How I Beat Cancer: Your Path To Health Recovery

Introduction and James Templetonu2019s Mission 0:00

James Templeton. It's always such an honor and pleasure to to chat with you. You're your man, a wealth of knowledge. And you've I mean, you've been you're you're a 35 year plus cancer survivor and you healed yourself from terminal diagnosis, you know, with with different alternative medicine and diet and and and that whole story is in your book I used to use to have cancer. I found my own way back to health. I have that book is an awesome book as I really suggest people reaching you know, reading that book.

It's it's a wealth of information. You're also visionary, founder of the Templeton Wellness Foundation, a and where you utilize your wisdom and experience to helping others achieve optimum health and wellness. And this foundation is a rich source of resources for anyone fighting cancer and includes a library, a one on one video interviews of long term cancer survivors who share what they are doing to successfully fight cancer, defy the odds, and remain cancer free, vibrant and healthy for life. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, James, for joining me. I mean, you're you're really a fighter. Well, it's great to be with you, Dr. Karlfeldt. You know, I just love to try to help people find the right direction. You know, everybody's got to make their own decisions, but. And to try to somehow give people hope because that's where it's at, is knowing that there's so much a person can do nowadays. And a lot of people are given these these diagnosis, and it scares the heck out of everybody. And they're told a lot of times there's not much we know to do.

This is all we can do. And and I and I like to always say, there's a lot that people can do, and they just got to understand what causes cancer in the first place. And we all have cancer cells in our body. We've all got it. Is it is it at a high enough level to be, I guess, detectable, you know, by conventional medicine is probably the the good place to start with that. But it's you know, it's it's scary, though, when someone has told those those words, you know, you have cancer. You know, it's just it just is that right there?

It's hard to get over for a lot of people. Yeah. And you were told those words. I mean, you were in that position. You were doing the traditional oncology route and you were doing everything that they told you you should do. And how how did that turn out for you? Well, here I am at a guy that's from Texas,

Melanoma Diagnosis and Conventional Treatment 3:04

and I thought I had lived by the tail and everything was going good for me. And and then I was even thought I was in good physical fitness shape. So I ended up being diagnosed by a dermatologist after going to get one of these cardio stress tests done. And the doctor says, Oh, I think you better get this mole checked out. Everything else looks great, but get this mole checked out. And I thought, you know, I thought I was really doing well. I had, you know, successful businesses and everything. But but it's funny how things can change, you know, just in a snap of your finger and I go in to see this this dermatologist, and he says, Oh my God, I think you have melanoma.

I remember that. And he started jumping around, you know, Oh, almost so excited that he was dancing around almost. And it scared me because here I knew that melanoma wasn't a good thing, but I didn't know a lot about it. But when I saw that, I knew I didn't want be part of this guy. But he went on to tell me that this could be very serious. You might have to have a large amount of surgery on your back. It was on my lower right back. And and he said to me, he says, you know, come back in here and we got to schedule surgery and all that.

Well, that was the last guy I was going to go to. So I ended up going to another dermatologist to get a second opinion. And then he sent me to an oncologist, which was supposedly renowned oncologist, and he was, you know, seemed like a nice guy. I went to see him and got an appointment and he goes in, he looks at and he goes, it looks very, you know, a little different to me also. And I don't know what it is for sure, but it's probably something that we need to deal with. But I don't know, let's let's just remove it right here in the office and see exactly what it is, he says.

Chances are it won't be anything. So he took a big plug out of my back right there in his office, you know, laid it on a table. And and he says, okay, we got it. We'll send it to the lab. Don't worry. Gone home. And that's all I did, of course, is worry and pace the floor couldn't sleep and all this. And about two weeks later, I got a call. Good news and bad news type call and he says you've got a melanoma for sure. It it's spread very deep. So that's the bad news. He first said the good news was you got melanoma.

And I thought, well, that's not good, but we think we got the melanoma around this this perimeter area. So then he says the bad news is that it's deep. So it's so deep that we're going to call it stage four. So we've got to keep an eye on it. So we did every three months I would come in and of course I was a wreck. After that, no one, I had melanoma, stage four melanoma. And I talked to a doctor friend or two of mine. It says, Oh, this isn't good and blah, blah, blah. And you know, you know, you know, you probably won't live more than three years and things like that.

And here I was, 32 years old. So anyway, I thought, well, you know, I, I don't you know, the doctor said, just go home, don't worry, there's nothing you can do. So that's what I was doing. But I was worrying and I wasn't the same person anymore. But after going to see the doctor every three months for at least two times, I went and everything looked fine. Everything was good. The doctor says, I hope we won't ever see this again. Well, all of a sudden I discovered a big lump in my groin. That was the size of a large marble, I guess.

And I went in to see the doctor and he says, We got to get this thing out and see what this is. And he said, Let's check in at the hospital first thing in the morning. He says, Chances are it's nothing, but we want to make sure. So I wake up in the hospital. I knew it wasn't just something little because it was a huge bandage in my growing and it was not, you know, I knew I was in trouble. So the doctor comes in the door and he says, Well, sorry to tell you, James. He says, you've got a melanoma that spread to other parts of the body.

It's in your lymphatic system. And he says, We got to be very aggressive with this. He says that I need you to do 80 chemotherapy treatments. He says this is experimental chemotherapy treatments, and he says you've got a 20% chance of living 3 to 5 years if we can get you through these treatments alive. Because, you know, we you know, I've seen a lot of this and this is kind of what we're looking at here. And he says, you've got to do a lymph drainage pump for God knows how many years because we removed all your major lymph nodes, all the lymph nodes in the right groin.

He says, your legs are going to swell. We don't want you to lose your leg. So now I had to do that. So here I am, I'm miserable. I'm laying there. I'm scared to death thinking about all this, going from thinking I had the life by the tail. Now I'm laying in the hospital with stage four cancer. That's metastasized. And I'm thinking, there's got to be something else I can do. This doesn't sound like a good thing. And, you know, I don't want to die. I'm laying here. What can I do? And all of a sudden I get a phone call.

The phone call was from a minister that I hadn't seen in a while, but he was a minister at a church I went to from time to time. He calls me up and he says, James, he says, I heard about you. I've been praying for you. I want you to know that if anybody can beat this cancer, you can. He says, I want you to, you know, really get ready to fight. And he says, You beat this SOP in cancer. And he didn't say it like that, but he said it and it got my attention. It just sparked something within me right then.

And it in the end, it just got me to thinking that I got to do something. I'm going to find a way if it's the last thing I do and I started to pray. I started to pray like I never prayed before. And I was just desperate to find an answer. And I prayed hard and I prayed, prayed like every cell in my body was praying. It was one of those kind of out of body experiences. So after I had this prayer, uh, about 20 minutes later, I got a knock on the hospital door. And this is when everything started for me.

And it was an old friend of mine from college that I hadn't seen in seven years. He walks through the door. He's waving these papers in his hand. He says, Listen, he says, I heard about you from one of our old buddies, and I'm so sorry to hear that you're going through this. And he says, you know, I've got these these papers here. It's about a guy that healed himself of cancer using a diet lifestyle program. He says, I don't know anything about it. So a friend of mine at work, he told me about this.

He gave me this article, and I was driving around the area thinking, I need to come see James. But, you know, I just felt like should I should or not? He was a little nervous about coming in there and he said something inside of me said, Get in there now. Just quit messing around. Get in there and give him this information. So he comes in and I knew instantly that's what I'm going to do. Whatever that guy did, I'm going to do it. And it was an interesting thing that the guy was Dirk Benedict, which was on the A-Team that we were talking about.

Mr. T here he was the other guy. LeBron had a guy that was in there and the A-Team back then. And anyway, he had overcome cancer using a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle. Well, I'd never heard of that. My gosh, what in the world is that? So I got excited. All of a sudden I'm like, Hey, if this guy can get well, I can get well. I want to know more about this now.

Discovering Macrobiotics and Vitamin C 11:34

I'm going to start getting getting some some help here, cooking. So I had my friend go out and try to find that book. And he did. He found it and he brought it in. It was a the confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy was the name of it. Well, this guy was from Montana. I was from Texas, and I lived on a little farm. I thought it kind of thought it was like a ranch. But he had he grew up on a ranch. And I could relate to this guy. You know, we're just kind of like kindred spirits, almost the way he talked, the way I thought.

So anyway, I. I got very excited and started reading that book. I couldn't put it down here. I was in pain from the surgery from, you know, I hadn't started the chemo yet, but here I was trying to overcome this surgery. All you know, my leg was swelled up. And so anyway, the next day I got another knock on the door, hospital door and it was my stepmother. She comes through the door, she's holding the book in her hand and she says, Hey, I got a book. It's very interesting. It's about a doctor talks about vitamin C and cancer.

And his name is Linus Pauling. And he says Linus Pauling has been doing research with vitamin C and cancer. He's finding that when people take at least ten grams a day of vitamin C, that they're having great results as far as the cancer is not not spread is faster. The terminal people are living much longer as long as they take high dose vitamin C and some people are even getting well. Well, I got excited. Hey, if it'll work for them and work for me, I'm going to do this diet, this lifestyle, and I'm going to do the vitamin C.

So here, here, I'm this guy that went from this deep depression, feeling sorry for myself, feeling, you know, very fearful. Now I'm getting some excitement within me. And the next morning I got another knocking on the door in the hospital room. And here comes a guy through the door I'd never seen before. And he was the psychotherapist from the hospital. And he says, James, he says, I've I've been hearing about you being very depressed and you're a young guy. And he says, you know, I'd like to come talk to you.

Is that something I can do? I don't want you to be like this. You know, I know you're going through a lot. And I said, sure. So the next morning he comes in, he says, I'll be there in the morning. He comes in, knocks on the door, comes through the door. And I said, listen here. I want to ask you something before we even start talking. Have you ever heard of the macrobiotic diet? And he says, Hold on, he just took off towards the door and I thought he was leaving. I said, Oh, I said the wrong thing.

He's not going to talk to me now. So he runs out the door and he looks down the hallway and he comes back in, shuts the door tight because it was open, you know, halfway, opened the door and he says, Yes, I have heard about the macrobiotic diet. But he says, I can't tell you anything I know unless you promise that you won't tell anyone of our conversation we're about to have. He says, I said, No way. I'm not telling anybody. I'll never tell anybody. What do you know about it? He goes, Well, I know a lot of things that's really positive.

He said, I've heard of a lot of people have done well following this diet lifestyle. I mean, this is this has been 35 plus years ago. And he's there and he's telling me that that people do very well if they do it the right way. He said that they really stick with it. You can't do it for two or three weeks and then quit. And he said, You've got to stick with it. You got to roll up your sleeves, you got to do it. You got to cook, you got to, you know, do the things that they ask you to do. And you can't cheat and cut a bunch of corners.

And I said, Well, I can do it. If anybody can do it, I can do it. And this and he goes on to tell me, he says, I tried it, but it didn't work because I couldn't stick with it. And so I'm telling you that it's so important that you don't cut those corners. So I remember that today, like it was yesterday, and he tells me that. And now I'm really excited because here's this guy doing this in secret and, you know, in secrecy and he's shutting the door and all this stuff and acting all strange about it.

And he didn't want to lose his job or anything. So he was very careful. And so he comes in and tells me that now I'm really excited. And I knew that I was going to do the diet and the lifestyle and the vitamin C therapy and then I, you know, I start looking for other things, you know, as soon as I got on the right track, because if it'll help them, it's going to help me. So that's how I always had that attitude. So anyway, I started taking the chemotherapy treatments and it was terrible. That was bad stuff because they elevated my temperature, got my temperature way up to as high as they could without it basically, you know, doing me in.

And then they would give me the chemotherapy. It was about a ten hour thing every day with an I.V. drip. And here I'm laying there. So this was three weeks after the surgery because that's how long it took to recover. And after I have the strength to do this. So anyway, I'm laying there and I thought, oh, this is like going to hell and back. But I got to do this because it feels good, a lot better. I'll do all this stuff. And I made up my mind already that I was going to fight like nobody ever had before.

So the thing is, is I left the hospital. I don't know how, but I left and went home and I started to cook, you know, some of the macrobiotic food reading everything I could about it. And before I knew it, it was two months because that's how long it took before I could recover enough to go back, do five more chemotherapy treatments because it's one each day, and then you recover for a couple of days before that you go home. So I'm like, this had to be done in the hospital on your back. So, you know, they they gave me this this typhoid serum and it would elevate your temperature and you felt like you were freezing to death, not burning to death, but, you know, just these heavy blankets on me.

But I remember after that, they must have doubled it because I meant I once told one of the guys, they say, if the little is good, a lot better. Give me give me the full dose. I want to get rid of this cancer. He goes, okay, sir, you know, is the chemotherapy doctor. So this guy, you know, gives me the gives me a huge dose of it, I guess. I don't know. But I felt so bad and so weak. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I was throwing up. It was terrible. And then the doctor comes in and I say, Doctor, I just I'm so sick.

I can't I don't know. I've never been this sick before. He goes, Well, you're not your body's not responding the way we had hoped. So then he says to me, he says, Listen, he said, We had hope that you would respond, but that's not a good thing when your body's not rejecting the chemotherapy. And I said, Well, what else can I do? And he says, Well, that's all I know to do. And I said, Well, you know what? If this was your son or daughter doing this, what would you do? I'd do the same thing. That's all I know to do.

I said, even if it kills him, I said I could die from this stuff. People are dying in the hallways at night. And by the way, you know, they're rolling them down and rolling them out because, you know, they're they're, you know, come in here with so-called cancer. They're leaving with pneumonia or kidney failure. And and I mean, I could remember laying in that bed and everybody's moaning and groaning in pain, and you can hear them at night. It's just like like a death chamber or something in there.

It was terrible. But anyway, this doctor told me, says, well, I'm sorry, but that's all I know to do. And after I asked him, I said, you know, I said, you know, I could die. And he says, well, you know, we're all going to die someday. When he said that, I swear I got up, raised up in the bed because I was pretty weak. And I said, listen here, you s.o.b. If I could get out of this bed, I'd tear you apart. And that guy looked at me like he'd seen a seen a ghost, and he ran out that door. And this was the big doctor that eventually removed, you know, that removed the melanoma from at the beginning.

He comes in, he left. And I never saw that guy, you know, so ever again, because two nights later, I decided to sneak out of the hospital at two in the morning. And I did. I snuck out. I looked down the hallway, you know, looking for any nurses. And I went down the stairways and went out to my car in the parking lot and took off. And I never they didn't even know. I mean, I didn't tell them because I knew I had a couple of more days to stay there. And I said, they're not going to release me and I don't want nothing else to do with this because this is going to kill me.

I was so sick and weak. Anyway, I left and I started that macrobiotic lifestyle and diet and I made up my mind. Right. Dan I if, if it didn't work for me, it wasn't going to work for anybody. And I just, just barreled into it and, and walked away from conventional medicine, you know, as I knew it then. You know, I'm not saying I totally did, but, you know, but down the road, I've seen natural oriented doctors and things like that, but not those guys. So that was just what I did. And and, you know, I've never looked back and it's like I said, it's been over 35 years, 37 years since I was diagnosed.

So it was. That's incredible. See you literally did a jailbreak. You know, you've just kind of like Won One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, you know, you kind of bolting out. You're trying to get out. Yeah, I knew I had to do it because, you know, I wanted to be kind of that that guy that's kind of that becomes the hero in his own life.

Macrobiotic Diet Basics and Daily Routine 22:08

And, you know, I was going for broke. I didn't have a choice. Now, I've heard of people saying they've got six months to live or three months to live and all that. He didn't tell me that and they don't know. But I wasn't going to stick around to find out what was going to happen next. And I knew that I was going to, you know, go and clean up my lifestyle, clean up my diet. I started throwing everything out at my house that was I felt was toxic, you know, from cleaners to to personal items that, you know, hygiene products to everything and and I, you know, just wanted to do everything is as close to perfect as I could.

And, you know, then you start to learn about new things. But I follow that diet for very religiously for six years. And I don't think anybody followed it more probably to the to the T as I did, you know, and and I even chewed my food 180 times a mouthful. You know, they say 50 times is really good if you can chew your food. But, you know, I, I did well 50. That's okay. But I'll do 180. I don't know where the 180 came from. But but it's funny. Don't tell me kind of the benefit of that. Obviously, when you're doing that, you're mixing it with saliva, you're able to break it down better.

But there's there are more benefits to that than just that, right? Well, yeah, you're breaking it down. The amylase production, you know, from the chewing and and it's breaking it down and it started to digestion, assimilating the vitamins and nutrients from the food. I mean, just think how easy it is to digest when you're doing most of the work for the for your gut and you're taking a load off of your stomach and your gut and your, you know, gut health overall because, you know, 80%, nearly is your gut health is is is 80% of immunity.

And and, you know, the macrobiotic diet is so, so full of, you know, cancer fighting foods, cruciferous foods and alien foods that are they're so detoxifying. I mean, I've never seen a diet that used more vegetables than that diet. Now, that's not all raw foods and it's not all cooked food. Some some things are cooked more than others. And some are, you know, but they use a lot of grains, whole grains. They don't use any cereal grains. They don't use any stuff you buy in a health food store that's, you know, you know, oatmeal and things like that.

It's really designed for like whole grains cooked slow and to help break it down. And now they suggest that you soak your food for four, seven, 8 hours or more to and then you drain it and soak it to eliminate the excess heavy metals like arsenic and cadmium, which is in a lot of the grains with people ask me all the time, well, what about these grains? What about the micro toxins? What about all this stuff? Well, I can tell you that the fiber in that diet is tremendous. And fiber is what? So prebiotic prebiotic is what really creates that good, healthy gut health.

And and, you know, that's that's your your good bacteria microbiome, your your your your total way to to increase your immunity. It's so important. But the macrobiotic die with all that chlorophyl and all those vegetables and all those grains and everything starts to detoxify, you know, all those heavy metals. And, you know, I interviewed a doctor here not too long ago that's pretty renowned. He's over in Spain. And he told me he said he had never seen a cancer patient that did not have some kind of mercury toxicity.

Usually, you know, that was one of the biggest thing challenges getting the mercury out chelating that mercury out and through diet, through supplementation, through, you know, just cutting out a lot of things like excess amounts of fish and things like that that that causes a lot of that. But but, you know, the macrobiotic diet basically saved my life because it made me understand the importance of good food and the balance of food. And we ate a lot of sea vegetables and we ate beans for protein.

You know, these these smaller beans and most of the time, like lentils, chickpeas and and a Dukey beans. That was what we ate back then. There's a lot of fiber in that and protein, but we soaked those overnight in most cases and drained them and all that too, because, you know, it just it helps to clean them really well and everything. And in the in the macrobiotic experts I've interviewed recently, they talk about how important that is now more than ever. But, you know, it it was it was a tremendous diet.

And we had miso soup every day. Miso soup was was very important. And you just can't overheat it. You can't because then you destroy the good bacteria. But the miso soup was was a staple that, you know, that really the fermented foods, fermented soy is healthy soy, not fermented. Many experts say it's not healthy. So, you know, so you want to have it make sure that if you're eating soy foods that it's fermented and not overcooked because, you know, that's that's the good bacteria don't want to kill it.

So he kills. And can you just can I give an example of a day what macrobiotic diet looks like, you know, so people get a feeling for like breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. I mean, what what it looks like. Well, in the morning, you know, we would have like brown rice, for example, with some seaweed in the brown rice, like what they call kombu. We would soak the kombu and then we'd cut it up and are either just just a piece of kombu and put it in the in the pot, cook the rice, but we'd use like four times more water.

So that's real soft, like a porridge, easy to digest in the morning. It's easy on the digestive track. And that that was that was what we would have in the morning. We'd have miso soup and the miso soup would have lots of different vegetables in there and leafy greens cooked in there and not not just cooked down to nothing, but just thrown in and lightly cooked depends on the time of the season, too. And the summer months you cook less, you it's more light or cooked in wintertime. It's it's a little stronger cooking because of the seasons, by the seasons, by the the location where you're at.

And, you know, locally grown foods is very important according to the macrobiotic philosophy. But we would have that the brown rice, for example, or a whole grain cereal and we didn't have gluten. There was very little gluten, no nightshades nightshades were were not good. And what are they what are nightshades. Nightshades are are like bell peppers, tomatoes, foods like, you know, they have the solar names in there that people talk about that now, but a lot. But, you know, they're they're the foods that tend to be potatoes.

Potatoes are, you know, are are nightshades, things like that. But so the basically the these are the ones that cause a lot of joint issues too, with people like arthritis, joint issues, fact they affect the inflammation and we're trying to get get the inflammation out of the body. That's part of it, too. But they they they are not permitted in the macrobiotic diet. Maybe occasionally somebody would have something in them. And, you know, but that's if you're doing it strict, if you're on a medicinal diet, that's how you follow it.

And it's it's something that was very important. But we ate a lot of like broccoli, cauliflower, our cabbage, leafy greens like kale, collard greens, just everything from, you know, winter squash was our sweetness. That was our cheat. It's kind of like, you know, if you want like a squash soup, then you get something sweet like that because it satisfies you. Everybody kind of feels like they need something sweet, but, you know, it's not something you have every day. But it's it's delicious if it's cooked, right?

So we had a lot of that. We would have. Parsnips are kind of sweet, like roots carrots, of course, and just there's so many different ones. But it's all the cruciferous vegetables, alien vegetables like onions, leeks, scallions. All of those were were a staple in everything. So you're just getting you're just flooding your body with all these these nutrients, these these cancer fighting nutrients. It's amazing. And you're starting to detoxify to see people that would break out, you know, maybe have a sore open up after a few weeks on the macrobiotic diet.

And they start to detoxify. I know myself after I started following that diet, I know I woke up one night and I had this kind of graph like liquid coming out of my ankles, both ankles.

Healing Journey, Detox, and Long-Term Survival 32:18

And I don't know if it was detoxing from the surgery, the limp, I'm not sure. But it was like a weird thing. The whole bed was wet around there and it was just like a grayish dark gray, gravelly kind of stuff coming out liquid. And then it just healed up and then it was like a sore there and it just was like overnight almost like where did that come from? So, I don't know, maybe it was the cancer leaving the body, you know. So but I've heard that. I've seen that with people, all kinds of things over the years.

I actually, you know, ended up living at the macrobiotic facility that that's no longer there. But it was in Western Massachusetts, live there for four and a half years. And, you know, I slept and drank macrobiotics and became the operations manager there and kind of oversaw the the the food buying of the food, buying of everything there, things like that to help help get the best food that we could. I would go out to organic farms and and get the food and bring it back. And that was something I enjoyed doing, but it was so important.

And I just, you know, I, you know, knew that, you know, just if it wasn't going to work for me, I wasn't going to go down saying I didn't give it my best shot anyway. And that was so important. And how long did you stay on that diet? You know that this district version of it. Six years. Okay. And how did you monitor your your disease or did you did you just kind of I'm just going to do this and whatever happens, happens. And either, you know, if I'm still alive, I'm still alive and must be working.

Well, I. I didn't run back to the conventional doctor, you know, whether that's good or not, you know, for some people. But I knew that I was going to do that and I wasn't going to go do chemotherapy any longer. And I wasn't going to do any more surgery that I, I didn't want to do anymore surgery. But so, yeah, I just dug in and I changed my lifestyle and and, you know, I walked every day. I did deep breathing every day I did yoga exercises every day I stayed active. I had, you know, you know, I would read as much as I could about different things, you know, and you're in you're you're visiting with people all the time in a place like that.

And we had people came there from all over the world to learn about how to take care of themselves. And they learned how to cook for themselves. A Lot of them were already cooking like myself, but we learned from the best chefs in the world there, and we learned the ends in the house. You know, don't do this and do this and and that. That was like a wonderful setting. We'd have sometimes 40 to 50 residential people come in from all over just for the week to study macrobiotics. Then they'd leave.

So I would see these people come in and they're like, you know, God, cancer. I used to pick a lot of them up at the airport or at the bus station because they would fly in from all over and they'd say, Oh, I'm not this or and I thought, Don't worry, you know, you're going to learn a lot. It's going to inspire you. You're going to you're going to get back on track. You're going to, you know, do whatever. And I would see these people kind of depressed and down. And the week after week, they would take them back, some of them.

And they were like different people. They're like, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm so inspired. And I inspired people. They would see me and I had a lot of energy and I was doing all this and and I wasn't worrying about everything every day. And, you know, and I just, you know, just it just made me more it was like almost like a health ministry or something to see that and made me feel really good. And, but it it was quite something to see that and see that and hear all the stories of people that did so well.

And yeah. Tell me a few of the stories, you know, people that did that. And I mean, obviously, your your story in itself is extremely powerful. But mean this is a diet. I mean, I remember back in in the eighties and nineties. Yeah that that's when it was really people were doing it more in regard to cancer and it's kind of fallen I wouldn't say fallen out of favor, but it it's it's not as people aren't as aware of it now. So I think I think a lot of it is just as Radio Khushi was, he brought macrobiotics to the United States and he studied with George Ozawa, which was and Japan.

And there was a group of them. The first students was Herman I Hora Mitchell, Khushi, aveling, Khushi, his wife Shizuka Yog Yamamoto, and she was in New York. She was a shiatsu gal that was like this tremendous masseuse. And they were in the first class and they kind of brought it into the United States. And of course, they've as far as I know, they've all gone on. So you know that that's part of it. And then there's other people that have taken it on and have, you know, done a lot with it, like some of the writers that helped with the the books and everything.

So that's why you don't hear as much as you used to. Alex Jack was one of the main writers, and he's, he's still doing some things. And I have a friend of mine that's still, still Steve and a cup. I interviewed him at Templeton Wellness and he's over in Sweden. My neck and neck. Where he's in Sweden. In Australia and he's back and forth. He's a he was born in just down the road from here not far. But anyway he ended up marrying a woman from Sweden and and that's where all that started. But he he's tremendous.

He's, he's a great guy. And and but it's not as big as it used to be. And and I'm surprised because, you know, a lot of the grains got such a bad, you know, kind of deal. People were saying, oh, the grains not good. And you talk a little bit about that, you know, because that's a big deal. You know, people they you know, think about grains and they think, well, they're high glycemic, you know, that's going to feed cancer. Well, I'm going to get diabetes and I'm going to get fat and all of that, you know.

So, yeah, I never saw that with it. I never saw anybody. Most people were thin and they kept their weight down and most people, if they're doing it the right way and you know, I think it's all that fiber. It doesn't work the same way. You know, when you're eating like when you're eating a bunch of carbs out there, you know, bread. And we didn't eat bread. We didn't eat all the stuff that people eat. I mean, if we ate any bread at all, it was something we made or it was very heavy. It was almost like a cake or something, but heavy, you know, it has really fibrous and and but yeah, I mean, it that's that's the issue with that the vegetable content, you know, a lot of people overcook things and they destroy the enzymes.

And of course, they didn't really believe in taking supplements and the things that I learned about vitamin C or anything back then. But, you know, I was sneaking around doing my vitamin C because that's something I really dug into. And, you know, I took as much vitamin C as I could get down. And it was it was a time released, vitamin C, but but yeah, the grains, you know, I never had an issue with it. I know people are still eat the grains and believe it's important. I don't eat as much as I used to.

And I think after all the things that you need, I kind of got tired of eating so much. So I, I switched over to more of a, almost like a paleo diet, which is kind of what I follow now. It's, it's what, what we call fat flush diet, which is a diet that's very similar to that. My wife, Ann Louise, you know, came out with this diet many years and it's very similar because it's low carbs, high in protein. It's it's used to be the, you know, very, very

Modern Diet Approach and Personalized Cancer Care 41:18

similar to what was that other diet kind of like? Well, it wasn't like Atkins and it different than the zone diet. So it was one that she she was, you know, came out with this back oh eight, 1985. I think. So, you know, it's but anyway, it's kind of like a paleo diet. It's nuts and seeds, very little fruit, lean protein, a little bit of fish, you know, some meat, some vegetable, um, a lot of vegetables. And that's kind of the way we eat now. So it's but the macrobiotic diet is still near and dear to my heart because I feel like it's saved my life.

And and I've heard a lot of people, I mean, over the years, I saw people that were basically had cancer everywhere. And they they live for many years, you know, following that diet. But they can't just go on it and then just, well, you know, I heard people say, well, I can't wait till I can, you know, go back to my old diet and lifestyle. And those people didn't do well. They just don't I mean, you've got to you got to widen out, you know, a little bit. And the only reason I widened out is because I met a Dr. Hazel Parcells, which was over 100 when I met her.

And she was like one of the, I guess, the grand dame of nutrition back then. And and we didn't have the Internet. We didn't have all the things we have now. But she was amazing. And she told me, you know, she said, James, you're going to have to change your diet and eat more protein because you've been on this diet for too long, you're too thin, you know, and all that. So I needed more energy, I guess a little bit, but I was I thought I was going to stick with that forever, but I started eating a little more protein.

But I, I do think that the macrobiotic diet was so wonderful because of all the vegetables, all the the quality food that you're eating and the detoxification aspect of it. I mean, I don't think there's anything more detoxifying than than a diet like that. And you have the opportunity also with the the Templeton Wellness Foundation. I mean, you you interview I mean, you interview everybody and anybody in relationship to cancer and what they did and what worked and what didn't work. You your interviews, you know specialist all over the world and regards to it what are what are some of the things that really stick out to you that you feel is important for people to know that if they're going to do something, you really look into these things well.

If somebody is very serious about their health and you should be if you have cancer and it's so important that you have a good clean, healthy diet. Now, whether it's whether it's a vegan diet, whether it's raw food being in diet, whether it's keto diet, whether it's a paleo diet, whether it's antifungal and yeast, candida diet, you know, that's that's all important. But you really want to make sure that you're following a diet that is substantially satisfies you as far as your nutritional needs.

And you've got to get rid of the sugar. You got to get that sugar down really low, the carbohydrates very low, because if you don't, you know, the cancer is not going to go away very quickly and you got to starve to death. It's got to be you know, it can't survive without what it feeds off of glucose and, you know, glucose, sugar or whatever you want to call it, foods high on the glycemic index, which basically means how fast do they break down foods, break down into sugar? And, you know, that's why fiber is a lot better because it slowly breaks down and, you know, animal protein breaks down slower.

The problem is a lot of people feel like when you when you eat too much animal food, it's it's it's harder on your system. It's harder on your enzymes. You got to break it down. It takes more of your trips and chemo trips and enzymes in your pancreas to break it down. You know, there's you know, I mean, I think that's one of the things I look at. And I find people, though, overall that do the best overall are people that kind of follow a diet that may be paleo, maybe keto diet. There's people doing vegan diets, but it's all about getting rid of the sugar, getting the sugar down, the carbs down, 40, 40 grams of carbs or less.

Sometimes some or sometimes they say 60 less depends on the person. But it's you just you just got to really find a diet because one diet doesn't fit everyone. And I hear stories all the time about this this person that's following a vegan diet and eating raw salads all the time. And after a while they don't do as well. Some People will will argue with that. And then I hear stories about people that are over here and they're they're eating, you know, a diet. And that's got too much fruit in it. And fruit is, you know, it's got some of the phytonutrients and there's the especially in the berries.

So a lot of good, good things about, you know, like blueberries and and strawberries, if it's organic, of course. And and raspberries. But the problem is, the more that fruit I mean, I've seen people do smoothies and stuff. They're drinking all this fruit. It's just sugar. It's there's a lot of sugar in fruit. So I didn't eat any fruit for at least four years, not one bit of fruit. And I wasn't going to do it. And I was told, do not eat fruit. You know, if you do, it's like once or twice a year.

I mean, that's how strict I was. And but, you know, I survived. I You know, I survived. And now I don't eat much fruit. And I'm just not I, I used to like fruit. I'm not a fruit or anymore. And, you know, it's occasionally, I guess occasionally. But but I think that's the kind of diet that people need. And I it's hard to know. Some people some of the experts I've interviewed claim that a diet should be based on their autonomic nervous system, whether a person pathetic or sympathetic, dominant, which is kind of where sympathetic is, you know, is like somebody that's, you know, wound up easily and running around, you know, and, you know, gets anxiety really easily and and the parasympathetic is somewhat more laid back.

Things don't bother them too much, you know, they're calmer. Yeah, they'd be. They'd be Texans. Yeah, yeah. So, so. And then in between, you know, it's like some of the, the work of Nicholas Gonzalez work and things like that and, and William Donald Kelly's work, which was where it originated from. But, but a lot of those people do very well based on their type of cancer, based on on their their basically their genetic makeup. It's, you know, so how can you say that one diet? I mean, there's people that that I've wanted to interview with that wouldn't interview me because I talk about that some people need to eat meat, you know.

Ah, I mean there's some of the people I've interviewed that have gotten well eating red meat two or three times a day. And these were more blood type cancers. People. And I've interviewed several and I've interviewed several people that have gotten well, they've been well for 20, 30 years of pancreatic cancer and what did they find more of a vegetarian type diet? And it, you know, maybe a little lean protein, but it was more vegetarian. But when I've talked to people that had, you know, like lymphoma in multiple myeloma and and melanoma and things like that that do better, better when they eat more a little more animal protein.

It's funny how they do it. It's just yeah, we were we're we're all so we're all so different, you know, and then that we you get to account for that. Well, James, that it's such a such an honor and such a pleasure to, to, to know you and the work you're doing and how you're spreading this information. And and thank you so much. And they they can what where where should they go with that? Where's the best place to find you? The best place is TempletonWellness.com. And you can check out my interviews.

I've interviewed Dr. Karlfeldt a couple of times ofI interviewed a lot of the other experts out there. They can see the interviews of of cancer survivors that many of them have overcome a late stage cancer stage for in many cases. And, you know, like I said, it's a little different. Everybody's a little different. But they do keep the sugar down. It's very important that you do that. And then you got to do the cancer fighting supplements. As as I talk about in my book, the things I did, what I would do if I had to do it over again.

Uh, it's very similar to a lot of the work that Dr. Karlfeldt's doing. So, you know, there's a lot of things you can do nowadays, and, and it's, it's like you got to kind of do as many of them as you can as long as it fits, fits you and you've got, you know, the energy to do it, I guess. And but you've got to roll up your sleeves. You know, the following A plan is easy. It's doing the work is the hard part. And sometimes you just got to take some time out of your life, you know, because this is your life.

Take a year, maybe two years to really get yourself back on track. And and that's what I had to do. And you just, you know, and then just be open to new things and keep educating yourself. There's so much. But yeah, they can get get a hold of me on Templeton Wellness TempletonWellness.com. I would love to have them come on and check out what we're doing and and we'd love to, you know, anybody that's got a good story, I'd love to talk to them, interview them. Well, thank you so much, James. Is this as as always, this is awesome.

Thank you so much. Thank you very much. I appreciate. Thanks for everything you're doing. Thanks.