Ok, Disclaimer time: Just cause I put it here dosn't mean it is the way YOU should go. YOU should talk with your Dr's about anything you want to do that is outside their plan. The reason is simple; adjunctive therapy ideas you read about may interfere and reduce the effect of your medical treatments.

Second, I am not a trained medical expert. I do have some knowledge about how things work and I have a pretty good Bull S. sensor. This should qualify me as dangerous so here goes.

I do believe generally the food we eat is too processed and relatively void of nutrients. If you are going to help your body fight disease you need to be sure you give it all the tools you can. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables the fresher the better. I hated the drink-in-a-can food products so I used a blender to prepare my own drinkable meals.

I took vitimin suppliments (check with your DR's) including extra vitamin E. I took flax seed oil, I ate raw almonds, I took MGN 3 (yes I know it's on the Quackwatch site), I stopped eating anything with sugar added. If you would like to look into nutrition ideas read "Beating Cancer with Nutrition" by Patrick Quillen (look in the Amazon link found on the OCF site) The title would probably be better as "helping to beat cancer with nutrition" because it is not likely you will cure cancer with nutrition alone. (I am sure good nutrition will not hurt)

I prayed and continue to pray. I had groups praying for me many of which I didn't know about until later. I had many things happen to me that I cannot explain without a spiritual connection. It would seem perhaps weird to mention them here in detail but several were profound. I know faith and religion are potentially dangerous subjects to discuss. Boiled down, I have found that there is good and I have seen evil. I believe the good we do comes from our soul. You can wonder about the rest on your own time.

I stayed active. I always felt better if I was moving around (even if it was slooow) I did as much hard manual work as I could without hurting myself (sometimes it wasn't much). I believe an active body is a faster healing body, and a busy mind dosn't have time for worry.

I tried to laugh as much as possible, and I cried without shame.

I off-loaded as much stress as I could, I realized most of it didn't matter. Yes you really can get by without stress!

I took a multi-week Meditation class with my wife. (it was very different for me but it had and has continued value)

I made sure I thanked every one of my professional caregivers. (I wish I knew more of their names)

I wish I had done more with massage.

Another book I found had excellent ideas "cancer the 50 essential things to do". The book is full of how to live thoughts and is very uplifting.

I am not sure if these ramblings represent adjunctive therapies or not but here they are for your consideration.

Mark, an excellent assortment of ideas, well presented (even with all the appropriate disclaimers!!). I too blended every vegetable known to man in my juicer and then mixed that with whey protein in a blender. I wish that I had lived my life like this before cancer, as researchers know there is a definite correlation between high vegetable and fruit intake and some resistance gains against getting cancer. I still incorporate this in my life now, 5 years out. I take a variety of supplements now and my favorite is curcumin (found in turmeric) based on sound research. I won

Because it might be overlooked in the middle of all the other good ideas, I want to stress the importance of thanking our professional caregivers, every day, after every treatment, no matter how we feel. They have chosen to work with sick people, and every person I see is friendly and helpful -- and overworked. As a former health care worker with critically ill people, I know how much a smile and a sincere thank you mean. So patients and family, do not forget to thank these hard working people whose goal is to save your life.

My husband is mainly drinking Ensure type drinks mixed in a blender with ice cream, milk, yogurt and sometimes protein powder with various other ingredients to build the calories. He can eat creamed soups, cream of wheat, mashed potatoes, ect.. I worry about the sugar involved. I want to purchase a juicer and mix some vegetables together to make a healthier drink. I would appreciate any combinations and or recipes that make a tasty drink that other patients have experienced. I have recipes for the milk type drinks. Thank you in advance.
Becky Ray wife of David.

My husband is just starting radiation (finished day 7 of 31 treatments). I bought the book mentioned above ("Beating Cancer with Nutrition") a few weeks ago and noticed that it had a recipe for a "Dragonslayer milkshake" that seemed pretty nutritional. He had the peg inserted before radiation began and I was thinking this would be a good thing to make when the time comes. I don't like the ingredients of Ensure/Boost either (sugar, corn syrup and vegetable oil mainly). Now, while he's having no trouble eating, he does have a daily shake made of ice cream, soy milk, and a powdered soy based vitamin supplement. Also, I noticed that Dr. Andrew Weil has recommended (on his website) that cancer patients take a mushroom blend extract and milk thistle during radiation/chemo. Also, he recommends astragulus. I ordered both in pill and liquid form.

This sounds like something I did too Mark, and the disclaimers are hilarious. Except now I stick with this other company, if anyone wants to know about it just email me sometime.

Why not just post the company here, Margaret, and we can check it out for ourselves. If it's legit, we will all welcome the benefit it can give us.

Since I was diagnosed (especially after the breast cancer diagnosis two weeks after the tongue cancer diagnosis) I have been paying lots of attention to eating well--fresh veggies and juices and soy protein and am taking all the supplements, blue-green algea, FLAX oil, quarts of green tea, etc. too.

Before each surgery I had , I stopped the supplements that could thin the blood (Most of the ones thought to have antioxidant properties) for about 5 days because the pre-admissions folks at the hosptial said to do so. As soon as the surgeries were over, I started up again.

Friday, I asked he medical oncologist's nurse about taking supplements during chemo/rad and she said to stop taking everything but a good multivitamin. She said that in theory, almost all that other stuff is thought to work by slowing down the growth of cancer cells and thus giving your immune system more time to kill them.

But she pointed out that both chemo and radiation work *because* cancer cells grow faster than regular cells and so you don't want to do anything that would reduce that difference in growth (cancer vs. healthy cells) during chemo and radiation treatment.

So OK, that made sense ot me and I definitely want this hellish treatment to *work*. I just ordered a rather expensive oreder of 18 different kinds of supplements and now they're going to have to wait until raidation and chemo are over for a few weeks.

I realize many health professionals are just blindly dismissive of the idea of any kind of nutritional intervention being effective but she actually wasn't. She said it was a good idea to do lots of fresh juices and all the supplements and green tea etc. AFTER treatment ends.