Hi. Good to hear from you. I will try to help. What I have done has worked for me. It has come about through trial and error, and logic combined with my biological knowledge which of course has its limits. Before going into what I do eat or my diet, here is what I don’t eat. I eat no red meat like pork or beef and generally few eggs (maybe two a month on a Sunday). I don’t eat out whether fast food or at restaurants. I don’t eat pizza or any pre-prepared foods you can buy in grocery stores. They all have too much either fat, salt, sugar and calories. Dairy is a bit problematic. I don’t drink milk but have a dab of cream in my coffee. I don’t eat cheese but use a cheese sauce in one of my meals. I don’t eat ice cream except as a rare treat like on my birthday.
I don’t do any soft drinks or fruit juices and no citrus except what is in a tomato. I rarely have fruit, maybe a few plums during the summer.
What I do. I believe, when you have cancer of any sort, on calorie restriction as primary and also as much as possible the avoidance of sugar whether high fructose or refined sugar. I also avoid products with artificial sweeteners. I believed in what is essentially a plant based diet (with the addition of either chicken or salmon in small quantities).
My day in diet—
I begin each morning with a walk taking a dog with me. This is before I eat or drink anything. I then toast three bagels and put some cream cheese on them and also have a cup a coffee with a little cream. I can’t give up my coffee but it probably is not the best. If I have an additional cup later I will need to visit the rest room shortly after. I never have a third cup. About 2:00 p.m. I have either a can of sardines or a few slices of bread and that is it until dinner at about 6:00 p.m. My meal then is a salad and a main course plus a cooked vegetable.
The salad is always a colored pepper, cucumber, apple and some grape tomatoes (some people have trouble with tomatoes but I don’t) on which I pour on some apple cider vinegar but no prepared or store-bought salad dressing or any salt or pepper. We have two basic meals that my wife and I share, each for three days as she makes enough for three days between us. That means that each day I get a sixth of each of these recipes
The one is: two cups of rice(red, white brown and wild combination) with a half cup of barley, three chicken breasts, a half bag of frozen carrots, a jar of mushrooms, two to three ribs of cut up celery, a can of either cream of chicken, or mushroom or celery soup. Sprinkle some Mrs Dash(no salt or other spices) and she uses chicken broth and water to cook the rice. She cuts up a pepper into it and cooks it all in a crock pot.
The other meal which is again three days’ worth for both of us is:
Two cans of salmon with the liquid from the can but no skin, a pound of whole grain pasta, a jar of mushrooms, a can of celery soup, some chicken broth, a cheese Alfredo sauce, a half of a cup of sour crèam. Some Mrs Dash.
As I mentioned above, on each day I get a sixth of one of these meals.
Also daily I eat a serving of either broccoli, cauliflower or Brussel sprouts. I pour apple cider vinegar on them. I believe in vinegar as a health help.
That is basically it. As you can see. Very few calories and actually a very boring diet.
I do take a few vitamins. D3 4000 IU, B12 250 mcg, a Centrum silver and Ferrous Sulfate 325 mg. I don’t know if any of them help anything really except for the Ferrous Sulfate as my lack of meat I assume keeps me from having my hemoglobin kept at an acceptable level and the Ferrous sulfate keeps it up where it needs to be.
Two non-dietary items -I have been taking an LAR octreotide injection every four weeks for 10 years—I assume it helps but you never know about cause and effect.
The other thing is that the two goals of a carcinoid patient are to limit release of hormones and the spread of the tumors. I believe one thing that helps is to control your stress levels which ideally means to try to not stress about things at all. I know that stress causes the release of hormones and so a lot of avoiding stress means changing habits and attitudes. I have had to work on that for a few years. I found it was about changing my perspective. I don’t stress on anything even this illness. Everyone has problems that come up and rather than fret about them I either do something about them or accept and live with them by adjusting or adapting. I hope I don’t sound preachy here and don’t mean to, but I just avoid, at this at age especially, stress and worry.
As I stated before I am about to get to the 20 year mark and I still have the tumors in three places but they sort of just lie there. My lab numbers on my blood work have been great especially considering where I started out 20 years ago. No guarantees that things will stay that way but for now my life is pretty well in good shape.
I hope this helps and isn’t too much info.