How I Beat Cancer: Your Path To Health Recovery

James Templeton

Well, it is great to be with you, Dr. Karlfeldt. I just love to try to help people find the right direction. Everybody’s got to make their own decisions, but to try to somehow give people hope, because that is where it is, is to know that there is so much a person can do nowadays. A lot of people are given these diagnoses, and it scares the heck out of everybody. They are told a lot of times there is not much we know to do. This is all we can do. and I will always say that there is a lot that people can do, they just have to understand what causes cancer in the first place. We all have cancer cells in our bodies. We have all got it. Is it at a high enough level to be, I guess, detectable? Conventional medicine is probably the best place to start with that. But it is, and it is scary when someone tells you those words that you have cancer. It is just that. Is that right there? It is hard to get over for a lot of people.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yes. You were told those words. You were in that position. You were doing the traditional oncology route, and you were doing everything that they told you you should do. How did that turn out for you?

James Templeton

Well, here I am with a guy that is from Texas, and I thought I had life by the tail and everything was going well for me, and even though I thought I was in good physical fitness shape, I ended up being diagnosed by a dermatologist after going to get one of the cardio-stress tests. The doctor says I think you better get this mole checked out. Everything else looks great, but get this mole checked out. I thought I was doing well. had successful businesses and everything, but it is funny how things change. Just within a snap of your finger, I go in to see this dermatologist, and he says, My God, I think you have melanoma. I remember that. He started jumping around, almost so excited that he was dancing around. It scared me because I knew that melanoma was not a good thing, but I did not know a lot about it. But when I saw that, I knew I did not want to be with 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 he said to me, Come back in here, and we have to schedule surgery and all that. Well, that was the last guy I was going to go to. 

I ended up going to another dermatologist to get a second opinion. Then he sent me to an oncologist who was supposedly a renowned oncologist, and he seemed like a nice guy. I went to see him and got an appointment, and he goes in, looks at it, and goes. It looks very, very different to me, too. I do not know what it is for sure, but it is probably something that we need to deal with. But I do not know. Let us just remove it right here in the office and see exactly what it is, he says. Chances are, it will not be anything. He took a big plug out of my back right there in his office and laid it on a table. and he says, Okay, we got it. We’ll send it to the lab. Do not worry. Go home. That is all I did, of course: worry, pace the floor could not sleep, and all this. About two weeks later, I got a call. Good news and bad news type call, and he says you have got a melanoma for sure. It is spread very deeply. That is the bad news. 

He first said the good news was that you had melanoma. I thought, well, that is not good, but we think we got the melanoma around this perimeter area. Then he says that the bad news is that it is deep. It is so deep that we are going to call it stage four. We have 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 had stage four melanoma. I talked to a doctor friend or two of mine. It says This is not good, and blah, blah, blah. You probably will not live more than three years and things like that. Here I was, 32 years old. Anyway, I thought, Well, I do not, and the doctor said, Just go home; do not worry; there is nothing you can do. That is what I was doing. But I was worried, and I was not 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 will never 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. I went in to see the doctor, and he said, We got to get this thing out and see what this is. He said, Let us check in at the hospital first thing in the morning. He says Chances are it is nothing, but we want to make sure. I woke up in the hospital. I knew it was not just something little because it was a huge bandage in my growth, and it was not. I knew I was in trouble. The doctor comes in the door, and he says, Well, sorry to tell you, James. He says you have melanoma that spreads to other parts of the body. It is in your lymphatic system. He says We have got to be very aggressive with this. He says that I need you to do 80 chemotherapy treatments. 

He says this is an experimental chemotherapy treatment, and he says you have a 20% chance of living 3 to 5 years if we can get you through these treatments alive. We have seen a lot of this, and this is what we are looking at here. He says you have 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 do not want you to lose your leg. Now I had to do that. Here I am; I am miserable. I am lying there. I am scared to death thinking about all this, going from thinking I had the life by the tail. Now I am in the hospital with stage 4 cancer. That was metastasized. I think there has got to be something else I can do. This does not sound like a good thing. I do not want to die. I am lying here. What can I do?

All of a sudden, I get a phone call. The phone call was from a minister that I had not 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, I heard about you. I have been praying for you. I want you to know that if anybody can beat this cancer, you can. He says I want you to get ready to fight. He says You beat this S.O.B. cancer. He did not say that, but he said it, and it got my attention. It just sparked something within me right then. In the end, it just got me thinking that I had to do something. I am going to find a way if it is the last thing I do, and I started to pray. I started to pray like I had never prayed before. I was just desperate to find an answer. I prayed hard, and I prayed like every cell in my body was praying. It was one of those out-of-body experiences. After I had this prayer, about 20 minutes later, I got a knock on the hospital door. This is when everything started for me. It was an old friend of mine from college that I had not 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 am so sorry to hear that you are going through this. He says I have got these papers here. It is about a guy who healed himself of cancer using a diet and lifestyle program. He says I do not know anything about it. 

A friend of mine at work told me about this. He gave me this article, and I was driving around the area, thinking, I need to come see James. But I just felt, should I or not? He was a little nervous about coming in there, and he said something inside of me: Get in there now. Just quit messing around. Get in there and give him this information. He comes in, and I know instantly that is what I am going to do. Whatever that guy did, I am going to do it. It was an interesting thing that the guy was Dirk Benedict, who was on the A-Team that we were talking about Mr. T. He was the other guy, the bald guy in there in the A-Team back then. 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? I got excited. All of a sudden, I am like, Hey, if this guy can get well, I can get well. I want to know more about this. Now, I am going to start getting some hope here cooking. I had my friend go out and try to find that book and he did. He found it, and he brought it in. 

The book was The Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy. Well, this guy was from Montana. I was from Texas, and I lived on a little farm. It appeared to be a ranch to me. But he grew up on a ranch. I could relate to this guy. We are just kindred spirits, almost the way he talked and the way I thought. Anyway, I got very excited and started reading that book. I could not put it down here. I was in pain from the surgery. I had not started the chemotherapy yet, but here I was trying to overcome this surgery. My leg was swollen all over. So anyway, the next day I got another knock on the door—the hospital door—and it was my stepmother. She comes through the door, holding the book in her hand, and she says, Hey, I got a book. It is very interesting. It is about a doctor who talks about vitamin C and cancer. His name is Linus Pauling. He says Linus Pauling has been researching vitamin C and cancer. He’s finding that when people take at least ten grams a day of vitamin C, they’re having great results as long as the cancer is not spreading faster. Terminal people are living much longer as long as they take high doses of 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 am going to do this diet and this lifestyle, and I am going to do vitamin C. Here, I am this guy who went from this deep depression, feeling sorry for myself, feeling very fearful. Now I am getting some excitement within me. The next morning, I got another knock on the door in the hospital room. Here comes a guy through the door I’ve never seen before. He was the psychotherapist from the hospital. He says, James, I have been hearing about you being very depressed, and you are a young guy. He says I would like to come to talk to you. Is that something I can do? I do not want you to be like this. I know you are going through a lot. I said, Sure. The next morning he comes in, and he says, I will be there in the morning. He comes in, knocks on the door, and comes through the door. I said, Listen here. I want to ask you something before we even start talking. Have you ever heard of the macrobiotic diet? He says, Hold on; he just took off towards the door, and I thought he was leaving. I said the wrong thing. He’s not going to talk to me now. He runs out the door, looks down the hallway, and comes back in. He shut the door tight because it was open. He opens the door halfway, and he says, Yes, I have heard about the macrobiotic diet.

But he says, I cannot tell you anything I know unless you promise that you will not tell anyone of our conversation we are about to have. I said, No way. I am not telling anybody. I will never tell anyone. What do we do about it? He goes, Well, I know a lot of positive things. He said I have heard that a lot of people have done well following this diet and lifestyle. This happened more than 35 plus years ago. He has been there, and he has told me that people do very well if they do it the right way. He said that they stick with it. You cannot do it for two or three weeks and then quit. 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 do the things that they asked you to do. You cannot cheat and cut a bunch of corners. I said, Well, I can do it. If anybody can do it, I can do it. this, and he goes on to tell me; he says, I tried it, but it did not work because I could not stick with it. So I am telling you that it is so important that you do not cut those corners. I remember that today was yesterday, and he told me that. Now I am excited because here’s this guy doing this in secret and secrecy, and he is shutting the door and all this stuff and acting all strange about it.

He did not want to lose his job or anything. He was very careful. So he comes in and tells me that now I am excited. I knew that I was going to do the diet, the lifestyle, and the vitamin C therapy, and then I started looking for other things as soon as I got on the right track because if it helped them, it was going to help me. That is how I always had that attitude. 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, and did me in. Then they would give me the chemotherapy. It was about a ten-hour thing every day with an I.V. drip.  Here I am, lying there. This was three weeks after the surgery because that is how long it took to recover after I had the strength to do this. Anyway, I am lying there, and I thought, Oh, this is going to hell and back. But I got to do this because it feels good—a lot better. I will do all this stuff. I made up my mind already that I was going to fight, which nobody had ever done before. The thing is, I left the hospital. I do not know how, but I left and went home, and I started to cook some of the macrobiotic food, reading everything I could about it. Before I knew it, it was two months because that is how long it took before I could recover enough to go back and do five more chemotherapy treatments. After all, it is one each day, and then you recover for a couple of days before you go home.

I am; this had to be done in the hospital on your back. They gave me this typhoid serum, and it would elevate your temperature, and you felt you were freezing to death—not burning to death, but just these heavy blankets on me. But I remember after that, they must have doubled it because, as I once told one of the guys, they say if the little is good, a lot better. Give me the full dose. I want to get rid of this cancer. He goes, okay, sir, is the chemotherapy doctor. This guy gives me a huge dose of it, I guess. I do not know. But I felt so bad and so weak. I could not eat. I could not sleep. I was throwing up. It was terrible. Then the doctor comes in, and I say, Doctor, I just am so sick. I cannot; I do not know. I have never been this sick before. He goes, Well, you are not, and your body’s not responding the way we had hoped. Then he said to me, Listen, he said, We had hope that you would respond, but that is not a good thing when your body’s not rejecting the chemotherapy. I said, Well, what else can I do? He says, Well, that is all I know to do. I said, Well, 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 could die from this stuff.

People are dying in the hallways at night. By the way, they’re rolling them down and rolling them out because they’re coming in here with so-called cancer. They’re leaving with pneumonia or kidney failure. and I could remember lying in that bed and everybody’s moaning and groaning in pain, and you can hear them at night. It is just a death chamber or something in there. It was terrible. But anyway, this doctor told me, Well, I am sorry, but that is all I know to do. After I asked him, I said I could die. He says, Well, we are all going to die someday. When he said that, I swear I got up and was raised in bed because I was pretty weak. I said, Listen here, you s.o.b. If I could get out of this bed, I’d tear you apart. That guy looked at me; he had seen a ghost, and he ran out that door. This was the big doctor who eventually removed the melanoma from the beginning. He came in; he left. I never saw that guy again, because two nights later, I decided to sneak out of the hospital at two in the morning. I did. I snuck out. I looked down the hallway, looking for any nurses. I went down the stairs, went out to my car in the parking lot, and took off.

I never knew they did not even know. I did not tell them because I knew I had a couple of more days to stay there. I said, They’re not going to release me, and I do not want anything else to do with this because this is going to kill me. I was so sick and weak. Anyway, I left and started that macrobiotic lifestyle and diet, and I made up my What. What if it did not work for me, it was not going to work for anybody. I just barreled into it and walked away from conventional medicine, as I knew it then. I am not saying I totally, but down the road, I have seen natural-oriented doctors and things like that, but not those guys. That was just what I did. And I have never looked back, and, as I said, it has been over 35 years—37 years—since I was diagnosed. 

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

That is incredible. You did a jailbreak. You have just won One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and you are bolting out. You are trying to get out.

James Templeton

Yes, I knew I had to do it because I wanted to be that guy who became the hero in his own life. I was going for broke. I did not have a choice. Now, I have heard of people saying they have six months to live, three months to live, and all that. He did not tell me that, and they do not know. But I wasn’t going to stick around to find out what was going to happen next. I knew that I was going to go and clean up my lifestyle and my diet. I started throwing everything out at my house that I felt was toxic, from cleaners to personal items to hygiene products to everything, and I just wanted to do everything as close to perfect as I could. Then you start to learn about new things. But I followed that diet very religiously for six years. I do not think anybody followed it more, probably to the T than I did, and I even chewed my food 180 times a mouthful. They say 50 times is really good if you can chew your food. But I did well. That is okay. But I will do 180. I do not know where the 180 came from. But it is funny.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Tell me the benefit of that. When you are doing that, you are mixing it with saliva, and you can break it down better. But there are more benefits to that than just that.

James Templeton

Well, yes, you are breaking it down. The amylase production starts with chewing, and it breaks it down and starts digestion, assimilating the vitamins and nutrients from the food. Just think how easy it is to digest when you are doing most of the work for your gut and you are taking a load off of your stomach, your gut, and your gut health overall because, 80%, nearly all of your gut health is immunity. and the macrobiotic diet is so full of cancer-fighting foods, cruciferous foods, and alien foods that it’s so detoxifying. I have never seen a diet that used more vegetables than that diet. Now, that is not all raw food, and it is not all cooked food. Some things are cooked better than others. Some are, but they use a lot of whole grains. They do not use any cereal grains. They do not use any stuff you buy in a health food store, that is, oatmeal and things like that. It is designed for whole grains cooked slowly to help break them down. Now they suggest that you soak your food for four, seven, or eight hours or more, and then drain it and soak it to eliminate the excess heavy metals arsenic and cadmium, which are in a lot of the grains. People ask me all the time, Well, what about these grains?

What about the mycotoxins? What about all this stuff? Well, I can tell you that the fiber in that diet is tremendous. Fiber is what? It is prebiotic, it is what creates good, healthy gut health. That is, your good bacteria microbiome is your total way to increase your immunity. It is so important. But the macrobiotics diet with all that chlorophyll and all those vegetables and all those grains, and everything starts to detoxify, including all those heavy metals. I interviewed a doctor here not too long ago who is pretty renowned. He’s over in Spain. He told me he had never seen a cancer patient that did not have some mercury toxicity. Usually, that was one of the biggest challenges to getting the mercury out—chelating that mercury out through diet, supplementation, and just cutting out a lot of things—excess amounts of fish and things that cause a lot of that. But the macrobiotic diet saved my life because it made me understand the importance of good food and the balance of food. We ate a lot of sea vegetables, and we ate beans for protein. these smaller beans and, most of the time, lentils, chickpeas, and Adzuki 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 it just helps to clean them well and everything.

In the macrobiotic experts I have interviewed recently, they talk about how important that is now more than ever. But it was a tremendous diet. We had miso soup every day. Miso soup was very important. You just cannot overheat it. You cannot, because then you destroy the good bacteria. But the miso soup was a staple because, really, the fermented foods—fermented soy is healthy soy, not fermented. Many experts say it is not healthy. So if you want to have it, make sure that if you are eating soy foods, they are fermented and not overcooked because the good bacteria do not want to kill them. Heat kills.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Can you just give an example of a day, what a macrobiotic diet looks like so people get a feeling for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks? What does it look like?

James Templeton

Well, in the morning, we would have brown rice, for example, with some seaweed in the brown rice, what they call Kombu. We would soak the kombu, and then we would cut it up and either just a piece of kombu and put it in the pot or cook the rice, but we would use four times more water. that is soft, like porridge, and easy to digest in the morning. It is easy on the digestive tract track. That was what we would have in the morning. We would have miso soup, and the miso soup would have lots of different vegetables in there and leafy greens cooked in there, not just cooked down to nothing but just thrown in and lightly cooked, depending on the time of the season, too. In the summer months, you cook less because it is lighter or cooked in the wintertime. It is a little stronger cooking because of the seasons, by the seasons, and by the location where you are. Locally grown foods are very important, according to the macrobiotic philosophy. But we would have brown rice, for example, or whole-grain cereal, and we did not have gluten. There was very little gluten; there were no nightshades, which were not good.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

What are they? What are nightshades?

James Templeton

Nightshades are bell peppers, tomatoes, and foods like they have the solar names in there that people talk about now, but a lot. But they are the foods that tend to be potatoes. Things like potatoes are nightshades. But these are the ones that cause a lot of joint issues too. With people, arthritis and joint issues affect inflammation, and we are trying to get the inflammation out of the body. That’s part of it, too. However, they are not permitted in the macrobiotic diet. Maybe occasionally somebody would have something in them. But if you are doing it strictly, if you are on a medicinal diet, that is how you follow it. It is very important. But we ate a lot of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, leafy greens, kale, and collard greens—just everything from winter squash was our sweetness. That was our cheat. If you want squash soup, then you get something sweet because it satisfies you. Everybody feels they need something sweet, but it is not something you have every day. But it is delicious if it is cooked right so we had a lot of that.

We would have. Parsnips are sweet, as are root carrots, of course, and there are so many different ones. But it is all the cruciferous vegetables—onions, leeks, and scallions. All of those were staples in everything. You are just getting and flooding your body with all these nutrients—these cancer-fighting nutrients. It is amazing. You are starting to detoxify to see people that would break out, maybe have a sore open up after a few weeks on the macrobiotic diet. They start to detoxify. I knew myself after I started following that diet. I know I woke up one night and I had this graphite liquid coming out of my ankles, both ankles. I do not know if it was detoxing from the surgery or the lymph; I am not sure. But it was a weird thing. The whole bed was wet around there, and it was just grayish, dark gray, gravelly stuff coming out of the liquid. Then it just healed up, and then it was a sore there, and it just lasted overnight. Where did that come from? I do not know; maybe it was the cancer leaving the body. But I have heard that. I have seen that with people and all kinds of things over the years. I ended up living at the macrobiotic facility that is no longer there. But it was in Western Massachusetts; I lived there for four and a half years.

I ate, slept, and drank macrobiotics and became the operations manager there and oversaw the food buying of the food, the buying of everything there, and things that helped us get the best food that we could. I would go out to organic farms, get the food, and bring it back. That was something I enjoyed doing, but it was so important. I just knew that if it wasn’t going to work for me, I wasn’t going to go down, saying I did not give it my best shot anyway. That was so important.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

How long did you stay on that diet, that strict version of it?

James Templeton

Six years.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Okay. How did you monitor your disease, or did you just do it? I am just going to do this, and whatever happens, happens. Either way, if I am still alive, I am still alive and must be working.

James Templeton

Well, I did not run back to the conventional doctor, whether that is good or not for some people. But I knew that I was going to do that, and I wasn’t going to go do chemotherapy any longer. I wasn’t going to do any more surgery; I did not want to do any more surgery. But so, yes, I just dug in, changed my lifestyle, and walked every day. I did deep breathing every day, I did yoga exercises every day, and I stayed active. I had, and I would read as much as I could about different things, and you are visiting people all the time in a place like that. We had people come there from all over the world to learn about how to take care of themselves. They learned how to cook for themselves. A lot of them were already cooking like me, but we learned from the best chefs in the world there, and we learned the ins and the outs. Do not do this, and do this and that. 

That was a wonderful setting. We would have 40 to 50 residential people come in from all over just for the week to study macrobiotics and then leave. I would see these people come in, and they were, I got cancer. I used to pick a lot of them up at the airport or the bus station because they would fly in from all over and they would say, I am not this and that. I thought, Don’t worry, you are going to learn a lot. It is going to inspire you. You are going to get your life back on track. You are going to do whatever. I would see these people depressed and down week after week, they would take them back, some of them. They were different people. They were, and I am so inspired. I inspired people. They would see me, and I had a lot of energy. I was doing all this, and I was not worrying about everything every day. and it just made me feel more; it was almost like a health ministry or something to see that, and it made me feel really good. , but it was quite something to see that and hear all the stories of people who did so well. 

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Tell me a few of the stories of people who did that. Your story, in itself, is extremely powerful. But this is a diet. I remember back in the 80s and 90s. Yes, that is when people were doing it more regarding cancer, and it has fallen—I would not say fallen out of favor—but if it is, people are not as aware of it now.

James Templeton

I think a lot of it is just as Rachel Kushi was; he brought macrobiotics to the United States, and he studied with George Ohsawa, who was in Japan. There was a group of them. The first students were Herman O’Hora, Michio Kushi, his wife Aveline Kushi, and Shizuko Yamamoto, who was in New York. She was a Shiatsu gal who was this tremendous masseuse. They were in the first class, and they brought it into the United States. Of course, they have, as far as I know, all gone on. That is part of it. Then other people have taken it on and have done a lot with it, some of the writers that helped with the books and everything. That is why you do not hear as much as you used to. Alex Jack was one of the main writers, and he is still doing some things. I have a friend of mine who is still Steven Acuff. I interviewed him at Templeton Wellness, and he is over in Sweden.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

My neck in the woods.

James Templeton

He has lived in Sweden and Australia; he goes back and forth. He was born just down the road from here, not far. But anyway, he ended up marrying a woman from Sweden, and that is where all that started. But he has tremendous talent. He is a fantastic guy. and it is not as big as it used to be. and I am surprised because a lot of the grains got such a bad deal. People were saying, Oh, the grains are not good.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

You talk a little bit about that because that is a big deal. People think about grains, and they think, well, they’re high-glycemic, which is going to feed cancer. Well, I am going to get diabetes, and I am going to get fat, and all of that.

James Templeton

Yes, I never saw that in it. I never saw anybody. Most people were thin and kept their weight down, and most people, if they are doing it the right way, I think it is all that fiber. It does not work the same way when you are eating a bunch of carbs out there, like bread. We did not eat bread. We did not eat all the stuff that people eat. 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; it is fibrous, and yes, that is the issue with the vegetable content. A lot of people overcook things, and they destroy the enzymes. Of course, they did not believe in taking supplements or the things that I learned about vitamin C or anything back then. But I was sneaking around doing my vitamin C because that is something I dug into. I took as much vitamin C as I could get down. It was a time-released vitamin C, but yes, with the grains, I never had an issue with it. I know people still eat grains and believe they are important. I do not eat as much as I used to. I think after all the things that you need, I got tired of eating so much. I switched over to more of a paleo diet, which is what I follow now.

It is what we call the fat flush diet, which is a diet that is very similar to that. My wife, Ann Louise, came out with this diet many years ago, and it is very similar because it is low in carbs and high in protein. Is it used to be very similar to what that other diet was? Well, it was not like Atkins, and it was different from the Zone Diet. It was one that she came out with back in 1985, I think. But anyway, it is a paleo diet. It is nuts and seeds, very little fruit, lean protein, a little bit of fish, some meat, and a lot of vegetables. That is the way we eat now. It is, but the macrobiotic diet is still near and dear to my heart because I feel it has saved my life. and I have heard a lot of people over the years, I saw people who had cancer everywhere. They live for many years, following that diet. But they cannot just go on it, and then, well, I heard people say, well, I cannot wait till I can go back to my old diet and lifestyle. Those people did not do well. They just do not; you have got to widen out a little bit. 

The only reason I widened out is because I met a doctor, Hazel Parcells, who was over 100 when I met her. She was, I guess, the grand dame of nutrition back then. We did not have the Internet. We did not have all the things we have now. But she was amazing. She told me, James, you are going to have to change your diet and eat more protein because you have been on this diet for too long, you are too thin, and all that. I needed more energy, I guess, a little bit, but I thought I was going to stick with that forever, but I started eating a little more protein. But I do think that the macrobiotic diet is wonderful because of all the vegetables, all the quality food that you are eating, and the detoxification aspect of it. I do not think there is anything more detoxifying than a diet like that.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

You also have the opportunity to work with the Templeton Wellness Foundation. You interview everybody and anybody about cancer and what they did, what worked, and what did not work. In your interviews with specialists all over the world, what are some of the things that stick out to you that you feel are important for people to know that if they are going to do something, you look into these things well?

James Templeton

If somebody is very serious about their health, and you should be if you have cancer, it is so important that you have a good, clean, healthy diet. Now, whether it is a vegan diet, whether it is a raw food vegan diet, whether it is a keto diet, whether it is a paleo diet, whether it is antifungal and yeast, or whether it is a candida diet, that is all important. But you want to make sure that you are following a diet that substantially satisfies your nutritional needs. You have got to get rid of the sugar. You got to get that sugar down low, the carbohydrates very low, because if you do not, the cancer is not going to go away very quickly, and you got to starve to death. It got to be that it cannot survive without what it feeds off of glucose, sugar, or whatever you want to call it—foods high on the glycemic index, which means how fast do they break down foods into sugar? That is why fiber is a lot better because it slowly breaks down, while animal protein breaks down slower.

The problem is that a lot of people feel that when you eat too much animal food, it is harder on your system. It is harder on your enzymes. You have to break it down. It takes more of your trips, chemo trips, and enzymes in your pancreas to break it down. There is, and I think that is one of the things I look at. I find people, though, who do the best overall are those who follow a diet that may be paleo, maybe keto. People are doing vegan diets, but it is all about getting rid of the sugar, getting the sugar down, and getting the carbs down to 40 grams or less. Sometimes they say 60 or less, depending on the person. But you just have to find a diet because one does not fit everyone. I hear stories all the time about this person who is following a vegan diet and eating raw salads all the time. After a while, they do not do as well. People will argue with that. 

Then I hear stories about people who are over here and who are eating a diet that has too much fruit in it. Fruit has some phytonutrients, especially in the berries. There are a lot of good things about blueberries and strawberries if they are organic, of course. and raspberries. But the problem is the more fruit, the more I have seen people do smoothies and stuff. They are drinking all this fruit. It is just sugar. It is because there is a lot of sugar in fruit. I did not eat any fruit for at least four years—not one bit of fruit. I was not going to do it. I was told not to eat fruit. If you do, it is once or twice a year. That was how strict I was. But I survived. Now I do not eat much fruit. I am just not me; I used to be fruitful. I am not a fruit anymore. It occurs occasionally, I guess. But I think that is the diet that people need. It is hard to know. Some of the experts I have interviewed claim that a diet should be based on their autonomic nervous systems, whether they are parasympathetic or sympathetic dominant which is where sympathetic is, is somebody who is wound up easily and running around, gets anxiety easily, and the parasympathetic is somewhat more laid back. Things do not bother them too much; they are calmer.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yes, they had to. They would be Texans.

James Templeton

Yes, then in between, it is some of the work of Nicholas Gonzalez and things like that and William Donald Kelley’s work, which was where it originated from. But a lot of those people do very well based on their type of cancer and their genetic makeup. It is, so how can you say that one diet, there are people that I have wanted to interview with who would not interview me because I talk about how some people need to eat meat. Ah, there are some of the people I have interviewed who have gotten well by eating red meat two or three times a day. These were more blood-type cancers people. I have interviewed several people who have gotten well; they have been well for 20–30 years of pancreatic cancer. What did they find more of in a vegetarian-type diet? Maybe a little lean protein, but it was more vegetarian. But when I have talked to people who have had lymphoma, multiple myeloma, melanoma, and other things that do better when they eat a little more animal protein, it is funny how they do it.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

We were all so different, and then you get to account for that. Well, James, it is such an honor and such a pleasure to know you, the work you are doing, and how you are spreading this information. and thank you so much. They can, but where should they go with that? Where’s the best place to find you?

James Templeton

The best place is Templeton Wellness.com. You can check out my interviews. I have interviewed Dr. Karlfeldt a couple of times, and I have interviewed a lot of the other experts out there. They can see from the interviews of cancer survivors that many of them have overcome late-stage cancer stage 4 in many cases. As I said, it is a little different. Everybody’s a little different. But they do keep the sugar down. You must do that. Then you have to take the cancer-fighting supplements. As I talked about in my book, the things I did and what I would do if I had to do them over again are very similar to a lot of the work that Dr. Karlfeldt is doing. 

There are a lot of things you can do nowadays, and, as it is, you get to do as many of them as you can as long as they fit you and you have the energy to do them, I guess. but you have got to roll up your sleeves. The following of the plan is easy. Doing the work is the hard part.

Sometimes you just have to take some time out of your life because this is your life. Take a year—maybe two years—to get yourself back on track. and that is what I had to do. You just have to be open to new things and keep educating yourself. There’s so much. But yes, they can get a hold of me at Templeton Wellness.com. I would love to have them come on and check out what we are doing, and we would love to interview anybody who has a good story. I would love to talk to them and interview them.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, thank you so much, James. As always, this is awesome. Thank you so much.

James Templeton

Thank you very much. I appreciate. Thanks for everything you are doing.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Thanks.