I decided as part of my journey that I would take the 9 key factors as researched and compiled by Dr. Kelly Turner in the New York Times bestseller Radical Remission: the 9 Key Factors that Can Make a Real Difference in healing from cancer when conventional doctors have given up and apply them to my life.  Dr. Turner researched the thousands of recorded ‘spontaneous’ remissions, which are ridiculously referred to as spontaneous simply because the patients did not use chemotherapy or radiation.  These people did not do ‘nothing’, they just didn’t heal the conventional oncology way.  I want to share with you how I am applying each one to my journey of balance and self-discovery.  The first thing I need to do is to share with you what those 9 factors that the research subjects had in common:

1. Radically Changing Your Diet
2. Taking Control of Your Health
3. Following Your Intuition
4. Using Herbs and Supplements
5. Releasing Suppressed Emotions
6. Increasing Positive Emotions
7. Embracing Social Support
8. Deepening Your Spiritual Connection
9. Having Strong Reasons for Living

The very first, and I think incredibly important, insight that I want you to notice is that of the 9 factors of thousands of people who healed cancer on their own only 2 are physical changes: diet and supplementation.  Even these 2 factors have a strong mental component, which I’ll share my experience with below.  The other 7 factors are mental, emotional and spiritual.  If that isn’t telling!  We are a society that believes more is better, that hitting something hard and fast and knocking it on it’s ass is the way to deal with disease.  Even the word disease has been lost on us.  Disease is really ‘dis-ease’, meaning the body is ill at ease.  We have too much stress, worry and obsession.  Many of us are ill at ease over something and our bodies communicate with us to express ‘dis-ease’, to let us know that we are not being true to ourselves.  We have even declared a ‘war’ on cancer, something that our very own body produces!  The war must end.  The love of self (including the cancer) must begin.  My feeling, that comes from deep inside of me, is that cancer is a gift, a wake-up call that some or many areas of your life are out of balance and that you aren’t being true to yourself and your desires, and in my case, that I am stunting my joy and purpose.

In each post I will share how I am or have incorporated the wisdom from these beautiful souls into my own journey, fully recognizing that ultimately Divine Source, God, knows what is best for me and that I am at peace with that completely.

Radically Changing My Diet

It is high time that insurance companies start covering nutrition as therapy in healing.  This goes far beyond the food pyramid which is woefully skewed.  It is time to realize that pharmaceutical drugs are not the only healing agents and, in fact, cause a lot of disharmony in the body.  So let me start off by saying that I have known about this one since 2010 when I started working with Dr. Mark Mincolla.  Dr. Mincolla gave me an anti-inflammatory diet to follow.  For the first month I followed it religiously.  And then I began to cheat here and there.  You see I had no symptoms of a problem!  My willpower was no match for my cravings.  I didn’t go wild, but I folded gluten and hydrogenated oils back into my diet pretty quickly, both of which my body struggles to process.  There were periods over the 6 years in which I stuck more closely to the diet and periods where I did not.  For the second half of 2015 and first half of 2016, I was following the diet about 50% of the time…which just doesn’t cut it.  Not only were my cravings strong but living a social life with evenings out with girlfriends and couples it became frustrating to not be able to kick back and indulge as everyone else was.  It’s not fun to go out and order club soda all the time.  It’s not fun to bypass pizza and ice cream.  I felt the sacrifice, not the love for myself which, if it were strong enough, would propel me to eat what nourished my body not what depleted it!

In May 2016, just over a month before I landed back at the hospital for a craniotomy, my blood work came back positive for cancer.  Dr. Mincolla’s advice was to ‘button up’ on my eating for a month and I’d likely find myself back in the clear, only that advice made me angry and frustrated!  Even being asked to eat cleanly for one month was too much effort for me.  I was not in a good mental place and ready to end my challenge.

Gratefully the crisis came in mid-June.  It began suddenly with the room spinning and vomiting after a Zumba class at the gym and turned into a four day journey to hell with light-sensitive migraines and vomiting.  After that passed I had a few days reprieve before round 2 hit which never fully went away and came roaring back as round 3 by the end of June.  At that point I went for an MRI and discovered there was too much pressure for my brain to manage and thus to the hospital I went…groggily.

When I awoke from surgery I realized quickly that everything had changed.  My cravings for processed food were gone, as was my fear and my sense that this challenge was a chore and a drag.  I awoke realizing what a gift this diagnosis had been, how powerful I truly am and craving vibrant, living food for the first time in my life.  I mean REALLY craving it.  Fake food was so offensive to me that when I ate it, which in the hospital you have very little choice, the surgical site throbbed in pain.  Within a couple of hours I learned that I, and only I, knew what was best for me to eat.  I didn’t need to mentally figure this out, my body through the pain point in my head, was a clear antenna alerting me to foods that raised me up and foods that depleted me.  From there it was easy.  I just followed my newly tuned internal guidance system.  For the first 2 weeks, I had zero appetite for processed food.  As time progressed, the cravings tried to return, but with new willpower and an understanding from my spiritual experience while in surgery that this journey was for my benefit and growth, I easily mastered the cravings.

I realized that for the 6 years I was intellectually on this journey I had looked at my diet changes as a sacrifice, I looked at it through the lens of fear.  This was a fear that if I didn’t follow these diet changes that I would die.  I carried a whole lot of resentment energy around with me every time I stuck to the diet and I carried guilt energy every time I ‘cheated’.  I honestly believe that anything we do through the lens of fear will never help us achieve our goals.  It is only through the lens of love, that I love and value my life enough to feed my body what it needs to thrive, that healing is manifested.  I am mentally, emotionally and spiritually in a place now where I love myself so much that my body is communicating it’s needs clearly to me.  I live in abundant gratitude for that!

So I find myself eating cleanly and enjoying food in a much more meaningful way.  I don’t feel conflicted every time I eat.  I feel vibrant and grateful.  Do I believe that my exact diet changes are needed for everybody to heal?  No.  In fact there is no right diet for everyone, cancer diagnosis or not.  It behooves us to follow the example of cultures that rank high in longevity such as islands of Greece and Japan, but whether it is vegetarian or meat-eating, I think one can thrive.  Those cultures not only focus on food, but also on living slowly, fully present and peacefully.  There is more there than meets the eye.  The universe is one giant field of pulsating energy.  That includes us and the food we eat.  I truly believe that the intentions that we put into our food gives that food power, to hurt us or help us.  Before you eat, bless your food.  Intentionally recognize that you are nourishing the vehicle with which your soul came to play in the theater of life.

Lastly, I want to share with you that I am expanding my approach to include working with a functional medicine doctor.  These are medical doctors that have determined there is more to health than disease symptoms, cutting, poisoning and burning.   They work to balance mind, body and soul and I am eager to get started!  Of curious note, Bill and Hillary Clinton use this very practice I will be working with.  Hope for healthcare in this country perhaps?

As always, I’ll keep you posted…

Gratefully,

Erin