Few things are more devastating to a person’s peace of mind than a cancer diagnosis. It brings up fears not only for our own health but also for the well-being of our families, friends, and loved ones. For this reason and because it takes the lives of thousands of Americans every day, cancer has been the subject of intense scrutiny for half a century and has been studied for more than one hundred years.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that cancer is a chronic dis¬ease of the genome that can appear in anyone at any time, triggered by genetic predisposition and a confluence of interactions with the environment. Yet not everyone with the breast cancer gene develops the disease. Whether a woman avoids developing breast cancer, genetics notwithstanding, has everything to do with a myriad of other factors, including exposure to environmental factors, diet, lifestyle, stress, and more.

Once a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, an inevitable fear permeates her body and mind, and her friends and family are affected as well. Alarming questions emerge: Why did this happen to me? Why now? How serious is this illness? What treatment will be suggested? What can I do to improve my chances of having a happy and healthy life after treatment? If this cancer goes away, how can I minimize the risk of recurrence? Too often, some of these important questions go unanswered.

Despite doctors’ best intentions and high level of skill at diagnosing and treating cancer, there is still a great deal that we don’t know about this most frightening of diseases. Fortunately, there is a new movement within medicine that addresses the health of the whole person, not just the presence of cancer. This movement, integrative oncology, draws on traditional and contemporary natural health and wellness philosophies in addition to conventional cancer treatment modalities, resulting in a multifaceted approach to supporting the well-being of women with breast cancer.

Prominent among the wellness factors that a woman can proactively address every day of her life is nutrition. Good nutrition is the very foundation of cancer resistance, a vital, life-enhancing component of lifelong tissue growth as well as tissue repair, damage, and recovery. Emphasizing certain foods while avoiding others is a powerful self-care practice, and the healthy food choices presented in this book are delicious and satisfying to boot.

For the woman whose life has been turned upside down by a cancer diagnosis and treatment, optimal nutrition is key. This book offers an Eating for Health approach, which supports a healthy liver; digestive, immune, and hormone balance; nutrient sufficiency; and positive genetic expression. We explain the mechanisms of cancer, provide evidence-based information on how to prevent or delay its onset or recurrence, and offer suggestions for supporting sustained recovery. Dr. Bernie Siegel, who, along with his wife, Bobbie, founded the Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP) center in New Haven, Connecticut, articulates the whole-person approach we share. In working with people who have cancer, he writes (quoted in Hughes and Hughes 2006):

Your actions depend on your attitude. If you listen to a doctor who tells you, “You have two months to live,” you can go home and be dead in a week. You just turn off everything. But what if you got angry at the doctor and said, “Who are you to tell me when I’m going to die?” Then you might go home and start fighting for your life to prove the doctor wrong. What a difference! So that’s why I began to learn from people who didn’t die when they were supposed to. They all have stories to tell you. They were not denying their mortality, but they were using it to truly begin to experience life and do what felt good before they died. However, once you’re feeling good, it’s a benefit to your body and the healing process, and this is why we have spontaneous remission. It’s crazy to me that we don’t study success. Somebody has an incurable disease but survives, but we don’t rush to them and say, “How did you manage this?” We just say it’s a miracle.

Our book aims to instruct and support women who are dealing with breast cancer about risk and diagnosis, both before and after treatment. This information can enable integrative oncologists to share the care of cancer patients with nutrition consultants, natural chefs, and other healing arts and mental health professionals. We seek to create a network of health professionals who provide coordinated nutritional and personal support, elegantly blended with medical treatment.

Nutrition Is Power

The Eating for Health approach to improving eating habits and food choices supports health and contributes to protecting healthy cells from becoming cancerous; it doesn’t claim to be curative. If we assume that cancer is a genetic disorder, our focus is on which foods support cancer-protective gene expression versus which foods promote cancer proliferation. The research on this nutrition-based approach is still emerging, because foods have not been studied as exhaustively as botanical and, especially, pharmaceutical medicines.

Because few researchers have tested the healing power of diet alone for breast cancer, we see the role of food and nutrients as promoting health and peace of mind, and supporting life. Jeffrey Bland, a pioneering biochemist in the field of nutrigenomics, has stated (2010) that fresh, whole plant foods speak to our genes in a language they understand, encouraging them to function in a health-promoting way (more on this in chapter 3). It is logical to conclude that consuming foods that were grown in poor soil, and then overprocessed and blended with chemical additives, colors, and preservatives, is less conducive to health in general due to such foods’ low nutrient content and tendency to arouse inflammation at a cellular level. We will explore this premise in detail in the chapters to come.

Engaging the Whole Person in Healing

For healthy women, this book provides reliable nutritional information that can help you to stay cancer free. If you have had breast cancer, we explain how to use nutrition and lifestyle practices to minimize the chance of a recurrence.

Nutrition for the body comes from food, whereas nutrition for the soul comes from hope, faith, and love. Combining optimal bodily nutrition from fresh, whole foods with soul nutrition from kindness and compassion communicates to our genes that we are committed to making the most of life. Whatever patterns of toxicity, trauma, or malnutrition may have contributed to the altered gene expression that we call cancer, these patterns may shift as we surround ourselves with love and good wishes while undergoing treatment. If indeed an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, then our intention is to provide you with information, skills, and Eating for Health guidelines and recipes that you can use to foster vibrant health. May you live a long, full life knowing that the “C” word stands for many things besides cancer, including courage and commitment to change and growth.

excerpt from The Whole-Food Guide for Breast Cancer Survivors: A Nutritional Approach to Preventing Recurrence by Edward Bauman MEd, PhD and Helayne Waldman MS, EdD