New Daily Routines

As a result of reading this book, Anticancer, as well as visits with my physical therapist, I've tried to make some changes into my daily routine and diet.

I've been eating at least one tablespoon of flaxseed with cereal or on my toast in the morning. The author of Anticancer advocates 2-3 tablespoons a day. He also says that 2-3 cups of green tea are part of an Anticancer diet - I'm up to two. I have a caffeinated version with breakfast and will have a decaf one in the evening. I have incorporated at least a cup of soy each day, either as milk or in tofu. I already take turmeric as a supplement but a few times a week, I try to have a curry. I need to incorporate blueberries more often, but I eat something with blueberries at least once a week as well as dark chocolate. I have a bottle of red wine and over the past week, I've had two glasses. I'm trying to eat more veggies, especially colorful veggies. He also says we should eat "stone fruits" which are things like peaches and pears. I need to bring them in still. He also says that eating things in combination with each other is more effective than eating them singly, so my breakfast is a multigrain cereal with soy milk and ground flaxseed with a cup of green tea. The ground flaxseed has blueberry, cranberry, and strawberry bits in it.

My physical therapist said that I should do my stretches twice/day. I find that that's hard to do. So, I do them at night and have incorporated them into my nightly before-bed routine that includes qigong. I think it helps. On Friday, the palm of my hand started tingling a lot, like it was falling asleep. I kept shaking it to try to wake it up, but that didn't help because the nerve is constantly being compressed with the swollen lymph nodes. What helped was stretching. Once I stretched my left arm, it felt better.

I guess I find, that for me, it's better to start slow and incorporate one or two new things into the routine and once they become routine, then add something else. So, that way it's gradual - and pretty soon, I don't notice it. If I were to go all out, it would be overwhelming. So, a little bit at a time.

I've been trying to phase out sugary candies and processed foods, including industrialized meats and dairy products (meaning, meat and dairy products that have hormones and/or are fed corn syrup and other products to increase productivity, instead of natural range beef and dairy).

I think our whole American society needs to change our diet - like the new TV show called Food Revolution (I think). Yesterday, as I walked around the amusement park, I noticed that at least half of the people (if not more, sadly to say), including children, were overweight. (I noticed this, too, when arriving at the Minneapolis airport after living in London for a few months in 2005. It's really sad - and then I get pissed off at the toxic way that large industrial farms have harmed our diets.) The author of Anticancer says that nutritionists have called the obesity epidemic in this country an "American paradox" - since the 1980s, we have greatly decreased the amount of fats in our diet and yet our society, on average, has gained weight, not lost it. He cites a lot of research, that convinced me, that this is due to the fact that our diets now have about five times as much Omega-6's in our diet due to these processed foods - the amount of sugar and corn syrup in our diets and even in the diets of our meat and dairy. The Omega-6's are "inflammatory", causing an increase in heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer. The idea is to create balance in our diets again by decreasing the Omega-6's and increasing the Omega-3's, found in the anti-inflammatory foods such as flaxseed, soy, blueberries, fresh veggies, green tea, curry and turmeric, and red wine.