Spirituality and diet

Diet and stress are risk factors for many cancers plenty of evidence for that.  Once you have the cancer the evidence is less conclusive but I think fasting is a promising avenue..

Please keep in regular contact. Anything that can help is worth consideration

There's a journalist called Jenni Russell who wrote about her years of illness with Crohns Disease being ended by part time fasting. She wrote of someone called Dr Valter Longo who was writing a book on the subject and his meals that fooled the body into thinking it was fasting.  His work is mainly about longevity but he's worked on immune system regeneration.

Here's an extract from Jenni Russells article from 2015.  It's behind The Times paywall.

'In the last few years diabetes researchers have found that the disease can be cured by a daily 
600-calorie diet for eight weeks. Longo’s own earlier research indicates that fasting is as effective as chemotherapy in treating cancer. Combining the two, fasting just before and after treatment, increases the efficacy of chemo by up to 40 per cent while minimising side-effects. Cancer cells cope badly with being simultaneously poisoned and starved. But normal cells gain protection, because fasting closes the pathways that let toxins in. Since a fifth of all cancer-related deaths are due to the effects of chemo, this may be a major breakthrough.'

Sums it up:
https://sperlingprostatecenter.com/the-excitement-of-intermittent-fasting-and-you-thought-not-eating-was-boring/

I have binned breakfast to try and get ketatosis every day but you have to watch the urge to eat unhealthy !!

Thanks Chris for your question, which has made me dig a bit deeper as I work through how best to fight the stuff showing up on my scan. A bit technical, but this summarises what I found
“An overview on the role of autophagy in cancer therapy

Autophagy is a highly regulated catabolic process through which cells recycle their own constituents by delivering them into lysosomes. Several studies have demonstrated that autophagy plays a wide variety of physiological and pathophysiological roles in cells. In cancer, autophagy has been described to have paradoxical roles, acting both as tumor suppressor and as tumor promoter. In particular, it may exert different functions in response to cancer therapy, causing cancer resistance or increasing sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drugs and radiation. Therefore, autophagy could provide new means for the enhancement of antitumor drugs and radiation effectiveness.”

So it ain't so simple... My first reaction to the diagnosis was to go on a wilderness trek and a 3 day fast. It was good and what I needed to do at the time.
But now I'm pretty sure that careful consideration is needed about autophagy.
As a thinker, it would take a lot to shift me from seeing us all as “Universe experiencing Itself”. That includes the NHS and medical expertise, but my personal conscious and unconscious experience of my physical body is also “part of the great scheme of things”.

So for me, fasting as part of the fight will be directed by what some would call “my inner voice” and what I “hear” arising out of the prayer and meditation I have been in since I was a teenager.

Edited by member 08 Oct 2018 at 08:52  | Reason: bold and layout

Hi Barcud/David.

This testimony relates back to your original theme on this thread of fasting. I have just had my second session of chemotherapy. Following my first session I experienced 9 bad days of a racing heart, throbbing head, extreme fatigue, and almost total loss of taste. I believe that some of this was connected to the dosage of steroids that were administered alongside docetaxel and some was also possibly the docetaxel dosage itself. After 9 days I began to 'recover'. I reported this back to my oncologist who reduced both dosages slightly. Being a guitarist, I was also extremely worried by the neuropathy symptoms that I was experiencing. I did a bit of research and discovered that fasting was recommended as a possible method of alleviating chemotherapy side effects. Something released by the brain in reaction to food deprivation apparently causes healthy cells to temporarily shut down their ability to ingest anything. This allegedly to some extent protects them from cancer drugs. Cancer cells apparently don't shut down in the same way and continue to be affected. Hypothetical result, far fewer chemotherapy side effects. Well, I am now on day 3 of my second chemotherapy cycle and my experience of this cycle so far has been markedly different. Whereas I spent large chunks of the first three days of my last chemo round in bed exhausted I feel fine this time. No extreme lethargy, no heart racing, no thumping head, no loss of taste. So far, so good. I have also learnt a fair amount about myself. I wasn't at all sure that I'd be able to fast, that I'd have the mental strength. I was also fearful that it would prove very uncomfortable. In the practice of it it actually presented very few problems. I lived on water and unsweetened ginger tea and was fine. I will keep you in the loop as to how this cycle progresses, but so far, the results have been startlingly good.

Very best wishes,

Jonathan x