My four 'p's to battle cancer...

... doing what I can to improve my health holistically

This is bit off topic for my Substack, but as the topic of health is consuming my thoughts at present, I thought I would write a little bit about it. I believe that spiritual health is deeply connected to physical health, in any case.

This is the stage in a cancer diagnosis that can be frustrating as not much is known and this time there has been a considerable delay, I presume due to the current state of the NHS. Since the first May bank holiday I have been experiencing pain in my chest and breathlessness, on top of worse fatigue than usual, so I have stopped working. So far there has been no clear medical explanation for these symptoms though, which is unnerving, and I’m becoming increasingly disillusioned with medical care as a result.

However I am being proactive in improving my health, physical, emotional and spiritual, in preparation for whatever may come.

Purity

As mentioned I had an amazing Lent. Over the past six months I’ve undergone a thorough repentance and I have experienced some beautiful graces and consolations. I now see that God was most likely preparing me for the challenge ahead. But more and more I see the importance of holiness, pursuing the grace of union with Christ, and the need for attention towards all sin, however small.

I realise in the past that I have given myself too much tolerance for “little” sins such as criticism, judgement, impatience, and so on, and I feel a strong desire to root them out of my life. Recently I have realised how much these are rooted in pride. If I surrender self to God, these faults tend to lessen. As I meditate on the Cross and its redemptive power to remove these sins, I am aware of the resurrected life of Christ and my need for Him in order to live a holy life.

Christian healing often focuses on rooting out sin and especially unforgiveness in order to be physically healed. I do not want to focus too much on this, because I feel as though this ongoing task should be done for love of God, not because I want to get something out of it, however much these kind of self-centred motivations persist. But perhaps this task is especially important when facing the possibility of suffering and even death, and being ready to give account to my Maker.

Push ups

There is reasonable evidence that exercise can both ward off cancer and extend survival to those who have it. I had been reasonably fit on and off but recently a frozen shoulder had almost stopped my activity entirely and I’d become very unfit. But, during Lent I committed to 15 mins a day of exercise, usually by using some of the great YouTube workouts that are out there. Since diagnosis I’ve gradually upped the length, so I’m aiming now to work out for an hour a day. There are loads of different fitness instructors to try. I’ve tried a few ‘Christian’ workouts whose main advantage is an absence of the low quality house music that seems to always sing about awful dysfunctional relationships and is almost ubiquitous on other fitness channels!

Plenty of vegetables

Using diet to heal is controversial and nowadays there are so many different approaches that it can lead to an argument. Many ill people are really resistant to using food as medicine. I might have been too if it hadn’t worked for me - I’ve been on various forms of a low carb diet for years, because I have time and again experienced that it is effective in reducing my disabling migraines. I am aware that there is good evidence for high vegetable consumption in improving health and especially cancer. Some health advocates push a high veg, high raw, diet such as Chris Wark who combines it with Christian inspiration, and a number of medical doctors.

Cruciferous vegetables appear to be particularly beneficial against cancer and inflammation, although the research is patchy. So I’ve started a green smoothie regime inspired by Dr Brooke Goldner, which at first prompted quite a few migraines because to make them taste nice you need a lot of fruit - which have a lot of carbs. So I’ve had to get used to much less palatable smoothies with much less fruit. Not great for taste, but I do feel better for them. I’ve also listened to medics such as Dr Joel Fuhrman and his advice regarding a “nutritarian” diet, and am seeking to follow it. As a result, I’m eating extraordinarily healthily at the moment, including a pound of raw cruciferous vegetables a day!

When I discuss this with people they sometimes get worried as the enormous amounts of veg, nuts, seeds I’m eating along with limited animal protein sounds very unhealthy to those used to our modern, high meat, highly processed diets. However when I started, I was plugging in the diet into the cronometer app, and I found that I am receiving considerably better nutrition on this diet than my typical intake.

Positivity

I’ve written before about how many blessings I received from my first cancer diagnosis three years ago. This time round and the same is happening - friends were commenting on how positive I have been - though there are considerable ups and downs, for sure. This is likely the fruit of the great Lent I’ve talked about. But I am already observing God bring good things out of this situation, and I am sure that will continue, whatever happens.

When considered in the light of eternity and spiritual wellbeing, many difficult and painful experiences can be seen to be blessings in disguise. The story of Jessica Hanna, who titled her Instagram account “blessed by cancer,” is one example of this. Her frequent vlogging on her deep spiritual life as her body suffered and eventually succumbed to cancer is an inspiration to me.

Of course I want to avoid suffering, and all the challenges of having cancer. But I am hoping to unite them with Christ in the hope of the beautiful fruits of love, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit, for myself or for others.

Some of the anti-cancer salads I’ve eaten, with high volumes of raw cruciferous veg!