The Power of Nutrition

My first real experience of the devastating effects of cancer came during my third year of university, when I was a pharmacy student at the University of Toronto. My grandmother was dying of pancreatic cancer, cared for at home by family in Timmins, my hometown in Northern Ontario.

As her cancer progressed, my grandmother became unable to swallow oral medications and relied on visits from her physician for morphine injections to relieve her pain. These weren’t working, though, and my family turned to me – a pharmacy student and the first in my family to attend university – for help.

I’ll never forget the call from my mother pleading for something to ease my grandmother’s pain. Morphine suppositories would have been the answer, but at the time, no drug company made them since the market wasn’t profitable enough. I remember the feeling of impotence I had as I told my mother that nothing could be done.

After I graduated two years later and set up my pharmaceutical practice in Ottawa, I made morphine suppositories available in Canada. This was the start of my journey and my commitment to serving the needs of people who had been abandoned or ignored by conventional medicine or drug corporations. My approach was, and still is, a simple one: “Solve the Problem.”

As a pharmacist, I am very much aware of the power of pharmaceutical drugs. But as a professional who has spent over 25 years studying and using evidence-based natural therapies, I am a strong proponent of the importance of nutrition and the impact it has on overall health. Nowhere is this more evident, than in the fight against cancer. Whether it be the power of foods, such as fruits and vegetables, to help prevent cancer, or the vital role nutrition plays to help people tolerate treatments, nutrition IS crucial to quality of life and well-being.

I am honoured to be ‘blogging’ this week on the Cancer Foundation’s website, about this important topic.