Back to Basics

Healthy Food & Lifestyle

I wanted to share the story of how Ken initially came to write the blog. We rented the movie Anticancer by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber from the library and it tells the amazing story of how he lived with brain cancer for almost 20 years (he was diagnosed by accident when his friends gave him an MRI).

His personal story, Anticancer tells us:

◊ Why the traditional Western diet creates the conditions for disease and how to develop a science-based anticancer diet
◊ How and why sugar and stress feed cancer and ways to achieve life balance and good nutrition to combat it
◊ Why the effects of helplessness and unhealed wounds affect our ability to restore health
◊ How to reap the benefits of exercise, yoga, and meditation
◊ How to minimize environmental toxins
◊ How to find the right blend of traditional and alternative health care

We watched the movie late at night and Ken cried afterward (Ken does not cry often) saying “I want all my friends and family to know about this because they can maybe avoid cancer by watching this movie.” He proceeded to stay up late crafting what would be this blog to help others and share what he learned – http://www.anticancerbook.com/.

I think it’s important to bring the focus back to food because it is so important to our health and well being and also lifestyle. We DO have a choice in our everyday decisions that impact our health. For those afflicted with GBM seeking out the Ketogenic Diet could greatly improve survival time and help to control seizures.

Valcyte

I also read an interesting article on a breakthrough brain cancer treatment that Dr. Charles Cobbs in Seattle has been using which shows great promise. He found that cytomegalovirus, a common virus that infects 50 to 80 percent of adults by age 40, can cause brain infections in newborns and patients with a compromised immune system.

Cobbs’ hunch was verified in 2002 when he started testing cancerous tumor samples from patients and found every one tested positive for cytomegalovirus.

“It was jaw dropping at the time,” he said. “These were the dark years. No one believed a virus could cause brain cancer.”

Many, in fact, did not believe Cobbs claims until years later after his findings were confirmed by researchers at Duke University, MD Anderson Cancer Center and UCLA.

A treatment plan

Working under the assumption that brain tumors were somehow associated with cytomegalovirus, Cobbs considered whether the antiviral drug valganciclovir (Valcyte) –  typically used to treat the virus in AIDS patients – could help brain cancer patients survive.

While the median survival rate for glioblastoma is typically just 15 months and only 15 to 20 percent of patients live for two years, 90 percent of Soderberg-Naucler’s patients on Valcyte lived for at least two years. Even more exciting for Cobbs and Soderberg-Naucler, the median survival rate of these patients was 56 months, or just over four and a half years (link to article http://www.komonews.com/news/health/Doctor-brings-breakthrough-brain-cancer-treatment-to-Seattle-223645961.html?m=y&smobile=y)