I’ve spent countless hours behind my screen completely ignoring other responsibilities in my life to figure out how to beat this diagnosis without the use of chemotherapy. I came across a video about the ketogenic diet and how it can work to starve and kill cancer cells, so I thought that’d be a great place to start. The ketogenic (keto) diet is all about cutting sugars and carbohydrates completely out. Although some people use the keto diet to shed weight, I’m using it purely to fight cancer.
Every one of the cells in our bodies feed on glucose, which is what sugar and carbs convert to once our livers process them. It’s what gives us energy and fuels us throughout the day. So what about our healthy cells, are we starving them to? What’s great about our healthy cells, is that they have the ability to convert into ketosis, which is like a built in survival mode that our bodies naturally have giving our cells the ability to feast on our fats instead of our sugars. Cancer cells don’t have that ability to convert into ketosis and therefore have no other choice but to go hungry.
The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is switch to the ketogenic diet. I had no idea how many foods actually have carbs in them, and if you didn’t already know, just about everything has carbs, and the keto diet only allows for a maximum 20 carbs per day. I, like most people LOVE the American diet; bread, fruit, potatoes, rice, tortillas, pizza, ice cream, etc… I found it nearly impossible to meet that standard, but with my determination to beat cancer naturally, I sucked it up and am just doing what I need to do.
Another lifestyle change that I made is to sleep through the night. Being a self employed graphic designer and a creative thinker, I’ve always loved staying up and working through the night because there are way less distractions at night. No phone calls, no text messages, no babies climbing up my leg, no fires that need to be put out, just time to focus on my work, meet my deadlines and then sleep in the morning for a few hours until something wakes me up. So switching to a normal sleeping cycle has been challenging in the sense of work. Especially now with my diagnosis, in addition to the normal daily distractions I mentioned, now I have doctor meetings, scans and blood tests… and more doctor meetings and more scans and more blood tests, not to mention all the time it takes on the phone to make the appointments in the first place. Luckily for me, my wife has really stepped up to the plate and is scheduling all my appointments for me which has allowed me to get my work done. Gotta have that support, thanks babe!
Daily exercise is another lifestyle change that I need to address more of in my life. I’ve always been a highly active guy for most of my life, but with my schedule now the way it is, it’s just been hard to find the time. To help promote my daily activity and monitoring my progress, I went out and bought a fitbit watch that tracks pretty much everything I do. From counting the steps that I take, to tracking my sleep cycles, it tracks my heart rate and water intake, as well as my active minutes. I can set daily goals and so it really motivates me to get up and move, or drink more water, etc… It’s like I can make a game out of it and try to beat old records that Ive set. Now I’m just trying to figure out an activity that will really push me to stretch my goals even further. I’m not really a gym guy, so I’ve been thinking about getting a touring bike and setting a goal that will allow me to train myself up to riding a complete a ‘century,’ which means 100 MILES.
Stay tuned as I’ll be posting weekly updates every Thursday as my cancer journey unfolds, so please stay tuned and if you have any comments or advice for me, please don’t hesitate to comment below.