When people believe that you are not healthy, they often want to give you really genuine advice about what they believe will make you better. In a way, this is one of the nicer aspects of human nature. And many people truly, fervently believe that their advice is not only worthwhile, but absolutely correct to almost mystical proportions. This can be especially true of information that is not even relevant to the person’s direct experience, but instead is based entirely upon anecdotal information that the person simply, deeply wants to believe. And this is the problem with so much advice about how to get healthy: it is based on belief and not on knowledge.

Diet is one of the first topics that is likely to come up when talking about cancer treatment. There are a lot of good reasons for this, including

but not limited to the basic fact that eating well is an essential part of any healing process. One cannot be healthy without the right nutrients in the diet, of course, and there is always the concern about the wrong nutrients as well.  When taking any medication, it is important to know whether it reacts with any particular foods, vitamins or herbs, because many medications either don’t work or can lead to complications when they are taken in concert with certain supplements or even whole natural foods. Grapefruit is a good example, and must be avoided when taking certain specific pharmaceuticals, regardless of how much of a vitamin C powerhouse or how delicious it might be. Doctors are in a particularly good position of knowledge (along, presumably, with pharmacists) to know what proper recommendations to make in this regard, based, usually, on a list that pops up on their computer when they are initially making the prescription for any new medication.

People whose nutritional advice might need to be vetted includes, well, pretty much everyone else. Even the really smart folks who appear to know everything about everything, like random bloggers or your best friend from school or the dude in that cubicle over there, all of those folks, need to be vetted. People with professional sounding titles, even with degrees and classifications and fancy certifications must still be vetted. Herbalists, naturapaths and chiropractors must be vetted — possibly even more so because, no offense to those professions, they are especially prone to quackery. But this all presupposes that your doctor has already been vetted, too; no one should be getting treated by a doctor they haven’t thoroughly checked out and trust. This trust is essential and any reasonable doctor understands — even supports — the notion that they need to earn that trust through openness, good communication and a willingness to encourage second opinions as necessary. Good doctors also express the underlying reasons for their recommendations and endeavor to ensure patient understanding.

A big danger for those seeking to educate themselves lies within that wonder of 21st Century: the Internet Search Engine. Whether you use Google or Bing or Yahoo or AltaVista or whatever brand has survived the latest trends, most of the advice found in the InterWebs is likely to be garbage. One of the reasons for this is quite simple: common sense and obvious logic don’t make for sensational web pages or good click bait. If it isn’t going to blow your mind when you see picture #8, chances are it also isn’t going to rank that highly in the search engine, either. Hyperbole and under-researched claims are hallmarks of modern websites parading as actual resources. This can be mitigated somewhat by better search terms and digging deeper, and also by focusing on pages from sources that are more likely to be reliable, like those from accredited educational institutions and recognizable news outlets.

Is macrobiotic healthy? Maybe, for some people. But it doesn’t ever cure cancer, even if some people who eat that way have been otherwise cured. Vegetarian diets? No, they don’t cure you, but if you respond well to them you might feel great and be happy!

My dietary advice? Kind of you to ask. Humbly, I will basically repeat my oncologist’s advice: eat a balanced and healthy diet. Every case is different and everyone tolerates food in a different way, even when not undergoing treatment. I am not, for instance, lactose intolerant. Ergo, I enjoy a lot of cheese in my prescribed protein-rich, high calorie diet. What makes a diet balanced? It must have vegetables and fruit in addition to the fats and proteins. One thing a healthy diet does not need, and probably should not even include, are lots of processed foods and specifically those high in sugar and salt. In fact, the one thing I would recommend cutting right out of the diet is refined sugar. But the one thing I would also recommend is that you eat stuff you love because the notion of restricting your joy is counterintuitive when dealing with healing and recovery, unless what you love is specifically toxic to your system (see, for example, grapefruit above).