Louisa Nickel’s Nutrition Strategy
True nutrition promotes eating intuitively, eating living foods that have been brought to life under the sun, with roots in the soil, and without exposure to cancer-causing chemicals. True nutrition does not count grams or calories; it looks at the quality and quantity of nutrients, and leads us to the vibrant life we were intended to live. When we view nutrition in this way—outside of the packages, boxes and cans, beyond the nutritional labels—we’ll truly start to nourish ourselves and thrive.
The food industry is a mega-billion dollar industry; they want you to obsess over counting calories and protein/fat/carb grams and ratios. Take carbs for example—we fear carbs! Not all carbs are the villain; not all carbs are created equal. We should avoid certain carbs like white flour, white sugar, and concentrated sugars. But we shouldn’t fear the high-fiber, micronutrient-rich carbs like sweet potatoes, oats, carrots, bananas, apples, etc. These wonderful high-carb foods (and many others), give us energy! They fill our digestive tract with lots of insoluble fiber that drags through the colon like a broom, and gel-like soluble fiber that lets you absorb nutrients and remove toxins.
The most recent trend—Ketogenic diet—boasts fat as the elite macronutrient. Our family adopted the keto diet after our son was diagnosed with cancer, because all the other childhood cancer families were doing it. But we started to understand that it’s not the healthiest diet long-term, certainly not the way the average American goes about it.
We also started to recognize that everything in life has a vibration, including food. If you bathe your cells in high-vibrational foods—fruits, vegetables, soaked/sprouted nuts, seeds, grains and beans—you’ll increase your body’s energetic frequency. You’ll feel more alive, and your body will not be the prime breeding ground for cancer. If you’re consuming low-vibrational foods—meat, dairy, processed foods—you’ll end up in a low-vibration state. Your energy will become stuck and blocked, giving disease the perfect terrain for settling in.
With this understanding, we phased out our inflammatory Keto diet to a plant-based vegan diet. We now enjoy an abundance of fruit and veggies, and a moderate amount of soaked/sprouted nuts, seeds, grains, and beans. We know this way of eating helps give our son’s body homeostasis—just what he needs for a lifelong remission.
Our family’s 8 anti-cancer dietary essentials:
EAT MORE FRUITS AND VEGGIES. The most powerful way to clean your body internally is to flood it with vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and enzymes from whole, living foods. You can’t overdose on nutrition with fruits and veggies. Fruit sugars are slow burning, but powerful. They are easy to digest and enhance the vitality of cells faster than any other food. Fruits and veggies provide your body with everything it needs. Hundreds upon hundreds of studies show that eating fruits and veggies help prevent you from getting cancer in the first place, and that cancer patients who eat fruits and veggies live longer. Making smoothies and juicing are excellent ways to get raw fruits and veggies in your diet.
SOAK/SPROUT YOUR NUTS, SEEDS, GRAINS & BEANS. Soaking and sprouting are simple processes that improves the nutritional content. Soaking rehydrates the dehydrated nut, seed, grain or bean, while deactivating the anti-nutrients and making them easier to digest and absorb. Sprouting takes this one step further by activating it from its dormant state through germination, which amplifies the nutritional profile.
BUY ORGANIC. Conventionally grown food contains cancer-causing pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other toxic chemicals. Buy organic when possible or shop using the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean Fifteen” lists. A recent study showed that the incidence of childhood cancer may be associated with parental exposure to pesticides during the prenatal period. The risk of lymphoma and leukemia increases significantly in children when their mother was exposed during the prenatal period. Conversely, the incidence of brain cancer was related to the father’s exposure.
DRINK FILTERED WATER. Do not drink unfiltered tap water since it often contains chlorine, fluoride, and heavy metals—all associated with cancer. Water is essential for hydrating and flushing your body, so don’t let your water be a source of contaminants.
LIMIT/ELIMINATE DAIRY. We are the only species on the planet that drinks that breast milk of another animal. Milk is full of hormones and proteins designed to make a baby calf to grow—not humans. The main protein in cow’s milk, casein, makes cancer cells grow, both in petri dishes and in lab rats. There are cancer-causing chemicals in most U.S. dairy products, like bovine growth hormones, antibiotics and pesticides. Dairy products also contain unhealthy amounts of Omega 6 fats (which have been linked to cancer), because we feed cows corn instead of grass, their natural diet. Additionally, any nutrient you get from dairy can also be found in other foods. It’s best to avoid dairy all together because it’s highly-inflammatory and mucus forming in the body.
LIMIT/ELIMINATE MEAT. Scores of studies show that regular consumption of meat, especially red meat, is linked to many types of cancer. Additionally, the meat, poultry, and fish industries have the same issues as the dairy industry with unhealthy additives—artificial growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, Omega-6 fats, genetically modified corn bi-products, nitrites and nitrates. As with dairy, there’s no nutrient from meat that you can’t get from another source. If you still want to include some animal products, eat only organic, free-range eggs that have not been supplemented with genetically modified feed, and wild-caught or organic poultry, fish, steak and bison. These should always be a minor component of a meal, with the biggest part being whole plant foods (fruits, veggies, soaked/sprouted nuts, seeds, grains and beans). Always avoid pork, which is very dirty and prone to parasites and larvae. The worst way to slow down detoxification, increase inflammation, and further entrench sickness is to consume dead foods—meat, dairy, refined and processed foods—which leave a lot of residue in our tissues and burden the body.
LIMIT/ELIMINATE REFINED/PROCESSED FOODS & SUGAR. Consider Wonder Bread for example, it’s likely been made from hybridized wheat, which likely contains a cancer-causing herbicide—glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup. The wheat changes from its original form as they strip out the vitamins and minerals found in the germ, throw away the bran where the fiber is. Then it’s turned into a fine flour and bleached, and mixed with yeast and sugar to make bread. You’re left with a very high-glycemic bread that’s nutritionally empty and leaves you bloated with glue-like gunk in your intestines, slowing digestion and your energy. Instead of refined and processed grains, eat carbohydrates in their whole form, like rice, quinoa, whole oats, etc. Take it one step further by soaking and/or sprouting your grains to neutralize the anti-nutrients and improve their digestion and nutrient absorption. Avoid the center aisles in the grocery store where you find the packaged foods; shop the perimeter.