Sugar

One of the very first things I heard when I got my diagnosis was that I should change my diet. A plethora of books, cookbooks, health blogs, Instagram accounts, and YouTube channels were all recommended to me. Of course, none of these things were recommended by my doctors. None. During my two-hour long session with my oncologist and surgeon to discuss my treatment plan, nutrition wasn’t even mentioned.

At the time, I didn’t know to ask questions about nutrition or any other lifestyle factors. And I had full confidence that these well-educated, well-reviewed, experienced, and healthy-looking female doctors would tell me everything I needed to know. And let the record show, I still have great faith in my esteemed doctors. But now, with so much more research under my belt, I know that this treatment regimen was just one small piece of a greater puzzle.

Thanks to an unbelievable outpour of support from my family (both blood and in-lawed), close friends, and even distant acquaintances via Facebook/Instagram (many of whom I hadn’t even spoken to since middle or high school!), my eyes started opening up to a world of alternative approaches to cancer treatment. The blinders of mainstream Western medicine started to come off. And the first thing I knew I had to do was make some changes to my diet.

The first phase of this journey was going organic. ALL organic ALL the time. I voraciously sifted through my canned and packaged goods, creating a giant donation pile of anything non-organic (which I felt kind of bad about… “I can’t have any of this cancerous POISON, but maybe you’d like some, people less fortunate that I?) I threw a lot of stuff away, too, as an astonishing number of goods were expired. Check your shelves, people!

Next step was jam-packing my fridge with lots of colorful fruits and vegetables that have strong cancer-fighting properties—blueberries, apricots, kale (obviously), broccoli, sweet potatoes, bok choy, mushrooms, etc. No joke, the fridge was (and continues) to be packed wall-to-wall with fruits and vegetables that I struggle to finish before they go bad.

This focus on colorful natural foods was inspired by author and YouTuber William Li, to whom my mother in-law introduced me. I sped-read and highlighted his 300-page tome “Eat to Beat Disease” the night of my first chemo infusion (which means it was also first night of being on post-chemo steroids, an experience akin to being on a moderate cocaine binge. Thus, getting through this huge book at 2am was an easy task).

Dr. Li’s theory revolves around the process of angiogenesis by which blood cells form and systemize in our bodies. When operating under healthy conditions, angiogenesis is a good thing. For example, I was undergoing rapid angiogenesis while pregnant so that my breasts could develop new blood vessels and get my body ready for breastfeeding. The problem, however, was that I also had microscopic levels of cancer in my breast, and these rapidly developing new blood pathways allowed my cancer to grow very quickly and rush off to different places in my body—it metastasized. That’s how my cancer became stage four in probably just a couple of months.

Dr. Li talks about how we can starve cancer by eating anti-angiogenetic foods. The list includes tons of fruits and vegetables, green tea, supplements, salmon and other omega-3-rich foods, beans, and nuts. During my cocaine-like stupor, I highlighted every food in his book and was ready to start eating better. I wasn’t going to die. I was going to eat salmon, brown rice, and broccoli and be just fine.

Adding more good stuff to my diet was the easy part. The hard part would be cutting out the bad stuff. Namely, red meat (that wasn’t a big deal to me), processed meats (ugh, I love turkey, but fine), and (oh, God, no, please don’t say it)… Sugar.

I love sugar. Before I got sober in 2020, I didn’t have a sweet tooth whatsoever. That’s because the amount of sugar I was consuming from alcohol was enough to kill a diabetic three times over. So if I ever went for something sweet, it was truly inedible to me.

Then I got sober and started craving sugar like you wouldn’t believe. I needed it to fill this crater-sized sugar hole inside me. Ice cream was the main feeder of this new addiction. And Sour Patch kids (ironically, my soon-to-be husband’s favorite). Those were the obvious culprits, at least.

I also started devouring a bunch of foods that I thought were healthy but weren’t, including sweetened yogurts, milks, green juices, cereal, and Luna bars. All these foods were disguised as nutritious alternatives to things like French fries, potato chips, white bread, and soda. But they all lived covertly under the umbrella of processed sugar.

Let the record show, I never let myself get too carried away by sugar. I became well-versed in the field of dieting and calorie counting at a very young age. Maybe too young. So my naggy bitch of an inner critic has never let me eat anything naughty without a healthy dose of guilt and shame alongside it. Thanks to her, I wasn’t stopping at McDonald’s or Dairy Queen every day. And I guess that made me think I was in the safe zone. Plus, surely the fact that I had FINALLY given up booze after well over a decade of binge-drinking gave me a little wiggle room.

Fast-forward five years later to my diagnosis and everyone around me (except for my doctors) start telling me that sugar feeds cancer. And, thus, it dawned on me…

I’ve done this to myself. All those indulgences, however small or infrequent, gave me cancer. This is all my fault.

When Jordan and I went to the Mayo Clinic back in early August, I brought this up to the doctor. She could see it all over my face that I thought—no, that I knew—this diagnosis was something I caused and could have avoided if I’d just eaten better and exercised more. I was going to die and abandon my family all because I couldn’t keep my chocolate addiction at bay or get back on the damn treadmill once in a while. (Somehow I’d fallen away from my cardio routine after taking care of a baby for a year-and-a-half and being pregnant with another baby for half of that time—I’d managed to start and keep up with Pilates, but that wasn’t good enough… said my pesky inner critic).

The Mayo doctor did her best to squash this fear. “Everything we eat turns to sugar. So don’t blame yourself. You didn’t get this by eating too much sugar. Maybe just try to cut back a little.” And if that had been the only sugary piece to this puzzle, I would be inclined to agree.

But something else had occurred earlier that year that gave me pause…

When I was just two months pregnant with Peter, I had some routine labs done. (One of the similarities between being pregnant and being a cancer patient is that you become a human pin cushion). A nurse called to discuss my results. I thought it would be a quick call and even had a Zoom meeting starting in five minutes, so I picked up. She would tell me that I was slightly anemic and needed to take iron or eat more red meat. Yada, yada, yada. I heard this every time.

But no. She called to tell me my A1C level, which was high, indicating that I was prediabetic.

I froze. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The nurse, on the other hand, said it like it was nothing. Like I was a little dehydrated and to drink more water. She didn’t say it in an atomic-bomb-dropping tone. Unbeknownst to her, she had just fueled my inner critic for months to come, and I would pay the price every time I went for the semi-sweet Raisin Bran instead of the sugar-free Shredded Wheat.

When I went to see my OB a week later, she told me it was nothing to worry about. It’s possible the results were skewed because I was pregnant. And, heck, even marathon runners can be prediabetic. “You’re probably fine and it’s nothing you did. But in the meantime, maybe just try to cut back a little on sugar.” Sound familiar?

My family also told me not to worry. They all globbed onto the fact that the results could be incorrect. As did I. I mean, heck, I didn’t want to give up sugar!

“It’s not ilke you’re eating Twinkies and Bonbons all day, Sam!”

“You don’t even drink regular soda!”

“You’re young and healthy!”

It was the encouragement I needed to keep my inner critic at bay. And that’s what my loved ones wanted to do was to ease my fears. And that’s all I wanted to hear in that moment…

In my last post, I discussed how cancer is now being looked at as an immune disorder. Here’s the super-quick recap: Cancer cells gobble up glucose more than healthy ones because they don’t respire properly.

Diabetes is also an autoimmune disease in which your body either doesn’t produce insulin at all (Type 1, diagnosed usually very early in life), or doesn’t produce enough insulin/doesn’t use it effectively (Type 2, often caused by genetics, lifestyle factors like obesity or inactivity, and aging).

Insulin plays a major role in regulating blood sugar levels. Thus, if you have Type 2 diabetes and are insulant resistant, you’re going to have higher glucose (i.e. sugar) levels in your body. And if you have higher sugar levels, that means more food for cancer to thrive on. Sound at least plausible?

So maybe I didn’t get cancer simply because I overindulged one too many times. Maybe it’s more complicated than that. Maybe I really am prediabetic and my body isn’t regulating glucose properly and thus created the perfect breeding ground for my cancer to thrive. After all, every blood panel I’ve taken since getting cancer (and there have been many) have all shown a high glucose level. And yet…

“Your glucose could be high because of the cancer drugs in your system.”

“Chemo can skew blood results.”

“It could also be because you’re postpartum.”

That’s what I heard from the people around me. Really, the only thing I didn’t hear was: “Yeah, maybe you are prediabetic.”

So what if I am prediabetic? Will NO ONE (not even my doctors) tell me to stop eating sugar, for fear that it will make me feel bad about myself or force me to make some difficult food choices? Our culture has become so careful not to make anyone feel bad about themselves, and it’s having some alarming consequences, even (and especially!) in the medical field.

God forbid our own actions lead to consequences and force us to accept some level of responsibility for them.

“You didn’t do this.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Just do your best.”

“Maybe try to limit.”

How about, “Just stop eating sugar, you freaking moron!”

And yet, despite both the cancer diagnoses and all my failed glucose tests, there was still a voice inside me that doubted being prediabetic. And this wasn’t the nagger that told me I was bad for eating sugar. This was a different voice. This was my inner addict who wanted me to keep eating sugar:

“How on earth could you be prediabetic? Diabetes doesn’t even run in your family!” Neither does breast cancer, dude.

But that question kept eating away at me, until just last week, during my daily HBOT session. Forced into an hour of reading, I cracked open my brand-new Keto cookbook (Keto being another diet I was told to consider because it changes your body’s fuel source from glucose to fat). And there, in this unassuming cookbook’s thorough introduction, I learned that SSRI’s have been found to cause insulin resistance.

I have been on Zoloft (an SSRI) since I got sober. Man a lot of my problems started when I got sober. Maybe I should have kept drinking!! Kidding… I’d almost certainly be dead by now. The doctor at my swanky rehab facility prescribed it to me, and it was one of the only anti-anxiety medications that I hadn’t tried before. Based on my doctor’s testimony, I gathered that Zoloft wasn’t addictive and had minimal side effects. That all sounded good to me! And it seemed to really help with my anxiety and depression (though I’m sure putting down the booze helped, too).

I’m still taking Zoloft to this day and believe it has been an integral part to my recovery. So, I’m not just trying to poo-poo SSRIs. All I’m saying is that this seems to be another possible link in this cancerous chain of events. (Plus, this gives me a scapegoat for the diabetes conundrum. After all, I didn’t prescribe myself the Zoloft. It was that tiresome rehab doctor who wanted me to find lasting happiness in sobriety. What an ass.)

So, to recap a little… in the last five years I quit drinking, thus ending a fifteen-year, around-the-clock sugar binge. Then I started taking Zoloft, which could have caused some insulin resistance. Then I had a baby and stopped all cardio and didn’t eat very well (“that’s just motherhood!”). Then I got my prediabetic diagnosis in January, and did nothing about because deny, deny, deny. Then I got my cancer diagnosis, but that obviously had nothing to do with anything that had come before because, God forbid, I had done anything to contribute to this tragedy. God forbid my actions had led to some consequences.

Please note: The point of all this is not simply to blame myself for getting cancer. All I’m trying to do is find a solution for my cancer problem. And understanding the problem is a way to find that solution. There seems to be at least a possible connection between what I’ve put into my body and me getting cancer. Can’t we agree that it’s at least a plausible argument? And in my book, that’s a good thing! Because that means I can do something about it!

I can control what I eat. It’s as simple as that. And, yes, it’s also as terrifying as that. Because now when I opt for a sugary treat, it does kind of scare the pants off of me. And maybe it should. It’s okay to be afraid. And it’s okay to have to make hard choices. That’s life.

You know that the rise of cancer is directly correlated with the introduction of refined sugar in this country? You know that our sugar intake and our cancer rates are both far higher than in most other countries? You know that our diabetes rate and cancer rates keep growing alongside one another? There is a connection and the powers-that-be need to address this once and for all.

But they won’t. There’s too much money to be lost. You’d think (hope) that doctors and the FDA would always have our best interest at heart, but unfortunately, money is a powerful decision-maker. It’s the sugar of modern medicine. You can’t say no to it. It’s too delicious. Consider the opioid epidemic. Everyone knew it was bad, but there was too much money to be made. And people continue to suffer the devastating consequences despite how much we now know.

There are various drugs that may help cure cancer (i.e. ivermectin), but they aren’t researched because they aren’t patented so there’s no money to be made. (I realize that ivermectin may have a political odor to it post-Covid, but it’s a very good example of why some things get studied and some things don’t).

I could go on, but I won’t. I didn’t mean for this post to include a diatribe about the evils of the health industry. But it’s clearly an important piece of the cancer puzzle. A puzzle that I’m eagerly trying to put together, piece-by-piece.

And yes, putting this puzzle together may come with some hard-hitting truths about my own role in this. And that might be hard to swallow. But with this ownership comes power.

Moving forward, I won’t be perfect. Hell, I ate a bowl of cereal while writing this (“it’s fine, you’re on vacation!”) But I’m going to try. And I’d really like some support along the way. Support that might not be your typical, “live a little!” or “don’t be so hard on yourself!” All that’s good, too, but I think a firmer hand is missing through all this…

So, for now, it’s up to my inner critic to badger me about what is right or wrong. And it’s up to my addict to tell her that everything is fine and sugar will make everything better. And it’s up to me to be the middleman and decide for myself.

Hm. Maybe that’s just being an adult.