Well I´m overweight and i eat a very healthy diet , the problem is I eat too much of it !!
Since my DX I have put on over a stone , most of it around my middle , exactly where i don´t want it to be .
So I am trying to lose weight ,and for the first time in seven months I have lost just over a kilo this week . It is just so difficult . Went to the gym yesterday and now my arm aches like mad ,legs are fine . Just hope it eases before I see the surgeon on monday ,sure it will .
I was slim when I was younger thank goodness , played a lot of competative sport up until my 30´s ,used the gym until my late 40´s, had my first child at 19, suffer from allergies , eat healthy . All the things you should do , yet here I am !
Kris
Me too Kris! I eat very healthily, trouble is I eat far too much and also like my wine which has an horrific amount of calories. All my weight is round my middle, which is the worst place for fat. I have always had trouble with my weight and managed to lose loads twice in my lifetime and then put it back with some. The minute I reduced the frantic sessions at the gym and ate “normal” portions again, back it went!
I thought I was doing all the right things. I have eaten broccoli almost every day my entire adult life - but have only just discovered that if you boil it you destroy the phytochemicals that help prevent cancer! Same with tomatoes - I have them everyday in my lunchtime sandwich - didn’t realise to get the good effect they have to be cooked. Also had no idea about the importance of omega 3 / 6 balance, which for me was totally out of whack. I am really just finding out how little I actually know.
It is not just being overweight that can cause problems. I was always slim when young and as I got older, I made sure I didn’t put on middle-aged weight. I don’t have a sweet tooth, anyway. However, during a stressful house move, I lost a bit more weight and was then diagnosed with bc about 8 months afterwards. When I saw the surgeon for the first time, he said jokingly, “Well, you’re not the fattest person I have seen today.”
Ann
Oh God ann
I cannot donot know what to say. What a thing to say to someone. I actually believe that stress is what helps /causes cancer. The four ladies that were in for ops with me all had had really bad stressful moments before their cancer ranging from deaths, seperations or family members with heath issues. I wonder if that is the cause with other ladies ?
Dear Lupin15, I am convinced that my breast cancer was about stress. My daughter started having epileptic fits aged 21 and was living at home with me. I was supporting myself and had problems with money. I was very ,very stressed for about a year,looking back I didn’t eat properly and could not relax.
I feel that this helped create the scene for developing a tumour that was in an injury site…I had had mastitis in that breast years ago and then was hit on that breast with a tennis ball at close range.
I have read that cancers may start in an old injury site.
Best wishes
Leadie
I´ve tried really hard not to have middriff spare rolls , but they appeared when I was´nt looking …honest !! My mum was the same , very smart lady who watched her weight and what she ate all the time ,but she still had too much fat around the middle .I have walked every day early morning for years ,for about an hour , and I mean relly walk . Not on pavements , but clambering up hills .My legs today are covered in scratches as I had to fight my way through a gorse bush . I swim most days , not much I admit , proberbly only a couple of lenghs .I´ve not eaten more or excercised less since dx .
flinty , buy a steamer , I´ve used one for 15 years ,I never boil any veg. I puree fresh toms with garlic basil and olive oil and buy jars of plain beans , chick peas etc , add spices to lentils and eat cold with salads . See I do all this and what happens ? BC !!
I would´nt have been too happy with your surgeon Ann , a bit insensitive . Ok so we don´t need to be handled with kid gloves , but there´s been lots of times in the past seven months where tears have´nt been far away , usually for the most silly reason.
Ann ,lupin, leadie . I am so with you on this one . Stress , definately .Living here where the authorities cannot make their minds up whether or not they want to demolish houses is so stressful , we´ve had three years of this and all we want to do is sell and move , so that we can enjoy whats left of the rest of our lives .
A calm , peaceful state is what I want to achieve . I´m having acupunture this week . That is to try and calm me ,plus the excercise to try and knacker me . If I´m comotose then I will be stressfree .
Yes , it´s strange how many peopple seem to develope a cancer after an accident .
Kris
My Mum was diagnosed with bc four years after my father died but by then it had already spread to her bones and so she must have had it a fair while. They had been married for 51 years and it was the end of her world when he died. If that’s not stressful…!
I am certain stress was to blame, together with HRT, in my case but when we moved house, it is very likely I also got knocked on the breast (can’t remember) and that could have started it off. It is like any accident, a coming together of certain events all at the same time. Any one of them may not cause an accident but when you put them together…voila!
Ann x
This is a difficult one because so many people have stressful events etc and the other problem is that we don’t really know when exactly the cancer started developing in us. My surgeon said it would have been there for at least two years but probably longer.
On the subject of surgeons, on the day I got my biopsy results and was told it was cancer the surgeon told me to go home and the main thing was not to get stressed. I should think being told that you have cancer is one of the most stressful things ever! Then when I rang my mum to tell her she told me that a close family friend had just been killed. How can we avoid stress and worry in our lives, it’s impossible.
Elinda x
I don’t know what role stress plays in cancer developing, but there is research to show that how we deal with stress has an impact on cancer survival. It appears that it isn’t always the stress per se that is the issue, but whether we feel helpless in dealing with it, or whether we can develop strategies to cope, and have some control over our situation. I think all sorts of things can help - posting here, joining support groups, meditating, diet, exercise …
I would strongly advise meditation as an antidote to stress. I received a ‘sirius’ mind machine as a gift and it is fantastic. I’d say its particularly helpful for those who normally would have difficulty meditating. After using it I invariably feel calm.
by the way - I wouldn’t necessarily knock alternative treatments. If you read Ty Bollinger’s “Cancer - step outside the box” it makes some very strong claims about how it is in the interest of the huge money making pharmaceutical companies to ‘rubbish’ any idea of an alternative therapy. Why wouldn’t nature provide natural ways of healing the body? I have been doing a lot of reading lately and am becoming more convinced that medical and pharmaceutical approaches are not necessarily driven by altruism. I would advise everyone to at least be open to the possibility.
alex
I have , I hope , an open mind about medicine , causes of cancer , the role of food and herbs in well being , and that stress also is in there somewhere .
I find acupuncture very therapeutic , find relaxation extremely difficult .
I did read "Cancer - step outside the box " given by a well meaning friend , and I disliked it intensly .
Whilst I can see that it would be possible for the pharmaceutical companies to want to "rubbish " alternative "cures " for cancer in the states , where medicines and insurance are huge business´s . I cannot see that the same is true in teh UK. With such an impoverished NHS , anything cheap would , I´m sure , be welcomed with open arms …or am I being naive ?
Anything that helps in any way be it supplements , change of diet , reiki , acupunture whatever , then go for it .This is´nt just "my cancer " , it is "your cancer " as well , and we will proberbly approach it slightly differently ie you found the book thought provoking , I found it a bit unnerving .
I do believe nature has natural ways of healing the body , but over many years , we seem to have gone against nature .
We spray crops with powerful pesticides and fungicides , over the years many have been banned .
We feed our animals on things totally alien to them , were they allowed to eat and forrage natuarlly .
Poor old nature has very little chance of putting right , what we have spent decades destroying .
Kris