I am looking BACK into huge diet changes. Sadly to say, what we did in the beginning slowly and completely went away. Once Ryan got a few NED scans in the beginning we let the diet go to the way side. Now that he is regaining strength and feeling better overall we want to re introduce the diet he was on. Was wondering what everyone else is doing in that aspect. I would love to hear about any diets or supplements anyone is on. Gerson diet is what I am going to go for again, it’s super strict so I know we won’t be able to stick to it 100% by the books but we are going to try along with a slew of supplements. Love to all! Hope to hear from you guys
Kelly
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kellyOd
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Kelly, has Ryan talked with his provider about vitamins and supplements? I’d be interested in their thoughts with immunotherapy. There are interesting studies currently underway around the gut biome and the relationship to uptake with immunotherapy.
He has! He sees a palliative care doctor that also does integrative medicine. So she manages his pain, also gives suggestions on diets, supplements, and mental health care. His oncology doctor and palliative care are at the same hospital and they work very closely. They do a lot of research as to what would interact or not interact with current treatment. I always run things by her anyway just to make sure we don’t cause any harm by certain supplements. We just got one approved, well let’s say the “go ahead” on taking a black cumin oil supplement. “Black seed”.
Hi Kelly I am glad to hear from you, hope everything is going well.
About diet and lifestyle changes I can tell you what we did, which I think helped a lot!.
Just for the record, MD Anderson has started a fase 1 trial regarding gut microbiome and how it affects cancer in itself and outcomes for immunotherapy. Extremely interesting.
So here we did, and still do, the following: Whole food plant based diet, all organic, mostly raw, all food made from scratch 95% of the time. NO industrialised food ( not even the plant based ones). A different grain every day and not too much of it, no bread ( just 1 slice of Ezequiel IF hungry ), nothing animal related, a ton of veggies and fruit of all kinds. We also juiced about 64 oz a day, fruit and vegetable based. We do that 3x week now that he is NED. Low fat. Gerson is perfect if you can keep that up, in general you basically want to overload on nutrition. There is enough research done on animal protein relating to cancer and other diseases for me to feel comfortable being mostly vegan, just have your B12 checked after a couple of months to compare with baseline.
We didn't do many supplements in the beginning because I felt uncomfortable doing it without knowing how it would affect the immunotherapy. I am an acupuncturist so gave him sessions and some chinese herbs as well. Gave him Reiki everyday, Access Bars at least once a week. Now that he is without active melanoma we continue on the diet because as I see it it's for the rest of his life, still juice although a little less, still do reiki and AB, try to get him to meditate but that's hard hihi.
I am pretty convinced it helped his treatment kick in the way it did and have fewer irAE's, just can't prove it scientifically, hope the people at MD Anderson help with that part!
If you want more details, I'd be happy to provide them.
Thank you so much for such a detailed response! What you guys are doing sounds exactly like what we will try to achieve in the next few days! WOW that’s so awesome you do acupuncture! Do you recommend that? (I’m sure you would 😊) do you think it was beneficial? What Chinese herbs do you mean? I love eastern old medicine and am so interested in learning more.
Anything you have to share I am a sponge right now!!
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