This month of September is self-care awareness month. It reminds us that each of us should be conscious of our state of health and take the necessary independent measures to stay healthy or return to health if we are not feeling well. 

In our previous column, we reported on the important recent scientific finding that phytochemicals found in carrots (and in celery) have remarkable anti-cancer properties. If consumed in sufficient quantities they can make the most aggressive of cancer cells, those that gorge themselves with saturated fats die off, by robbing them of their main food supply, which is cholesterol. 

We reported also that patients with advanced cancer got rid of their cancer by drinking fresh carrot juice. As a poignant example of self-care: one of the patients by the name of Ann Cameron was told she had only a few months to live with Stage 4 Breast cancer that had spread (metastasized) to the lungs. She was told that chemotherapy would only prolong her life by a mere two months. 

With determination, she navigated the Internet and by accessing alternative forms of medical care she stumbled on the testimony of another cancer patient, who had treated his Stage 4 head and neck cancer by consuming 40 ounces of carrot juice a day, which healed his cancer in a matter of a few months. Ann Cameron followed his example, juicing about 5 pounds of carrots a day. After 6 weeks the doctors reported on the CT scan that the lung lesions had stopped growing. After 6 months the lesions had disappeared and she was declared cleared of cancer. 

While Ann Cameron’s heroic effort could be called self-care in extremism, we would hope that efforts at self-care would not have to wait till they become a desperate move to survival! Self-care should make use of all the information that is available to stay healthy or to reverse illness in the most natural ways. If this approach to life were followed by most of us, the number of sick people would drastically come down. This is what the emerging Lifestyle Medicine movement is all about and what METI is promoting. 

Thanks to the ever-expanding social media outreach, the average person can now access practically unlimited information on how to stay healthy. As we reported in earlier columns, as a result, ideally, the doctor would become the ‘coach’, who would guide you and encourage you to stay on the path of healthy living by following simple lifestyle measures such as responsible eating, stopping smoking, drink alcohol sparingly, ensure a restful sleep, control stress and cultivate loving relations. By doing so, basically, individuals would personally become responsible for maintaining their health. 

The doctor ‘coach’ is not unlike the sports coach, who skillfully nudges the athlete to steady and then improve their performance and works out strategies for how to achieve this. It is a new role for the doctor but one that offers many rewards, especially when this coaching effort leads to the individual reversing one or several of their non-communicable disease (NCD) conditions. Such an event is unheard of with the time-honoured pharmaceutical drug treatment of such conditions but is observed regularly at METI’s Healthy Living Clinic. 

Coaching individuals to follow the whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet is challenging in view of the Samoan population having embraced for decades now the unhealthy high-fat, animal-based Western diet. But great are the rewards when the individual returns for a check-up 2 weeks after starting on the diet and triumphantly declares that his backache has gone and it is found that he lost 5 kg of weight and has brought his blood pressure under control! The first two weeks are the most challenging until the old taste buds that were used to taste fatty foods have been replaced by new cells that immediately get accustomed to the low-fat, vegetarian food. The challenge for the newcomers is to get over the first two weeks of following the WFPB diet, but once the benefits of the diet become apparent, the individuals will find it easier to persevere and start enjoying their new experience at self-care. 

We invite you to visit METI’s Healthy Living Clinic at House No. 51 at Motootua (across from the Kokobanana Restaurant) to become further acquainted with METI’s whole food plant-based diet and Lifestyle Change programs. Or call us at 30550. Learning how to follow these Programs might be your ‘game changer’!