BOOKS AND SUCH

Anti-Cancer: A New Way of
Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life by the late Dr. David Servan-Scheiber is an absolute essential as it encompasses all one's 'terrains'.

Great thread, Claudia!

Annie

Best Books I've Read So Far

By far the best books of the twelve I've read on cancer are as follows:

Anti-Cancer

Although author David S. Schreiber, a psychiatrist and researcher, recently died, he DID orchestrate long remissions from an aggressive brain tumor via a combination of traditional treatment and research on which foods--around the world--best fortify us against cancer. Very readable, concrete, and upbeat, with colorful food charts illustrating what foods and spices are "good," "OK," and disastrous for cancer patients.


Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients

Author Dr. Russell Blaylock, a neurologist for decades, eventually left practice to devote time to his growing interest in the nutritional dimensions of cancer. His book offers the most detailed and nuanced explanations of what supplements may protect us during chemo and radiation and even improve the efficacy of those treatments. His discussions of certain supplements such as glutamine are so nuanced that they might initially confuse us--but illustrate his ability to see "the yes and no without which there is no true intelligence." In short, he refuses to oversimplify, showing both the benefits and occasional hazards of certain supplements. My heart sinks at his stringent position on dairy foods (as i hate to give up cheese entirely!) but he at least explains the rationales for his positions. Unlike James Quillen's book on nutrition and cancer, which is provocative--and worth reading--but often quirky, overly anecdotal, and unevenly footnoted, most of Blaylock's positions are footnoted, lending it, for me, more academic credence.


Life Over Cancer

Author Dr. Keith Block is highly respected as founder of the Block Clinic for Integrative Medicine. His book is clearly organized, addressing the nutritional, physical and emotional dimensions of cancer. Particularly valuable is his advice on how to recognize and improve our individual 'terrain"--iron stores, and so on. (He also shows what tests to ask for to measure each condition.) One chapter I found truly eye-opening? "Blood Thickness and Cancer." (Apparently we cancer patients tend to exhibit thicker, more viscous blood than non-cancer patients, encouraging cancer as well as metastasis, but what we eat and how we supplement can, according to Block, definitely change that texture! Explaining the connection between platelet counts and blood viscosity, Block illuminates for me why my platelets have recently been so low, causing postponements of treatment. (It is not merely that chemo had depressed my platelet counts; it is also, I now realize, that I had been following an anti-cancer diet for eight months that--unbeknownst to me--was thinning my blood. Green tea, fish oil, vitamin E (and even, to a lesser extent, curcumin) are ALL blood thinners, platelet reducers. So in order to have chemo again, I needed to reduce them--which I have, temporarily, except for curcumin). A must-read for cancer patients.


How to Prevent and Treat Cancer

Author Michael Murray is not an M.D. but an N.D. yet has played an instrumental role in heading the nutritional programs for CTCA (Cancer Treatment Centers of America). He prescribes a clear plan of supplementation during chemo and radiation (in a bit more organized way than Blaylock's book) as well as a plan for post-treatment, and he offers the best discussions of immune-boosting mushroom products I've come across, evaluating the relative merits of AHCC, Maitake D and MD Fraction, Polyerga, PSK and PSP.


Knock-Out!

Often passing this book with disdain (as its author, Suzanne Somers, I'd long dismissed as a mere Hollywood hussy!), I finally skimmed it in a used-book store and was amazed at how well researched it was. A series of interviews with a dozen or so prominent doctors who are treating cancer--with notable success--in unorthodox ways, I found the interviews riveting. The doctors interviewed are practicing differing alternative approaches to cancer--from gene therapy to enzyme therapy--but even if one emerges untempted to seek out their treatments, one gains, in the course of each interview, fascinating insights into the mechanisms of cancer; the interview with Dr. Gonzalez alone makes the book worth reading. And optimism is the result of this reading, persuading us that IF conventional treatments are failing us, there ARE other approaches worth pursuing that are more than mere eccentricities.


Will be eager to hear about the books that have most impressed others!

Best,
Rosey

Books and Such

"Sass cancer Back" by Rita Tatum offers lots of tips and suggestions for dealing with advanced uterine cancer, its treatments, etc. from a holistic perspective. She covers what the patient can do as part of the oncology team -- spirituality, nutrition, questions to ask along the way, coping therapies, staying active, etc. Lots of practical tips, especially for someone just entering into advanced uterine cancer treatments. And, it's funny. For instance, the music playing during her first radiation treatment is Pat Benatar singing "Hit Me with Your Best Shot."