#68 Alison Gannett – Cooking to Conquer Cancer

Meet Alison Gannett:Show Notes:

ABOUT ALISON

• I was overweight as a child
• I ended up being a world’s champion extreme skier
• I am one of those people that jumps off cliffs that you see in television
• I am also a climate change consultant
• So, I work a lot with saving our snow or saving our water for future generations
• I felt like it was my calling to walk the talk
• My husband suggested that we buy a farm and grow and raise our own food
• So, we started that in 2010
• In 2013, I was feeling kind of weird and one day I was cooking and almost burned the house down
• My husband brought me to the emergency room and they discovered a tumor in my brain
• It turned out, it was malignant cancer
• Here I thought I was just this super healthy person, eating all organic food, exercising every day, living a chemical free life and my life change in that millisecond
• Lucky for me, I found Dr. Nasha Winters right after that
• I wanted to live a long happy life and die of old age
• Nasha was amazing, she told me that we are just going to look into the root causes on why I got cancer and we are going to reverse them one by one
• And it just made so much sense to me
• She was right. Normal gave me cancer
• So, everything about normal had to change
• And Ketogenic Diet was step one. And there were just a million changes that had to follow
• After 30 days of being Keto, I saw improvements on my labs
• 3 months later I could not believe how much my labs had changed
• It just kept on getting better and better and all these conditions I had in my body also went away
• There was no evidence of cancer reoccurring, which was amazing
• Then, my arthritis from being my competitive ski career, suddenly went away
• My bladder infections went away, my polycystic ovarian disease went away, my breast fibroids went away and my Hashimoto’s thyroiditis reversed itself
• It took some time. By the time all these things were reversed, it was like 12 to 18 months into Keto
• I did surgery on the tumor
• But, I actually don’t really remember going into surgery, because the tumor had impacted my memory
• The doctors weren’t really upfront with me. They just told me it’s going to be ok
• And then, I googled it and it was like the average life expectancy with chemo, radiation and surgery is 6.8 months
• Mine is a really rare tumor. It’s hemangiopericytoma
• It regrows aggressively in the brain over and over again
• It also metastasizes down the spinal column, and so people tend to get bone cancer
• It just keeps growing. It goes into the liver, kidney or breast
• That was 5 and a half years ago
• Having a really good immune system and having our whole body healthy, then we can fight cancer naturally, everyday
  
  
• I kind of famously call the keto that you find on the internet, the internet keto
• Because mostly, it’s about weight loss or body building
• Keto for cancer or for preventing cancer is different
• There is no one size fits all
• Every single person’s Keto or diet should be different
• If you have a cancer like mine, then your ketones need to be somewhere between 3 and 6
• If you have less aggressive cancer, then you might be able to have ketones that are lower
• I recommend waiting about 1 hour after you wake up
• Then, I like to do my second test 4 to 6 hours after eating lunch
• I call it my recipe testing keto test
• Whenever, I eat something different or new, I eat it at lunch
• And then, test my ketones 4 to 6 hours after
• Then, I can see how my body reacted to that recipe
• For some reason, every time I eat cabbage or coconut, it throws me out of ketosis
• That’s why everybody is different
• Or you can also, wake up, do whatever your morning routine is, test right before you go to the gym and then you’ll know what the “gym effect” is on your body
• Not enough exercise is inflammatory and can cause cancer or other ill health effects
  and too much exercise can cause ill health effects
• I kept having a high inflammation number on my labs because I was exercising too much
• Chronic cardio in general is considered pro-inflammatory
• HIIT training is more helpful, but again, everybody is different
• I have high cortisol and the only way I could get my cortisol back in range is to do walking or surfing
• Becoming a better surfer sound a lot nicer than quitting the sports you used to love
• Normal gave me cancer and I had to change everything in my life that was “normal”
• We need to think a new normal for our self, a new version for our self
• This new version of myself is so much softer, nicer and has more fun
• In the beginning, I did not use any app and then, MyFitnessPal came in and it was a little bit helpful
• I met the folks at Cronometer when I was speaking at the world ketogenic conference in Canada and they told me to try it
• And it is amazing
• You can do your own settings like, lose weight, gain weight or maintain your weight
• The internet keto is really set up for people to lose weight, not for people who have an illness. A lot of them actually do not want to lose weight
• I track total carbs instead of net carbs because everybody metabolizes differently
• It just changed my life, because as a keto coach, a lot of people would say that their ketones are only 1 and they are eating perfectly
• Before, I don’t know what their “perfectly” meant
• Now, I can see all my client data
• I think not eating enough fat is the common mistake
• Internet keto always forgets that, everything needs to be organic and chemical free
• And you need to look at your DNA if you have the ability to process dairy or red meat
• I actually do not metabolize saturated fats very well
• Now, I am a big fan of nutritiongenome.com
• They look at way more than just genes
• I got rid of dairy and now if I get a bite of dairy, I get violently ill

OTHER LIFESTYLE CHANGES

• Keto was the first big one
• The second one is making sure all the toxins are removed from my diet
• Because I am such an environmentalist and that’s what I went to school for, I have always been kind of an environmental alarmist and so, that came pretty easily for me
• But, I have to dig deeper
• I always kind of knew that the water that I drank was full of radiation and heavy metals and that was probably one of the biggest root causes
• What happens when you have been in ketosis for a longer time, when the fat cells in our body open up in our body, they provide ketones
• When we are fasting, or sleeping or when we don’t have any glucose or carbs in our diet, fat provides energy from the ketones
• When those cells open up, out comes toxins, old hormones and old glucose
• All these weird symptoms are what I call the keto detox phase, which is much different than the keto flu
• This is when all these fat cells are opening up and all of that stuff comes out
• Getting those toxins out through rigorous keto is really helpful
• I worked really hard on my microbiome and did some gut testing
• A lot of work in repairing my leaky gut with really good probiotics
• I also have to work on my immune function
• I test my blood work every month, so every month, I am learning something new about my body
• The next thing I worked on was blood circulation, making sure my tests are not high
• One of my key things was also lots of hydration
• If you are not hydrated, that detox process is not going to happen
• And then, your heart is working harder, your liver is working harder
• I do shots of salts where I mix salt with water
• All my other electrolytes numbers are good just by eating 5-9 cups of vegetables a day
• Nasha taught me everything
• When people’s white blood cells are low or hemoglobin’s are low, we are immediately thinking that there is a virus on board
• If platelets are high, there’s got to be a virus, infection or heavy metals going on
• It’s just a process of elimination figuring out what is different for each person
• Fill the blender whatever herb you have, and I put a couple cups of fat like avocado oil if it’s going to be a heated process
• If it’s going to be a cold process, I use organic olive oil
• Sometimes, I’ll throw in some shallots or garlic. I always put in salt and sometimes, hot pepper
• I put it into a canning jar and freeze it
• When I travel, I just bring one of those little jars to every meal that I go to
• I love cilantro. I do a lot of cilantro puree and I also do love parsley and celery
• I love thyme, rosemary, oregano
• Lately when I am fasting, I have been making a tea with grated turmeric, ginger, some cinnamon and throw in parsley, cilantro, thyme and rosemary and add some hibiscus flower
• I actually grow stevia leaves, so I just throw some stevia leaf
  
  
• My hormones were really wacky
• Getting rid of stress and the over exercise, and then, working on my sleep trying to get 10 to 12 hours and going to bed early, helps me with my hormones
• I also do a high dose of melatonin at night, which helps with balancing my hormones
• For my mental and emotional health, mediation and deep breathing are really helpful
• Now, I am more peaceful
• I thought eating whole grains and exercising was healthy
• If I had not gotten cancer, I would still be doing that
• Everything we have been told, we had it all wrong
• Every day I am learning something new and it is fun
• You have the power to take charge of your health in your life
• I am in charge of everything and Dr. Nasha is above me, because everything she says has proven to be true
• There is so much research out there that fasting is beneficial for our health
• Now, we eat all the time
• But our body was trained to have a clean-up period where we weren’t eating
• I do the time restrictive window everyday
• I don’t eat until noon
• I’ll just have herbal tea in the morning and tons of water
• I eat lunch and generally I eat dinner around 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM and I don’t eat again until the next day
• Some people call it intermittent fasting, but it is actually called time restricted eating window
• Intermittent fasting is actually when you don’t eat for 24 hours a couple times a week
• If you have some kind of condition going on, you might want to do a 4 to 6 day fast
• That can really help with disease related condition
• People who have the highest cholesterol lived the longest so it was a protective mechanism 10 thousand year ago
• But, my body doesn’t like eating all the time
• There’s a lot of people around me that are making some changes and realizing that their diabetes is getting better and their Alzheimer’s are going away
• It is possible to reverse all these things

HOW CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU

• Website: alisongannett.com

WHA’S NEXT FOR YOU

• I just finished training some students to do health coaching like I do
• I am booked until March and now, I have a whole team working with me
• I just continue to work on my own health and help other people when I can

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