My Strategy

One of things that is a challenge for me with myeloma is that it is generally an older person cancer and most of the data out there is based on someone much older than I am. The median age for myeloma is 66-70. Only recently has it been showing up in younger people.

I’ll confess that I’m a bit of a data/numbers/stats person. How do I know if a certain set of data points are the way they are because it’s just myeloma or it’s because it’s off of someone who’s 70? The answer is, I don’t.

Most of the oncologists I’ve talked to like to say, “You’re young, you can take it”. Umm gee thanks, I get extra drug abuse because I’m young and can take it???? It’s a fine line between dying of myeloma and dying from drugs meant to kill myeloma. I like to keep that in mind.

The 5 year survival rate for myeloma is about 40%. Obviously, like most people, I want to be on the side of the 40% that is still alive. I want to be a myeloma person who is still alive in 10 years, 15 years, 25 years. 

What’s my strategy to achieve that? A strategy that I believe can help a person who is any age.

By doing what is good for my body, down to the cellular level and bad for cancer. It’s funny how things that are really good for us are also good at getting rid of cancer cells (and other chronic illnesses, I might add).

The biggest foundational piece to health is diet. Without a healthy diet, as the first building block, it’s hard to have success with anything else. Everything builds off of food and drink. It’s easy for me to point to having a poor diet as part of the reason I’m in this mess to begin with.

Feed your body nutritional food that is GOOD for you and don’t feed yourself food that is good for cancer growth. It’s just common sense if you think about it.

NF-KB is the primary pathway for growth in Myeloma, regulating inflammation and immune responses. Doesn’t it just make good practical sense to eat an anti inflammatory diet as to not give myeloma what it needs to grow. We know sugar, dairy, highly processed foods, meat and alcohol are inflammatory for the body and feed cancer cells.

1. I choose an anti inflammatory diet that is plant based whole food which is anti cancer. Food that is full of life/prana/qi and not something that expires 6 months from now.

Some people call a whole food diet, full of vegetables and fruits, legumes, healthy grains and healthy fats extreme. If you stop and think about it, I eat the same way as my great grandparents did and every generation before them. Does that sound extreme? If you had a time machine and went back in time to the 1800’s and asked someone if they have an extreme diet, they would look at you like you were crazy. In fact, I eat better then my great grandparents, because I have access to so much more variety. Only ignorance holds people back.

2. Next, I make sure that I drink purified water. You only have to glance at the news to read about stories of toxic water in whole towns (Flint MI, South Shore KY etc.) that is undrinkable. The local governments come out and say “my bad”, leaving you to deal with the fallout. I use a RO water filter currently. We have pretty good water here in California, but when we change the filters, they are really disgusting. Filter your water!

3. There are basically two thoughts of dealing with cancer, killing it with chemotherapy, surgery or radiation or to block it metabolically (starve it). Metabolically makes the most sense to me, since cancer cells are just your cells gone wrong and I can’t kill my blood without killing myself effectively. Truthfully, I’ve been hammering away at this metabolically and I haven’t been able to get the results I want. The best I got the oncologist to say is “Your myeloma isn’t behaving as expected. You are a high risk patient who is behaving like a standard risk patient”.

I’m currently mixing both worlds of chemo and metabolic blocking. I do take supplements such as Curcumin, Reishi, D3/K2 among other things that inhibit myeloma growth (they inhibit other cancers as well).

4. “Sitting is the new smoking”, they say. Move your body! I stay active everyday, walking, hiking, gardening, bike riding and Qigong. Some say cancer is cause by stagnation of the body, in areas that lack oxygen. Exercise has lots of benefits such as increased oxygen, blood flow (looking at you revlimid non-blood clots), increased heart rate, plus it can get you out of your own head!

5. Speaking of heads, I’m pretty sure I suffered some sort of ptsd with the cancer diagnosis. I took me a couple of years working through stuff to overcome it. It was a big growth experience for me. Getting out raw emotions, breathing techniques and meditation is what worked for me. I still keep up with pranayama and meditation daily for upkeep.

I have had plenty of seemingly one sided conversations with God. One of the things that I’ve gotten back is, an overwhelming sense that I’m meant to go through this (for reasons that are still a mystery to me), so that is very reassuring for me.

6. Detoxing. I’ve spent a significant amount of time working on detoxing my body (and mind). I done detoxing methods from naturopath methods and I’ve gone to India twice for a major full body detox called Panchakarma, which is a month long process each time. I’ve definitely had some raunchy stuff come out of me. Of course we live in a toxic world and I’m continually having toxins come in no matter how much I avoid it. I use diet and infrared sauna to keep on moving things out that aren’t supposed to be there.

To sum up my strategy, I do what is good for me and bad for cancer. Using chemo when I need it (trying to stay away from it as much as possible). Keep moving and living. Hit the myeloma with certain supplements. Keep working on my head and remembering why I want to keep living.

Eat Your Vegetables!