Beating Cancer w/ Diet Changes | Natalie Jill

Hi, I'm Natalie. Jill. And I'm so excited because I've got my client Jason here, who is a nutrition client of mine who has such an interesting story to tell. I was so fascinated when I first talked to you.

Thanks.

So I wanted to share this story with everybody out there about how you were diagnosed with cancer and actually overcame it without traditional treatment through nutrition.

Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me here. I'm excited to be here. And, you know, and it's one of those topics. Anytime you say the word cancer, it's. It'll stop you. And so it was last July, you know, I had this lump in my lymph node, and I was like, okay, this isn't normal, and what's going on? And. And went in, actually, and they did a biopsy. And I come to find out I had this thing called dendritic sarcoma. And the doctor was like, yeah, in all my 35 years of doing this, I have no idea what this is. And they sent it to several different labs and came back. That was kind of the beginning of this whole chapter I never thought I'd be facing at 38. So that's kind of what made it interesting.

So, obviously, very scared when that happened.

It was. It was, you know, when somebody tells you, okay, you have cancer, and I've been doing this 35 years, and I've never seen this, your mind immediately goes, I've got two beautiful children and a wife. And you immediately go to that. I was actually pushing the doctor when I first found out about it. He's like, hey, you know, I don't want to just run in this. I got to find out what it is at first, you know, before we kind of, you know, throw some chemo at it. And I was like, okay. After the first week, I'm like, okay, Doc, what is going on? Because I have this cancer, and it needs to go away, and I want to do something about it. That is what saved my life. What saved my life was those two weeks, because it was about a week into it when my wife was like, jason, what are you doing? You're a big researcher. You need to take some time and find out. And all of a sudden, I began to discover a lot of really important information about the side effects that chemo and radiation can do and what causes cancer. Cancer's not like some alien that kind of flies in from outer space and hits our bodies. So that's what I began to discover was what was actually causing the cancer.

So in the time when you were Waiting for the doctor to come back with exactly what this is and what our course of cancer, conventional medicine, treatment is. You started researching and it started scaring you a little bit about these numerous side effects out there that happen from treatments.

Yeah. What happened was I now began to understand that cancer needs three things to survive. It needs low oxygen. So if you have a low oxygen environment and you're bringing in sugar to your body, and it's an acidic body, if you have those three cornerstones, you're creating an environment for your cells to break down, which ultimately ends up becoming cancer. And I was like, well, hold on a second. I said, if that's the cause, if that is where a good cell can kind of go rogue, well, then what if I reverse that? So what if I bring oxygen into my body, I create an alkaline environment, and I just get rid of the sugar.

What was your current diet like at this time? What were you eating?

Oh, it was pretty bad. So I'll give you my daily breakdown. So I'm going to wake up, I'm going to have like two Starbucks, Maybe breakfast, Maybe breakfast. I'm definitely not working out. Then if I get to lunch, I'm like pounding, I don't know, a hamburger with a nice large coke because I love coke.

Fast food.

Yeah, fast food. If I thought it was healthy, maybe it was a sandwich loaded with mayonnaise and all that kind of good stuff. And then just pop it with another coke. And then I at least had three cokes a day. And then I'm charging hard all day long like everyone else is. And I get home, my wife would have a huge bowl of spaghetti. And so a bowl of spaghetti, a glass of wine, maybe a Coke at dinner. And then got to have a bowl of ice cream.

So lots of carbs, lots of sugar.

Lots of sugar, dairy, all of that, all of that sprinkle with some nice stress, you know.

And how did you, when you were eating that way, just in general, aside from obviously the cancer, which was the big lurking health thing going on, how did you feel? How did you look?

I want to say, so I was 243 at the time, you know, so 64243. So maybe I kind of carried it well a little bit. But now I'm 215 and I couldn't feel better. And so it was more sluggish. I was like, golly, I'm kind of just feeling more sluggish than anything. And I knew, kind of being an athlete in the past, like, hey, I know I'm not where I was. So that's kind of, I guess, how to respond to it.

So you researched that there could be another option. You're aware that your diet's bad. You go back to the doctor, they know what's going on. He recommends this course of treatment. And did he ask you about your diet or your habits?

No. So it was about a week into it when I really began to put my hands around it, talking to other patients that had fought cancer, kind of going down this path without doing chemo and radiation. And that's when I began to realize, hold on a second. I'm not an experiment. Because that's where they were at with me. They wanted me to go down to MD Anderson and do clinical trials. So clinical trials means we have no idea, but we're going to test stuff on you. And I'm like, that's. No, that's not what we're gonna do. And so. But no one ever asked, like, what are you eating? What are you drinking? You know, like, what are you doing inside your body chemically? When I walked into the doctor's office and he began to unveil his plan, that's how I felt. I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, this is. No, I just read about this, and this is happening to me.

So you had read that this is what happened.

This is the protocol. This is how this is going to happen.

And.

And you're gonna. You know, this whole MD Anderson thing. And here we go. And then I stopped the doctor. I said, no, here's what I'm gonna do. And he looked at me with this kind of very sarcastic look as to kind of like, well, good luck with that. Doctors are great at finding it. They're great at diagnosing it. They're great at, like, identifying, hey, it's right here. Like, your cancer is right there. Here's how it got there. But then they just jump to, oh, well, then this is the recipe to kind of try and treat that. It's not a holistic approach. So when you hear that word, holistic, people kind of freak out. Like, oh, that word holistic means, like, you know, we're going to light candles and incense and start chanting. You're like, no, you're going to come at it from all different areas. And so where I sit is, you know, I'm kind of the person. I like to know what all my options are. And it's not that doctors are evil people or they don't care. I don't think it's that at all. I Think it's just that the system isn't designed in a way that it's not. They don't benefit by telling you that, hey, maybe what you're eating while I'm going to put you through chemotherapy is going to affect it. And when I left the doctor's office that day, I can't believe I'll tell the story, I was quite upset. And as I'm sitting in the lobby, there was this lady that was coming out. And you could just tell she was challenged with some kind of cancer. And she had no hair. And in her hand was this large big gulp. And I just wanted to scream, going, okay, this chemo that they're giving you is really hard on your immune system. But that sugar in there is feeding. It's like counterintuitive to the system, I mean, to the cancer. And so it's enlightened me in so many different ways. Our bodies are amazing. When you give it what you want.

Did you have any sense of doubt that, gosh, you know, I probably should go with what the doctor knows. You know, he. Medical school, this is what works. How did you.

How did I get to that point? I would say it was harder for my wife than it was me because any of my family. When I told my family that I was going to kind of, you know, what they call go down this alternative route, my wife was like, honey, no, like, you need to listen to the doctor. You're not a doctor. And I was like. And then I began to educate my wife. I began to, you know, to share with her, like what I was discovering with the research. I mean, research that goes back to like 1930, that I know stuff that I would. My oncologist didn't know about health and nutrition.

You've mentioned that a few times about the 1930. I want to talk about that.

Sure.

What did you find that was researched and discovered in 1930?

Yeah. So in 1931, from Germany, Dr. Otto Wasberg won the Nobel prize in medicine. And what he discovered was, is that a cancer cell has a different state than a healthy cell. So a healthy cell is kind of like this aerobic cell, which means when your cells have 60 plus percent oxygen, they're in a healthy state. So they are absorbing oxygen, they're burning that. Burning the glucose to produce. What we were talking about is this adp. So our bodies are full of energy, right. And they're in a good state. But the moment that cell goes from aerobic to anaerobic, becomes sick and becomes acidic, and all of a sudden it's saying, I want to survive because our bodies are resilient.

And.

And then it begins to break that DNA down and start searching for sugar. And so that's kind of the basis of how cancer begins to form. And what he discovered in 1931 and won the Nobel prize for was the discovery that a cancer cell in its respiratory kind of nature is totally different than a healthy one.

So you decided you weren't going to go the route of traditional medicine. What did you do? What was your next step?

So my next step was. Is like, it was an education of just saying, how do I kind of dive into. You kind of learn as you go. So my diet radically changed. It was steamed vegetables, water, I juice, even to this day, the different green juices and different supplements. And then I found a place down in Arizona called Invita that really took an approach that I felt was the right approach. I had a poured in my chest, and I was taking vitamin C supplements and different treatments like that, but no chemo, radiation.

Let me ask you this, because this is what I think a lot of people would be a little mind baffled about. It's scary. You're being told you've got cancer, really.

Rare form, aggressive cancer.

You try to treat it a traditional way, and you're saying, no, I want to go this other way, which I believe in. But it's somewhat controversial.

Absolutely.

And you. Why not do both? Why not do some radiation or some chemo and change your nutrition?

Yeah, I think that's definitely a personal choice that people can have. But what I would tell anyone who's listening to this is that if you have to put A before B, a has got to be the nutrition that nobody talks about. See, that's the problem that I've come with is, like, if somebody said, well, I feel like we're going to do chemo and we're going to do radiation. But I want to let you know how important your health and your nutrition is during this process. They don't get near that. And that's kind of the challenge that the system has, you know, is to really dive in and say, let's talk about. You know, I understand if we get rid of the cancer today, but I want to make sure that your lifestyle is on a path that this doesn't come back.

So if you. If you were reversed and the doctor had had that conversation with you, you may have gone that route of having possibly.

Yeah, because again, I was very vulnerable. I'm like, I have no. I mean, like I told you before, I was like, doctor, just give it to me, because that's what I, you know, that's what we know. That's what the average person knows.

So you got to know a lot of other people in your same situation.

Yeah, yeah.

And you mentioned that when you were diagnosed with cancer, you were somewhat in the earlier stages.

Yes, yes.

But you mentioned. And for those that don't know, there's stages of cancer one through four.

Correct.

Four being the most serious. Usually you're given a very short time to live at that point. But you mentioned you had met some people, a lady in particular that was stage four.

Yeah. So she had stage four breast cancer. And then it was in, like, I think, 16 different lymph nodes. And so this was kind of the deciding factor for my treatment path, which was this place at Invita that she had gone to. And that was so powerful for me because that's when all the pieces kind of came together, and I had that deep sense of peace. So when you said, what was that kind of defining moment? When I knew that this was the right path? And it was when I hung up the phone with her, and I think she's now four years cancer free. And she just kind of shared. She just downloaded so much wealth of knowledge and information.

So she was given a few weeks.

She was told to go home and prepare to die. That's what she was told.

She, at that point, changed her life.

And she found in vita and was informed and educated and done a lot of things, because it's about building up your immune system. That's our first line of defense. And so. So when a cancer patient is going through treatments, when you're doing the chemo and radiation, it's breaking down that natural defense. And so what it's doing is, as much as it might see that tumor shrinking, you're also causing permanent damage to the immune system. And so, you know, sometimes you hear people that fight cancer today, and it goes away, but then it comes back two or three years later all the time, and then they end up passing away. And then what happens? The doctor says, well, it worked before, but now we need to up it. Now we need to up the dosage. And then the body just gets, you know, it's harder and harder for them to fight, yet getting back to the baseline of them changing that environment of alkaline and, you know, getting rid of the sugars and things like that that are more of a permanent solution.

Hindsight, you would have done the same path again if you had been diagnosed with a much more advanced cancer Would you have taken the same path?

That's a great question. If it was like stage four, I believe everything that I know. I would have not changed anything.

Okay. And I know. So how long have we been cancer free right now?

Well, the cool thing is this past Monday I had another scan and I'm totally cancer free. So the doctors, it was pretty neat. The radiologist like, hey, whatever you're doing, just keep doing it because it's working. So come July will be one year for me. So I know people watching will say, hey, that's really not much of a time. True, true. Because they say you got to be five years or 10 years. And I understand that. So my tone and my language that I use internally is that I'm not cancer free, but I'm tumor free because our bodies are constantly fighting cancer. So it kind of gives me that kind of attitude. I want to fight it. That, hey, I know you're trying to go somewhere in my body, so I have to, like, talk to it, you know, like, you know, like scream. I'm just staring. You're like, I'm coming after you kind of a thing. So that's kind of my attitude towards it. And it should be for all of us, because think about our environment. You know, most people are constantly stressed, Their bodies are so overworked, and they're not feeding it as, you know, the proper nutrition.

So I'm a firm believer of creating that alkaline environment versus acidic. But like, a lot of people will say, but your stomach is naturally an acidic environment. So how are we. How is that truly affecting? Because your stomach's gonna change things anyway when you eat it.

Yeah, well, so when you put asparagus in your mouth or a processed piece of meat, even though it's going into your stomach, that is going to break that down. It is all of the, as you know, that the live nutrients that live life that mother Nature creates. As they say, if God made it, you can eat it. And so apples and oranges and carrots and grass fed cows. Okay, wonderful. It's everything that we as man have kind of created. I mean, Diet Coke, that doesn't come from the sky.

And I wholeheartedly agree with you. And that's why. Huge fan of an unprocessed food diet.

And I think that's where the challenge is, that before this happened to me, if I was hearing this conversation, so I'm going back to old Jason, I'd be like, yeah, okay. I mean, I believe it. It sounds good, but it sounds a little kind of hoaxy a little bit. I mean, I'm being honest. Like, that's just kind of where my mind would have been. And I'm good, I'm okay. I could be better, but I'm not dealing with cancer. And I really feel bad for Jason on the screen. But then it's like, oh, now we're talking about me. And so that's why it was just a huge paradigm shift. And my personality, if my wife would hear I'm either in or out. And I was like, oh, we got cancer. All right, let's get after it. Let's make this. I gotta change my eatings. Alright, done. So I'm really proud, I can tell you. I'm sitting here and I haven't had a soda since July 3rd of last year. And that is a huge feat for me. So, like, I'm not like, I never was into drugs or anything like that, but I can tell you that symptom of like, oh my God, I just want a Coke.

Everybody but you probably look at those now. Like, that's creating a tumor that's gonna.

Yeah, so I just look at it like I have to like yell it at it. You know what I mean? You like, you know, like curse at it, you know, because there's moments like you're like, what do I want? I want a carne asada burrito and a regular coke with crushed ice. Like, you know what I mean? You're like, those were just like hand in glove. But you've gotta realize it comes down to those choices. Like when someone's successful with you, it's those little choices, right? Do I make that choice or do I not make that choice? And I think that's the hard part. I mean, that's what I wear around my wrist. I had this made. It says choices. And I want this to remind me every day I have to make the right choices. Because that's what it's going to come down to. So if I make the wrong choice, well, then it incrementally shows up. It's that compound effect. And it's not easy. It's not easy. I mean, I would honestly tell you I feel like I'm 90 10, I'm on 90. And then there's 10% of the time I'm like, okay, I am going to have this glass of wine or I am going to have this, you know, I'm going to have a scoop of ice cream now. But there's certain things I just won't go do. But you know, like the sodas And I never was a smoker, so I don't have to deal with that.

But so you know what I want to ask, because this is something we have not addressed is what does your typical diet look like now? What's off limits for the most part? What do you eat?

So what's totally off limits is, I mean like I said, the sodas and you know, anything that, you know, the fructose, anything that's. I try to say if it is manufactured and chemical, I try my best to stay away from, even down to the deodorants and toothpaste that I'm doing. But my day, I wake up, I do the organic steel cut oatmeal, throw my whey protein in there thanks to Natalie gel and then the almonds and then I do flaxseeds in there. And so that's. So I have that. Oh, I back up. The first thing is the warm cup of water and lemon. So when I wake up, I wake my body up with just lemon and the warm cup of water, then to the oatmeal and then I go to Dale's bars. And then I am religiously, you can ask my brother because we go to lunch every day practically I am a kale salad for lunch. So it's got kale almonds on there, a little bit of goat cheese sprinkled on top of that. And then I'll do the dressing on the side so I just dab it. And then I'll throw roasted turkey on there, so it's an organic turkey. And then I'll do a Dale bar for my fourth meal. And then at dinner time I might even do just steamed vegetables with the sweet potato. Just kind of mixing the meals up at night or chicken. But that's pretty much my regimen.

So I'm curious your thoughts because this is. I'm always very careful, I tread lightly on this topic. And again, I don't know what I would personally do in the situation. I don't know that anyone really does unless they're fully in that situation.

I agree with that statement. I agree with that statement.

What would you say to somebody that a child that has cancer or how do you, how does that. When you say we create all this, how do, how do you explain that? And I'm not looking for necessarily a medical explanation. I'm curious your thoughts on that.

You know when, where I was at, there was a seven year old girl that was there and she had a tumor behind her. I think it was her left eye. And she had the radiation and from the radiation. She had suffered two strokes. And it was a really. Just kind of a horrific story. And just to kind of hear those different testimonials, I don't. What I know is that. Well, first of all, I don't know why that happens to a one year old or a three year old or a seven year old. What I know is that cancer needs certain things in order for that to survive. And you can't say, well, this one year old just had this brain tumor and they didn't spend a whole life drinking slurpees and creating that environment. I don't know that answer. But what I do know is that from the medical research, that when a cancer cell is alive, it has to have an environment for it to metastasize. See, we don't die from a tumor. We die from it metastasizing to multiple parts of our body. We don't die from cancer being in my leg, we die when it's spread throughout the body. So I guess that would be my answer. Obviously, I don't know. But I just know that what I've learned gets back to those core things. If there's the imbalance of oxygen, if there is sugar that's feeding the cancer cells and the body around it's acidic, then you're creating a chance for that to spread and grow.

Okay. And I would. I don't know that there's anything to support this or not, But I would be willing to think that something with the attitude, with that too. And you're. Some would call it law of attraction, but believing that you're fixing something too, because you've got to have that positive mental state. And when you. If you had said, this is not going to work for me, maybe that stress, that attitude. Because I think stress would play a.

Role in disease as well. Yeah. They found stress is a. I mean, it's a chemical thing. When we. When we become stressed over something, we always see there's a chemical reaction. I'll be honest, last week before the scan, I was starting to get a little nervous. I mean, I'm just like, okay, we're getting scan. Like, what if this doesn't come back? You know, your mind wants to go there and you just got to pull it back and you go, okay, God, I'm trusting the choices that I'm making, you know? And so even if that scan wasn't good, I would still believe that the choices that I was making was going down the right path. I really would.

Interesting. So what advice would you give for somebody Newly diagnosed. I know this is a hard one, and I get that it's a personal choice, but if someone is watching and they're newly diagnosed with cancer or a loved one is what advice? Knowing what you know, would you give them?

I would say jump right into informing and educating yourself like I did. You know, everything that I'm sharing with you is out there for someone to go and read and see the facts and see the research. And one of the great books that I found is it's called Fighting Cancer Outside the Box. And I think it's the most complete book in terms of exposing somebody to all the information. And so that would kind of be the first step. And then there's great places, like I mentioned to you, like Gerson, who's here in San Diego, gerson.org, and then the place that I went at to Invita, which is in Scottsdale, Arizona. And what that's going to do is, is that's going to allow somebody to have additional information so that they can make an informed choice. That's what I would suggest.

Okay.

Yeah.

But just to recap, you would advise that people for sure do their own research and see both sides to this and address nutrition with themselves. You know, see, could they possibly be contributing to this?

Yeah.

And you feel from what you've learned that you really do control how fast that tumor grows or doesn't grow or. And can it be reversed?

I would say this cancer has. It's a terrible disease and it's robbed people from their moms and their dads and brothers and sisters and best friends. And if somebody who's watching this has cancer, they know somebody who has cancer or maybe someday themselves have divided, I would say that they should have a great sense of hope because there are things outside of chemo and radiation that you can do to help whoever that person is and wherever they're at to have a chance to beat it. That's what I would say. It's out there. It's just not as prevalent, you know, that knowledge base and you have to seek it, but it's out there and it's amazing.

And one last thing, you're not advising against talking to traditional doctors by any means.

I'm not advising. Yeah. And I'm not advising because that's the case. I'm not a medical doctor, obviously. I would say talk to your doctors. Talk to them, but make sure that you are getting all the information that you need so that you can make an informed choice. Because in my situation, if I had not had that delay of finding out my diagnosis and me researching it, the outcome could be a lot different where I'm sitting today. I probably would have been down getting different treatments and clinical trials and things like that. I do want to say one last thing, though. I want to say thank you for letting me be here. And I also want to say that the viewers need to know. This is the first time that I've spoken about this.

Thank you for letting me do this.

You're so welcome. And I feel comfortable with you. And people need to know of your personal integrity and that, you know, there's no plug. And I'm not getting paid to say that, but that is why I'm here. It's a very personal story for me. And so I want you to know, and I want everyone who's going to watch this to know that I appreciate what you're doing and the lives that you're touching and. And so that's the reason I'm here. So I want you to know that.

Thank you for saying that.

You're welcome.