Strengthening Your Immune System

The Cancer Involvement Program offers information on what foods, behaviors, and mindsets can help to boost the immune system. With a master's degree in nutrition, Sandy Jost, PhD offers the balance of a more holistic approach inclusive of diet, guided imagery, and journaling ... all in one program that integrates with today's conventional treatments for cancer.

The following text is an excerpt from Chapter 4 — Inner Roads: Imaging Your Immune System. (The pictures have been added here to increase your retention of this important information):

Optimizing your immune system

It is important to know that you can help your body make this important journey by optimizing its ability to produce those incredible immunoglobulins that make up the immune system. Learn to incorporate all of the following principles into your daily routines:

• If you have been eating a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet, start immediately on a balanced diet that includes foods like eggs, meats, fish, and especially the mono-unsaturated fat foods such as nuts, olive oil, and avocados! All these foods hold the essential ingredients necessary for immunoglobulin formation. Dietary fats do not automatically digest and form body fat. It's the sugars, starches, and carbohydrates (yes, even whole grains are carbohydrates) that cause insulin to be secreted, which then turn all extra foods eaten into stored body fat.
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• The omega-3 fatty acids are especially important, and are found in cold-water fish, some of which you might recognize as trout, catfish, bass, eel, herring, salmon, and tuna. Sources other than fish are easily found in ground flax seeds, canola oil, wheat germ oil, and walnuts. Keep fresh flax seeds frozen for storage and just pour a tablespoon or so into a coffee mill reserved especially for this job. You will benefit from their super light, nutty flavor that can be enjoyed sprinkled on everything from cereal to salads.
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• Especially limit your intake of acid-creating, refined carbohydrates like sugar, bread, pasta, white flour, most bottled sauces, and low-fat dairy products! Cancer cells actually thrive in acidic environments and cannot survive in an alkaline one. Even though some foods, such as a fresh orange, do indeed start out as an acid, they digest into healthy byproducts that are perfect alkalines. The exact opposite exists with refined carbohydrates. They digest to an acid that your body must then convert in order to keep the body in its desired slightly alkaline state. The body often needs to mobilize precious calcium phosphate from your bones in order to accomplish this conversion.
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• Eat immune-boosting foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, unprocessed whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Include garlic, onions and mushrooms, for they are also known to enhance the immune system.
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• Avoid foods that contain altered fats and chemicals, for the body must spend precious resources removing the harmful effects of these foods rather than attending to cancer cells. Altered foods include artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, margarines, deep-fat-fried foods, processed items like canned or dried foods as well as lunch meat, and anything that is considered a food "substitute."
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• More simply, eat all foods as close as possible to their most natural state. This means eat fruit as a fresh piece of fruit - even the outer skins when edible. Don't make your source of fruits one of juice. When fruits, vegetables, or grains are ground up, mashed, cooked to a pulp, processed for storage in any way … (you get the idea) … their wonderful source of nutrients and fiber is drastically diminished, and your body treats it more as a source of "sugar" than anything else. It may help to think about buying only those foods found along the periphery of the grocery store rather than anywhere along the isles.
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• Drink plenty of good-quality water. And water means plain water! Do not drink sugary drinks, or even the artificially sugared drinks. Plain water is what serves your body best.
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• If you need more details, information, or even "proof" to help you understand what foods should be eaten for a well-balanced and healthy diet (especially when society has been encouraging us to believe in the "healthiness" of a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet), please refer to the resources found in "Further reading on nutrition" within the Appendix on page 62 [of the Cancer Involvement Program].

In addition to diet, it also helps to …

• Wash your hands before cooking or eating.
  
  
• Get enough rest.
  
  
• Know that touch works wonders! Get a regular massage from an expert…or better yet…from anyone who is willing to do it for free.
  
  
• Control your stress levels by using relaxation techniques and appropriate coping strategies.
  
  
• Take time for those things that give you pleasure such as your favorite hobbies, social activities, etc.
  
  
• Get regular aerobic exercise, finding something that you like to do, or a variety of things to do, for the sole reason that you might find yourself being able to make consistent exercise a habit!
  
  
• Use imagery. Offer your body plenty of self-love and appreciation for its incredible complexity and skill.
  
  
• Deep breathing will assist in the circulation of your immune system, for this is the vehicle by which the lymphatic fluids circulate (the body doesn't use the heart to pump this system). This is another reason why incorporating a few brief moments of more frequent imagery into your day may have a greater effectiveness than one long session of imagery just once a day.
  

IMPORTANT NOTE: During chemotherapy treatments, you may find that your body only accepts a few types of foods or activities. So, you might want to begin first with the suggestions above, but be sure to listen to your body's needs by honoring whatever it is that your body is desiring and able to digest at that time. You can offer plenty of these immune-boosting items into your life once your body is through the intense challenge of chemotherapy treatments as it attempts to find balance in its own path toward healing.

For additional excerpts from Chapter 4 of the Cancer Involvement Program
with its information on Compromising the immune system ... click here.

For complete information on tools for strengthening the immune system
through a new alternative cancer treatment program that can be incorporated
into today's conventional medicine, look closely into the
Cancer Involvement Program and learn how to get your own copy ... click here.

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