Merry Christmas Everyone!   Back in a couple of days.  Enjoy the festivities and be safe! 

130. Chemo Sugar: Guilty of More than Just Tooth Decay

Sometimes it feels like I have been living under a rock as far as my own health is concerned.  Take sugar for instance.  While I have been aware of the fact that inflammation is at the origin of many health problems and diseases such as diabetes and cancer for quite some time, I did not know  about the sugar-cancer connection...

During my childhood, when relatives would come over for tea on Sunday afternoons and my mother would serve a variety of pastries, I instinctively refused to eat any of it.  I did not like the taste of the gooey stuff.  My mother and aunts however gobbled it up like there was no tomorrow.  After all, they had survived several years of starvation during the war.  They deserved to have a nice treat, right?  And I was labeled as being "weird".  They could not understand how I did not appreciate such bounty.  And that is exactly the point: humans learned to seek out sweetness because sweet foods were generally safe to eat and it helped them survive lean years of deprivation when calories were difficult to obtain.  In our part of the world, starvation is not usually a problem.  Nevertheless we have developed a sweet tooth to the extend that according to "Sugar" in the National Geographic of August 2013 "the average American consumes 77 pounds of added sugar annually, or more than 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day."  The stuff routinely gets snuck into our food in all sorts of ways.  But we, the consumers, are becoming more and more savvy and I for one, have been trying my darndest to rid our pantry of added-sugar-staple-foods.  I am preparing a lot from scratch again, going back as much as possible to using basic ingredients. 

So when I had a conversation with a physiologist at a recent Christmas gathering, and he heard about me having cancer, the first advice he offered was to cut out all sugar, including natural sugar, as much as possible  because it causes inflammation and it feeds cancer.   But with the festive holidays just around the corner, how easy will that be?

If it interests you, please read: "5 Reasons Cancer Cells and Sugar are Best Friends" on www.beatcancer.org    Click on link below.

https://beatcancer.org/?s=5+reasons+cancer+cells+and+sugar+are+best+friends

The above ad dates from 1966.  Back next week.  Happy Holidays!  SanTeh! 😋  

129. Chemo What a Difference a Year Makes!

Dave and I were invited to a family supper at my brother and sister-in-law's home last night.  We haven't had any meaningful visits with family members since before the pandemic and my diagnosis.  I dreaded going, but we went anyway.  The reason I was a bit reluctant is that our family, like many around the globe, had been divisive about Covid vaccinations, masking etc. and there had been animosity, heated tempers and arguments about that whole scenario.  Turned out that last night, the subject luckily never even came up and everyone had a great time and a great visit! Pfew!  What a relieve!  It was so nice to have a peaceful joyful gathering again!  Coincidentally, I listened to a radio interview, just prior to the visit, of a medical journalist who has written a book about epidemics throughout human history.  She stated that all epidemics go pretty well through the same stages: denial, anger, blaming others, isolation, quarantine, etc.  She also said that often there is a resolution afterward and new and better practices and policies are put into place.  Good to hear!   

An added bonus was meeting and talking to a distant relative who is very knowledgeable about nutrition and laser therapy for healing.  More about those subjects in later posts.  SanTeh!  😎

128. Chemo Contradicting Results

Well, I had an appointment with my oncologist yesterday and she confirmed what I had been thinking; that we are presented with contradicting results.  The results from the recent CT scan are positive.  No metastesis or residual cancer was found. Great!  My recent labtests were not so positive however.  The CEA level keeps rising with every test and so do my liver enzymes.  My oncologist is concerned about that.  As am I.  She does not think that these levels are rising due to the latest Covid vaccine.  She believes that they are rising because the cancer is hiding somewhere, most likely in my liver.  So, she is going to put in a request for a liver MRI, which I will get in early January.  If the MRI demonstrates that there is residual cancer, I am most likely looking at another operation.  If no cancer is detected, then we will probably take a wait-and-see approach.  She suggested I go on a different kind of chemotherapy treatment, one that is supposed to be "easier on the body".  But I declined.  I feel like the character portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie "The Terminal".  My life continues to be "on hold".  But there are worse things to contend with.  And I am grateful that I get to celebrate another Christmas with my family!

Due to upcoming Holiday Celebrations I am not sure when I will be back.  I may post a couple of anecdotes and interesting tidbits between now and the upcoming MRI in early January.  Stay healthy and safe!!  SanTeh! 😎

The results from Thursday's CT scan are in and while I believe there is reason for celebrating, I will not post any comments till after my consultation with my oncologist on Wednesday, December 14th.  I will write comments after the 14th.  Till then!  Keep well! 😎 

127. Chemo On Longevity

Some well meaning people who know my family and are aware of my health problems, try to reassure me that I will live to be my mother's age...  

My 95 year old mother lives in her own home still, mostly unassisted.  She does her own shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry and in summer tends to her garden.  The only surviving sibling of 8 is her sister, who turned 103 last month.   Most of the other siblings lived to be a "good old age". (80s and 90s)  On my father's side of the family, all members of his generation have passed away.  My dad was 74 years old when he died.  There were smokers on both sides of the family.   Longevity lives in the family, right?  At least that is a popular notion, one I used to believe also.  An article out of the Time magazine "Secrets of Living Longer" claims otherwise.   ""Approximately 25% of your risk of death is due to genetics", says Luigi Fontana, a physician and co-director of the longevity research program at Washington University in St. Louis.  "Of the remaining 75%, diet is likely the most important factor- even more so than exercise"." (quote taken from the article: "The best diet isn't what you think" by Markham Heid from the above-mentioned publication.)

It may be interesting to note that my mother grew up in a rural area and that her parents had a small garden.  My father however grew up in a appartment in the city with no opportunity to grow much of anything.  Also relevant maybe is the fact that neither my mother nor her sister ever learned to drive a car.  And while it is true that my mother was chauffeured around by my father when he was alive, my aunt always used public transportation and her own two feet.  She lived on the second floor of an appartment building with no elevator till about 5 years ago.

The above publication does mention that there is a way to predict a person's longevity and it does relate to our genes by way of examining someone's telomeres which are bits and pieces of DNA at the end of chromosomes.  The shorter the telomeres, the more rapid the aging.  It is a bit more complicated than that, and the article stresses not to take any supplements such as telomerase, but there are a few things a person can do to protect (and even grow) one's telomeres, such as stress reduction, exercise, eating and sleeping well...  This should come as no surprise!

Back in a few days; I have some appointments coming up.  Like the ladies are saying: SanTeh! 😁  Aunt on left; mother on right.