Eff You Cancer

Do you like the headline? I got it from Tracy Krulik’s blog, I Have Cancer. And I’ve Never Felt Better. I knew I loved her the minute I read it. No matter how good I think I’m doing at any point in my life, there are always people I'm fortunate to connect with who inspire me to push harder, learn more and live better. Tracy is one of these people. Her journey is an incredible testament to the healing power of food.

Tracy is a writer, speaker, cancer survivor, Pilates instructor, recreational cyclist, animal lover, nutritarian and author of the new book, I Have Cancer.And I’ve Never Felt Better. I’m so happy she was willing to guest blog for us today and share her story. I know you’ll adore her as much as I do.

Without further ado, here’s Tracy.

_______________________________________________________________________

Doc: “Tracy, the mass that was on your pancreas two and a half years ago is still there.”

Me: “What mass?”

Doc: “It was on the CT scan back in 2004, but don’t worry. The mass is smaller now than it was back then, so I don’t think it’s cancer.”

That was a startling conversation that I had with my gastroenterologist in 2007. As it turns out, I did have cancer: pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer, to be exact. But why did the mass shrink?

I have a theory: food.

In 2005 my husband and I became vegetarians. We loved animals so much that we said goodbye to the beef and chicken in our fridge and said hello to quinoa, kale and couscous instead.

I had been sick for nine years before that doctor found the tumor growing on my pancreas. After a biopsy two weeks later I found out that I did have cancer, and a few weeks after that I learned that the tumor had metastasized to my liver and chest. My doctor explained to me that once a neuroendocrine tumor spreads outside the primary organ, there is no known cure. (This is the same cancer that Steve Jobs had.)

That was when I realized I could depend on no one but myself to keep me healthy. I would seek out the finest services Western medicine could provide (read: get a top-notch surgeon to remove the primary tumor from my pancreas), and then I would turn to holistic practices to make my body as inhospitable as possible to cancer.

Guess what I learned? Animal-based proteins can promote cancer growth.

I read the book The China Study and learned about children in the Philippines who developed liver tumors after exposure to the carcinogen Aflatoxin. Children from the wealthiest homes developed tumors, but poorer children -- whose families could not afford meats -- remained healthy.

After discovering this anomaly, researcher T. Colin Campbell began experimenting on rats to see if meat truly could have been the cause for the tumors. He dosed two groups of rats with Aflatoxic but then fed one group the milk protein casein and the other group only plant-based proteins.

The milk protein group developed tumors; the plant-based protein group did not.

Next he tried this experiment: Group A gets low amounts of Aflatoxin but high amount of milk protein; Group B gets high amounts of Aflatoxin and only plant-based proteins.

The winner? The milk protein group got liver tumors, and the plant-based protein group got none.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

I’ve since read a couple of other books by a doctor named Joel Fuhrman. Rather than focus on what not to put into your body (i.e. I’m a vegan, so I don’t eat anything that once had a momma.), Dr. Fuhrman focuses on what is good to put into our body (nutrient dense foods such as kale and collard greens). He promotes a nutritarian diet. That’s how I describe myself.

On top of the fact that I’m no longer fueling my tumors with animal proteins, I’m flooding my body with powerful phytochemicals and nutrients found in colorful vegetables, fruits, nuts and whole grains. As one doctor at Johns Hopkins put it, my diet is helping to put my body into balance so that my immune system can fight the disease on its own.

My approach appears to be working quite well. It’s been five and a half years since my cancer diagnosis and almost that long since the brilliant surgeon removed the primary tumor from my pancreas. The metastases on my liver and chest have not grown since we found them in 2007, and I’m in the best health of my life.

So is my food the reason the primary tumor shrunk and the metastases stopped growing? I can’t prove it, but I can tell you one thing for sure. I’m doing what that doc at Hopkins told me to do when he learned about my diet: I’m not changing a thing.

_______________________________________________________________________

You can continue following Tracy’s journey on Facebook and Twitter. You can also order her new book, I Have Cancer. And I’ve Never Felt Better, on Amazon.

Learn more about whole-food, plant-strong living. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.