The meat munching and dairy slurping dilemma (Part 1)

Dangling a slice of prosciutto into my gob or munching on a bacon roll were two of my favourite past-times, but through time and some research I had learned that the animal products I loved to eat were creating a toxic environment inside my body. My immune system just wasn't able to handle the damage that was being done. For some time before my diagnosis, I had become interested or drawn to healthier eating lifestyles. I had read and researched about vegan, raw and alkaline diets and I was slowly learning that what I had been told...no, educated about our so called healthy and balanced diet was in fact mis-information. Being a nurse for many years, I believed that we need meat for protein and milk/dairy for calcium (when I say meat I am referring to all animal meats e.g. chicken, pork etc). In all the years I practised and did professional development, not one doctor, specialist or dietician told me that humans do not need these animal products to survive (or thrive). Doing my own research, I learned that the truth of the matter is that animal products actually do great damage to our human bodies and the increasing burden on our healthcare services is the direct result of our mis-information regarding the western diet.

Luckily the information I had read, meant that once I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was immediately able  to start putting a new diet into practise. Initially, I veganised my old favourites...spag bol, chicken salad, kormas, etc. Bit by bit, I started experimenting with making different dishes, utilising different spices and putting some effort into ensuring that my store cupboard had all the basic essentials to create any dish...just add veg. Thankfully, I'm quite a good cook (even if I say so myself!) and I enjoy pouring over recipe books. I must admit, I love it. I love it that I am eating healthily and it is effortless. I love it that I feel cleaner, lighter and more energetic. I love it, that my family see the changes I have made and have improved their own diets. There are still some things I miss but like an ex-smoker, as time passes so does the urge.

So what about the mis-information then...
Did you know that the majority of the world's population is lactose intolerant (which is completely normal, we are not biologically designed to continue drinking milk past infancy)? But many populations such as ours, where dairy is consumed as part of our standard diet, have developed a gene mutation which allows for lactose to be consumed past weaning. It is only in cultures such as ours that lactose intolerance is even considered to be a problem. Symptoms such as bloating, gas, diarrhoea/constipation, etc are common in our dairy fixated culture.(Link to symptoms of lactose intolerance)

The common symptoms mentioned above highlight the inflammatory nature of dairy and a study last year by Dr Karl Michaelsson (link to study) showed that high milk intake was associated with higher rates of fractures and death, especially in women. In countries where dairy and animal products are more heavily consumed, we see greater rates of chronic disease such as heart disease (e.g.link to study) and cancer (link to study).


Meat (all meat, including processed/cured and chicken!) can cause cancer and inflammation in (link to study) So you can see why someone such as myself, diagnosed with breast cancer and researching ways to protect myself from reoccurrence would cut out these products. And to be honest, this information is only the tip of the iceberg, I haven't even started discussing how animal foods contribute to the levels of growth hormones in our bodies...i.e. we eat these foods, they cause inflammation and we promote the growth of cancer (and other chronic disease) through these circulating hormones (link to study). There's lots of research, but it is difficult to understand (hmm... I wonder why?) and there is also great deal of research which discusses the nutritional value of animal products (funded by meat and dairy industry!) Plus, there is research regarding hormones which is not made publicly available and is of particular concern (link to study). To highlight these issues I have included this great article that discusses the animal products we eat...(Article link)

Basically, it is no surprise that we are getting fatter and sicker eating our western diet. And to those that stupidly say, what you eat has nothing to do with it, go and do some research! Here is a study about diet to get you started...The lower risk diet is vegan (link to study) but it is important to realise that our bodies are not designed to eat the levels of animal products and refined foods that we pack into it. Also, we get more than adequate levels of protein and calcium (which is absorbed more readily) from vegetables.


What I find fascinating are those doctors/researchers (mainly in the USA) who acknowledge that diet is a (if not the) crucial factor in our poor health equation and are promoting plant-based diets to reverse and cure chronic illness. Dr Dean Ornish is one of those doctors. He has successfully (and proven scientifically) reversed heart disease in his patients through a plant based diet. Many of his patients were considered to be on their 'last legs' by their own cardiovascular consultants, yet made full recovery. He also promotes the same diet to those with prostate and breast cancer with excellent results. There are so many studies to choose from if you want to read the evidence...just Google (scholar) his name. And for some excellent information regarding all things diet and based on published academic papers have at look at Dr Michael Greger's site, it is a fantastic resource (link to his site).

Wonderful D3

How do you feel when you wake up in the morning...blissfully rested or like you have just gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson? I must admit that although I love my two wonderful creations, since they were born, I wake up feeling like a burst couch. Even if I manage to get a long lie on a Sunday, or if I ever get the rare chance to sneak back to bed, although this usually means I have succumbed to some sort of man flu or mysterious illness, I never wake feeling rested. As the years have passed, I have just put this bone-weary fatigue down to 'how one feels passed the age of 40' syndrome and accepted that jumping out of bed in the morning shouting "yay, I'm alive!",  is something I do in my head, not for real. I know I'm not the only one to feel like this. I have had many conversations with friends who all agree that come 10 o'clock in the evening (or earlier), most of us are propping our eyelids open
with matchsticks while the drool runs down the side of our mouths. Oh yes, most of us have had the humiliating picture taken of us with our heads back, mouths open and snoring like Percy Pig while 'watching' TV.  BUT all that is in the past because I have discovered the new wonder drug and it's name...ta, da, is Vitamin D3. Oh yes! I am a new woman!

"So tell me all about it" I hear you shout!  Well, since this whole cancer curfuffle,  tiredness reached new limits for me. I will not be beaten though! Rebuilding my immunity (no thanks to chemo) and strengthening my liver, are key priorities to me... hence the whole vegan diet thing, getting back to exercise and adding a whole array of nutritional supplements. And I was feeling good. I felt happier, stronger, healthier, slimmer and cleaner on the inside, so the changes I was making were definitely helping. But to be honest, I still felt tired. And yes, I do recognise that it takes some time to recover from the Big C (and it's nasty treatments). I am impatient to be jumping out of bed shouting "yay!" Recently however, I was discussing the role of high dose Vitamin C and other supplements with my sister. She said my brother -in- law had been reading about how important Vitamin D was and although I was taking a Vitamin D supplement, I had skipped over articles discussing it when I was researching Vitamin C. Coincidently (or not. I don't believe in coincidences. Rather that, if you are meant to stumble across it, you will), I came across a YouTube video where some U.S. M.D. was discussing the merits of Vitamin D in relation to a myriad of diseases where deficiency is present. I was intrigued...could Vitamin D be that important? Wouldn't we know already?

The reality is that the role of Vitamin D isn't fully understood and research is still ongoing. But hey, I am not waiting 5-10 years on research facilities finally getting round to telling Joe Public...I'm impatient (didn't you know!). So, I've been looking at the current research and yes, it is impressive (and there is plenty!).  First you need to know what Vitamin D is and does, so click on the links below...
What is Vitamin D
What does Vitamin D do?

So, hopefully you have an idea of the importance of Vitamin D. For the majority of us, unless you are jetting off to sunny climes every other weekend, you are going to be deficient. And ironically, when the sun does come out for that one day in Scottish summertime, we are so paranoid that we get skin cancer (because we have the bejeebies scared out of us by the media and sunscreen companies), that we lather sunscreen on before even stepping outside and so deny our desperately, deficient bodies of making that vital D vitamin. Even if you were able to get a good holiday and top up your Vit D levels, come winter, your blood levels will be back in their boots.
The symptoms of vitamin D deficiency may not be apparent but studies have shown that it is linked to depression, bone pain, muscle weakness, hypertension, dementia, hypertension, heart disease and various cancers. It starts to make some sense then why so many people get sick come Autumn/Winter and why those with darker skin are at greater risk (I will put some links to research at the end).
So, it looked like this vitamin was pretty darn good but I don't just pop any drug in my gob without finding about toxicity and side effects (which we all should do even if your GP has prescribed it!!!) The good thing is you have to take mega high doses for a pretty long time to become toxic (I decided on taking the high dose oral spray for convenience).
Apart from sunbathing, the best way to ensure you get an adequate amount of this vitamin is by taking a supplement. So, I did...and I noticed an improvement in my health pretty quickly. The first thing I noticed was an improvement in my mood (and while getting my tax return completed was a call to celebrate,  the only other change was, I had started to take vitamin D). I have also noticed that I'm sleeping better and waking, feeling much more rested than normal. And strangely, the right side of my lower back (which niggles from time to time) has eased considerably. For me, improving my mood and feeling rested are a huge bonus.
The other bonus that I'm hoping to achieve is avoiding cancer recurrence, osteoporosis (these two are pretty important for someone such as myself) and other chronic disease, such as Alzheimer's and according to research, vitamin D plays a huge role in that (again, see links at end). My suggestion to you all is get yourself some high dose Vit D (D3 is better) and try it for yourself...maybe we can all start jumping out of bed in the morning shouting "yay!"

Here are the links:-

Vitamin D and it's role in cancer prevention

Vitamin D in health and disease - current perspectives

Vitamin D in adult health and disease: a review and guideline statement from Osteoporosis Canada

Vitamin D3 enhances mood in healthy subjects during winter

and there are so many more...just have a look in google scholar....happy reading!

Furious!

While skimming through the posts on FB today I came across this one from Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity  http://www.breakthrough.org.uk/blog/broccoli-and-cancer-whats-story and I must admit I felt furious! They were basically saying that there is no evidence that broccoli can fight cancer. They said "the real story here is that a chemical found in broccoli has been used to develop drug molecule which plans to be tested on cancer patients".  They then said that this chemical, which by the way is sulforaphane, in it's natural form has been shown to kill cancer cells in lab experiments. Well natural form, to me, would be in cruciferous vegetables i.e. broccoli. But the part that really threw me over the edge was "so yes, a chemical which happens to be found in broccoli has the potential to treat cancer, but eating the stuff probably won't do anything".  Can you believe it! They may as well have said just continue eating your unhealthy diets as eating healthy vegetables won't do anything for you (eating broccoli raw, juicing it or chopping it up half an hour before cooking, will help you to get all the benefits of the vegetable). I know I may have simplified their article as they were discussing the instability of the chemical, but as I said above there are ways round this.

This to me is all that is wrong in the world today. While we see cancer, obesity, heart disease and diabetes hit epidemic levels we are given incorrect nutritional advise from those that are out to make a quick buck from our chronic ill health. The meat and dairy institutions along with other large corporations ensure that their interests are protected by sitting on nutritional advisory boards. Big pharma and many cancer charities work alongside each other to tell us a miracle drug is just around the corner. You are told, just keep doing what you are doing, there is a drug on the way to sort it for you! We are kept ignorant in our ill health by the lies fed to us on a daily basis.

There is PLENTY of scientific evidence out there to indicate that eating a wholefoods, plant based diet will suspend, reverse and in many cases, cure the top diseases that have become reached epidemic proportions in today's Western society. WE, YOU, US need to reclaim our own power. Do some research yourself into your diet and if you have one, your disease. Let us stop waiting on our doctors telling us what to do as few of them are educated in correct nutritional practises for optimum health. Let us stop waiting on big pharma coming up with that miracle drug..it is just not profitable for them. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWwZ4VKLQZk

Uprooting the leading causes of death

The Broccoli Receptor

and this is what US medical staff think about their nutritional education

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADlY8CYllhU&index=37&list=PLEHzczjouSWv2ku-5wnJYsn4KS1WjDRSN

Happy New Beginnings

How do you view Hogmanay and New Year? Do you celebrate loudly with friends, or just a quiet night with your loved one or maybe you shut up shop and go to bed early?  Normally, we tend to have quiet affair for Hogmanay and have a family get together on New Year's Day. This Hogmanay we are having some friends over for a quiet celebration just before the bells and as usual, a get-together tomorrow with my sis, which we love.

This year as I raise my glass to see out the old and bring in the new, I will quietly be thinking about this past year. Many people have said I will be glad to get it behind me and while I am glad to have the treatment over, I am grateful for the lessons that this 'blip' has taught me. The silver lining behind my very large black cloud has always been there. I am grateful to be healthy and well and grateful for my wonderful family and their love. I will never again take good health, good friends and happiness for granted again. Things can change in the blink of an eye. The recent tragedy in George Square shows us this quite clearly. 

I love the changes that I have made in my life as a result of this breast cancer. For some time I wanted  to make dietary changes. For some time I wanted to be less stressed about the not so important details of life. For some time I wanted to find a direction in life. And as hard as it was, breast cancer has given me those things. 

As a nurse I used to work in many different specialities and daily I came across people that were sick or depressed or both about their health and lives. I used to try to advise them, but so many people refused to make their health their business. One day in a high dependency cardiac unit, the charge nurse told me that many people refuse to make changes in their life until they have had 2 or 3 heart attacks and often it is too late and the damage has been done. How sad. How sad that we choose to ignore the things that are screaming out to us to fix until it is too late.

I  blog about these things in the hope and wish that other people don't wait to make positive changes in their lives until they are faced with a diagnosis such as mine. I ignored my messages until they hit me square on. I didn't believe it could happen to me. 

New Year is a wonderful time. Fresh starts and new beginnings abound. Let's do some affirmations to create the lives we want and deserve. Let's not forget about others along the way. Let's stop focussing on the negatives and boost the positives. Let's get committed to helping ourselves and others reclaim happiness. Let's make health a normal part of our lives. Let's evolve our awareness and consciousness to higher levels. Let's not accept corporate greed as a way of life. Let's take out the garbage and make room for new growth. Let's take our dreams and make them a reality. Let's live in the now and forget about the past and the future will take care of itself.  Let's create a better world for our children.

I'm raising my glass to a wonderful 2015 and continuing to make lots of positive changes. Happy New Year!

And so this is Christmas...

Blissful ignorance last year!

The Christmas movie is on...we are singing along to the yuletide tunes. It is your typical memory inducing pre-Christmas lazy weekend. As I put up the Christmas tree with the children, I think about my blissful ignorance of the fact that my breast cancer was at this time last year, undiscovered. I had, had the BRCA gene test and was awaiting its results. I felt pretty confident that all would be fine. My Facebook timeline and pictures show my confident disregard for what would unfold. 

If you can't have a laugh at yourself...

Sometimes, when I look back I feel sad for what I have lost. I guess it is a similar feeling for those that look at old pictures to people who have passed away and feel sad that they won't be able to recreate those same feelings of good, old, happy carefree times. My feelings swing from happy to be alive to sad for past carefree times. I'm almost bipolar! Along with my hair and some body parts, I've lost a wee part of the old me. Maybe this is the silver lining. That old me was always grumbling about some ridiculous nothing or another. The new me sports a 'See You Jimmy' hair-do and more of an indifferent attitude. This is definitely a good thing...no not the 'See You Jimmy' part, that is a hair-do unto itself which will tame itself eventually! No, the indifferent part. I always wanted to be more indifferent to the small insignificant annoyances that scratch through most people's minds on a daily basis. I'm not so caught up in being annoyed about less trivial matters and I'm more grateful to the basics of life that we tend to overlook...still breathing being one of them!

Yip! it has been some year. It's time to shake off the old, put my Christmas head on and start thinking about the new...

Happy Eating!

Some people have asked me for a blog about being a vegan...so here it is. 

There's lot's to know, not just about veganism but more importantly, why move away from animal products, so I usually suggest to my friends to google and read about it first before drawing any conclusions. 

Now that I eat a vegan diet, I regularly get asked what I eat. In fact, many people do not know what a vegan is. A vegan is someone who does not eat any animal products. Some vegans choose to go further than just diet, restricting wearing clothes and shoes that have been made from animals, or cosmetics that have been tested on animals. 

Before my diagnosis, I had already been reading about vegan, raw and acid/alkaline diets so I already knew about the health benefits. (Please note though, some people can claim to eat a vegan or vegetarian diet without a vegetable ever passing their lips...and no, this is not healthy! A whole foods, plant based diet is what I eat and is what the WHO claim to be excellent for your health and the environment.) So, it was a very easy decision once diagnosed to make the switch to being vegan. I make all of my meals from scratch. It is easy to do and it means I can be completely sure that no animal products have sneaked into my meal. You would be surprised at just how many shop bought vegetable sauces, etc, have milk in them. In fact, have a look in your cupboards and fridges at the ingredient labels, especially those that you would not expect any dairy to be lurking...it's in everything. Not good for those with intolerances, skin, asthma or other inflammatory conditions.

Garlicky mushrooms with cannellini beans
and spinach

So here is a very small selection of what I love to eat;

Vegetable and rice noodle stir fries

Vegetable curry..one fav is sweet potato and spinach

Minestrone soup full of chunky veg including potatoes and beans

In fact any veg soup; carrot and coriander or spicy butternut squash especially!

vegemince chilli

vegemince spag bol

Mina's Minestrone Soup

salad and marinated tofu with roast potatoes

marinated artichokes, peppers and rice

The list goes on, I won't bore you further! 

I like to choose my favourite dishes and veganise them! 

I am also experimenting with vegan baking. I love chocolate cake, so here is the recipe (as I have promised some friends I would add it). It is a really moist cake and very quick to make. My kids love it!

Oven at 175 degrees Celsius

Vegan Chocolate Cake

I use a lined or greased loaf tin

210g plain flour

200g caster sugar

35g good quality 100% cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

Half teaspoon salt

Sift together in a large bowl

then add

225ml water

75mls of vegetable oil or you can use 75g vegetable spread (I use soya Pure)

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar (or white vinegar, but the balsamic complements the chocolate)

Mix together to combine all ingredients.

Pour mixture into pan and bake for 45mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

Veganise your favourite buttercream using icing sugar and vegan margarine (I use Pure) to top, or serve warm with dairy free custard, or your favourite jam. Yum! 

If you fancy eating more healthier, especially after over eating during the festive period, why don't you do some reading around the subject of a whole foods, plant based diet. Have a look at the health benefits you can expect. It is particularly beneficial for those looking to lose weight in a healthy, gradual manner. It can reverse high cholesterol, diabetes and heart disease and protect against many cancers.

In a society where obesity, ill health and cancer are becoming epidemic we need to look at how we can take responsibility for our own health rather than expecting our doctors to simply dish out the drugs...it is no way to live.

One of my Facebook friends has just shared this excellent web site about giving veganism a go in January... have a look, the recipes are brilliant. Or, just ease yourself into it by having an animal free day, once a week. (p.s. you don't need to register to have a look at the recipes, etc)

Veganuary

Happy Eating!

Choices   

One of the choices I made to reduce my cancer risk was to have my ovaries removed. For those with the BRCA gene, it is one of the options (see link: BRCA gene mutations ) that you can take. Well, I did. I actually had a laparoscopic removal of my ovaries and uterus. Both had been shrunk to just about nothing following chemo anyway. I'm recovering fine. It's been four days. I opted to decline any analgesia post op. To be honest I just can't face any more drugs. I found it very difficult knowing that they were going to be giving me drugs during surgery, but obviously I needed to be put to sleep! I actually think I have recovered faster without any analgesia. A lot of these drugs can make you feel really doped post op, not to mention constipated and depressed and I didn't want to go down that route.  But, this again is a personal choice, everyone is different. The worst part of it all was the gas pain in my abdomen (they use gas to distend your abdomen so that they can see your organs clearly). It didn't hit me till I got home the day after surgery and I had to manage it with moving around and heat pads. 

I have been looking at the role of oestrogen in the body..especially now I have very little. Most people don't realise that your adrenal glands also make oestrogen. We have oestrogen receptor sites all round our bodies because this hormone plays an important role in many of our biological functions. A reduction in oestrogen affects our hearts, bones, skin, nervous system, brain as well as the more obvious gynaecological changes. (see link:role of oestrogen) 

I'm worried about the long term health effects of no oestrogen. It's like Russian Roulette..keep the hormones, have some breast cancer...get rid of them and take your choice between stroke, high cholesterol, dementia, and Parkinson's. And that is without the drug Letrozole, which further removes oestrogen from our body which I am supposed to take! I am going to have to make another choice regarding taking this or not.

I'm also worried that I have removed the protective, healing factor that my brain needed to recover from the chemo as oestrogen influences the blood flow and nerve impulses in the brain. Oh god, I'm going to be this forgetful forever!

Well, it is done. All I can do is continue to improve my health with proper nutrition and hope that I can reverse any damage I have done through eating the so called 'balanced diet' that we in the west claim to be healthy (and is anything but).

In hospital, a couple of the older women that I shared a room with, asked me why I chose to eat a vegan diet. One asked "what do you eat?" in such a way that she could not possibly fathom what I put on my dinner plate every day. I told her about the various meals that I had, which seemed to stir her interest and she was going home to do some research herself.

I too, am continually researching about food. I am fed up being misled about what a healthy diet really is. It is important that I make dietary changes to avoid a cancer reoccurrence and to correct the damage already done by previous choices (animal products, sugar, refined foods) and chemotherapy.
Coincidently (or not), my favourite nutritionist Dr Michael Greger, posted an article yesterday just as I was looking into the subject of pesticides. Is this something we should be worried about? Surely the government, environmental and health agencies would have something to say if we were being poisoned...right?  It can be difficult not to mention costly, to get all organic. Should we care? Well yes, we should and here is why.
Animal studies on the effects of pesticides have shown that they can affect foetal development, disrupt hormones, damage DNA and cause infertility. Studies however, failed to show the same negative effects on humans when they looked at the active ingredient. As a result, pesticides have been declared relatively safe for humans and the allowed pesticide residual levels have risen over the years. So, we're safe right?  Er, no! We're not! When another study looked at the effect of the active ingredient plus all the other adjuvants (basically everything else in the actual solution they spray on the crops which they normally don't test for), they found that they were 1000 times more toxic than the active ingredient alone! 1000 times! And these were the so-called inert substances. So, we can clearly state that pesticides are definitely harmful to us and environmental agencies will need to reassess this information with regard to the way that they test for toxicity levels and inform the public on safety.
So you think you are safe now just eating all your animal products...well no. Putting aside the carcinogenic effect of animal protein, the crops and many of them are GMO, that they feed to the animals are obviously sprayed too, thus impacting on their meat.
So what to do? Well, don't just take my word for it.
Do some research yourself. You can start with the paper that I have just discussed (here is the link: Major Pesticides Are More Toxic To Human Cells Than Their Declared Active Principles).
Make it your business to know what big agrochemical companies are making you and your family eat. What goes into the ground also contaminates marine life.
Eat more organic produce (including animal products if you eat them). In the USA, The Environmental Working Group advise us to steer clear of the "Dirty Dozen" fruits and veg and to only eat them if organically grown. Sadly, they are the ones we most routinely buy so it is worth reading their fact sheet (See link here: Health Risks of Pesticides in Foods) as it is info that also impacts us here in the UK too.
Don't leave it to the environmental, agricultural or health agencies to look after your health. They don't. They are too busy protecting big business interests to tell us the real truth.