Richard Calautti from Live Life Now Project recently interviewed brain cancer patient and oncology nutritionist, Andrea Schaffer, from Arizona. In this insightful interview, Andrea shares the remarkable journey of discovering her brain tumor through a scan she organized as a birthday present for herself. Drawing from her background in oncology nutrition, Andrea discusses how her expertise guided her through surgery and recovery whilst emphasizing the significance of nutrition in a cancer patient’s journey, covering essential topics such as testing, dietary considerations, sugar impacts, collaboration with the medical community, and much more. Andrea’s story and insights offer invaluable guidance for anyone navigating the challenges of cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Live Life Now Project
Andrea, I’d like to start with how you found out you had a brain tumour, particularly as you’d had no symptoms.
Andrea Schaffer
I found out about my brain tumour because I had decided to get a full body MRI scan at a company called Prenuvo, which is outside of the medical system. I had no idea anything was wrong. My mom had breast cancer when she was my age and I had a few perimenopausal symptoms. I thought “I’m an oncology nutritionist, I should take charge of my health and just make sure everything’s good.” You know, we’re coming up to colonoscopy time and it was just an idea of “let’s do this to take charge.”
I had a trip to San Francisco planned, which is also where Prenuvo has a location, and I decided to take advantage of it for my birthday, which is in February. I went in at the beginning of a business trip at 6:30am, had the scan and as I finished the scan, the radiologist asked for more information about my lost sense of smell that I mentioned on my intake form. I didn’t think a whole lot about it and said “I had COVID in 2022, and I lost my sense of smell. I’ve been working on it, you know, taking lots of zinc, and doing things that nutritionists would do for that, but it still really hadn’t come back.”
After the scan, I attended my work commitments and, after a late night at a work dinner, I looked at my phone for the first time in hours and there was a message from Prenuvo saying they needed to speak to me urgently concerning my scan. Unfortunately, at 9:00pm, no one’s around to speak to, so I called them at 6:30am the next morning and managed to schedule an appointment to talk to the person who gives the results at 5:00pm that afternoon, which is totally not normal as it usually takes two weeks to get your results. When I spoke to them, they told me I had a 2.3 centimeter by 2.4 centimeter mass in the right temporal lobe of my brain.
Live Life Now Project
When you returned to Maine following the scan, how did you interact with the medical community there and how did the diagnosis prompt your move from Maine to Arizona?
Andrea Schaffer
Since I opted to undergo scans outside of the conventional medical system, I returned to Maine without a doctor to oversee my care. We had only moved there eight months earlier, and I had struggled to find a doctor during that time.
The hospital system in Maine made it difficult for me to access proper care after my diagnosis and, despite my efforts to schedule appointments with doctors, I was always set up with nurse practitioners, probably due to a backlog in the hospital system following COVID.
I reached out to a neurosurgeon for assistance. However, he didn’t review my scans until weeks later and, when he finally reviewed them, said I needed another scan. At that point, I had decided for my health not to use gadolinium, which Prenuvo doesn’t use. Gadolinium is contrast, so when you get an MRI, they like to give you a shot of contrast to make images sort of light up. But MRI technology is such that you don’t necessarily need it, and it’s a somewhat toxic heavy metal – given that I already knew at that point that I would have many scans in my lifetime, it could potentially harm my kidneys if I did contrast every time and I decided I would forgo it.
Ultimately, I am the luckiest person on the planet because I found my tumour before I had symptoms. Because of my oncology nutrition background, one of my mentors is a 10-year brain cancer survivor and I called her for advice. She told me to go to Arizona to the Barrow Neurological Institute, which is what I did – I was able to see an amazing doctor here in Arizona, whereas in Maine it was just fighting all the time just to get some blood labs done – like I said, they would set me up with a nurse practitioner and I made a nurse practitioner cry because she didn’t understand the labs that I was asking for. My husband and I decided that moving to Arizona was the best decision for us.
Live Life Now Project
I want to talk now about the oncology nutrition side. I know that your decision to become an oncology nutritionist was influenced by your mother’s breast cancer diagnosis when you were a teenager. When you received your diagnosis, did your approach to oncology nutrition change? Did you feel lucky that your oncology nutritionist background could assist you? Or did you discover a whole lot of new options?
Andrea Schaffer
When I found out I had a brain tumour, I immediately went on a very strict ketogenic diet as that’s what my training instructs for brain cancers. It’s a very effective strategy. I wouldn’t say that my tactics changed regarding my practice or my health, although my diet definitely changed. I was not on a ketogenic diet before the diagnosis. I was predominantly on a paleo diet.
I’ve learned a lot because of what I’ve gone through. When preparing for surgery, I started fasting which was a big addition to my life as was learning how to eat a very, very low carb diet. It was kind of a fun challenge in the beginning, and it worked well because I could try new things and tweak recipes so I could eat foods safely, which was how I looked at it. I still look at it this way because I’m likely in this is for life and committed to staying compliant. I also had some side effects from surgery to deal with – my incision was on the right side of my skull and face and somehow in the process of cutting in that area, I have a tingly feeling on that side of my face and half of my tongue is kind of numb, which feels like the sensation when you burn your tongue.
I also went through a period of experiencing food aversions, unfortunately, to foods I needed. I went through some protein aversions – I would eat as much as I could, but I had to figure out ways to get in protein beyond what I could stomach before I would gag.
Live Life Now Project
Before your diagnosis, were you OK with these proteins, or did something change after surgery?
Andrea Schaffer
It was absolutely surgery. That has since subsided and has now gone, but I had to figure out how to improve my protein intake and how to deal with the food aversions. Also, after surgery, my sense of smell came back.
Live Life Now Project
With those aversions, you obviously knew that you needed to have that intake, but your body was rejecting it. Can you describe the emotional challenges you faced during this time, such as frustration, and how you navigated finding alternative solutions or adjusting your approach?
Andrea Schaffer
I just had to get creative. One of the things I did was make keto pancakes using a grass-fed beef isolate protein powder called Equip. It’s unflavoured, and since it’s beef, there are no carbohydrates; it’s quite literally just protein. These pancakes kept me alive for a month or two, and I figured out other places to put the protein powder that I could stomach, mostly with bland foods – I did well with broths and soups, and I just had to get creative and work with it.
Live Life Now Project
How were you feeling physically after your operation? Were you bedridden?
Andrea Schaffer
No, in fact what’s interesting to me is that 24 hours after surgery, they released me from the hospital, and I was able to walk around. I didn’t feel like doing a whole lot and there was some pain, but it wasn’t terrible – I was able to wean myself off the Tylenol pretty quickly. I definitely took some time off work to recover and to sleep and my in-laws came to stay with us for a while to help out around the house. My husband was off work so he could hang out with the dog and make some meals. I was still mostly cooking for myself though because no one else was doing the full keto diet with me.
Live Life Now Project
What advice would you give to someone in your situation who doesn’t have your oncology nutritionist background? There are probably two components to that question: firstly, in normal everyday life, should people be obviously mindful of their nutrition before they get any sort of diagnosis? And, secondly, if somebody does get a diagnosis like yours, what advice would you give them? Let’s start with the first part of that question, just general nutrition for everyday people.
Andrea Schaffer
I think this is a good opportunity for me to tell you a little bit about how I view cancer because I think it feeds directly into that question. Cancer is not ‘bad luck’ and it’s not just because of your genes. I view our bodies as a sort of garden and, with that garden you have soil. If there are things that are out of balance, something like cancer can happen. Or it might not be cancer, it might be another disease, any sort of illness.
But the attitude shouldn’t be that suddenly you have a tumour and that’s the only place you have to focus. You need to focus on the whole soil, the whole body, the whole terrain, and that is why I think that when people are looking towards prevention or a new diagnosis, one of the first things I would do is start looking at that terrain – what are we dealing with and how can we make it better? There are a lot of ways that we can fix it. That is why it’s beautiful viewing cancer not as being bad luck or genetics – you can’t do anything about your luck, and you can’t do anything about your genetics, either. But you can do something about your soil. The earlier you start paying attention to those little signs and start investigating deeper, the better, and one of the ways you can work on things is through diet.
According to Doctor Nasha Winters – I am one of her followers – she’s the one who wrote the book “The Metabolic Approach to Cancer” with Jess Higgins Kelly, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to prevent cancer or already has cancer. This is required reading. In that book they have determined that there are 10 terrain items to address in making your body healthier: Circulation, Inflammation, Oxidation, Microbiome, Blood Sugar, Toxins and your Detoxification systems, Hormones, Immunity, Stress and Biorhythms and Epigenetics. That’s the “Terrain Ten.” Diet is a cornerstone that can actually feed into a few of those categories.
If you want to explore further what could be happening in your body, I highly recommend you get a scan. You can also get a complete blood panel which, for cancer patients, I have a list of blood labs on my website that I recommend. It’s very long, and not every person needs to get all of those, but there are a few key blood tests I would get to see where you’re at. Let’s say if you got your vitamin D run, that is important. I would likely get an HB A1C to see where your blood sugar is at. But there are a couple of inflammation markers as well that are important to know: HS CRP, which is an inflammation marker – C-Reactive protein is what it’s measuring; the sedimentation rate, which measures the stickiness of your blood; and lactase dehydrogenase, which is another inflammation marker. And those three markers are what we call the trifecta, and if those are all out of whack, not good things are happening inside your body.
Live Life Now Project
If these markers show abnormalities, could that indicate potential health issues or increase the risk of developing them if left unaddressed?
Andrea Schaffer
Both.
Live Life Now Project
Considering your healthy lifestyle prior to diagnosis, do you believe it influenced the size or severity of your tumour and overall diagnosis?
Andrea Schaffer
Well, we’ll never know for sure. But when I think about things that contributed to my issue, they say tumors can start forming 7 or 8 years prior to actually being big enough to diagnose, so we don’t know how long mine was there. I do know that factors like diet and stress were significant for me. Also, I think COVID may have played a role, given the loss of sense of smell I experienced, which could be related to immunity issues. And definitely toxins.
Live Life Now Project
If someone facing a similar situation approached you for advice, what key points would you discuss with them?
Andrea Schaffer
Besides the blood tests I mentioned earlier, another important thing I recommend is genetic testing. Not because markers will predict you’ll get cancer, but because it reveals vital information about your health. For instance, it can show if you have stress genes like me, meaning you might not handle stress well. These tests also highlight dietary sensitivities – for example, dairy may not be good for you, or saturated fats might raise your blood sugar. From testing we can also learn more about your detoxification genes – mine are quite poor and, when we moved to Maine, I suspect radon in our water may have affected me because of these. Knowing these risks allows you to take steps to mitigate them and take steps to fix things and improve your health.
One of the top things I advise people is to make sure they have good water filtration. We need water for our detoxification, but the tap water in our country is terrible – between the pesticides, the herbicides, the radon, the uranium, the arsenic, and the medications that are in our water. By water filtration I’m not talking about a Brita pitcher, I’m talking about a whole house filter or even better, reverse osmosis. It’s important.
Live Life Now Project
With the genetic testing you mentioned, how do people go down that road because it doesn’t sound like the medical system is very supportive – do people need to do that independently through organisations that exist?
Andrea Schaffer
I recommend a company called Nutrition Genome, which provides pay-out-of-pocket tests for, I think $359, and you receive a very substantial report at the end. Sometimes it’s useful to have somebody help interpret it though, just to make it a little more understandable in layman’s terms and help you put the pieces together which is one of the things I do for my clients – we go through the labs together.
There’s a saying in “The Metabolic Approach to Cancer” which is Test/Assess/Address – we get the tests done, and then we assess them, which is where the practitioners on your team come up with a strategy to address them.
I believe it’s important to have a diverse team which will likely include your oncologist and probably a general practitioner. It is a very good idea to have a naturopathic doctor on your team who is specifically trained in cancer because there are lots of nutrients that naturopathic doctors use in their practices that are cancer drivers and many don’t know it – this is something I come up against often. There are lots of nutrients there out there like glutathione which some people need, but it’s not generally appropriate for cancer patients. We need to support with foods rather than supplementation, so if the naturopath is not trained in cancer, it can be problematic.
I also think having a nutritionist is very helpful because we help with the more practical issues. For example, if your doctor has put you on a certain diet with added supplements, a nutritionist can integrate them by providing recipes that work for you and making them taste good because quality of life is very important for cancer patients.
Therefore, your team expands, but the naturopathic doctor and the nutritionist are the ones who are helping you work on your terrain, on your soil, whereas the oncologist is more focused on zeroing in on the tumour – they are only focused on that little piece, and we work together.
Live Life Now Project
Do you see people who want to prevent cancer, who might think that they are healthy and want to do as much as they can to avoid a diagnosis, or do you predominantly see patients who have a diagnosis, and who want to work on healing themselves?
Andrea Schaffer
The majority already have a diagnosis, but I do see people who are looking at prevention as well. Many people look at their family background, and they say, “Oh my dad had three kinds of cancer and my mom died of cancer – I’m screwed!” But they are not “screwed” – there is something they can do about it, and they can heal. Your body doesn’t want to die, it doesn’t want to be sick, it wants to heal, so we have to give it what it needs in order to do that.
Live Life Now Project
Let’s talk about these cancer patients who ask for your assistance. What’s your next steps with them, particularly as there are multiple types of cancer, and each has a different stage. Do you send them off for testing? What’s your starting point with people?
Andrea Schaffer
It depends if they’re also seeing a naturopathic doctor as sometimes our services can slightly overlap. Before recommending testing, I will look at their diet. We know that 95% of cancers are glycolytic, which means they feed on sugar. One of the first things we do is start stepping down the carbohydrates and the sugars – depending on where their diet is at, and that may be a slower or faster process. My aim is to meet people where they’re at and try to get them to a place where they’re no longer feeding their cancer with their diet.
Live Life Now Project
The discussion around carbohydrates can be controversial because one would assume that foods like brown rice are healthy. But from your perspective, is it considered bad?
Andrea Schaffer
Yes, for a couple of reasons: brown rice is full of arsenic. It is also not good for blood sugar, and we’re looking for blood sugar to be lowered. And the modern diet is full of carbohydrates – I help people to come up with replacements because it’s not helping them.
Live Life Now Project
How do you do this?
Andrea Schaffer
For example, we do a lot with cauliflower rice or advise that you put curries on a bed of greens instead of the starchy carbs that you might be used to. I also work with people from different cultures, and I have a great falafel recipe! I like to put my creativity into coming up with recipes that make people feel like they’re eating their traditional foods, but lower carb.
That’s the thing about diet and cancer, especially if people look online as Doctor Google is very confusing. Online, there are people saying you need to be vegan or that fruit is the way to go. There are things like the Gerson diet which currently is carrot juice-based, whereas the original Gerson diet was not about carrot juice, it was about using liver for vitamin A, but unfortunately, it’s been bastardised over time.
People see conflicting messages online and are confused about what to eat and, knowing that cancers are so glycolytic, for me it’s a no brainer: let’s bring the blood sugar down, let’s bring the insulin down. Insulin growth factor #1 is one of those markers we test, and it essentially means you have high insulin which comes from high blood sugar, so reducing those blood sugars is a good idea for anyone.
Live Life Now Project
Is there a one-size-fits-all approach? Or do you tailor a nutrition plan according to the individual and the results of their lab tests and other testing? Are there cases where someone may be suited for more carbs, or should everyone simply reduce carbs?
Andrea Schaffer
That’s a question with a lot of nuances, and it depends where your blood sugar is at. It is important that you can be metabolically flexible, which means that you can burn fats and sugars as your fuel and your blood sugar is nice and low. People have different thresholds for carbs and that takes a little bit of figuring out and tinkering around to find out if that is you or not. I am totally for getting people on a lower carbohydrate diet and then stair-stepping them up a little bit if they can maintain low blood sugar. Or if their blood sugar won’t come down, we troubleshoot how to get it where we would like it.
It also really depends on where they’re starting at. I sometimes work with pregnant women with cancer and I don’t generally put them on a super low carbohydrate plan – we take out the sugar, absolutely, but we might have some other carbs or a higher level of carbs than somebody with brain cancer who’s also not pregnant. With certain cancers, you need to go lower on the carbs – brain cancer is one of them and pancreatic cancer is another. It also depends on what the patient is willing to do – we’re all adults, and what you eat and put into your body is your decision. It’s my job to give the information. If somebody doesn’t want to do that, then it’s their body.
Live Life Now Project
What’s your stance on meat versus vegetarian/vegan?
Andrea Schaffer
Meat is one of the big controversies. There’s a lot of people who say you need to be a vegetarian, and I personally disagree with that for a few reasons: one, there are nutrients like B6, B12, vitamin A and zinc in meat that you cannot absorb very well from vegetable sources. The ketogenic diet that I recommend is not a meat-and-cheese fest. I like to call it “super keto” because, firstly, you feel awesome on it, it’s like you’ve got superpowers and, secondly, it’s just so different from the Internet’s version of keto which relies heavily on cheese and meat.
For cancer, we treat meat as a garnish, but you do need it because we need to keep protein levels adequate so that cancer patients don’t fall into cachexia, which will kill you faster than cancer. Having enough protein is important and, unfortunately, most sources of vegetable-based protein are really high carb, so you’re feeding your blood sugar, which is feeding your tumours and that gets tricky, so we need to have some meat. We need to have vegetables too, and most of the vegetables that I recommend are the leafy greens, the herbs, and things like asparagus and cauliflower, the brassicas (cruciferous vegetables) are great. It depends on your plan, but those vegetables are really important for a well formulated cancer diet.
Live Life Now Project
Is there a ‘bad’ list of vegetables?
Andrea Schaffer
Essentially, the bad list of vegetables is potatoes, sweet potatoes, and even carrots and beets, the sugary ones. The root vegetables are much higher in carbohydrates, which is not to say you can’t ever have carrot – I’ll buy little carrots from the local farm, and I’ll have a bite of carrot, you could use it as a garnish, and that’s how I view some of these vegetables. Red peppers are delicious and a little higher carb, so I use it as a garnish, just a little bit here and there so you get some colours in your diet – it doesn’t blow your carb allowance for the day. My personal plan is I do 20 grams of total carbs and less a day which is very low. Not everybody is on that plan. Some people are on 40 grams of carbohydrates a day, and we can get some people up to 80 grams, depending on the person. I’m speaking in total carbs, not net carbs.
Live Life Now Project
Regarding sugars, can we talk about fruit because that’s also something that confuses people as they have the mindset that eating more fruit is beneficial and healthy. What’s your opinion?
Andrea Schaffer
Fruit is loaded with fructose which is one of the primary sugars that cancer likes the best. I have this conversation with pretty much every client – everyone wants to keep their fruit. I love fruit too, it’s delicious, but what I would say is that on a regular basis, I would lean on berries in small amounts, like 1/4 cup or less, maybe a little bit of green apple – I put a little green apple in my Thanksgiving stuffing this year that I made with keto bread. I also use quite a bit of lemons and limes which are fine, and I always use the lemon rinds because they are full of cancer fighting nutrients.
The rest of the fruits are the higher sugar ones, which is not to say you can’t ever have a piece of pineapple or orange – it depends where you are regarding your health. If you are preventative, fruits are OK here and there and generally not a big deal, but if you are really fighting a cancer diagnosis, I would not eat fruit. When I do eat berries, I eat them with a lot of fat, like a homemade whipped cream, or a dairy free keto ice cream I’ve made, something that is high in fat to go with it. When making your own keto dairy free ice cream, the sweetener in that is usually a non-caloric keto sweetener. Right now, my colleagues and I are on an allulose kick – there is some recent research which suggests allulose brings down blood sugar and works like one of the popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic, it has the same mechanism. I’d put a little bit of that in your whipped cream or your ice cream or whatever you’re making and then eat that with the fruit to balance out those sugars so that they don’t hit your bloodstream and cause a big spike.
Live Life Now Project
If a client who is used to the typical American diet visits you, believing they’re already eating healthily, but then you introduce changes that seem overwhelming, how do you guide them through when they say, “There’s no way I can do this long-term, it’s too difficult for me, it’s like a full-time job to prepare these foods.” What advice do you offer to individuals overwhelmed by the information?
Andrea Schaffer
Well, we might take it in pieces, and there’s a couple of ways to go about it. Firstly, it depends on their support structure. Quite often, caring family members will contact me to say, “You need to help my mom” or “You need to help my wife”, and they’re not necessarily on board, but their stance is, “OK, I’m going to placate you because I love you.”
Sometimes, people are not ready for these dietary changes, don’t know if they can do it or don’t like particular aspects of the plan. I have some clients who are farmers who are heavy on meat and potatoes, and changing their diet can be really challenging for that group of people. Culture can have an impact too because there are lots of cultural traditions that are, for example, very rice based or heavy on tortillas. We try and figure out food substitutions to make their diet a little lower carb. If we take out the rice, I’ll suggest what can be used instead. I present some options like a cauliflower rice or Shirataki noodles which sometimes go by the brand name “Miracle Noodles” – they’re made from a substance that’s essentially a starch, but is not digested by the body, meaning they’re very low carb. I think a serving is 3 grams of carbs and the texture is pretty good. If, for example, somebody is Italian who eats a lot of pasta, we can substitute this with a zucchini noodle or cabbage cut into strips, different ways to have a lasagna – we can make you a lasagna with zucchini.
We come up with strategies to make things work. Maybe they don’t ever reach the therapeutic ketosis or are as low carb as we initially talked about, but they can tweak things slowly so that it’s not so overwhelming.
A lot of people are scared enough by their diagnosis that they are determined to make the necessary changes. Cancer is like a full-time job with lots of doctor’s appointments and if a patient doesn’t have the time required to cook or prepare their food because they are having treatments, infusions, radiation or recovering from surgery, their support network is really important. If somebody in your family can make a big batch of keto bread so you can have a Turkey sandwich here and there, great. Splitting up the work or providing friends with recipes that fit with your diet and asking if they could make something for you is helpful – it sometimes takes a village.
Live Life Now Project
Some individuals might feel conflicted about prioritizing nutritional approaches alongside traditional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. What advice would you give to patients who find themselves in this situation, where their doctor is solely focused on conventional treatments and not supportive of incorporating nutritional strategies?
Andrea Schaffer
What I would say is that your conventional doctor has about an hour of nutritional education, so do not go to them for nutritional advice. And, because of that, they don’t keep up with nutritional research, it’s not their thing. Their toolbox is drugs, chemo, surgery, and radiation. That is it.
Live Life Now Project
Can the nutrition side work together with the conventional side?
Andrea Schaffer
We can and we do. It also depends how willing they are to collaborate. The ketogenic diet is getting a lot more attention now because the research is really strong and, as a cancer patient, you need to advocate for yourself. This is important and it’s tricky because a lot of people aren’t aware that they should advocate for themselves, or that this whole other side of cancer treatment exists, which is based around fixing the terrain and the soil in addition to having your conventional doctor who will tell the patient they need six months of radiation treatments.
A lot of people don’t know nutritional options exist, and I encounter this sometimes. A friend of my husband’s has a child who has a brain cancer diagnosis and I’ve tried explaining to him them that “I’m glad you’re going for the six weeks of treatments, but let’s also fix the terrain, and incorporate dietary changes that can also make the treatments work better and mitigate a lot of the side effects.” I want to spread the word that we must deal with the human being as a whole – we are holistic beings and not just physical beings. We’re also spiritual beings which is another aspect of this – having a therapist, or having an energy person on your team – whatever it takes to get your body into a healthy state. We all need to work together.
As part of that advocating process, the patient needs to tell their doctor they’re also working with a nutritionist and naturopath. It’s up to the patient to tell their doctors: “This is my team, and I would appreciate it if you would work together.”
Live Life Now Project
And if there’s resistance from the medical side, what should the patient do? Change practitioners?
Andrea Schaffer
Depends how bad it is. The conventional system sits in a box, and they can’t see out of it. A lot of times they don’t really want to know every bite you’re eating, or they just want to know how your platelets are doing or what your white blood count is, are you able do this treatment, are you healthy enough to do the chemo or are your blood counts too low? They’re more focused on those details, not so much what you’re putting into your body. Most doctors just tell people don’t lose weight or it doesn’t matter what you eat. The worst is when you’re in the hospital and they give you something like a bag of chips after surgery. I had my surgery done in a very special hospital that had a keto menu, but they still tried to feed me red Jello. I brought my own food.
Food is not their thing. I recommend getting a nutritional person on your team, which doesn’t mean you’re going against the recommendations of your doctor, it just means that you’re supporting yourself in other ways too. And cancer is such a big diagnosis that we need to support all aspects of our humanity.
Live Life Now Project
How do you recommend individuals navigate the process of assembling their medical team after receiving a cancer diagnosis?
Andrea Schaffer
One of the challenges people have when they’re first diagnosed is how to find their medical team and I think finding a good oncology trained naturopathic doctor is a challenge for a lot of people. There are some resources out there. I have a pamphlet I send it out to people that has some useful links on it around how to find a good naturopathic doctor or how to find a good oncology trained nutritionist.
With nutritionists, a cancer patient also needs them to be oncology trained. It is dangerous for someone who is not trained to work with a cancer patient because they may suggest supplements, that could actually harm a cancer patient. Supplements are a sticky issue, and a lot of people are doing their own supplements. They read something and they’re like, “Oh, I’m just going to take this supplement, it should help.” Supplements can hurt you. Some good examples of this include calcium, which is a no go for cancer. Copper is a common immune system supplement which you often find in multivitamins but it’s also a no go for cancer, and it’s one of the things we test for because it drives cancer. We also recommend no iron supplementation for cancer patients – if you need iron, go with an organ blend complex, it’s the whole food which is OK, but iron supplementation is also a no go.
Let’s say a client is cachexic or suffering from muscle wasting. One of the markers that decreases in this case is calcium. An untrained practitioner might respond by supplementing with calcium, which is harmful for a cancer patient and is not the root of the problem. This is why you need somebody who is oncology trained, and why I’m particular about helping patients find the right people for their team. It’s important. You need proper guidance and Dr Google is not a good source of information.
Live Life Now Project
That is so useful for people, especially the supplement side because, like you said, people think that they are taking things because they’re healthy but could be driving a cancer that’s not yet been diagnosed and making it worse.
Andrea Schaffer
I’m not so worried about people who are undiagnosed. If you have been diagnosed, these are things to avoid and unfortunately the list keeps growing. One of the new ones is B6. It’s incredibly important for whoever you work with to have the proper education and that they continually update their education.
Live Life Now Project
This has been very valuable Andrea. Do you have any final comments?
Andrea Schaffer
I want to share the word that you can heal yourself. We absolutely need the medical system and the treatments, but it’s best for the patient if we work in tandem. I’ve also had a lot of people who saw my interview with NBC News about my Prenuvo experience message me on Instagram – many were scared to look into getting a scan or looking into their health as they were scared about what they might find.
My response back to them was you shouldn’t be scared of what you find out, you should be scared of what you don’t know. In my case, the Prenuvo scan discovered my tumor. Without it, the next step would have likely been seizures due to the compression of my hippocampus.
People shouldn’t be scared of what they find out – they should be happy to find it out when they can still do something about it. If it progresses and you don’t know it’s there, you’re going to have a much harder time fixing it. Even if you are stage 4 with multiple metastasis, you can absolutely make your health better. I can’t promise it’ll heal you completely, but you can make the length and quality of your life better, you can make improvement, and reduce your pain and suffering in the process.
Live Life Now Project
Thanks Andrea, this has been very valuable.
Andrea Schaffer
Thank you.
For further information, contact Andrea Schaffer online at notjustbroccoli.com, Instagram, Facebook or via email [email protected]
