Budwig Diet Basics

   
    A few months ago I started sharing what I call my Beat Cancer Bootcamp routine. You may remember the post about coffee enemas. If you missed that one, you can read it here.   Today I want to tell you about the Budwig diet, which is based on a mixture of cottage cheese and flax oil. But before I begin telling you about that, I want to share a bit of cancer news.

   In the article in which I talk about how to do a coffee enema, I also mention the Navarro urine test. It is a test that anyone can do on their own by sending a urine sample to the Navarro  Clinic.  Click here to find out how to do it.  The test is a reliable way to monitor your progress, and see if your cancer fighting protocol is working.  I did my first one in January, after my CA 125  (blood test) jumped from 70 to over 300 in just two short months. I then did another one in mid February. I just got my results this Monday. It can take a few weeks to get the results, since your pee is going first class (mail) all the way to the Philippines. The news is that there has been no change since January. While I would have liked to have seen it go down, the point is it did not go up! That means that the amount of cancer in my body has not increased.  

   A test result of less than 50 means that you do not have cancer. A result of 50 or above indicates that, yes, you do have cancer. While some cancers can push this number very high, 50-70 is the typical range. Mine was 52.2 both times. This has given me the validation that I needed to continue treating cancer on my own. I am more determined than ever that I CAN DO THIS!

    The Budwig Diet is a cancer fighting protocol that was developed by Johanna Budwig back in the  1950's. It includes a diet free of processed foods, sugar, and meat. It includes pure water, sunshine, fresh fruits and vegetables, and a mixture of cottage cheese and flax seed oil. 

   Dr. Budwig was a leading authority in the study of dietary fats. While studying the metabolism of fats in the body, she discovered that blood samples from people with cancer lacked phosphatides and lipoproteins . In order to replenish these essential nutrients, and maintain good health, one needs to have adequate essential fatty acids (omega 3's, and 6's) in their diets. Essential fatty acids are important components of our cell membranes, and are needed for proper cell respiration, and cell division. 

   Dr Budwig discovered that when you mix flax oil with sulfur rich proteins (such as cottage cheese) the oil becomes water soluble, and increases oxygenation of the cells, as these essential fatty acids bind with the oxygen in our blood, and get pulled into the cells.
  

   The cottage cheese mixture can be eaten plain, or with added fruits, nuts, etc..  I like to eat it with some raw broccoli florets, red onion, and red pepper mixed in. And I always add a bit of turmeric and black pepper for added cancer fighting properties, and top it off with 1 T. of freshly ground flax seeds. Flax seeds should be eaten within 15 minutes of grinding, because their oils go rancid quickly after they are ground.

   The recipe is simple. It is two parts cottage cheese, to one part flax seed oil.  Some recipes call for 2/3 c. to 1/3 c. oil, others 1/2 c. cottage cheese to 1/4 c. oil. Both the cottage cheese and the oil should be organic. I like Barleans flax oil, and Nancy's Cottage cheese, which has a bit of a tangy flavor from the probiotics.

   Start by adding your measured amount of cottage cheese to the mixing container. Then add the measured amount of flax oil. The oil must be completely incorporated into the cheese, and I believe you need an immersion blender to do this. At least to do it easily. If you don't have one, they are not that expensive, and come in handy for so many other things. Such as making salad dressing. I have this one by Cuisinart. You can buy that or another one online here.  

   Once the mixture is completely smooth and homogenous, with no streaks of oil, let it sit for a few minutes, and then mix in whatever you like, by hand. I usually eat it for breakfast as pictured above, but sometimes I divide the portion size in half, and have it as a snack with carrot and celery sticks.You can also add spices and vinegar to make it more like a dressing. One thing to note though; is that this should be eaten shortly after it is made. You cannot make it ahead and save it for later. So if you divide the recipe, you will have to make it twice that day to get the full amount, and it can be difficult to mix the smaller amount due to the height of the blade in most hand blenders.

   Due to the fact that I have had chemo-twice, I expect that my body has a lot of repairing left to do, and I may not see a drop in my test number for a couple more months, but the fact that it is stable makes me feel confident that I am on the right track. I believe that this diet, juicing, supplements etc, have been instrumental in supporting my bodies efforts to heal.  I will do another test in a few weeks. If the results do not show improvement, then I will add some other things to my protocol to strengthen it's ability to fight cancer.
  
   Even though I call this my Beat Cancer Bootcamp, it's not because I see this as a war. No, cancer is part of my body. Cancer is something my body makes. It is not an invader. So I have always seen this as more of a journey than a battle. But we're not in the Girl Scouts here. No! This is hard core training for a new life. It takes hard work, dedication, and faith. And there are no cookies allowed, just major cancer ass kicking nutrients! So eat your salad soldier!

Links:

To read a great article/ interview between two of my favorite cancer blogggers  chris beat cancer and green drink diaries, who both used the Budwig Diet as part of their healing
click here.

For books and sites providing more info on the Budwig diet and other cancer protocols check these out: cancer tutor website, and Cancer Free a book by Bill Henderson

p.s. This isn't just for people with cancer-the cottage cheese flax oil mixture is a great way for anyone wishing to maintain good health to get their  essential fatty acids. If you don't have cancer you could eat half a portion.

Full Circle

      I'm feeling a bit worn out these days. February was a bit complicated, and all the gear shifting  I did has left me feeling a bit numb, and unable to process it all.

    I started the month in the peace and quiet of the Insight Meditation Society retreat center, focusing on my inner terrain in noble silence. I left the retreat feeling rejuvenated by the deep sense of calm and focus that I gained there. When I returned home I got the results of my PET scan, and found that while some of my tumors are still stable, the ones in my liver are very active, and there is a new one just outside of my spleen. This news was disturbing, but at this point in my cancer journey it caused a ripple, not a wave of emotion. More than anything it let me know that as hard as I am working at rebuilding my body, in order to stop it from making cancer, I have to try harder. Then my 84 year old father ended up in the hospital. He had pneumonia which turned into sepsis. He is home now, and seems to have made a full recovery - thankfully. But for the first time in my life, I found myself feeling like he needed me to take care of him.
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   So, here it is March first, and I'm trying to make sense of the past month. I'm not worried about my dad anymore, but his illness has altered our relationship. I feel like the experience has brought us closer together. Illness can do that. At least one that shoves your own (or a loved ones) mortality in your face.

    I know that my own cancer has brought me closer to myself.  It has shown me my strengths, and my weaknesses. It has put me in touch with my true feelings, and what I value most. It has not taken away the fear, or the anger, or the sadness that are all a part of life. I still deal with those. But it has taken some of the strength away from these emotions by giving me the courage to explore them more deeply, and to recognize when and if they are imprisoning my true self. 

   I also believe that my cancer has made it easier for me to understand my Dad at this point in our lives, since we are both quite possibly near death. For my Dad this is almost certain. As for myself, even though I feel I have the chance to live many more productive years, at 52 years of age, I know what it's like to live with death just a breath away. 
   
   I thought about death a lot during my meditation retreat. I thought about it in a straight forward manner, as just another experience in life. I thought about it in practical terms-burial arrangements, wills etc.. I thought about it with wonder. Would it be beautiful? peaceful? scary? All of this may sound morose, but all this thinking about death actually relieved me of any lingering fear I may have had of dying. It made me realize that when my time came, I could welcome this inevitable natural event. It also made me wonder if I could actually control the experience. If I didn't fear it, and it had no power over me, could I choose how I experience my own death?  And could it be beautiful? I believe it could.

  Thinking about death in this way has given me even more courage to face my cancer, and to take even more control in how I choose to live with cancer. When I found out the results of my PET scan, I knew I would have to go it alone from now on-no chemo, no oncologist. I would have to direct my own healing. I couldn't let myself be a cancer patient for the rest of my life. Whether I drove myself to a full recovery or my own funeral, it would be okay. I'd be driving myself to where I need to be.

  It seems that instead of shifting gears as I called it at the beginning of this post, I have come full circle this month in accepting the inevitability of death- both my own and my fathers, whenever they may be.
                      
                                          May we both live and die without fear.


   

  


  
   
   

South Western Sweet Potato Skillet

with egg

      It's not that I don't know where eggs come from, but after a lifetime of seeing them neatly organized into convenient  packages of 6 or 12 in the brightly lit refrigerated section of the supermarket, I wasn't prepared for the emotional experience of lifting a freshly lain egg from its nest, and holding it in my hands. The feeling was somewhere between finding an unexpected gift under the tree on Christmas morning, and reaching into the candy jar when no one was looking. I felt exhilarated, wide eyed with wonder, and well - a little bit guilty. I then decided that this egg was given freely, and accepted it with deep gratitude.

Roasted Tomato Soup

     The temperature outside is below freezing today, so I wanted to spend my late morning huddled close to the oven with a cup of tea, and maybe a book, as the kitchen got toasty warm, and filled with the aroma of something delicious. I thought maybe a casserole, or a stuffed squash. But I was also craving soup- you know- a big bowl of hearty soup to warm your bones on a cold day kind of soup. So I turned on the oven, and I made this.

Roasted Tomato Soup With Basil Oil

The Hole

The Hole

Posted by Margaret.
This is not an easy topic for me to write about. I've already vacuumed the living room and hallway, cleaned the breakfast dishes, answered my emails, and eaten some food. I have no doubt I could find even more "worthy" forms of procrastination, but then I would be staying safe and that is what I'm trying to change….. Plus, the whole point of this blog, as Diane so lovingly reminded me, is to share honestly how we're feeling and what we're doing, in the hopes that it can be helpful to others--something that she has already done courageously and beautifully. So in the spirit of that hope and dream, here is a bit of my story.

We all have a "story", or an "imprint", as Michael Singer calls it in The Untethered Soul, something that we learned during our childhood that we have to unlearn as adults--a coping mechanism that kept us safe then, but that works against us now. I love how Michael Singer talks about it because he says it's not really even important what the story is or how it got there, but how we learn to release it as adults. It's this imprint that keeps our hearts closed and keeps us living in a reactionary kind of mode--reacting from this "imprint", rather than from our true nature. For example, one thing that I learned from being the oldest child of an alcoholic (and then sober and raging) mother, was to stay small and "good" so as to not upset her, so as to avoid her rage. For me that meant learning how to put others' needs first--to figure out what those needs were and meet them. I became quite proficient at it. As for my needs….. well for years I prided myself at not having any. So, earlier this week when I drove three hours up to northern Vermont to take my friend, Amy, up on her offer to show some work in a little gallery she started up there, I had some needs of my own that I was meeting. I have done a lot of work around this issue, so it wasn't terribly torturous to ask my husband to be a single parent for two days or to tell my former boss that I couldn't help with the fundraiser that I generally help with each month (okay, so the latter was a little torturous). But when Amy and I were hanging the work, something got set off in me that felt overwhelming and paralyzing. The minute we started unwrapping the work to decide how to arrange it, I was filled with self-loathing and dread. Essentially I just wanted to leave the room--which is one of my old, well-used coping mechanisms--and thought about asking Amy if I could just take a walk. Later she reminded me that the last time I showed work up there, I did actually leave and had to let her finish hanging it, so I guess the fact that I stayed shows some progress? It didn't feel like it at the time, in fact, it felt like I had not made any progress, and I was right back to being that scared adult/child who is not allowed to take up any space or feel good about anything I do. The work that I had been excited about while alone in my studio, suddenly felt all wrong, hideous even.

We did hang the work--well, Amy hung it while I watched in a state of angst--and I headed home the next day. I picked up my son from school, made dinner for my family, read for awhile and went to bed. The next day I was "in the hole". This is an expression my sisters and I have used to describe what we experience, in terms of depression and self-hatred, where everything literally feels dark and no light can get in. I felt full of despair about everything--my art, my health, my relationship. Nothing was safe.

Fortunately it was Wednesday, the day that I see Kathleen Kelleher for reiki. Kathleen did for me what we hope this blog can do for others. She reminded me about the importance of compassion for ourselves and acceptance of all our feelings; she shared some of her own ongoing work around self-love and acceptance--how sometimes she falls down in that area and needs help of her own; she reminded me of all the work I have done, and how that has not gone away. She was a salve on my bruised heart. And of course the reiki also helped move the energy around. After an hour and a half I felt better.

And then last night I found this passage by Tara Brach, in Radical Acceptance, and it reminded me of the quote that Diane had posted a few days ago by Albert Einstein, and pushed me a little further into the light:

     "When we understand our pain as an intrinsic gateway to compassion, we begin to awaken from the imprisoning story of a suffering self. In the moments when we tenderly hold our anger, for instance, we cut through our identity as an angry self. The anger no longer feels like a personal flaw or an oppressive burden. We begin to see its universal nature--it's not our anger, it is not our pain. Everyone lives with anger, with fear, with grief.

     A beautiful Sufi teaching shows us how our pain is not personal, it is an intrinsic part of being alive:

          Overcome any bitterness that may have come
          because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain
               that was entrusted to you.
          Like the Mother of the World,
          Who carries the pain of the world in her heart,
          Each one of us is part of her heart,
               And therefore endowed
               With a certain measure of cosmic pain.

     …. Rather than being a problem, our depression, fear and anger are "entrusted to us," and can be dedicated to our awakening. When we carry our pain with the kindness of acceptance instead of the bitterness of resistance, our hearts become an edgeless sea of compassion. We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering."

So, today I am trying to "carry (my) pain with the kindness of acceptance" and remember that I am not alone--we are all "endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain." 

mf

Attitude

  I wasn't going to post anything more this week. I told myself I didn't have time. I have my PET scan tomorrow. I am in the midst of car purchasing paperwork. I have to prepare for my 5 day retreat that starts Friday, which means that I have to juice, and freeze 5 days worth of carrot juice, get all my supplements together, remember to pack my water filter, and decide what clothes to bring. Then my kitchen sink got clogged, and I lost a filling.

   Do you know the quote "she's standing on a line between giving up, and seeing how much more she can take"? Well, when I felt the hole in my tooth, where the filling used to be, this is exactly how I felt.

Simple Carrot Salad

Carrot Salad with Cilantro

    I have never been a fan of the month of January, so I am glad to see it go. Especially since this January has been an unusually bumpy ride for me. I rang in the new year with a car accident that left my car totaled, and me with a mild concussion, which feels a lot like a holiday hang over. But I haven't had a drink in years. And by the way, the accident was in no way my fault.