Surviving Brain Cancer in a Precarious World

Part 13: “I would rather be illegally alive than legally dead”...

As I moved onto the last few weeks of radiotherapy, I was meeting more long-term survivors online. One that really stood out for me was a woman from Scotland called Lynn Cameron. Her story really resonated with me because at the time I met her she had just got driving again after the standard 2-year ban from surgery.

She had managed to get herself into clear remission using the cannabinoid protocol combined with Frankincense oil which was another thing I was experimenting with at that stage by taking micro doses to make sure I had no adverse effects from it.

Much like all the research, I was doing on the cannabinoids it seemed the frankincense was essentially like a more cytotoxic to cancer cell version of CBD oil where it could be administered sublingually and pass through the blood-brain barrier with relative ease.

I was so impressed with Lynn’s story I decided to have a go at telling her story in that day’s vlog after she kindly sent a short version of what she went through.

What was great was how clued up she was on the cannabis protocol having made the oil herself. This was where she coined the poignant phrase “I would rather be illegally alive than legally dead”. I put the vlog together with a few of the photo’s she provided and narrated her story.

This turned out to be the most successful vlog of the entire run, reaching over 1000 views in just a few days. We sent the video to some medical cannabis groups online, hoping to raise awareness of our battles and to push back against the stigma that weighs against the use of this highly medicinal plant.

For me, the most impressive aspect of this encounter was that Lynn had been diagnosed with a grade 4 Glioblastoma. So this provided some anecdotal evidence that cannabis could be highly effective at bringing brain cancer patients into remission even with the most aggressive form.

Meeting survivors like Lynn were what made the last weeks of my radiotherapy much easier because it gave me hope that now I was combining successful parts of many other survivors into my own personal protocol, I felt I had a shot at arresting this thing on multiple pathways.

My weight was still dropping because I was being very strict with my ketogenic diet. This was actually causing some issues because my metabolism was working out to be just too fast for long-term deep ketosis.

Because of this, I would need to keep losing weight until treatment was over being on the most strict ketogenic diet I could consume, until I had at least 1 clear scan. I knew that if I could get such a result I would be able to ease off slowly and try to regain some weight with a low carb diet instead of what through treatment was close to a zero carb diet with most of the carbs coming from veg.

For me, this felt like a delicate and risky balancing act I would need to perfect. The risks were that brain cancer can be extremely unforgiving where a clear scan could be achieved with a super strict ketogenic diet but if you fell off the wagon and had a cheat day, that glucose could end up waking up a starving tumour.

A helpful addition to the last 2 weeks of treatment were exogenous ketones where you could take a shot of it with something acidic like apple cider vinegar. One downside was how unpleasant it tasted but luckily it was just 1 shot each day and the results on the blood ketones were great, especially on a day where I would work out.

Another downside to these kinds of ketones was how incredibly expensive they were at around £80.00 for just 480ml. Considering that I had not taken any income support during treatment I was incredibly lucky my parents put a roof over my head and the British health care system under the NHS because my income was only just covering the cost of my protocol.

The thing about a cancer protocol is that they should evolve to be more efficient and personalized. At the start, it’s difficult not to throw everything at the tumour but it’s important to slowly introduce and replace things depending on your blood/scan results and simply the way you feel. I found that taking all those supplements every day was just adding to the growing treatment-related fatigue.

In the end, I came to find that some are at best useless or at worst slightly counterproductive. An example would be how I was taking cod-liver oil for the essential omega 3 fatty acids. That’s fine but it’s not as efficient or cost-effective as getting the exact omega 3 fatty acids you need, namely DHA.

So instead of buying cod-liver oil, I found I could buy high dose DHA instead which also worked out cheaper.
One major revelation in fine-tuning my protocol was my belief that I wouldn’t need to supplement high dose vitamin D if I could simply supplement high dose DHA, avoid sun cream and ground outside in the sun for the vitamin D.

The lack of sun cream would maximize the amount of vitamin D I would take in while grounding and my skin cells were already protected with DHA and Co-enzyme Q-10. To me, the vitamin D was much more important than a risk of skin cancer because, like melatonin, it is one of the most powerful anti-carcinogenic chemicals in the human body.

It is my belief that people become more at risk of skin cancer when their immune system is suppressed from lack of all these protective chemicals and unfortunately the established dogma of slapping high factor sun cream all over the body reduces 1 of these essential chemicals being synthesized.

To Be Continued…