While cancer cells prefer glucose and low carb or ketogenic diets have been found to help slow cancer growth, cancer cells can also use fat and ketones for fuel to grow.

Vital Nutrition was founded in 2001 by Nutritionist Jane McClenaghan to educate and inspire people to make positive, healthy changes to their diet for the good of their health. We deliver nutrition workshops and cookery demonstrations for wellbeing at work. Our corporate health wellness workshops and training courses focus on optimum nutrition for workplace health in Belfast, Northern Ireland and throughout and the UK.

ABOUT JANE

I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in the spring of 2018 at the age of 39. The disease is ER/PR+ HER2- and I have the PIK3CA mutation. My oncologist immediately put me on zoladex, followed by letrozole and zometa infusions. This is the extent of my standard of care treatment that I have been on for more than two years. I truly hope her methodology works for others as so many lives could be saved but I do wonder why it has taken so long for this information to come to the fore? Unfortunately, many people lose their appetite when going through cancer and hence lose a lot of weight, including precious muscle mass. Regaining strength and body weight with enough energy to support healing and recovery is critical for these people. Being in the midst of a radiation therapy programme, I was seeing my oncologist weekly. I decided that I would discuss the approach with her and went to her armed with a copy of Jane’s Metro Map. She immediately understood the approach and was happy for me to follow it provided I started it after radiation was over. This to me was a huge bonus and I respected her all the more for it. I really feel blessed to have her in my life.

I was recuited for a clinical trial, but ended up opting out before starting; I also cut my course of chemo short. I'm absolutely fine without either of those two things. If I had finished chemo and stayed on the trial, I would have been included in the "success" statistics, my survival attributed to the drugs. I'm with Petrolhead on this. Without a "control" or baseline comparison - e.g. someone who was identical, didn't do the same thing, and progressed/died - how do you know whether it's all the things you've chosen to do/not do, or the body managing in its own way to prevail? I'm a sceptic.In the following section, we will look at how we can remedy this by adding in more of the vitamins and minerals that tend to be harder to find when we avoid protein. Nutrient density and cancer One common question in the development of these recipe books was whether someone using these recipes would still need to supplement. There may be benefits in supplementing to achieve the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) if these minimum requirements cannot be met by food alone, however, supplementing above these levels may be unnecessary and potentially risky. For me this book is an absolute must read for all those dealing with a cancer diagnosis, either in the UK or worldwide, especially those with a higher stage who have been offered no ‘cure’.