ever be able to make the claim that I'm 100% organic. Am I doomed? I don't think so. So what's missing?
There was this one piece of advice that had always intrigued me, but one I never explored. I mostly heard about it in Dr. Mercola's newsletters. With virtually every natural course of treatment he suggests, he includes three items. Two of his recommendations are pretty old school: get lots of rest and plenty of sunshine. Those of you who know me well have seen me hit the sheets by 9 pm a lot of nights, and I keep a pretty good Florida tan, It was his other recommendation I ignored: eat according to your metabolic type (he later started using the term nutritional type) . I didn't know what that meant.
After hearing that advice repeatedly, I finally bought the book The Metabolic Typing Diet by William Wolcott and Trish Fahey. BTW, the concept of metabolic typing is catching on with many health practitioners like Mercola. However, the terms "metabolic type" and "metabolic typing" are trademarked by Healthexcel, Wolcott's research and consulting operation so that Mercola calls his version "nutritional typing". Sorry if that info seemed useless.
Anyway, I read the book. It makes some mind blowing claims about improving our health and avoiding disease by simply changing how we eat. I liked this. The concept certainly marries well with my holistic approach to health. In fact, I'd call their "product" the best approach to wellness I'd ever read. Unfortunately, the process of determining your type gets a bit cumbersome. Terms to define in the diet like the sympathetic or parasympathetic branch of our autonomic nervous system and oxidative rates seemed pretty abstract. So I never followed through on the advice. Then I got sick.
In my search for answers after getting sick, I pulled the book off the shelf. With a little more skin in the game now, I paid more attention to the content, took the test, and discovered I'm a "mixed" type. The alternatives are protein or carbo types. What this means is my body best responds to fuel that includes protein and carbs and fat. I know that sounds pretty elemental ("Does the book say you need oxygen, too?" you quip.)
Well, as simple as it sounds, following that recommendation has helped. So for example, I avoid eating carbohydrate foods like an apple unless I combine it with some protein. It's not always possible, but with some planning, I can have a mixed meal or snack anytime. The benefit of this trick has been reduced sugar cravings.
More than anything else different in my diet has been the reduction of sugar. For the first few months after surgery, I eliminated sugar. A year later, I've gotten a little sloppy with the ocassional cookie, cake, or candy (holidays are evil that way); but things like sweet tea, Coke, and after dinner desert are pretty much gone. In a future piece, I'll share the results of my PET scan which I hope will spook you away from sugar too.
Another benefit of eating according to my metabolic type is I feel full longer, and I have absolutely no fear of saturated fats (butter, raw milk, beef, eggs). The book explains why. I've just begun to explore the application of the book's content with my Saturday morning small group so I expect more breakthroughs to come. I'll keep you posted.
You shouldn't have to ask, but yes I'm still exercising - not as much as I'd like. I've embraced one of Covert Bailey's top 25 fitness tips: #24 If you exercise more than 45 minutes 5 days a week, you aren't doing it for fitness sake.
The only other piece of advice I can offer is one that I've had posted on my website for years: avoid as much food with a UPC code as you can.
Are you in?
