As we explained in last week’s Column, the cancer patient needs to acquire the ‘Beat the Cancer Mindset’ to have a chance to heal their illness. As Chris Wark on his website Chris Beat Cancer highlights: "This mindset is the single most important factor, the linchpin in every successful healing story."

As we said, it is not easy to develop such a mindset in the present medical climate. For one, most patients are devastated when they are told they have cancer. It is like being struck by thunder in a blue sky and when the doctor then declares, "you only have six more months to live…" many a patient goes through a mental breakdown from which it is hard to recover. This is the time the patient needs to be able to receive all the moral support they can gather from family and friends.  

Then, the patient must answer two important questions. First "Why did I develop this cancer?" Most often the explanations that will be offered are "it’s in your genes" or "it’s a matter of bad luck." None of these are correct: defective genes are responsible for cancer in less than 5 per cent of the cases and then mostly in childhood cancers. 

And it is not a matter of "bad luck": it’s simply the way the patient has been living that has led to the cancer. It is so important for the patient to become aware and convinced of this, to the point of reaching the "aha" moment and spontaneously concluding: "the way I have been living is killing me!" 

In other words: "cancer is not the cause of my sick body… it is the effect of a sick body". Once convinced, a simple answer will come: "Therefore, I must take control of the situation and change my lifestyle!" Once the patient reaches that conclusion and understanding, he has already made up his mind on the second question "do you want to live?" By deciding he wants to live, he automatically becomes empowered to take control of his life and to change for the better: he has developed the Beat the Cancer Mindset! Once the patient has reached that stage, the real work starts: it will require a full-time commitment to heal the cancer. 

And that healing will require not just the body but also the mind. What is required is "massive action" which means taking an active role in your health and healing, not solely relying on someone else to cure you. At METI we can help by coaching the cancer patient to adopt the WFPB diet and other healthy lifestyle changes like regular exercise and quitting smoking and alcohol. There are no quick fixes or "silver bullets". It requires the patient to make a full commitment to eating a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, legumes, root crops, nuts, seeds, and spices every day without becoming lazy and sliding back into old bad habits. 

In an earlier column, we mentioned a study that looked at the effect of plant chemicals on breast cancer cells. When they treated the breast cancer cells with each phytochemical: nothing happened. But when the phytochemicals were mixed together in a "super-cocktail" and spread over the breast cancer cells: they eventually caused 100 per cent cell death! We invite you to come and attend the METI Health Seminar to get the details of how to prepare and get used to the WFPB diet. 

But from a practical point of view, you should eat daily a (gigantic) "rainbow salad" (combining various raw vegetables of different colours). Take your pick of those you like such as watercress, laupele, moringa, carrots, red onions, beetroot, peppers, celery, radishes, and others, and eat the salad with whole meal bread and legumes (like baked beans). You can add tofu or other salad dressings. Add spices of your liking and then there will come a moment you will exclaim: "I cannot live without my rainbow salad!" Other meals could be breadfruit or green bananas or root vegetables like taro or sweet potatoes with a vegetable stew or soup, or a variety of fruits mixed with oats and plant milk like soy milk. There are thousands of recipes you could try that you can find on the Internet by simply googling "whole food plant-based recipes" or "vegan" recipes or you could purchase METI’s Cookbook with 50 easy-to-follow WFPB recipes. 

But as we mentioned earlier: healing cancer will require not just the body but also the mind and that will be the topic of next week’s Column. In the meantime, we invite you to visit METI’s Healthy Living Clinic at House No. 51 at Motootua (across from the Kokobanana Restaurant) to become acquainted with METI’s whole food plant-based diet and Lifestyle Change program and reap its benefits if you suffer from cancer or a chronic disease. You can also purchase METI’s WFPB Cookbook with 50 recipes written in English and Samoan. You can contact us at 30550.