Living From Experience Part I, II & III

Waking up one morning and being told that I have been diagnosed with AML M5 (Acute Myeloid Leukemia), was not something I expected on the 28th February 2000.

This is my story and this is how I live my life day in and day out.

I endured a three month chemotherapy treatment program at The Pretoria Academic Hospital Ward 19, where I underwent excessive chemotherapy and multiple blood transfusions. 

Funny enough, on the 5th March 2000, the day that I was admitted, I said to all my friends and family that I would be out and finished with this ordeal in three months. No joke, I was discharged from Ward 19 0n the 5th June 2000. Mind over matter some call it but I just wanted to continue with my life as normal.

I can seriously say that it was the toughest 3 months of my life wondering  Why ,  How and  What if , the entire time I was undergoing the treatment.
 
I was in remission for a year and 2 months and then I was hit with some more devastating news, the Cancer had returned. I had what they call  a relapse and just as the first time hearing this, the second time just seemed to be unfair. But I had to return to hospital where the decision was made by my doctor, to undergo a Stem Cell Transplant as my brother and sister s Bone Marrow was not compatible with mine.

This treatment lasted for a period of 5 months and it was tougher than the first treatment I underwent. It made the first treatment look like a vacation.

Scary thought though, is that this could happen to anyone as we are all born with Cancerous Cells. It's how we look after ourselves that counts.

In this chapter I am going to run through a few factors of life after Cancer like lifestyle changes, making healthier choices, diet, nutrition and exercise just to name a few.

Lifestyle Changes to Consider During and After Treatment

Having cancer and dealing with treatment can be time-consuming and emotionally draining, but it was also a time to look at my life in new ways. I was thinking about how to improve my health over the long term. I began the process during my first treatment and when I had the relapse in 2001 I thought back on what I had done wrong during my remission time.

Make Healthier Choices

I thought about my life before I had cancer. Were there things I did that might have made me less healthy? Maybe I drank too much alcohol, or ate more than I needed, or smoked, or didn't exercise very often. Emotionally, maybe I kept my feelings bottled up, or maybe I let stressful situations go on too long. Now was not the time to feel guilty or to blame myself. However, you can start making changes today that can have positive effects for the rest of your life. Not only will you feel better but you will also be healthier.

What better time than now to take advantage of the motivation you have as a result of going through a life-changing experience like having cancer? Individuals tend to be dreaming of the future, living in the past and forgetting about the present. I Say:  Live for today and your future will be healthier.

Diet and Nutrition

Eating right can be a challenge for anyone, but it can get even tougher during and after cancer treatment. For instance, treatment often may change your sense of taste. Nausea can be a problem. You may lose your appetite for a while and lose weight when you don't want to. On the other hand, some people gain weight even without eating more. This can be frustrating, too.

If you are losing weight or have taste problems during treatment, do the best you can with eating and remember that these problems usually improve over time. You may want to ask your cancer team for a referral to a dietitian, an expert in nutrition who can give you ideas on how to fight some of the side effects of your treatment. You may also find it helps to eat small portions every 2 to 3 hours until you feel better and can go back to a more normal schedule.

One of the best things you can do after treatment is to put healthy eating habits into place. You will be surprised at the long-term benefits of some simple changes, like increasing the variety of healthy foods you eat. Try to eat 5 or more servings of vegetables and fruits each day. Choose whole grain foods instead of white flour and sugars. Try to limit meats that are high in fat. Cut back on processed meats like hot dogs, bologna, and bacon. Get rid of them altogether if you can. If you drink alcohol, limit yourself to 1 or 2 drinks a day at the most. And don't forget to get some type of regular exercise. The combination of a good diet and regular exercise will help you maintain a healthy weight and keep you feeling more energetic.

Rest, Fatigue, Work, and Exercise

Fatigue is a very common symptom in people being treated for cancer. This is often not an ordinary type of tiredness but a  bone-weary exhaustion that doesn't get better with rest. For some, this fatigue lasts a long time after treatment, and can discourage them from physical activity.

However, exercise can actually help you reduce fatigue. Studies have shown that patients who follow an exercise program tailored to their personal needs feel physically and emotionally improved and can cope better.

If you are ill and need to be on bed rest during treatment, it is normal to expect your fitness, endurance, and muscle strength to decline some. Physical therapy can help you maintain strength and range of motion in your muscles, which can help fight fatigue and the sense of depression that sometimes comes with feeling so tired.
Any program of physical activity should fit your own situation. An older person who has never exercised will not be able to take on the same amount of exercise as a 20-year-old who plays tennis 3 times a week. If you haven t exercised in a few years but can still get around, you may want to think about taking short walks.

Talk with your health care team before starting, and get their opinion about your exercise plans. Then, try to get an exercise buddy so that you re not doing it alone. Having family or friends involved when starting a new exercise program can give you that extra boost of support to keep you going when the push just isn t there.

If you are very tired, though, you will need to balance activity with rest. It is okay to rest when you need to. It is really hard for some people to allow themselves to do that when they are used to working all day or taking care of a household. For more information about fatigue, please see the publication, Cancer Related Fatigue and Anemia Treatment Guidelines for Patients.

Exercise can improve your physical and emotional health.

It improves your cardiovascular (heart and circulation) fitness.

It strengthens your muscles.

It reduces fatigue.

It lowers anxiety and depression.

It makes you feel generally happier.

It helps you feel better about yourself.

And long term, we know that exercise plays a role in preventing some cancers. The American Cancer Society, in its guidelines on physical activity for cancer prevention, recommends that adults take part in at least 1 physical activity for 30 minutes or more on 5 days or more of the week. Children and teens are encouraged to try for at least 60 minutes a day of energetic physical activity on at least 5 days a week.

How About Your Emotional Health?

Once your treatment ends, you may find yourself overwhelmed by emotions. This happens to a lot of people. You may have been going through so much during treatment that you could only focus on getting through your treatment.

Now you may find that you think about the possibility of your own death, or the effect of your cancer on your family, friends, and career. You may also begin to re-evaluate your relationship with your spouse or partner. Unexpected issues may also cause concern -- for instance, as you become healthier and have fewer doctor visits, you will see your health care team less often. That can be a source of anxiety for some.

This is an ideal time to seek out emotional and social support. You need people you can turn to for strength and comfort. Support can come in many forms: family, friends, cancer support groups, church or spiritual groups, online support communities, or individual counselors.

Almost everyone who has been through cancer can benefit from getting some type of support. What's best for you depends on your situation and personality. Some people feel safe in peer-support groups or education groups. Others would rather talk in an informal setting, such as church. Others may feel more at ease talking one-on-one with a trusted friend or counselor. Whatever your source of strength or comfort, make sure you have a place to go with your concerns.

The cancer journey can feel very lonely. It is not necessary or realistic to go it all by yourself. And your friends and family may feel shut out if you decide not include them. Let them in -- and let in anyone else who you feel may help.

You can't change the fact that you have had cancer. What you can change is how you live the rest of your life -- making healthy choices and feeling as well as possible, physically and emotionally.
In my second chapter I will cover my daily eating plan and exercise routines, which has proved to keep me mentally focused and living a normal and healthy lifestyle

Living from Experience (Part II)

Eating healthy and maintaining a physical and active lifestyle is one of my key secrets in living a stress free and healthy life. It seems hard to all take in at once, but as you read on you will notice that it is actually quite simple.

In this chapter I am going to cover my daily eating plan and some inside secrets on eating correctly.

Healthy eating plan

You will notice that I will rarely use the word  diet because the second that you mention that word it seems to make everything a little more complicated. I like to refer to it as a  healthy eating plan.

When the word diet pops up you automatically start thinking of things like weighed meals, no fat, no carbs, and it just seems to become so tedious. But it doesn't have to be you see, once you see what I have to say it will all become clear.

Being a personal trainer it sure helped me understand that we're all built differently and we all require different eating plans to reach our desired goals. Imagine this, if I took 10 people all with the same goal, to loose weight, and put them all on the same eating plan for 1 month you will find that after the month has been completed, some of the people would have lost weight, some might have put on weight and the remainder could have even maintained their weight. Strange but very true, our bodies are different and that's one of the secrets that people need to understand.

So what is the secret in reaching your required weight, well it's not much of a secret, its more like understanding your body and eating the right foods at the right time.

We all need to have protein, carbohydrates and fat with every meal we eat, no matter what time of the day; it s just knowing what ratio to eat at what time? So now you asking yourself all kinds of questions like, am I eating the right foods and if so, why aren t I reaching my goals and if I think I am eating the right foods and so and so on. It can drive a person crazy, so let me make it easy for you, here goes:

What you should keep in mind is that your body is like an engine and you need to keep refueling it to keep it running. Carbohydrates come in two basic forms: complex and simple. Simple carbs are one, two, or at most three units of sugar linked together in single molecules. Complex carbs are hundreds or thousands of sugar units linked together in single molecules. Simple sugars are easily identified by their taste: sweet. Complex carbs, such as potatoes, are pleasant to the taste buds, but not sweet. There are two groups of complex carbs: high fiber and low fiber. High-fiber, complex carbs are not digestible, at least not by human beings, because we do not have the enzyme to do the job. Cows have that enzyme; that is why they can get calories out of grass, and we cannot. The main stuff in high-fiber, complex carbs which is indigestible by humans is called "cellulose."

High-fiber (high-cellulose) vegetable foods are the healthiest choices for human nutrition, and intake of these foods is associated with lowered incidences of hypertension, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, etc. Examples are lettuce and broccoli. Examples of low-fiber, complex carbs are banana, tomato, squash and all cereals and grains (therefore bread and pasta), potatoes and rice. It matters not if a carb is simple or complex. After digestion, it appears in the circulatory system in the simple form, as glucose, on its way to the cells where it is used for energy. To be transformed into simple sugars, complex carbs must be digested by the enzyme amylase. Amylase is secreted by the salivary glands, which empty into the mouth, and by the pancreas, which empties into the head of the duodenum. Simple sugars and low-fiber, complex carbs represent a threat to health when they are consumed in inappropriate amounts such as may occur in low-soy, vegetarian diets where they are being eaten to replace the calories which would ordinarily come from protein. Processing of plant food strips away its fiber and/or vitamin content. A simple example of processing is cutting an orange in two pieces, pressing the juice into a glass and discarding the fiber. While it is true that fiber is an important part of your diet, even necessary to protect you from some diseases, carbohydrates themselves are not necessary. There are "essential" fatty acids and "essential" amino acids (from protein), however there are no known essential carbohydrates.

Most of our carbohydrates come from cereals and grains, both products of the agricultural revolution. Our bodies are not genetically designed to thrive on large amounts of these fibreless complex carbs. With the popularity of cereal- and grain-based "health diets," carbohydrate metabolism has been upset in approximately 3/4 of the population which simply cannot handle this large load of carbs. Increased insulin output from the pancreas, over the years, results in hyperinsulinism, insulin resistance and the resulting diseases mentioned above: hypertension, dyslipidemia, atherosclerosis and heart disease. Complex carbs with lots of fiber should be consumed in proper proportion for maximum health and vitality. Complex carbs with lots of fiber are rich sources of necessary vitamins and minerals as well as enzymes when in the raw state. The problem happens when carbohydrates are altered by processes which provide empty calories stripped of much of their original food value.

The healthiest form of sugar is the complex carbohydrates present in high-fiber vegetables; however, it is certainly acceptable to spice up your diet in moderation with simple sugars in the form of whole fruits unless, of course, you are trying to avoid mucus formation. Eat your fruits, do not juice them and drink them. Eating the whole fruit results in the inclusion of natural fiber, which allows proper absorption of sugars. If you must have juice, dilute it with twice the recommended amount of water, so as to get the taste without overdosing on simple sugars.

Now that we have covered the history behind the 2 carbohydrates we now need to establish when a good time to have them is. What I tend to do is look at the protein/carbohydrate ratio for example your morning meals should consist of high carbohydrate/low protein (Meal 1 breakfast - Meal 2 snack - Meal 3 lunch) intake and your afternoon meals should consist of high protein/low carbohydrate (Meal 4 snack - Meal 5 dinner) intake. Now this is where it gets interesting. You see I have mentioned in the above paragraph that there are 5 meals, and to some of you this might seem a lot of food to take in all in one day, but its not, and I am going to explain to you why and how easy it is to maintain the 5 meal eating plan. You have to really appreciate your body when you come to think of it because it is a very clever machine which works according to its needs. Keep in mind that your body has a mind of its own and in the past when I have mentioned this to everyone I've spoken to, they have really understood it. 

Eating 2 meals a day will not benefit you if trying to loose weight because firstly, it is not a healthy choice to make and secondly, your body is not sure when it is going to get its next meal so what it does it stores as much nutrition as possible, kind of like a bear that going into hibernation, thus the weight gain factor instead of the fat loss factor.
 
Eating 5 well proportioned meals every 2-3 hours throughout the day will not only benefit you nutritionally, but also help in the fat and weight loss factors and helps in metabolism stabilizing. 

Yes, that's right, 5 meals per day  now you thinking, is this guy crazy? And where will I have the time to prepare 5 meals a day I ask? No, is my answer and here is why? The first thing I do when I awake is make myself a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal with fat free skimmed milk. Try limiting your sugar intake or using sweeteners as a substitute. What my well programmed body will do as soon as I have finished my first meal is say to itself that in 2  3 hours time I am going to get a nutritious snack, so let me take the nutrients that I need to sustain my energy levels and get rid of the rest. Sounds crazy but it is true. Snack time comes and so the process continues with meals 2, 3, 4 and 5. Now as mentioned previously, you say to yourself that preparing 5 meals a day is just ludicrous, I say to you, its simple and that s where supplementation plays a very important role for those who just find it too difficult or who spend most of the day on the road. Here it is in its simplest form: Breakfast  snack (supplementation)  lunch  snack (supplementation)  dinner. 5 meals per day!!!

In conclusion I would like to mention that it is important to eat the right foods at the right time and you will definitely benefit from this. Stick to this for at least 2  3 months and you will never look back. Follow a healthy eating plan 6 days of the week and spoil yourself on the 7th and after a while it will become a lifestyle. 

Remember:  You are what you eat!!!

Happy eating and live life to its fullest  don t leave for tomorrow what can be done today.

Living from Experience (Part III)

One thing that I have learnt from my past experience with Cancer is that it took a life threatening incident for me to take a step back and really start looking at my life differently with regards to eating healthy, training properly and trying my utmost best to live a stress free life. Now most of you don t have to go through what I did to take that step back and look your lives, its all there ready and waiting for you.

There is one example that I use for all my clients, friends and associates which I would like to share with all the readers. When you go and purchase either a new DVD system, cell phone, cd player for your car, the first thing you do is open the owner s manual and learn everything there is to learn about the desired gadget that you have just purchased so that you can get a full understanding on how the cell phone operates, what functions it has and what this little gadget can do before you start operating it, correct? But how many of us actually know how the human body functions?

No matter what you age is, you have been living in this body day in and day out and most things have just become a routine in our lives. Unfortunately we did not come with an owner s manual, but there are plenty ways of finding out the necessary information that one would require to maintain a healthy and stress free environment. What I am trying to say is that if we took more time to understand how the human body functions I think that there would be a better percentage of people living a healthy and prosperous life.

Most people also misuse the word "Stress" as it is short, simple and easy to use. Remember that the mind is a powerful tool and if convinced of something that is not really necessary like the word stress you will start believing it. Try using the word  Pressure as stress is really an overrated word that can cause all kind of sicknesses, illnesses and other unknown problems.

The reason why I mentioned the example about the owner's manual and the word stress is because these two points play a very important role in our lives and all that I can do from my side is give the advise and the rest is up to the individual to apply into his/her existing lifestyle.

In my past chapters I have mentioned a couple of points with regards to eating plans, the importance of carbohydrates in our daily lives and now I would like to mentioned the importance of Protein in our systems.

What Happens to my muscles if I don't bother to increase my Protein intake?

If you are training hard and don't bother to supplement your muscles with extra protein your muscles can start to deplete - due to your body turning to muscle / protein as a source of energy.

So how much Protein should I be taking?

This depends on your body size, training schedule and program. It is important that you increase your intake to cater for your training so your muscles can survive your training sessions. 

The Protein intake required for the average person who performs a light amount of exercise is approximately 1 gram of protein per kilo of body weight.

For an athlete who has a heavy training schedule that involves alot of resistance exercise, sports specific training or weight training, approximately 2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight.
The intake required for the person who has a hard core heavy weight training schedule is approximately 2.5 grams of protein per kilo of body weight.

The above-mentioned are approximations and examples to give you some idea of what the bodies requirements are for protein. Notice the difference in the protein intake for the programs that involve more muscle damage?

Keeping Up with Consuming Larger Amounts of Protein
Such high intakes of protein can be difficult to keep up with on a daily basis so as well as including the following protein sources in your low fat healthy eating program you can also use protein powders.

Sources of protein:

Lean red meat, lean white meat: fish, chicken or turkey (no skin), eggs (preferably egg whites) beans and legumes (which are high in carbohydrates), nuts, just to name a few.

When performing regular resistance training try to include a source of protein in each meal. For example: Breakfast: 2 x poached egg whites, morning snack: 1 x protein shake, lunch: lean chicken with salad sandwich, afternoon snack: 1 x protein shake, dinner: grilled lean read meat or fish with veggies.

If you are still hungry late at night, and you've been training hard, you might want to also have a protein shake before going to bed, as this is your peak muscle recovery time. 2 protein shakes per day should be sufficient for the average person wanting to increase lean musclemass. If just after a light snack after dinner try a low fat, low GI style yogurt (small, single serve tub).

Protein Powders & Protein Bars help supplement your eating program with the necessary muscle nutrients that your body requires such as Amino Acids, Vitamins and Minerals. Protein powders & bars are a convenient way of ensuring you receive an adequate protein intake. Make sure that you drink lots of water when increasing your protein intake to prevent dehydration and to help the digestion of your protein. Some people prefer to cycle their protein intake here and there to give their body a rest from trying to digest large amounts of protein, like a cleansing process.

Eating "real food" is important so don't go overboard gulping down protein shakes with every meal because you'll more than likely find that you'll end up consuming too much, which is not only as waste of protein powder but you could cause yourself to raise your calorie intake too high.

Before I end this chapter I would like to mention that it is important before starting any new eating program to check with your doctor regarding increases or decreases in certain food intakes and food sources. You should now have a better understanding of why protein is important for assisting with your training. Your eating program and training program work hand in hand to help you achieve the training goalsyou have worked so hard for.

Remember that famous saying:  You are what you eat! If there are any of you out there that requires assistance in changing your lifestyle please feel free to email me on allistair@hfwa.co.za

Yours in Health,
Allistair Watson