(photo)For most cancer patients, Christmas is a difficult time of year. When nearly everyone is partying and having fun, they’d be contented to be left alone. They’d fear the reaction of people and even among family members. A person with cancer receiving chemo wouldn’t want to attend a family reunion on Christmas eve. She’d be embarrassed by showing up hairless. She’d rather not go lest the reaction of family and friends would add to her stress. Or a family member undergoing cancer therapy wouldn’t be allowed to participate in the pleasure of food preparation. They’d be shunned from the excitement of Christmas. Does this sound familiar? For cancer patients undergoing treatment, holidays are indeed difficult. more…

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Christmas is that happy time of year when we eat, drink and be merry. Because we take pleasure in the camaraderie of family and friends, there’s a tendency to stuff ourselves with food. We enjoy one party after another devouring more loads of high calorie, high fat cuisine.

Party on

Until we realize that two weeks of food and partying makes us gain those unsightly blobs of fat. And we’ll just say, the heck it’s Christmas so why bother. Three, four days, a week and up to the New Year we throw caution to the winds. It shows that quick. We only come back to our senses when the weighing scale shows those excess pounds. Worse, the glucometer points to a skyrocketing blood glucose level. Sigh! more…

Lance Armstrong was lucky. If you know his cancer story, you’d be convinced that broccoli was key to his survival. You’d consider Lance and the vegetable broccoli to be superstars in their own right.

One is not enough

Even so, broccoli alone may not be enough to prevent cancer. Just one weapon to fight a many headed monster is risky. You don’t get out of the house on a bitterly cold winter day with only a hat without gloves, warm coat and boots. You’d freeze to death. The same thing rings true when preventing and battling cancer. A cancer mass is a very complex entity, built with defenses to survive and kill. Employing one strategy decrease our chance of survival. more…

Multi-vitamin supplements are a multi-billion dollar industry in the USA. If you’re an American, there’s a good chance a multi-vitamin supplement is sitting in your medicine cabinet. Go, check it out.

If you find that bottle of multi-vitamins, it isn’t actually surprising. Statistics confirm that half of Americans use a dietary supplement. 30% of Americans believe that multi-vitamins prevent cancer.

What is on the net

How true is this belief? The cancer blog discussed that intake of green and leafy vegetables are much better in preventing cancer than consuming them in a capsule. more…

Last September, it was amazing to see more than two dozens of celebrity chefs come together in NYC for a cook out. Their goal is to benefit a non-profit organization that empowers women affected by breast and ovarian cancer. If you’ve been there, you won’t forget the exhilarating smell and taste of all that excellently prepared and cooked gourmet dishes.

Thinking about this, I got this idea of concocting tasty recipes out of functional foods – foods that fight cancer, yummy veggie dishes that encourage one to make healthy choices. Cooking is an art. And it becomes a challenging though subtle art when functional foods are thrown in as ingredients (ingredients that are considered boring if you’re used to greasy fast food.) Then you’ve got to mix all that in and create a flavorful dish for people who are used to eating a lot of junk. Clearly, it’s an art! more…