Penny Brohn - Nourish: The Cancer Care Cookbook

NOURISH

The Cancer Care Cookbook

with Christine Bailey

Eating well is a simple and powerful way to strengthen your bodys natural defences against cancer. We aim to help you enjoy nourishing food and a whole-person lifestyle. Our understanding is based on more than 30 years experience of helping people to live well with the impact of cancer.

Penny Brohn Cancer Care has supported tens of thousands of people since 1980, as they take this step and make other simple lifestyle changes. Our approach, which has become known as The Bristol Approach, is a powerful combination of physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual support that is designed to help anyone affected by cancer, at any stage of the disease.

Working alongside medical treatment, our philosophy encourages people to build up their own resilience and to harness the power of their bodys innate capacity to restore balance and well-being (the technical term for this is homeostasis). We are the leading UK charity working in this field.

When Penny Brohn was diagnosed with cancer in 1979 she asked, Is there anything that I can do to help increase my chances of staying well? It set her on the path that led her, and her friend Pat Pilkington, to found the charity that is now known as Penny Brohn Cancer Care. The philosophy was to take a whole-person approach to managing cancer and this continues to be our aim today.

Nourish is for people affected by cancer, including their family and friends although much of the information applies to anyone, whatever their age or state of health. It is a source of recipes, inspiration and practical nutritional information that can increase your chances of staying well.

Cancer is a complex group of diseases. There are many different types, with numerous causes. Each cancer type can affect our bodies in a number of ways. In essence, each cancer starts life as a normal cell in which the DNA has been damaged. The damaged cell divides rapidly, multiplying and invading areas of the body where it would not normally be found.

Cancer is often caused by free-radical damage, which creates oxidative stress in the body. It uses processes such as angiogenesis () to grow and spread, and may be encouraged by certain environments in the body, such as inflammation.

The good news is that your body is hard-wired to heal. Your immune system is designed to protect you from all kinds of damage and has specialized white blood cells whose job it is to detect and destroy cancer cells. How a cancer develops depends on the balance between the damaged cells and the ability of your bodys immune system to detect and destroy them. Learning how to support your immune system is an essential step towards making your body a less cancer-friendly environment. This is especially important during cancer treatment, which often has the side effect of temporarily reducing immune function.

Your immune system is sensitive to changes in your physical, emotional and psychological states. There may be times when you seem to catch every cold going, especially when youve been under pressure or have been burning the candle at both ends. Now, scientists have proved that white blood cells can be activated or deactivated by chemicals produced in the body; for example, adrenaline and cortisol, which your adrenal glands make when you are stressed, are powerful immune suppressants, whereas endorphins produced by your body when you exercise are immune enhancers.

Fortunately, many of the things that keep your immune system working well also make you feel good, so it is a question of listening to your body and finding the right balance for you.

Eating well and exercising regularly, managing your stress and emotions, and connecting to the things and people that really matter in your life are all ways that may help to increase your chances of staying well.

THE FIRST SIMPLE STEPS TOWARDS A WHOLE-PERSON APPROACH

Eat more whole foods, especially vegetables and fruit, and fewer processed foods.

Aim to build up to taking some form of exercise for 20 minutes, five times a week.

Identify any major sources of stress in your life and, if these cant be changed, use regular mindfulness meditation or relaxation to help minimize the effects of the stress on your health.

Make sure you have support for expressing your emotions when you need to; for example, a cancer nurse specialist, your doctor, through counselling, a support group, friends or family, or by using an online forum or keeping a diary.

Do at least one small thing every day that lifts your spirits or connects you to the things that matter to you.

Researchers who have studied whole-person approaches have found that when people eat more healthily, exercise more regularly and pay attention to managing their stress and emotions, their cancers can sometimes become less active and even shrink in size. Evidence confirms the benefits of such lifestyle changes and how they can increase survival in people with cancer.

These results dont in any way suggest that medical treatments are not needed this approach can work even more effectively when combined with conventional care but they do highlight the potential benefits of a whole-person approach for the many millions of people living with a cancer diagnosis in the world today.

For many people, improving their diet is the first step towards managing their cancer, and this cookbook will help you to do that. There is more to our approach than the food you eat. The benefit you get from eating well depends on many things; if you eat meals on the run, for example, blood flow will be diverted away from your digestive organs so that even if you eat healthily your body may be unable to use the food as well as it could, reducing some of the nutritional benefit. Similarly, if worry about your health is causing lack of sleep or arguments with your family, or if you dont exercise, the overall benefit of the good food you eat may be reduced. What is more, if youre tired, stressed or depressed, you are likely to spend less time cooking and may be more likely to reach for comfort foods instead, which tend to be high in sugar, salt and unhealthy fats precisely the foods that undermine the bodys ability to heal itself.

The intention behind Nourish is to help you to adopt healthy eating as a lifestyle. We take you step by step through our approach, explaining at each stage why the food combinations we suggest make a difference to the way your body is able to deal with cancer cells and cancer treatments. In The Link Between Diet & Cancer () there are tips on how to plan, prepare and eat your meals in a relaxed way. There are also suggestions to help you get the most from the food you eat by making sure your digestion is working at its best.