This is Dr. Michelle Tollefson. She’s a gynecologist, and a menopause and lifestyle medicine expert. She’s also a breast cancer survivor, and, indeed, thriver.

So, what does she want us to know?

A Multivector Approach To Health

There’s a joke that goes: a man is trapped in a flooding area, and as the floodwaters rise, he gets worried and begins to pray, but he is interrupted when some people come by on a raft and offer him to go with them. He looks at the rickety raft and says “No, you go on, God will spare me”. He returns to his prayer, and is further interrupted by a boat and finally a helicopter, and each time he gives the same response. He drowns, and in the afterlife he asks God “why didn’t you spare me from the flood?”, and God replies “I sent a raft, a boat, and a helicopter; what more did you want?!”

People can be a bit the same when it comes to different approaches to cancer and other serious illness. They are offered chemotherapy and say “No, thank you, eating fruit will spare me”.

Now, this is not to trivialize those who decline aggressive cancer treatments for other reasons such as “I am old and would rather not go through that; I’d rather have a shorter life without chemo than a longer life with it”—for many people that’s a valid choice.

But it is to say: lifestyle medicine is, mostly, complementary medicine.

It can be very powerful! It can make the difference between life and death! Especially when it comes to things like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

But it’s not a reason to decline powerful medical treatments if/when those are appropriate. For example, in Dr. Tollefson’s case…

Synergistic health

Dr. Tollefson, herself a lifestyle medicine practitioner and gynecologist (and having thus done thousands of clinical breast exams for other people, screening for breast cancer), says she owes her breast cancer survival to two things, or rather two categories of things:

1. a whole-food, plant predominant diet, daily physical activity, prioritizing sleep, minimizing stress, and a strong social network
2. a bilateral mastectomy, 16 rounds of chemotherapy, removal of her ovaries, and several reconstructive surgeries

Now, one may wonder: if the first thing is so good, why need the second?

Or on the flipside: if the second thing was necessary, what was the point of the first?

And the answer she gives is: the first thing was the reason she was able to make it through the second thing.

And on the next level: the second thing was the reason she’s still around to talk about the first thing.

In other words: she couldn’t have done it with just one or the other.

A lot of medicine in general, and lifestyle medicine in particular, is like this. If we note that such-and-such a thing decreases our risk of cancer mortality by 4%, that’s a small decrease, but it can add up (and compound!) if it’s surrounded by other things that also each decrease the risk by 12%, 8%, 15%, and so on.

Nor is this only confined to cancer, nor only to the positives.

Let’s take cardiovascular disease: if a person smokes, drinks, eats red meat, stresses, and has a wild sleep schedule, you can imagine those risk factors add up and compound.

If this person and another with a heart-healthy lifestyle both have a stroke (it can happen to anyone, even if it’s less likely in this case), and both need treatment, then two things are true:

• They are both still going to need treatment (medicines, and possibly a thrombectomy)
• The second person is most likely to recover, and most likely to recover more quickly and easily

The second person can be said to have paved the way to their recovery, with their lifestyle.

Which is really important, because a lot of people think “what’s the point in living so healthily if [disease] strikes anyway?” and the answer is:

A very large portion of your recovery is predicated on how you lived your life before The Bad Thing™ happened, and that can be the difference between bouncing back quickly and a long struggle back to health.

Or the difference between a long struggle back to health, or a short struggle followed by rapid decline and death.

In short:

Play the odds, improve your chances with lifestyle medicine. Enjoy those cancer-fighting fruits:

Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer

…but also, get your various bits checked when appropriate; we know, mammograms and prostate checks etc are not usually the highlight of most people’s days, but they save lives. And if it turns out you need serious medical interventions, consider them seriously.

And, by all means, enjoy mood-boosting nutraceuticals such as:

12 Foods That Fight Depression & Anxiety

…but also recognize that sometimes, your brain might have an ongoing biochemical problem that a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds isn’t going to fix.

And absolutely, you can make lifestyle adjustments to reduce the risks associated with menopause, for example:

Menopause, & How Lifestyle Continues To Matter “Postmenopause”

…but also be aware that if the problem is “not enough estrogen”, sometimes to solution is “take estrogen”.

And so on.

Want to know Dr. Tollefson’s lifestyle recommendations?

Most of them will not be a surprise to you, and we mentioned some of them above (a whole-food, plant predominant diet, daily physical activity, prioritizing sleep, minimizing stress, and a strong social network), but for more specific recommendations, including numbers etc, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Take care!