Top 10 Tips for a Personal Spring Clean

In today's post, the Igennus team give us their top ten tips for giving your body a Spring cleanse.

Now that spring has well and truly sprung, many of us are starting to get that nagging sensation that it’s time to get down to some serious spring cleaning, and this doesn't just apply to our homes!

With the improving weather and longer daylight hours, the desire to be outside and generally be more sociable and active is growing. Unfortunately, many ailments and illnesses and comfort-food eating, all too common during the cold dark winter months, can heavily impact our energy levels and can make the thought of venturing too far from home or engaging in active outdoor fun quite daunting.

The organ responsible for processing and purifying/removing toxins in the body is the liver, so any strategy to clean from the inside out should focus on foods that support liver function and the detoxification processes that occur in the liver.

Embracing Better Health through 'Coffee with a Purpose'

Today's post is from founder of Loveursoul and creator of 'Coffee with a Purpose', Lucy Batham-Read. 'Coffee with a Purpose' is a support group scheme designed to bring together practitioners and those interested in taking control of their health holistically to share knowledge, experiences and of course coffee! Lucy is working in partnership with us to win funding to start a 'Yes to Life Coffee with a Purpose' scheme specifically run by, and for, people who have or have had cancer. To find out more and vote for us to win please click here it is free and takes a few minutes, thank you!

‘Coffee with a Purpose’ is all about bringing people together to find ways to boost well-being and define boundaries to remain healthy in mind, body and soul. These groups are supportive spaces where people can begin to work out what is right for their own health and start to make choices that will help them to live the life they want.

Living in the 21st century is tough at the best of times but living life to the full can be made much easier if you listen to your body, live from the heart, trust your instinct, and forgive yourself for being human. Sometimes it takes trauma for us to wake up and ‘smell the coffee ‘and whilst this may be an incredibly tough way to do it, for some it is the beginning of their freedom.

My own life has, in parts, been incredibly tough both physically and emotionally and I have learnt some hard lessons. Now it is time to put those lessons to good use.

'Tripping Over the Truth' - a discussion on the origins of cancer

Today's post, from our chairman Robin Daly, is a review of the recently published 'Tripping Over the Truth: the Metabolic Theory of Cancer' by Travis Christofferson.

In 2012 Thomas Seyfried’s game-changing book ‘Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer’ hit the bookstore shelves with a thud. At £90 or so, this heavy duty science book was clearly not aimed at the ‘man in the street’, however strong his interest in cancer.

Seyfried wanted to make the scientific community aware that a fundamental feature of cancer, known about for almost a century, has been systematically ignored to the detriment of the growing number of people with cancer. He wanted to put forward the radical suggestion that simply targeting an ever increasing number of cancer causing genes was not going provide the long sought for solutions. He went on to put forward a plausible and novel strategy of targeting cancer’s energy supply, its metabolism, through a specialised dietary regime - the ketogenic diet.

The task of communicating Seyfried’s crucial messages to a wider audience was picked up by Travis Christofferson, who published ‘Tripping Over the Truth: the Metabolic Theory of Cancer’ late last year. Written, in the most part, in very accessible English, and priced at around £10 this new offering hits the spot for readers like me.

Welcome to Sub-saharan Africa - Senegal, The Gambia and Mali - Part 3

Today’s post is our third 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 cultural differences between Mauritania and Senegal was probably the most striking of any of the border crossings. Senegal was colourful, noisy and much more in your face than any of the previous African countries.

St Louis is the first city you come to heading South, and was fascinating with its French colonial architecture and vibrant markets. A few kilometres south of St Louis at the popular over-landers destination of the Zebrabar camp site Annie and I met up with Belgium couple Antoine and Elizabeth who now live in the Gambia and were touring northern Senegal on their interestingly designed tandem, so we decided to continue together.

Satay Noodles

Today's post is a recipe from Jenny Phillips who specialises in supporting cancer patients with diet & lifestyle interventions. She herself recovered from breast cancer 10 years ago. This noodle dish is gluten and dairy free, packed full of nutrition and tastes as good as it looks! 

This is one of the most popular dishes we make at Yes to Life cookery workshops. It ticks all the boxes and is really easy and quick to prepare too. Just one essential gadget you may like to invest in, and that is a spiraliser.

If you haven’t yet met one of these, it’s a really fab gadget which in this recipe makes noodles from raw courgette. It’s also good for carrot, mooli and other hard veg, adding a different texture to raw food and salads.

Our next cookery workshop is being held in London on Saturday 4 July, so make sure you are on the Yes to Life mailing list to receive further information (you can sign up on the right hand side of the homepage)

The London Marathon 2015 - The Countdown Begins

Today's post is by Nick Rose who will be taking on the London Marathon on Sunday 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.

So the count down has well and truly begun and I am less than 4 days away from running 26.2 miles around London!

I actually ran 20.3 miles on Easter Sunday – the thought of a tasty roast dinner cooked by my lovely Aunt Viv, whose house I was running to, I admit was a great incentive – but it's done and was a great mental and physical goal to achieve before the race!

But that’s my last long run as we are now in official Taper Down mode. This is where you slowly lower the intensity, frequency and distance of your running to give your body time to recover and to also refuel ready for the big day. So its all about preparation now, making sure I look after my tired legs and aching & blistered feet so I am as fit as I can be for the 26th April.

The Mail on Sunday, Yes to Life and that ‘quack Vitamin C cancer therapy’

Today's post is from our founder Robin Daly challenging an article written about Yes to Life and Vitamin C. He shares the story of trying to hold the newspaper to account and gives us some the evidence as to why Vitamin C therapy is far from quackery.

Some of you may have seen the article published by the Mail on Sunday, in print and online, regarding Yes to Life and Vitamin C.

Despite giving Yes to Life the opportunity, prior to publication, to respond to the ‘criticisms’ being levelled at the charity - which we did in spades - when it came to publication, the only nod to balanced reporting was

“YTL founder Robin Daly said: ‘The only thing we do is to provide interested people with information.’”

The term that comes to mind for this style of reporting is ‘hatchet job’.

We decided the article was so biased we were not content to just let it go by, and so approached IPSO, the regulator, with a view to getting some sort of redress. In this we have had some degree of success, which is heartening: