The London Marathon 2015 – the highs and lows of a long distance runner

Today's post is by Nick Rose who will be taking on the London Marathon on the 26th April 2015 to raise money for Yes to Life and help us continue to support people in the UK to take an integrative approach to cancer. Good luck Nick! If you would like to sponsor our marvellous Marathon man please click here.

This will be my 7th London Marathon! 26.2 miles pounding around the streets of London with 30,000 other runners, cheering crowds, blisters, copious amounts of Vaseline, and being overtaken by runners dressed as rhinos, Elvis, fairies and the occasional superhero! There is certainly something very special about the London Marathon.

There is the crowd mentality of the runners at the start line with shots of “Ogi Ogi Ogi” belting out across Greenwich Park. Your nerves are buzzing and there is a certain amount of trepidation (some even say fear!) at what is to come. Then at 9.15 – you start!

Mindchoice: On silence

Today's post is from Clare McLusky who provides us with an insight into her experience with cancer and the popular practice of Mindfulness. 

Clare has a Masters degree in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy from University of Oxford and teaches Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy to people living with cancer. Clare is also a qualified Occupational Therapist, Yes to Life Helpline volunteer and one of the founding members and facilitators of Oxford Sangha, practising in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. 

Clare will be running a 'Mindfulness for Living Well with Cancer' Course in Oxford for 8 weeks starting on the 23rd April, for more information please see her website.

I am teaching MBCT or Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy to a group of 10 friends.  This has been a very rewarding and enjoyable experience.  Each week my friends arrive in a flurry of activity and chattiness and there is a real cocktail party atmosphere at 10 in the morning, with everybody chatting at once.

Last Thursday I led a silent day of practice and after we had come out of silence gently and slowly and reflected on the experience, the day was then drawn to a close with the bell.  However, we continued to sit and chat for a while.  The difference between the beginning of the day and the end of the day was striking – one person spoke at a time, people listened and then the next person spoke.  It was wonderfully calm and peaceful and nourishing.

Inspired Nutrition and Yes to Life take on Brighton

Today’s post is about our recent Cookery Well-being workshop which took place at Brighton Cookery School last Saturday. The morning was hosted by the wonderful Jenny Philips and Jeraldine Curran of Inspired Nutrition who brought a whole load of tasty recipes, years of expertise, a sunny vibe and plenty of jovial flair to the kitchen. If you missed it we are running two more workshops with Jenny and Jeraldine this year, keep up to date with our events calendar for more info.

Think of that person in your life who has cooked for you, gathered fresh ingredients, laboured over chopping boards and stoves with the passion of nurturing you: a mother, grandmother, sibling, friend, partner…then you have some impression of what it felt like to walk into Jenny and Jeraldine’s kitchen. These women are not professional chefs but they are something far more important, cooks who understand the power of food to heal, support and protect.

Although they are both qualified nutritional therapists, it is Jenny and Jeraldine’s personal experiences as much as any qualifications, which make them both such incredible fonts of knowledge.  Jenny recovered from breast cancer ten years ago and Jeraldine has been a close support for family members with cancer so they both understand the topic inside out and were happy to share their stories. The selection of dishes they prepared were designed to support the body through any stage of cancer diagnosis, and it was possible to tailor each to specific requirements…they were also delicious!

The Desert: Mike 'The Bike' cycles West Africa - Part 2

Today’s post is our second from Mike ‘the Bike’ McLellan, cycling enthusiast and long-time supporter of Yes to Life who is cycling from Italy to West Africa to embark on the adventure of a lifetime and raise lots of money to help us support people with cancer along the way.

The so called gateway to the Westernmost Sahara is Guelmim in Southern Morocco. As we approached it I could see a completely different landscape to anything I have seen before looming before me. Long barren mountains ran South from that city and were present for several days as we rode South-west to Tan Tan,  and then disappeared as we went on to Tarfaya and then to the border with Western Sahara.

Desert cycling is challenging in many ways, but probably mostly psychologically,  in that very little changes. To the mind this can be a big challenge, gone are the usual things that stimulate us; different landscapes, people, places to rest, cafes, shops. But changes there are. Hills appear and disappear,  the colour and texture of the sand changes, at times fine and almost white, at other times yellow or red, sandy or rocky. Sometimes huge dunes appear majestically in the distance and then are gone.

Flax Seed Focaccia

Today's post is written by Jenny Phillips who specialises in supporting cancer patients with diet & lifestyle interventions. She herself recovered from breast cancer 10 years ago. 

Jenny is hosting a cookery workshop with Yes to Life in Brighton on Saturday March 7th, if you are interested in coming along please click here for more information.

In this recipe Jenny offers us an alternative to wheat that will have any bread lover fantasising...

Science is consistently showing that the dominance of grains and processed carbohydrates in our modern diet is potentially an issue for health. From a cancer point of view, cutting down or even excluding wheat from your diet is a positive move (read more here) But what to eat instead?

This recipe is really easy to make, and replaces traditional wheat flour with a blend of flax seeds (rich in omega 3) and oats. The addition of eggs too make it a good protein source, and it tastes delicious.

Why Panorama's 'Can You Cure my Cancer?' is missing the point

Today's post is from our chairman, Robin Daly, in response to the recent Panorama documentary 'Can you Cure my Cancer?

After hitting us with the ‘hard fact’ opener that half of us are going to get cancer, last week’s Panorama: Can You Cure My Cancer? left viewers without a second to take a breath, let alone give a moment’s thought to questions such as ‘why?’ before sweeping us all away on a tidal wave of ‘good news’. We were alternately reassured that ‘this is an unprecedented time of progress in the history of cancer medicine and cancer research’, and thrilled by the promise of ‘personalised medicine’, the much heralded result of cutting edge gene research. ‘In both young and old patients, targeted treatments are producing spectacular results’. There was even tentative mention of the ‘c’ word - ‘cure’!

Not once on our wonder-filled roller coaster ride did we step back and pause to consider where we are really headed. As we saw people being treated for their second and third cancers with eye-wateringly expensive drugs, it became clear that, as good consumers, cancer spin has thus far succeeded in distracting us from the reality of the crisis we are in. If we keep going, it would seem likely that, not that far ahead, is the prospect of new ‘baseline’ where we blithely accept that we will all get cancer - of course - and the newspaper statistics and ‘good news’ stories will then be all about how many times.

The Science behind Medicinal Mushrooms

Today's post is an extract from 'Medicinal Mushrooms - The Essential Guide' by Martin Powell and describes their incredible healing properties.

Mushrooms are part of the fungal kingdom. As such they are more closely related to humans and other members of the animal kingdom than to plants and, partly because of this relative evolutionary closeness, a large number of the compounds they produce show physiological activity in humans as well as other animals.

Indeed many of the top-selling pharmaceutical products are derived from mushrooms and other fungi, including the major antibiotics as well as statin-class compounds such as Lovastatin and Simvastatin.

Of course mushrooms do not produce these compounds for our benefit but rather to give themselves an advantage in the competition with other micro-organisms for food and resources and as such many show anti-microbial activity, either as antibiotics or as anti-fungal agents⁴.