Episode_013_Diagnosed_ Cancer & Cowards Part I

The Toe Talks Podcast discusses navigating life after a cancer diagnosis. The hosts share personal experiences and advice on topics like diet changes, support from spouses, and the importance of early treatment. They emphasize the significance of organic foods and juicing, while also highlighting the challenges of transitioning to a new lifestyle. The podcast offers practical tips for both patients and their loved ones to manage the emotional and physical aspects of dealing with cancer. You're listening to the Toe Talks Podcast. You have cancer. You, a loved one, a friend, have just been diagnosed, and you're left floating on a sea of confusion and uncertainty, asking yourself, now what? What do I do? Will I be okay? Will my loved one be okay? How do I help my spouse, family member, or friend? Well, today, my husband and I will answer all these questions and more in order to help you navigate these treacherous waters during this difficult and uncertain time. We will help you avoid wasting time and making mistakes. Lee and I will discuss family, marriage, diet, doctors, supplements, research, and more. Stick around. You're not going to want to miss it. We are the rugged, authentic, savvy, and you're in the right place. Live free. Pursue health. Powerful living starts in 3, 2, 1. Welcome to Episode 13 of the Toe Talks Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Toe, and with me is my husband, Lee. Stick around until the end of the episode. We want to give you a free gift. And now, let's get started. Welcome, everybody. We have our beautiful guest back today, who is my wonderful husband. His name is Lee. Lee, welcome back. It's good to be back, sweetie. It's good to have you. We were going to be talking about when Lee was first diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which was back in 2020. I wanted to kind of pick Lee's brain just about that time period. And I wonder, Lee, you know, what was that like for you as a human being to have an oncologist confirm that you were about to start fighting cancer? Well, obviously, it blows you away when you hear the word, the C word. Definitely tough, definitely one that makes you look at life differently and look at your wife differently and look at your children differently and just everything in general. It just kind of stops you in your tracks and makes you kind of face the music, so to speak. So, yeah, it was a game changer, one that was really hard and emotional because we just didn't have all the answers at that point, too. Nothing we have on now. But, you know, just that first diagnosis is the hard part. And then where do you go from here? Yeah, it was like a gut punch, very, very unexpected. Of course, you don't know what to do because you've never faced it before, something brand new and serious at the same time. And that's incredibly humbling. For me, it painted the picture of just how out of control life is, the lack of control that I really needed. Yeah, like I thought I had a lot of control in my life. And that was an illusion. I think it was God teaching me just how much was in his control. So in that same spirit, let's move towards another question, and that is there's a lot of spouses out there who have spouses who just got newly diagnosed. Do you have any advice for the spouses of those who've just been diagnosed to encourage them or, you know, things to do or not do that might be helpful? You know, I mean, the bottom line is you probably already have spouses on your team. But this is the whole next level of being on your team in a supportive and a way that emotionally and physically can help you in this new life that you have. I think we might get into just it's going to change your diet and it's going to change probably your exercise and some of those things that everyone should be doing right now. But just support, you know, support and advocacy, help when you go to a doctor, help when you are trying to eat healthily, you know, supportive in that, which is really tough when you have two kids too that you've got to feed. And I think, you know, Lee, you can say yes or no to this, but I also think having a spouse that is willing to say, hey, do you want me to go with you to that appointment? Do you not want me to go to that appointment with you? And from a spouse point of view, sometimes I felt like I really need to go because I need to hear it from the doctor exactly what they are saying because sometimes Lee will come home, you know, I'll ask him like three or four questions and poor Lee will be like, I don't know. In and out. I think this is the difference between men and women sometimes too. But I'm obviously more medically minded and so my mind works a little bit more in that atmosphere. Now let's talk to the person that just got newly diagnosed with cancer. We're going to talk about what we did. We're going to tell you things that we learned along the way so that you don't have to waste time. But the first thing I would tell you is, what do you think the first thing I would tell people is, Lee? Change your diet. Yeah. Yes. Okay. That's actually the second thing. But that is at the top of the list. That would be number two. But the very first thing I would tell you, especially if you've been diagnosed with blood cancer or specifically chronic lymphocytic leukemia, is to start fighting. You will get the oncologist jingle of, hey, you just been diagnosed, you're not on the scale that says that we need to start treating you. We won't start treatment until you need it. No, no, no, no. You start fighting day one. Do not wait. And I will tell you that there is something that you can do, which Lee and I would call early treatment, even though there are people out there that say that there is no early treatment for CLL. Well, I beg to differ. And if you go to my website, drtoe.com, you can see a guide. It's a protocol. It's for early treatment CLL, and it also works synergistically with chemotherapy. Regardless, that's something that we learned years later after this diagnosis came. So what we did was, or what I should say Lee did was, he changed his diet. Do you want to talk about how that happened? I think when somebody introduced us to this book called Crispy Cancer. That was my good friend Nancy. Thank you, Nancy. And that was a life-changing book. And you don't read it if you don't want to know how gross food is. It's out there in our grocery stores. But it also, you know, just helped us see that if the body created cancer, it can heal cancer. God created our bodies in a unique way. Indeed. And so we hit it pretty hard juicing mainly, you know, in salads. Things that God created, not man created. We hit that pretty hard, and it's not easy. You know, it's time-consuming. It takes a lot of prep time, you know. Yeah, definitely. And a lot of cleanup time. Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to make a comment for what Lee just said, that, you know, if the body created it, the body can heal it. And I really believe that that is true too. And I also believe that your gut is a large part of healing yourself, because I think that that is where our immunity really begins. I've become a huge believer in that, and I have become more of a proponent that cancer is a metabolic issue more than it is a genetic issue. Not that genetics don't occur, that there aren't mutations. Obviously they do. But if your system is lacking something or has too much of something, things are going to go haywire. I think this is where diet comes in to help even things out. So that book that Lee just mentioned, Crispy Cancer, this is what I would tell you about that book. I would say read that book, don't freak out, because like Lee just said, you're not going to want to eat anything, because you're going to see, oh my gosh, everything in our food is bad. And there is a lot of stuff that is bad. I'm really hoping that Bobby Kennedy is going to change a bunch of that, because there is a bunch of stuff that is allowed in the United States that is not allowed anywhere else in any other country. It's ridiculous, even GMO stuff. And we'll talk a little bit about some of those things here. So the point being is to start slowly. You can't not eat. You have to eat. Every day, every week, just get a little bit better about something, about cutting out something, about making something, instead of buying it pre-made. If you can afford it, you know, what you can afford as far as buying organic, it's unfortunate that it's so much more money to buy organic, but there are studies out there that have proven that people who eat organic food versus people who eat what's in the food chain supply as it is not organic, there are far more chemicals in their body than those who eat organically, simply by what they're putting into their mouths. So there is something to say about it's worth it to eat organic as much as possible. And there are a list called the dirty dozen. Hey, if you're going to get organic, these are the things that you ought to get, things like tomatoes, strawberries, peppers. You know, the list goes on and on, but that's just a couple of the top offenders. The other thing that I would tell you is if you have a family, this is another reason to start slow because, you know, you're going to be introducing a new lifestyle. Now, as a spouse, you might be helping your spouse to juice and blend, and you might be making more salads and raw vegetables. This is another thing that you want to try to do is eat the fruits and vegetables as they come out of the ground as much as possible. Hence the reason why juicing is very beneficial. Don't burn your spouse out. You know, if you're a spouse, don't burn yourself out because you can very easily, especially if, you know, you don't want to be cooking, you know, several different meals a day. But you do want to start to figure out how to balance that. So start slowly would be my encouragement to you. And I would say along with that is because I went all in. I did exactly what, you know, Chris had said to do and eliminated all meats, eliminated all dairy products. And so just juiced in fruits and vegetables, salads, nuts, that kind of thing was key. The other thing I would tell you about that is, you know, Lee did go 100% in. And because he did that, he started losing weight. So we had to balance it out because he cut out all sugar, breads, I mean basically carbs in general, unless he did like, you know, a pasta that was made from peas or, you know, like chickpeas and things like that. But because he was cutting out meats and we were trying to get as much fat and protein in them as possible via plants, but sooner or later we had to start supplementing it. And I think fish is a great option if you can do something that's wild caught. Coconut milk, avocados, those things are helpful. But you have to have a healthy balance. You don't want to get out of whack in any way, out of just a staunch, I'm going to follow this diet. You have to do it smart. Okay, the other thing that we want to say, let's just talk about a few things that you can look for on labels. And in the book Crispy Cancer, he talks about this stuff. But, you know, you might get something that's organic and some of this stuff is just completely unavoidable. But it will say natural flavorings or natural ingredients. And that does not necessarily mean it's good for you. So, for instance, and this is extreme, arsenic, copper, lead, all those things are naturally occurring and they are allowed in food to a certain degree by the FDA. Yes, they are. Go check it out. Just because they're naturally occurring doesn't mean you want to put them in your mouth. Lee wanted to, we're both coffee drinkers, and he was looking for a good coffee creamer. And we're entertaining the thought of oat milk. Happen, Lee. Yeah, I started, you know, through this whole process, you start looking at ingredients of everything you eat because that's what, you know, I read in the book, you know, and you just start looking at that and it just kind of grosses you out. And one of the ingredients in a coffee creamer was this diopotassium phosphate or something like that. Yes, diopotassium phosphate. And so I Googled that and it was like bone meat, bone. Animal bone. Animal bone. Animal bone and pee. It's in urine, yes. In urine, yeah. And then now it's been, you know, upgraded to crushed bone, I guess it's some kind of, you know, pick in there. Yeah, or they use a rock, which, again, I don't know necessarily. Like I don't want to eat granite, thanks. I need iron, but I don't necessarily want to eat it in my food, you know, unless it comes naturally, you know what I'm saying. So things like that. Here's another thing that you might not know. Shredded cheese. You know what they put in shredded cheese that's naturally occurring? It's under the term cellulose. Do you know what cellulose is? I don't remember. Most people don't. It's actually wood. The FDA considers cellulose to be a dietary fiber, specifically an indigestible, insoluble fiber found naturally in plants and generally recognizes cellulose, powder, gum, and gel as, quote, generally recognized as safe, G-R-A-S, which, by the way, Bobby Kennedy is trying to get rid of that term because it's a loophole. Cellulose is considered safe, an inexpensive carbohydrate. It comprises of the woody parts and cell walls of plants. Here's the kicker. The cellulose added to processed foods usually comes from wood pulp, which is sawdust or cotton lint. So, yeah, a tree is naturally occurring. I don't really want to eat it. And here's the other thing that they put in shredded cheese. This is the reason why you should shred your own. And Lee can tell you what else is added to cheese that's annoying here in a second. But it's an anti-fungal drug to keep mold from growing, and it's called natamycin. I'm like, what? Okay, yeah, we're shredding cheese from now on. Do you remember the other ingredient in cheese, Lee, that we were like, oh, jeez, this is great. It's aluminum, right? Yeah, but they disguise it as salt. Yeah, that's your FDA working for you. Okay, here's the other thing. This ingredient is not allowed in Europe, and it's titanium dioxide. And if you look it up, it's cancer-causing in any form to humans. Now you think, oh, Dr. Toe, what are they putting that in? Well, they're putting it in food, pastries, Skittles. Yeah, Skittles actually has a lawsuit or had a lawsuit. I'm not sure what happened with that because they're putting titanium dioxide in the candy. Now what is this? Why are they putting this? It's a whitener. That's the only reason why they put this ingredient in is because it whitens things. Here's the other thing that it's in, cosmetics. You would not believe how many things of cosmetics, and go check your foundation right now, ladies, because you're going to find it, especially if it's a cream foundation. Also, nail polish. And the most recent thing that I just found, which is highly annoying to me, in feminine products, and you're sticking that in reproductive areas inside or near, that's not good. So go check it out. You'll see what I mean. So anyway, lots of things to start weaning out of your life if you can. The next thing that we would tell you is you should add supplements. Without a good diet, you're not going to get the most bang for your buck with these supplements. Supplements are there to do the icing on the cake. The cake is eating right. But supplements just make it all that much better. They help to boost your immune system. They help to help you fight sickness. And if you are immune compromised in any way, you need supplements. Lee, how many supplements do you think you're taking right now? 311. No, not that many. Maybe eight or so. A lot, a lot. Eight to ten. Mainly vitamins, obviously. Your main, your C, your D, your A. Curcumin. Curcumin. There's a whole bunch. Zinc. Yeah, so. Some of the typical ones you've heard if you've even thought about looking at supplements. Yes, and then you know another one that just. Magnesium. So poor Lee, because I keep finding things when I research. And one of the things that we've recently added for him is boron. I had no idea. Boron is actually very good for helping to maintain absorption with vitamin D and magnesium, among many other things. So I encourage you to go look at that. There is research out there, too. But poor Lee, you know, I'll find something and I'll say, hey, we need to try adding this. You know, because I want to see if it's going to affect his blood levels. You know, hopefully keep him healthy from getting sick less often. He's taking a bunch. He really is. But we try to keep it as minimal as possible because, you know, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. But if you're interested in knowing exactly what we're taking, I wrote a book called Kicking the Viral Load. And it lists everything in there. It has charts and diagrams and instructions about how to keep yourself healthy and boost your immune system. And you can get it for free. Just go to DrToe.com if you want to download that. So what, Dr. Toe? So what? Well, the so what is this? We are not meant to fight life's battles alone. When you find yourself surrounded by people but feeling utterly alone, turn to the God of the universe who stopped the sun and the moon for Joshua, made David a very unlikely king and a fierce warrior and conqueror over all his foes, split the Red Sea for Moses, slays giants, heals the blind, forgives sins, and provides living water for all who will drink. He is with you. He sees you. He loves you and knows your pain. Pray for help, strength, peace, wisdom, and encouragement. And if you haven't given your heart to Jesus, do it right now. Say this prayer with me. I am a sinner. I believe Jesus is king who died for all my sins. I accept his forgiveness. I surrender my life to you and ask you to come into my heart right now to stay forever. Amen. Hey, don't forget to get your free gift. It's a guide. It's called, I Have Cancer, Now What? Go to DrToe.com and download it for free. It's our gift from us to you in hopes that it might bless you. Well, that's a wrap. If you like what you heard, please share. Want to hear more, please subscribe. And if you're a faithful listener, thank you for all your love and support. Because without you, I would not be here. I'm glad you're along on this journey with me. We have each other and we are not alone. Pursue health, live free, and dream true. Until next time, everyone. This is Dr. Toe, signing off. Tune in next time for the continuation of the Toe Talks Podcast, Episode 14, Diagnosed Cancer and Cowards, Part 2. Important disclaimer. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I am not a medical doctor and I do not diagnose, advise, or treat. This podcast is not intended for the substitute of advice from a personal physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. It is not intended to be used or relied upon for any diagnostic or treatment purposes or to be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis, treatment, or conventional medical therapy. None of the statements made in this podcast have been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Please consult your health care provider before making any health care decisions or for guidance about specific medical conditions. Listen responsibly.