Tag: breast cancer

Mom’s Simple Shiitake Mushroom Soup

Shiitake mushrooms are amazing. They are not only vastly superior to portobellos in taste but they have more health benefits as well.

My mom had breast cancer last year and I help out preparing healthy meals for her as much as I can. One meal that she has really enjoyed lately and which packs a ton of healthy cancer fighting goodness is a simple Japanese inspired Shiitake Mushroom soup.

Shiitake mushrooms have many beneficial compounds that have been shown to lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure and reduce the size of cancer tumors. It also has anti-viral and anti-bacterial compounds as well.

The soup takes less than an hour from start to finish and served about six.

Mom’s Shiitake Soup

  1. One medium cleaned unpeeled sweet potato – diced in half inch pieces
  2. 1/2 box organic chicken stock
  3. 1/4 small red onion – finely diced
  4. 4 cloves of garlic finely diced
  5. 4-6 ounces Shiitake Mushrooms sliced in 1/4 inch slices
  6. 1 bunch of organic green onions cut up in small rounds
  7. 1 bunch of organic cilantro chopped
  8. 1 lemon – cut in wedges
  9. 1 tablespoon of Ghee, olive oil, avocado oil
  10. Two cups water

Sauté mushrooms on medium heat in fat of your choice (no veggie oil) in a medium sauce pain for 6-7 minutes. Add onions and sauté till they are translucent. Then add garlic and sauté for another 2 minutes.

Next add the chicken stock, diced sweet potatoes, and water. Bring to a boil and let simmer for at least thirty minutes to up to two hours.

To serve simply ladle the soup into a bowl and add a big handful of green onion and cilantro. Then squeeze a wedge of lemon into it and enjoy!

**I was cooking a lot of button mushrooms for my mom but I recently stopped after Paul Stamets on the Joe Rogan Podcast, warmed against eating them.

I highly recommend it. Paul Stamets is the most knowledgeable guy on the planet when it comes to mushrooms.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqWstVnRjQ

Button mushrooms, crimini and portobellos are all the same mushroom, Agaricus bisporus. He hesitated during the Podcast to reveal why to avoid them but I did a little digging and it turns out that Agaricus bisporus contain chemicals called agarotines that when digested can be carcinogenic.

I found a video of him explaining this in more detail. He said it’s analogous to smoking a cigarette when you eat one, except instead of just causing tumors in the lungs like cigarettes these compounds can create tumors all over your body.

So needless to say we avoid all button, portobello, and crimins until further scientific testing is done. Thankfully delicious Shiitake mushrooms don’t contain these carcinogenic chemicals.

In this video he explains to Daryl Hannah (yes the actress) starting at 6:30 why he thinks people shouldn’t eat button mushrooms and portobellos.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-QlPb3J74

I hope you will consider trying the soup. It’s something we have really enjoyed.

Brad Miller

Fellow Human

Miracle Fruit and Chemo tongue 

My mom just had her second round of chemo yesterday. She’s beginning to have trouble getting water down because of the taste. That was before she ate something called a Miracle Fruit Berry. After eating one small berry and then taking a sip of H2O she exclaimed “It tastes like water”. Before she would say that it tastes like have a mouth full of coins and could hardly get water down. 

The Miracle Berry is a small red berry grown indoors in Florida by Miracle Fruit Farms. My grandma, her mom, actually found an article in her local newspaper about this fruit that originated in Africa. I did a little research and watched the testimonials and ordered some fresh berries and the powdered tablets.

http://miraclefruitfarm.com/ 

Watching my mom suffer with her chemo treatments and being powerless to help her has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Being able to buy something that could possibly help was a no brainer. You can buy fresh berries, powdered berry tablets and even whole beery plants. The fresh berries are the most expensive option because they go bad so quickly. The tablets are less expensive and I would assume their top seller. We chose to buy both just to see if there was a difference. 

The berries have a special chemical that acts on the the tastebuds that help mask the metallic taste caused by chemo. And for my mom it works. It’s advised to eat the berry or tablet before you eat or drink and swish it around your mouth in order to coat your tongue. The effect is supposed to last from 15 minutes to 2 hours. 

I ate a Berry as well tonight and almost cracked a tooth. Turns out there is a huge pit in each berry so I advise caution when eating. The taste is very pleasant and you can feel the pulp coating your tongue as you chew it. After mom drank her water and found that it tasted like water again, I took a sip of my Yerba Mate tea in which I added some lemon to. 

At first I didn’t know what was going as I was expecting the sour punch of half a lemon in my tea and it wasn’t there. My brain wasn’t able to compute what my taste buds were reporting, my tea didn’t have the acidic lemon flavor I’ve come to love at all. In fact it tasted like sweet tea. I had to take a few more sips before I remembered reading that the same chemical that can mask the metallic taste induced by chemo can also  make sour foods taste sweet. Very crazy. I’m 30 minutes in and the effect is still going strong. 

If you miss sweet tea and you are on a Primal or Paleo or a no-sugar diet this may satisfy that craving.

After I placed the order the fresh Miracle Berries and Berry tablets arrived in about two days. We’ve not tried the tablets yet but will try them tomorrow. And also we’ve frozen the fresh berries and we’ll see if that alters the effect on the taste buds. Hopefully they’ll stop work. 

Chemo is horrible. In fact one of her 5 chemo drugs is actually a mustard gas derivative. To make it through this poisoning she has to eat and drink even though her mouth and throat are full of sores and on top of that food and water taste terrible. She has Miracle Mouth Wash and a homemade baking soda and salt mouth rinse for the sores but the the medical community doesn’t seem to have any answer to undoing her tastebuds short circuiting. 

Miracle Fruit is the one thing so far that we’ve found to help water not taste horrible to her. We’ll see about it affects the taste of food tomorrow. Anything I can do to  make her trip through this chemical induced hell, we call chemo, easier, I will happily do. 

Update – 3 days after chemo mom used the berry tablet and was able to drink a fruit and veggie smoothie. She tried it before the tablet and said it tasted terrible. But after letting a Miracle Fruit berry tablet dissolve and coat her tongue, she tried it again and with a smile said “it tastes good”. 

If you know anyone suffering through chemo and they are complaining of food and water not tasting right you might want to visit Miracle Fruit Farm and do your own research to see i you think it will help someone you love. I know I’m glad I did. 

Brad Miller

Fellow Human 

Roles Reversed

I’ve been chronically unwell for the last 30 years. During that time I’ve endured 20 surgeries, 40 bowel obstructions, a permanent ileostomy and for the last few years pancreatitis attacks. Through all of it from my search for a diagnosis at age 11 through to my last stint in the hospital in May of this year, my mom has been there for me. Now I’m getting to repay a small amount of the debt that I owe her. Our roles have been reversed.

In September she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, has had a mastectomy, a removal of her reconstructed breast, tens of doctors appointments, a port put in and had her first chemo treatment last week. Her surgeries, her chemo treatment and her doctors are in a hospital that’s right across the street from the hospital I’ve gone to since I was 11. Now I’m the one driving her up north to some of her appointments to north of Atlanta so she can get well.

Helping mom heal has been just as healing for me.  Over the years mom has invested so much of her time and energy into my mere survival that I’m grateful I’m able to help her now in her time of need. One of my biggest fears when she was first diagnosed was that I wouldn’t be of any help, and I would be unable to step up and be at least a partial care giver. I was struggling horribly with debilitating pain when she was first diagnosed. I was in the midst of months of pain due to pancreatitis caused by a gallstone.

My GI doctor during this time wanted me to have surgery but I refused. Instead I started a course of cannabis capsules and in about ten days the pain was gone. I’d had that horrible pain for at least two months straight. Before I started the cannabis, I would sleep in the bathtub  at night because the hot water along with oxycodone was the only way I could find some relief. Then one Saturday it just stopped. And this was a couple weeks out from mom’s surgery. I knew if i had surgery I’d been unable to help her. I’m glad I made that call.

I owe my life to my mom not only for giving birth to me but for helping keep me alive through all the trials of surgery and chronic pain over the last 30 years. This year I became a Primal Health Coach and mom was my first client. I live with mom and I do most of the grocery shopping and I’ve cooked the majority of the meals since I’ve moved in. Mom has lost nearly 100 pounds in a year. Her doctor told her that for women who are overweight it’s harder to detect small tumors in a mammogram.

Her cancer was super aggressive and if they hadn’t caught the tumors when they did it could have been a whole different outcome. Her doctor said that losing the weight could have saved her life.  I’m grateful I’ve been able to play a small part in helping get her cancer detected as well with her recovery and ongoing journey now with getting through chemo.

Love isn’t about a scale to be balanced. It’s not about clearing up a “debt”. Mom taught us all that love is unconditional and that it’s not a word, it’s an action. During her recent bout with cancer all of our family have been able to show mom how much we all love her by helping take her to the doctor, sit with her during chemo, cook for her and help her get through the nights of bone pain and nausea. We are doing nothing more than merely acting as a mirror reflecting back a small amount of the love she’s always shown us.

Experiencing the care giver role recently has given me a new respect for what mom and what my family have gone through during these many years of my surgeries, illness and all the uncertainty that goes along with it. In the end we do what we must in the midst of the uncertainty of illness and pain, and we are able to endure because of those that love us most.