I Used to Have Cancer
October 6, 2019
Listen in as we hear the personal story of James Templeton, author of “I Used to Have Cancer,” who has put stage 4 cancer into remission for over 30 years with just the help of a real food diet, key supplements, meditation and a variety of lifestyle changes. If you or someone you know has cancer, this is a rare opportunity that you don’t want to miss!
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Transcript
DARLENE: Welcome to the Dishing Up Nutrition. Today I have the pleasure of introducing to you James Templeton, the author of I Used to Have Cancer: How I Found My Way Back to Health. You know, I believe this show and podcast will be an amazing gift to use, especially if you have cancer or if a family member or a friend is struggling with cancer. So this is really going to be an interesting show, isn't it Marcie?
MARCIE: I do think so; lots of new thinking for people to hear.
DARLENE: You know, it's a rare opportunity to hear the personal story of someone who has put stage four cancer into remission for over 30 years. Yes, I said 30 years; particularly with just the help of real food, key supplements, meditation and a variety of lifestyle changes. Think about this: It's been over 30 years that James faced his cancer scare and decided he was not ready to die at age 32. Well I don't think anyone would be.
MARCIE: I don't think so.
DARLENE: So he decided he was going to fight as hard as he could and live. And guess what? He did.
MARCIE: He’s here today to tell us all about it.
DARLENE: You know, before we turn the mic over to James, I want to introduce to you our co-host today. You heard her voice. It's Marcie Vaske, who is a nutritionist. And besides asking James questions, she's going to keep us on track this morning, I hope.
MARCIE: Well, I'm going to try.
DARLENE: Well, with James and me, you never know.
MARCIE: I know. That's just it. I think I have the hardest job today.
DARLENE: I'm Darlene Kvist, also a long time nutritionist and you know, I have personally known and respected our special guest today, James, for over 20 years. However, until I read his book, I Used to Have Cancer, I didn't even realize the full extent of his cancer struggles. You know, I didn't even know.
MARCIE: Right.
DARLENE: Because Dishing Up Nutrition is all about nutrition, our main focus today will be on how he used nutrition to beat his cancer. You know, I encourage you to pick up his book: I Used to Have Cancer and get the full story because I'm sure he would tell you that although eating right truly made a difference in his recovery, there is more to healing cancer than just a good diet or good food. I mean, you know, and we recognize that in all healing, there's more to the story.
MARCIE: There is definitely more to the story. So we want to welcome James to Dishing Up Nutrition. We're very happy to have you on the show and share your remarkable story with our audience. So let's, can you help our listeners understand how you went from being a successful businessman to a frightened 32 year old man fighting for his life?
DARLENE: James, it's great to have you on. I love it. So thank you for being on this morning with us.
JAMES TEMPLETON: Thank you so much, Dar. It's great to hear your voice and I haven't talked to you in awhile. And it's wonderful to be with you and Marcie this morning.
DARLENE: Oh, it's going to be an eye-opening show for everyone. So I'll be quiet now and let you talk.
JAMES: Well, I'll tell you, it's just wonderful to be able to share my story today. And, you know, I was just a young guy. I was 32 years old. I was living in Texas. You can probably hear my accent still, even though I haven't lived there in many years. But, and it's early here, so I'm just getting going here. But, the thing is I was living in Texas and it was 1985; 32 years old. I thought that everything was going great. I had a beautiful wife, beautiful young daughter, not even two years old. And I thought I had life by the tail, I guess you could say. I had three very successful businesses. I was very ambitious. I worked every day and was looking forward to doing much, much more as far as business was concerned. I even was in very good physical fitness shape. I was one of these guys you'd see running down the highway every day and, people would see me everywhere. I was the guy that ran up and down the hills and through the woods; you name it. But, I thought I was doing the right thing. My father, my grandfather, they both died at a young age; my father at 46 and my grandfather 36.
DARLENE: Wow.
JAMES: So, therefore I never knew my grandfather. And I just thought that, you know, I better do something if I was going to live and be able to overcome this heart disease thing in the family. But long story short, I was following a guy: his name was Jim Fixx. Back in those days he was a runner. He was a guru in the health/fitness movement.
DARLENE: Yup. We all remember his name.
JAMES: Yeah. You know, Jim Fixx. And Jim Fixx was the guy that says, you basically stay in good shape and run, you can get away with anything. You know, pretty much. And so that's what I did. I beat myself to death on the highway and on the streets. Before I knew it though, I went in to get a newspaper in town, and I went in my office and sat down at my desk. And I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I noticed a headline that said, “Jim Fixx: Running Guru Dies While Jogging”. And I about fell over in my chair. And it said that he was a guy that was a runner and he died of a heart attack of all things. And I got to thinking about this. Oh my God, I mean, it really threw me. I better get checked out. I better do something quick. So what did I do? I went in to see a specialist, an internal medicine doctor that did these stress tests in this town I lived in. So I went in to see him. He got me on the treadmill and he was going to check my heart out thoroughly and all that. And he did. He got me on this treadmill and he says, you know, you broke the record. You broke the all time record. Nobody in this office has done this well. He says, “Whatever you're doing, you keep doing it. You're the picture of health.” He says, “You're going to live a long time because you're in tremendous shape.” But he said, on the way out, “There's only one thing I could even tell you to think about.” He says, “There's a mole on your back.” He says, “It looks a little different than the other moles.” He says, “I don't think there’s anything to it, but go get it checked out at a dermatologist office.” So that's exactly what I did. And when I went in to see the dermatologist I didn't think much about it. I figured it would be nothing. He just started freaking out. He looked at it and he says, “Oh my God. I think you have melanoma.” And he started running around in the room. Well, I didn't even know what melanoma was, but I knew it wasn't a friendly sounding word. I'll tell you. It doesn't sound very nice, does it?
MARCIE: No, and obviously he was scaring you.
JAMES: Oh, he scared the heck out of me. And all of a sudden I was this guy that thought he had everything going for him and now I just turned, probably, you know, pale all over. And I was scared to death and was shaking in my boots, literally. And I tell you what; I left there because I didn't like his bedside manner. And I said, I'll get back to you on this. Because he went on about, “Oh, you're going to, you know, you could die from this and this and that and you need to have all this surgery.” And so I didn't want to hear that at that point, so I left. I went home; decided to get another opinion. So I went into a dermatologist in Houston that I'd seen before. He looked at it; thought it looked suspicious, but he said, “Let me send you over to a world renowned oncologist.” Well, an oncologist, you know, is a doctor that specializes in these things. And this guy was renowned. I thought, well, if I have to go see someone, he's the guy I want to see. So I went to see the guy. He looked at it, said it looked suspicious. And he says to me, “I think we need to go in and remove this and see exactly what it is.” He said, “That's the only way we're going to know.” So he told me to go home. “Don't worry,” he says, “I'll get back to you in a few days.” He says “This two-inch square plug that we took out of your back's going to tell us everything we need to know.” So I went home and all I did was worry. You know, I was scared to death. This is the worst time, almost not knowing. You know, you're walking around on pins and needles. You couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep.
DARLENE: We've heard that from a lot of clients that go through this.
MARCIE: Right.
JAMES: Oh yeah. I was a total wreck. So then I sat around. I was waiting and waiting and no one called. I even checked at the doctor office. They said, “No, no results yet.” You know, I'm like, what in the world is taking so long? Well, it was almost two weeks before I got a phone call. And, he calls me up and it was one of those kind of phone calls that you read about in storybooks, you know. He says to me, he says, “Well, I got a report back from the lab. I got some good news and I got some bad news. And he says to me, he says, “The good news is that it's melanoma.” And I said, “Good news?!” He says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, now let me finish.” And he says, “It's good news because we think we got it all around this perimeter area of this incision.” And he said, “I think that we got it all and that's a good thing, and maybe we'll never see it again.” And then he says, “But the bad news,” he says, “It's very deep.” And he said, “Being this deep,” he says, “we're going to call it stage four, because it's more than likely going to spread to some other parts of the body or another organ. And we're going to have to really keep an eye on this.” And he says, “That's not a good thing.” And, he said, “You'll come in every three months; we'll check you out. There's nothing else you can do. You just live your life. Just go back to work. Don't worry about things.” He says, “There's nothing you can do.” Well, all I did was worry. I'll tell you I was scared to death.
All I did was feel sorry for myself. I got depressed. I didn't want to do anything. And my ambition went down the drain. I thought my life was over. I didn't have the internet that we have today to go and look things up in, you know, three or four minutes and find out information. But all I did was look and search what I could find. And I found that with melanoma, stage four melanoma, most people didn't live more than three years. So I was not a happy camper and I was so upset. I wasn't a good guy to be around anymore. I'll tell you, I wasn't the life of the party. I'll tell you that. And before I knew it, my wife said “I've had enough of this guy. I don't want to be around him anymore.” So what did she do? She moved into town. She took my daughter into town with her. And now I didn't have that needed support that I thought, you know, I needed. And I was miserable. And I didn't even care if I lived or died there for a little while.
DARLENE: So James?
JAMES: I was going through that.
DARLENE: James, we have to hold you right there because we have to take a break, you know. But stay with us.
MARCIE: We'll be right back with you, okay? You're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight and Wellness. Today our author, James Templeton, is sharing his story about how he overcame stage four cancer 33 years ago by changing his diet and lifestyle. I Used to Have Cancer is a very inspiring book about his healing journey.
DARLENE: So stay tuned and hear more of James's story.
MARCIE: Yes.
BREAK
DARLENE: Well welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. You know, today we want to take as much time as possible the hear James’ story. And so James you ended up in the hospital, so go ahead with your story, and then I want to make sure that you catch this: that you had three knocks on the door because I think that was so interesting in your story.
MARCIE: Powerful.
DARLENE: Powerful, yes.
JAMES: Well, I'll tell you, after getting checkups a couple of different times, three-month checkups, everything looked okay. But I discovered a lump in my groin area that was like a large marble right after about six months or so. And I called the doctor and he says, “Well, you know, why don't you come in and let's see exactly what that is?” You know, and he says, “Let's check you in the hospital.” And he says, “I think that it's probably nothing, but let's go in and see what it is. If it's anything, we'll remove it.” You know, “We'll just do a little biopsy.” So he went in, he put me in the hospital, and when I woke up in that hospital, I knew I was in trouble because I was all bandaged up everywhere. And, you know, and I didn't feel very well and everything. And I knew that wasn’t some little biopsy or some little bitty surgery. And he comes in; I'm laying there in the recovery room and he says, “Well, James,” he says, “I'm very sorry, but this cancer has spread to your lymphatic system.” And he said, “That's not what I wanted to see.” He says, “This is not good news.” He says, “Thing that I think we need to do,” he says, “is do 80 chemotherapy treatments.”
DARLENE: Wow, 80.
JAMES: He says, I want to do experimental chemotherapy, which was a type of hypothermia treatment where they'd elevate my temperature at, you know, as high as they could get it; like 105 or more. And they would get it really high with this typhoid serum. And then they would induce the chemo therapy and IV, would take about eight to 10 hours each time they would do this. But he wanted to do that and he wanted to do 80 treatments, but they could only do five at a time, five in a week's time. Then you'd have to go home for two months and recover from the chemo because it was that bad. And, he went on to tell me, he said, “Since we removed all of your lymph nodes in your groin,” he said, “We're going to have to do a lymph drainage pump also. If we don’t do that, your legs are going to swell.” This is what they were already doing. He said, “It's going to swell up so bad. You're going to have a lot of drainage and a lot of toxicity. You're going to end up losing your leg if you don't do this.” And I went, oh my God, you know, here I am going from, from good to bad really quick. And then he says to me, he says, “You know, I'm going to have to tell you this, that you only have a 20% chance of surviving three to five years.” He says, “If you can get through these treatments, these chemotherapy treatments alive.” And then he says, “If you don't do the treatments at all,” because I asked him; he says, “I don't see much hope at all.” Well I don’t know what that meant, but I didn't ask any more questions.
DARLENE: You didn’t want to know.
MARCIE: That’s for sure.
JAMES: Yeah. So I really was really upset now and I felt like my life was pretty much over and here I was a young guy and I'm laying there feeling sorry for myself and recovering from this surgery and I was on morphine and everything else that they give you for the pain. And it was pretty painful, this surgery I had. And I'm laying there and I'm just feeling terrible for over a week or so, just recovering. I was going to have to be in the hospital for two or three weeks, just recovering from the surgery. And then I would do the chemotherapy while I was there. But I'm laying there and I didn't know what to do and I, something inside of me said there’s got to be something else I can do besides this stuff. I didn't know what to do. Where I come from, you know, when you get sick, you go to the doctor. I didn't know anything about any kind of alternative means of healing or anything. I was just a, you know, a guy and just like a normal person that goes to the doctor. And if the doctor says jump, you jump, and you see, see if it's going to work or not. So that's what I did. Well, I'm laying there, I'm miserable and looking for answers and all of a sudden I got a phone call. And I got this phone call right out of the blue, and it was a minister at a church that I went to from time to time. And he calls me up and he says, James, he says, “You know, I want you to know I've been praying for you.” And he said, “A lot of people in town are praying for you. He says, “I feel terrible about what you're having to go through.” But he says, “I want you to know something.” He says, “If anybody can beat this cancer, you can.” He says, “You're the guy that's tough enough to do all this running and everything that you do.” And he says, “I just know that you can beat this cancer.” And he was a tough guy himself. He was a guy, he was an ex-professional baseball player, and I thought he was really a nice guy. And I looked up to him. And he got my attention because he said some things that I never heard any minister or preacher say that, the things that you hear in a locker room or something. And he told me, he says, “You beat this so-and-so cancer.” And he says, that “You're going to do this. I know.” And he got my attention. He really did. So I started to think after I hung up that phone about that I needed to pray; I needed to pray because I wasn't getting any, any answers, any other way. So I started to pray and I prayed so hard. I wasn't a guy who prayed a lot. I wasn't a guy that was real religious or anything. I started to pray though, and I prayed to God to help me and I said, I need help like I've never needed before. And I'm praying a hundred times more than I've ever prayed in my life here. So if you're willing to give me some help, I need it now: that kind of a prayer. And I tell you what, after I stopped that prayer, because I felt like every cell in my body was involved in this prayer. It was an interesting feeling in my body. And when I woke up, I had from that prayer, I was laying there and probably about 20 minutes later, I got a knock on the door. And I'm there in that bed laying there, miserable. And all of a sudden a friend of mine comes through that door that I hadn't seen in seven and a half years or so. And he was an old college buddy. And he comes in and he says to me, he says, “Well, I heard you were in here from a friend of ours and I felt terrible.” And he says, “I thought that that I should come and visit you. But I didn't know when the right time was. I was driving around the area near the hospital and something told me it's time to go see him now.” And he says, “I drove in. I walked up to the hospital” and he says, “Here I am.” And he had these papers in his hand, and I thought, well, what do you have in your hand there? And he goes, well, he says, “It's about a guy that cured himself with a diet and the lifestyle.” And he says, “I don't know anything about it, but it's information about a book. It's a book review. And a friend of mine at work brought it to me. We were having a discussion and I told him about you and he brought this to me and he thought it might be something you could use. And it was about a fellow and his name was Dirk Benedict. And Dirk Benedict wrote a book called Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy. And it was about how he healed himself of prostate cancer with a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle. Well, I never heard of macrobiotics. What the heck was that? You know. And I asked my friend, do you know about this? And he said, “No.” He said, “But you know, my friend just found this in a, you know, magazine.” And I said to him, well, can you go out and get this book for me? You know, and see if you can find it? And he says, “Sure, I'll do that.” Well, I started to get excited because if old Dirk could get well then why couldn't I? I felt like, well, this is something that I got to look into. And I felt like this was from the higher place: this whole thing that happened with my friend. I felt like this was meant to be. So I started to get very excited and felt like, hey, I've got something here that I can use to get well. And I got the book. I couldn't put it down. I read that book. I felt like hell, but I'll tell you what, I read that book. And I got excited. I felt like, hey, I got some information here that's going to help me. So I wake up the next morning, and I got another knock on the door in the hospital room and it was my stepmother. My stepmother comes through the door and she had a book in her hand and she says, “Well, I got a book from a relative and it just came in the mail and I wanted to get it over to you because it sounds very interesting. It's about vitamin C and cancer and it's by a guy by the name of Linus Pauling.” And Linus Pauling; well, I didn't know who Linus Pauling was back then.
MARCIE: That's right.
DARLENE: But you do now.
JAMES: So it went on to say that people had had late stage cancer, like I had: stage four mostly, that weren't considered terminal: a lot of these people. And they took high dose vitamin C and many of these people lived much, much longer when they took high dose vitamin C. And it said that some of the people even got well from vitamin C. That's what they felt. So I got excited and I thought, well my goodness. I said I'm finding and all this stuff out. I'm going to do the vitamin C also. I'll do the diet, the lifestyle and the vitamin C. If it'll help these people then why won't it help me too? So I started to get very excited.
DARLENE: James, we're going to have to stop just for a minute cause we got to take another break, but hold on. Don't leave us.
MARCIE: That’s right.
DARLENE: You've got a great story.
MARCIE: You're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. More than a third of men or women will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime. It seems that many people are now looking for a cure, and we also believe more and more people are looking at ways to prevent cancer. We encourage you to share this Dishing Up Nutrition podcast with any friend or family member interested in exploring a natural approach to fighting off cancer. Direct them to weightandwellness.com and have them click on podcasts. This may just be the information they've been looking for.
DARLENE: And we'll be back in a minute.
BREAK
DARLENE: Well welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. I want to read to you what James Templeton wrote about sugar, our favorite topic.
MARCIE: It is.
DARLENE: You know, he wrote: “Cancer thrives on sugar so waste no time kicking the sugar to the curb. Eliminating this sweet but deadly poison from your body is an absolute must.” You know, “Even fruit must be restricted when you have cancer.”
MARCIE: Yeah.
DARLENE: “But if you opt for eating fruit, you know, maybe just a little bit. Choose the fruit that has cancer fighting phytonutrients. And those would be things like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries or strawberries.” So, you know, guess what? This is exactly what we teach in our six week Weight & Wellness series, which we start… the next series starts October 7th at several of our twin cities locations. Or if that doesn't work for you, we have another option. We have a Weekend of Weight & Wellness and it's October 11, 12 and 13. And you know, we talk about real food is the best preventative measure that you can incorporate into your life, but it takes education and support to do that. So if you want to do the Weight & Wellness series, call 651-699-3438 or you can just go to our website: weightandwellness.com.
MARCIE: Yes.
DARLENE: So we're getting back to James’ story?
MARCIE: Yes. So James, so you had the three knocks on the door. And I think because of time, let's just kind of jump into… if you can tell our audience what the macrobiotic diet is. What does that mean?
JAMES: Well, the macrobiotic diet is the diet I’ve used. And the macrobiotic diet is a diet that consists of… it's almost like if you took a pie and you cut it out there's certain sections in it; well that would be probably 50% would be whole grains, organic whole grains like brown rice, barley, you know, millet; all these grains. And you would eat 50% or so of that in your diet and 25% would be vegetables. Now that would include organic vegetables. All organic, naturally grown everything. And you want to make sure that you're eating lots of cruciferous vegetables. Cruciferous are very anti-cancer; they have the anti-cancer properties, and alien vegetables like onions and garlic, and leeks. So that's very important. And then there's also like 10% beans because you got to get protein somehow or another. So beans like lentils, chickpeas, adzuki beans, which are smaller beans. These are the ones that are the most popular. There's other ones you can have occasionally, but these are the ones if you're going through some kind of a cancer thing. And the other thing would be 10% soups, especially miso soup. And they use a miso that’s fermented for like three years or so; of miso that's high quality, unpasteurized. It has to be in its natural state because of the good bacteria. And you want to make sure that you have this at least once a day on the macrobiotic diet and you have other vegetables, soups; lots of soups, and that's 10% of the diet. And then you want to have about 5% of sea vegetables. Sea vegetables are very high in minerals, anticancer properties also. So all these foods are very important and you want to have nuts and seeds; also healthy nuts and seeds, and like walnuts and macadamia nuts are very important, sesame seeds. These are all very, very important in the macrobiotic diet. And along with that, you know, there's the lifestyle. The lifestyle is chewing your food 50 times or more is what they recommend. Well, I did it 180 times cause it's a little’s good a lot's better. So I'm there and I'm chewing my food and that's how I got my meditation in cause I wanted to make sure I assimilated my foods, my nutrients and made it easy on my digestion because I wanted my immune system to be strong, and I wanted to take the load off of it from having to digest all this food. So I chewed my food also and I would have this meditative state. And when you're chewing that much, until the food is liquid, I mean you almost go off into another place.
MARCIE: After 180 chews.
JAMES: Yeah. And that was my meditation and I, it took me an hour or more just to eat a little plate of food.
DARLENE: So James, when you were cooking your own macrobiotic diet, how many hours were you spending on just cooking? Because I think this is the kind of stuff that people need to really hear: the importance that you placed on it.
JAMES: Well the thing about it is when you're doing a macrobiotic diet, it takes a lot of time. But if it's important to you to get well then that's not a big deal. But it takes probably at least, you know, an hour to do a little small meal but a lot of times a couple of hours to do a meal because you've got different dishes; you got all these dishes and you’re cooking your foods. And you're having, you know, something that's sweet and sour and and pungent and salty. There are different tastes. That's very important too for different organs. But the thing about it is, is that there's a right way to do the macrobiotic diet and a wrong way. And the people that do it the best are always the ones that do it the right way. They don't cut corners. They don't just eat rice and beans, you know, for example. And a lot of people think, well, “I'm on a macrobiotic diet and I'm just, you know, and I'm eating well…” Well, what are you having? “Well, I’m having miso soup today.” You know, so that's not going to make it happen if you're going through something like I did.
DARLENE: Yes.
MARCIE: How many years did you eat like that? I think the audience would be curious to know.
JAMES: I ate a very strict macrobiotic diet for six years; very, very strict. I mean, I was the strictest guy you could find, and I wouldn't even travel and eat in a restaurant; never ate in a restaurant for six years, other than a macrobiotic restaurant that I went to maybe, you know, three or four times a year that was owned by the Kushi Institute back then. And that was just as strict as the food that I ate. So I would eat there, but I would take my food in a motel room, for example. And I would have it in a, you know, I had a suitcase full of all my dried foods and I would pick up some fresh greens and vegetables at a health food store if I'm traveling. And I would cook in my motel room and I talk about this in my book: how I would cover up the smoke alarm.
MARCIE: Right.
JAMES: And I would cook on a hot plate.
DARLENE: Yes, interesting. So James, you did that for six years, over six years, and then you did switch; kind of talk about why you kind of switched your eating, your food plan, and what, why and what happened and more about that?
JAMES: I went, it's a long story, but I went to see a lady, and her name was Dr. Hazel Parcells.
DARLENE: We love that lady.
JAMES: Yes. Dr. Hazel Parcells: She lived to be 106. She was a very important person in my life and I learned so much from her. But when I heard about her, and I was taken to see her; and I went to see her and I even got to sit with her and work with her; and learn from her, and learn her methods of the way that she went about health and how she determined things that she needed to do on a regular basis. But I went to see her and I remember one day I sat there and I was working with her and I was more than less just kind of listening to her and helping her. You know, pick this up, and go get this, that kind of thing. And she says, “Well, honey, she says “It's about time for us to have lunch.” Now she was over a hundred years old then. She was probably 102, three back in about this time. And she says to me, she says, “Let's go have lunch. And she wasn't a lady that was in a wheelchair or bent over with a walker or anything. I mean, this woman was amazing, and she walked around just as good as anybody that was 30 or 40 years old. And she was so vibrant and had such a wit about her that she was really fun to be around. But she said, “Let's eat.” So I go in there and she brings out this food. She had a Crock-pot and I thought, you know, I didn't know what we're going to have. And she pulls it out. She says, “We're having beans and ham hocks.” And I said beans and ham hocks? How in the world can I eat that? I can't eat that. I'm on a macrobiotic diet. And she looked at me and she said, “Now listen here.” She says, “If you don't change your ways, you're going to get sick again.” And I looked at her and I said, well, what do you mean? She says, “Well, you're too thin. Your color's not good. You're not getting enough protein. And she just spilled the beans out literally.” And she says to me, she says, “You need to eat meat. Now I said, “I can't eat meat. I haven't had meat in six years.” She says, “Well, you're going to have to.” Well, I looked at her and I said, well, who's going to lie? Who's going to argue with a woman that's 103 or so and looks as good as she does? She must know something that I don't know. So I went ahead and had that and it was delicious. And I got to where I would eat meat again. I started eating meat, you know, very healthy, organic food. You know, I still do to this day. I followed the program similar to what she would recommend. I don't eat ham hocks, but, I really think it's important. She said it was so important because you know, you have to support your glands with the right amounts of protein and that when you're on a healing diet, it's not something you stay on forever. And I realized how important that was. And when I started to follow her diet, I gained weight, started to get my muscle tone back. I started to have a lot more energy. But before that I didn't know any better and I was scared to death not to be on a macrobiotic diet. It was very healing for me; very detoxifying and it was very alkalinizing, which is very important when you have cancer. So I'm not surprised that I got over this cancer diagnosis, you know, using this diet, this macrobiotic diet.
MARCIE: Well, this is a perfect place to take our third break.
DARLENE: Okay.
MARCIE: Okay. So you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Next week, join Cassie and Joann as they discuss how you can get better sleep during perimenopause and menopause. And you might also want to join Joann, Diane and Darlene on Saturday, November 9 for the Menopause Survival Seminar. People love this class. Grab a friend or a sister and spend a day learning all about hormonal symptoms and how to manage them naturally. If you have any questions, just give us a call at 651-699-3438 or read all about our fun info-packed day online at weightandwellness.com.
BREAK
DARLENE: Well welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. You know, before we run out of time today, I want to thank James for writing this book, and for taking the time 20 years ago to teach me how to listen and how to think deeply about each health challenge a client might have. James and the love of his life, Ann Louise Gittleman, are truly inspirational to all who want to live a healthy lifestyle. You know, I thank both of you for all that you know, and all that you do for other people. It's just amazing. Both of you are just amazing people. But we have more questions for you James. And your story is not over yet.
MARCIE: No, it is not over. So we kind of dug into the macrobiotic diet, but I think we should talk about the vitamin C piece of this. How did you use that in your healing, James?
DARLENE: And do you still use vitamin C?
MARCIE: Yeah.
JAMES: I do. I do. Vitamin C is my best friend, and you know, after I was in the hospital and I got that information about vitamin C, and after the doctor basically told me there was not much hope for me because my body wasn't responding to these chemotherapy treatments, I just walked out of the hospital, you know, at two in the morning. And I dug in. At that point, I made up my mind that I was going to get on this vitamin C and do this diet. Well, you know, and I wasn't going to look back and if it didn't work for me, it wasn't going to work for anybody. That was my kind of my battle cry. And I, the vitamin C gave me a lot of interesting ways of battling this cancer because at the time I didn't know I was doing. So I took a lot of vitamin C back then. I took 20,000 milligrams of vitamin C back then.
DARLENE: That’s a lot of vitamin C.
JAMES: Yeah. And I took that. Now I didn't do IV. People nowadays say, “Well, you got to do IV or you don't absorb it.” But I took a lot of vitamin C that was time-released that was slowly released into my system and that's a very helpful kind of vitamin C to take. But, it, after about three months on this vitamin C program and the diet, I felt like a different person. I felt like my body was coming alive again. I felt this excitement that I hadn't had in years. I felt like, hey, now, you know, if I was going to beat this cancer… my will kicked in. You know, when I decided to get out of that hospital and after I got that news, I had a strong will. And before that I had no hope. I was scared to death, fearful. And the vitamin C just gave me this confidence that if it would help all these people, it would help me. But yeah, I take a lot of vitamin C to this day. I probably take, oh, I don’t know, 16,000 milligrams a day or so now spread out through the day. It's just something that I, it's probably something I'm afraid to stop taking. But I'd never had any issues. I've never had kidney stones. I've never had any of this. And I've been taking vitamin C for 30 years, over 30 years. Can you believe that?
DARLENE: Wow, that's amazing, James.
MARCIE: It is.
JAMES: And I don't think I've been sick, but maybe once or twice in 30 years with the flu or anything. So there's something to that along with the other things that I do I'm sure.
MARCIE: Right.
DARLENE: Yes. So James as you're thinking about, a couple of things that just popped out when I was reading your book is… One of the things that you said is if you're really serious about fighting cancer, you can't eat out. You can't eat in restaurants. Do you want to cover that just a little bit? And then the other one is, you know, you have to talk about sugar again.
MARCIE: Right.
JAMES: Well, eating out… if you have cancer, you know, and I'm talking about serious cancer and I think cancer is serious no matter what stage it is. I wouldn't be eating out. I would eat at home. I would get on a strict diet. I would clean up my diet, whether it's a macrobiotic diet or whether it's some other kind of diet. You know, a lot of people will have different opinions. And, I think one diet doesn't fit all. And I'm not necessarily saying a macrobiotic diet is the diet that people should use. You know? And if I had to do it over again, I might not do exactly the same thing, but it helped me. But you've got to eat at home. You got to take control of your own health. You got to put your own healing energy back into your own food. And, I think it's very, very important, and you got to get the sugar out because sugar feeds cancer. It’s just that simple. Get it out. Starve the cancer to death. Cancer cannot live if you take the sugar out and starve it to death from sugar. It will start to go after the vitamin C because vitamin C has a very similar molecular structure to sugar; to glucose. So it's very important that you do this. And, and the other thing that, you know, vitamin C helps build up the collagen and there's research to show that cancer is a collagen disease. It spreads through the collagen layers through the connective tissue. And when it does that, that's why when it metastasizes, that's when it usually creates havoc in the body and causes lots of inflammation and all that and basically ends up doing a lot of people in. So vitamin C is so important and it breaks down into hydrogen peroxide. So you want to make sure that you take lots of vitamin C, you know, I believe if you have cancer, but that's just my opinion.
DARLENE: So the other thing, you know, this is just a back into the kitchen thing. Dr. Parcells talked to you about your cookware, what you were cooking with. And I think this is something that people can grab ahold of and think about. So talk about that just a little bit, James.
JAMES: Well, I mean most people just, they don't think about this. They buy cheap cookware that's full of aluminum and full of nickel and full of all these heavy metals, you know, on the bottom, on the cook bottom. And in the material, these, these alloys and you know, are just so toxic and the heavy metal toxicity that what they create is not very healthy on your immune system. And, you know, you got to get the best heavy duty stainless steel. You know, probably the most expensive stainless steel is going to be the best, and there's stainless steel out there that does not leech heavy metal into the food and in to your, to your body ultimately. So it's very important that Dr. Parcells used to say that, that you know, that the biggest serpent in the kitchen, you know, is in the cookware. You know, that you've got to really, you know, clean up your, your act. And the first thing is throw out your, your old pots and pans and get healthy stainless steel. Or cast iron, I like the Le Creuset. Those are very good too. They're heavy duty. They're expensive, but it's your health.
DARLENE: Exactly.
JAMES: Food is our medicine and we need to have the best of the best and use the best pots and pans. You know, when you're preparing. It's very important.
DARLENE: You know, James, thank you so much for writing this book. You know, people listening, I really encourage you to pick up his book, you know, let me give you the title again. I Used to Have Cancer.
MARCIE: That's right.
DARLENE: That was over 30 years ago; just amazing. James, you’re a great guest on the show. Thank you.
MARCIE: Thank you, James.
JAMES: Thank you so much Dar and Marcie. It's been a pleasure and, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.
DARLENE: I agree. Thank you.
MARCIE: Take care. Bye-bye.
