Survivors who had chemo etc and are into Complementary medicine
Comments
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Jana, you can check up on one of my first posts about vitamins...that is a pretty good basic list, I think.
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I also did the traditional treatments and now use alternative treatments daily. No red meat, only poultry and seafood, eat approx 80% organic with lots of fresh fuits and veggies. Daily exercise and same supplements others have listed. High on my priority list is Vitamin D with goal to maintain level above 50. Carlson liquid drops work best for me. 8,000 daily dose. I have High risk for melanoma and sun exposure I must be protected.
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I also love Livestrong, what a great site overall. Just remember that in general they say we all lowball our calories by about 20%, and exaggerate our exercise same! If you are actually trying to lose weight, sticking to their numbers can be a problem.
I've been trying to make a nutritious soup almost every day and freeze it. Today is a white bean soup.
Regarding weight bearing: yoga is also weight bearing if done correctly. You don't just have to lift actual weights. I also found swimming to be a remarkable exercise.
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In experiments with mice, Vitamin D3 worked in preventing cancer in lean mice but not in obese mice. The risks for the latter even increase for certain breast cancer types. I have a better link than the one below and will post when I find it.
http://foodforbreastcancer.com/news/vitamin-d-reduces-development-of-both-er+-and-er--mammary-tumors-in-lean-mice0 -
I love the idea for this thread! I exercise 30 minutes daily, and try to reduce my stress considerably. I also try to eat better and reduce the environmental toxins. I clean with nontoxic solutions and vinegar. I used to enjoy one glass of wine while preparing dinner. Now I have maybe 2-3 drinks per month. I try to eat mostly hormone-free protein.
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Cindy, I used to do tabata intervals, but got lazy. The beauty of it is that you can get all sweaty and out of breath in 4 minutes. It would be a good thing to re-start once I get myself away from the gym and doing hikes or bike rides outdoors more regularly.
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DiDel -- About VitD: When first tested, my levels were fairly low, even though I had been taking at least 1,800 IUs of D3 daily. For three months I upped my intake to 5,000 IUs of D3 and got up to the acceptable level. Now I'm back to about 3,000 IUs (a combo of drops, also in Caltrate and in yogurt). And, now that it's summer here, I do about 15-20 minutes of dedicated sunbathing (I call it Vitamin D-ing!) every day.
I know that some docs Rx 50,000 IUs of D2. My doc's opinion is that D2 is fairly useless for getting up to acceptable levels. D3 is the way to go.
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Linda, I laughed at you mention of 'getting your vit d' by sunbathing. That is what I tell my dh..."I'm going out to get some vit d."
I take 4,000 units of D3 every day. Half in the morning , half at bedtime. If we ever get more than 2 or 3 days of sunshine this summer, I will consider cutting that dose by half.
Edited to add: I actually get 5,000-6,000 units when I factor in my calcium with D and multi vitamin with D.
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D2 gets a bum rap, IMO. Worked beautifully for me, took me from 17 to 48. I then switched over to D3 to try and get it even higher.
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I get a total of 1800 UI of either D or D3 a day (1000 D3 the other just D). I was very low about 1.5 years ago (single digit I think). As mentioned I am now at 79 (a bit high) when I was last tested this winter.
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hllck, YES (and I did mean to shout) I'll PM you. I learned the hard way and my PS is now telling people different instructions, you can do pec, but, some important changes
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My gp is very, very conventional and even she recommends at least 2000 units a day.
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Hillck:
Re: your comment/question regarding training the pecs and having implants. It is absolutely fine to do chest presses etc.... I do push-ups, power yoga poses, etc.. and have had no problems, and have been advised that it is fine by my PS. Reconstruction does not come with any weightlifting restrictions once the recovery period is over. People who have suffered complications may have different medical instructions, though - I don't know. If you have lymphedema, things might be different too - I don't know anything about LE.
Susieq:
The American Lung Association has a great online tutorial/course/support group about stopping smoking. The best part is that you don't have to stop to start the course. They help you prepare and plan for your quit. Planning really helped me. The program is called Freedom From Smoking: Here is the link: http://www.lungusa.org/stop-smoking/how-to-quit/freedom-from-smoking/
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kmmd
if it isn't too graphic - could you post here about what exercses NOT to do with implants - it felt SO weird doing push ups...I stopped them. Really need to get ack to exercise. Have ordered the Yoga tape, but very VERY eager to learn what NOT to do with implants.
I have very small implants, silicone, but it still feels STRANGE when I "felx" my pecs. Always wanted to be able to wiggle my ears, never could, but I'll bet you can guess what I can wiggle now
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On Vitmain D3 - I just tested at 89, taking 10,000 IUs per day!
Edited to add: Caerus - It feels a bit wierd at first (I asked my doctor about it too) but eventually the feeling goes away as you get stronger. As long as your build your strength s l o w l y (you can do this by trying sissy style pushups first, or trying them against the wall) you should be fine - if there were no unusual complications.
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Did anyone answer Ted Williams question:
For those taking supplements...how do you take them? All at once? In groups? With specific foods?
I am certainly no expert on this, generally I take mine with meals. I have t be careful NOT to take anything until 4 hours after I take my thryoid medication - there may be some things not to combine, I dont know.
PS. I LOVED Ted Williams - and the Boston Red Sox/The Jimmy Fund are my heroes.
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I take as much as once as I can in the early AM. So everything except second calcium.
Nothing scientific about this. Just want to get it over with and have better things to do during the day than remember when to take what. I take the other one at night with aspirin.
One thing I didn't mention is that I took a probiotic during chemo. I think it helped with digestion plus who wants a yeast infection anywhere????
Have no idea if it helped. I did ask if it was OK to do this and the answer from my health center pharmacy was yes.
They said "no" to milk thistle as could potentially interfere with chemo. So important to ask these things. - Claire
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I take some of my suppliments in the morning and some at dinner. Both with food. I actually split my multivitamin in 1/2 to take 1/2 in the morning and 1/2 at dinner. I always try to take my meds and suppliments with food and water. I forget if it's D or C that you do need to drink plenty of water when you take it or you can bet the big D.
Missed the Ted Williams question. Don't let the "Chicago" under my name fool you. I'm from Bahston. (OK Bawston… I'm really from the S. Shore. Different accent).
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I take my DIM, probiotics, and Wobenzyme when I get up, without food. After breakfast, I take my fish oil, vit D. Usually after or during lunch I take my B12 and CoEnQ10. Later in the afternoon I take my calcium/mag/vit D liquid, although I sometimes forget (this needs to be taken away from most other meds or supplements since the molecules are quite large and should be absorbed alone (or something like that). Melatonin before bed, about an hour, and Tamoxifen right before bed. I sound crazy, lol. Anyway, hope this helps
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Lago
LOL
When I go to Dana Farber, I paahk my caah in Jimmy Fund Way garage 
thanks everyone for responding to tedwilliams...
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I take everything in the AM along with my other meds. I don't know whether this is the way to do it or not. I DO know that if I try to take pills at more than one time throughout the day I will forget. My motto in these things is: only sacrifice when there is no other option. Otherwise, do a treatment in a realistic way that you can comply with always, as opposed to setting standards for myself that I know I won't be able to maintain indefinitely.
The "complementary treatment:" supplements: Vitamin D3, a multivitamin especially for women, and CoQ10. Sometimes I tak Fish Oil.
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Thanks for the link Athena.
I split my supplements up, some in the morning and some at night. After taking both of the caltrate tablets at night for ages, I finally read the bottle and now split them. I've just switched to taking my liquid fish oil at night, so I would hopefully be less restless sleeping - DH complains all the time.
Sue
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I'd asked the integrative specialist @ UCLA if it matters when or in which combinations you take supplements, and she said it really doesn't matter. So because I take quite a few of them, I take some in the a.m. and some at bedtime. Curcumin is the only one I've figured out I have to take with food. Deanna
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A lot of talk about supplements...Can one never get out of this spinning wheel of pills, pills, pills..?
Personally, I think the most important is to eat organic and really know what you put in your body (that also goes for the coating of any supplement). That said, I will take DIM and say no to Tamoxifen; but that is the only supplement I will take, and am happy with that. Man wasn't made to take pills, or be exposed to xeno hormones, but maybe today one has to take all these vitamins from morning to night so as to cope with the environment...Industrial food poor in vitamins and fibers, wanting-to-rule-the-world companies like Monsanto promoting Omega3 which won't be assimilated by the body anyway, antibiotic injected cattle, shale gas water...I don't know. *sigh*
A Subway commercial keeps playing over and over again in my head, the first time I saw it I was horrified, do you remember 'It's OK, I had Subway'... ?
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Peebee,
Awesome post about the greasy boyfriend! So, so true!
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I agree Carola, we should really try to get what we need from our diets, I do worry about our environment though as well *sigh*. Have you started your DIM yet?
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I split my doses. Half when I get up and half at bedtime. Some of the supplements are not stored in your body so you need to take them twice a day. My calcium and vitamin C I take in the middle of the day as they can react with the other meds. My Arimidex is taken at 9:00 pm every night like clockwork. That way I don't have to worry about interactions with it.
You can get one of those huge pill organizers. I have a couple of them and fill them two weeks at a time. Works well for me.
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Carola, I agree that it would be ideal to get all of our necessary nutrients from food. Unfortunately, the way crops are often mass produced in soils depleted of nutrients and shipped long distances (at least in the US), we can't always be sure of how nutritious they are. Then there's the whole question of our often sedentary and motorized lifestyles vs. how much food we would have to consume to actually get the nutrients we need, which would be far more calories than we need. Plus, bc tx (chemo, rads and/or estrogen-lowering drugs) deplete nutrients from our systems.
Personally, I don't think of high quality nutritional supplements as "pills," but more like concentrated food that contains the nutrients we're probably not be getting in our diets.
But I agree with you about not ever taking more pharmceutical pills than we absolutely have to, and that's one reason I think it's important to use vitamins made from whole foods -- not the cheaper, chemicalized versions of them. Deanna
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Deanna, I agree that a lot of our food is void of the nutrients that they originally possessed. I think of my supplements as an insurance policy.
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Great that your supplements are made from whole foods, Deanna! And yes I know, in the US it's seems so much harder to keep track of your nutrition, (would like to add that I spend approximately two/three months a year in the US for work) maybe I just want to go back to the roots being a caveman and live on water, freshly caught meat and love...:-D
Sherbear, I was actually wondering when to start DIM.. My first thought was after radiation (when I was supposed to start Tamoxifen), but now I'm not so sure...Thoughts anyone? I'm one week post chemo (yay!), three weeksaway from lumpectomy and come September I'll be having 8 wonderful weeks of radiation.
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