Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcription has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors and ommissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes to Life show on UK Health Radio. I’m Robin Daly, host for the show and founder of Yes to Life, the UK’s interpretive cancer care charity, helping people find out about the many ways in which they can use lifestyle and complementary medicine to support their well -being and recovery from cancer. It’s Yes to Life’s 20th anniversary and we’re focusing on key topics throughout the year relating to integrative medicine for cancer. Today I’m speaking to a very old friend of the charity, Kirsten Chick, about one of the first topics anyone looking beyond the box of conventional care is likely to stumble on, nutrition. It’s an area of support that’s developed hugely in the time Yes to Life has been running, driven by an explosion of new scientific understanding. Hi Kirsten, great to have you back on the show again.

Kirsten Chick
Hello Robin, it’s always a pleasure.

Robin Daly
So as part of our 20th anniversary year we’re focusing on a range of topics around integrative cancer care and this time it’s nutrition. So I’m delighted that you’ve agreed to be our lead advisor on nutrition going forward so who better to talk to you today. My aim for today’s interview will be to look at nutrition as a single topic in relation to cancer, nutrition in all its multiple guises from diets to fasting, from supplements to juicing, just to get a sense of where we got to with the rapidly moving science and the ever increasing clinical interest and engagement amongst both practitioners and patients. So do you want to start out by listing some of the key developments, the changes that we’ve seen in the arena over the last two decades as you’ve been supporting people with cancer through nutrition all that time.

Kirsten Chick
Yeah, absolutely. So, I think in terms of approaches, there are some new developments that have been made there, but the foundations of it all are actually pretty similar to when I first started practicing, which is what we really want to look at in the world of nutritional therapy is the individual person in front of us and what their nutritional needs are in this moment, which isn’t necessarily just about what their cancer diagnosis is or what their age is or what treatment they’re on, but taking all of those things into account and where they’re at emotionally and psychologically and what they can cope with right now and all of the many different things, financial things that we can take into account.

Kirsten Chick
So, all of those things have always been really important, looking at the individual and personalising nutrition as much as possible. Now, that word personalise shows a huge or brings in a huge development that’s come in over the last 20 years because personalised nutrition is now often associated with looking at nutrigenomics, which is somebody’s DNA, their genetic variations if you like. So, looking at specific genes and gene variants that are associated with things that we can either change with nutrition or that can influence how we process certain nutrients with foods and that kind of thing. So, it’s DNA that’s directly related to nutritional approaches and using that information to then personalise what we’re going to recommend for an individual. So, that’s been a huge development. It’s having much more access and awareness and knowledge about what to do with that information as well, which is still growing.

Kirsten Chick
So, you can go and have your nutrigenomic test done, so you can maybe spit into a bottle or have a swab or something like that, get your DNA tested, your nutrigenomics test done and have all of this information come back about these SNPs or these variations. But still, how we then interpret that and put it into a context of what that individual needs nutritionally, a lot of that is still, the science around that is still growing in the same way that access to microbiome tests is now broadened considerably. So, it is so much easier now to get a stool test done where you can get an analysis of where your microbiome is at right now or your gut microbes. But how we interpret that and analyse that and then use that information in a way that’s meaningful and helpful to that person stood in front of you, that has developed but it’s still not completely there.

Kirsten Chick
So, we have lots more tools at our disposal, we have lots more information, but we’re still, the human body is so complex, so we’re still learning about how we can best use that information. So, we still have to keep coming back to that person in front of us and the case history that we’re taking alongside. And there are many other tests that we can do as well. I think that’s the biggest change I’ve seen is the amount of testing that happens now or that can happen within nutrition and some of that extra information that it provides, whether it’s blood tests, urine tests, things like Dutch testing, for example, vitamin D testing or these stool tests and DNA tests, they provide so much more useful information. When we put it all together within the context of an individual’s case history and really looking at and listening to the person in front of us and making meaning from all of that, there are a lot more pieces to the jigsaw puzzle now if we put them together in a helpful way.

Kirsten Chick
So, I guess that’s probably the biggest thing in terms of how we’re practising. The other thing, of course, is how nutrition is deceived. I think that’s gained traction a lot as well. I think you, Robin, and yes to life, have played a massive part in this, in getting people to actually take nutritional therapy and other integrative approaches much more seriously across the board, really. We’ve still got a long way to go, as you know. We have. But I think you’ve been really instrumental in helping us get to.

Robin Daly
So yeah, testing, it’s quite a thing, isn’t it? I mean, I kind of imagine it’s a job even for you to keep up with what’s on offer. I mean, everyone seems to me they’re coming out all the time. And it’s a very interesting area because as you say, you’re much better equipped with information than we ever were 20 years ago. But as you say, it’s something to learn, well, what do we do with this information and can we simply have too much information to be useful? These kind of questions and the where the leaders come from, it even now varies from practitioner to practitioner. But it’s like when testing first began to sort of be on the ascendant, there was a kind of thinking of like, well, forget all the old sort of clinical judgment in with the testing instead.

Robin Daly
But you know, it hasn’t really worked out that way. You still have to use both things. And you still got to find the right balance of these two things in order to really be of help to someone. So it’s very interesting, because the the arts and the intuitive side of being a nutritionist is still needed as much as ever, I think.

Kirsten Chick
Oh, I completely agree with that. There’s, there’s no single test that’s going to give you a complete picture of what’s going on. It’s all, if you think of a test as looking through, looking through a telescope at a piece of the moon, right? And then you kind of, on a different day where the moon’s at a different angle, a different night when the moon’s at a different angle, you get your telescope out and you look at a different piece of the moon, or you might look at it from a slightly different angle or with a different telescope. So you’re, you’re getting information, but you still haven’t got the whole moon. You still can’t understand the whole of the moon. To do that, you, it would take because the human body and how itself is so complex, and also because it’s changing from moment to moment as it interacts with what you’ve just eaten, what the temperature’s like, what the climate’s like, the time of day, the time of year,

Kirsten Chick
how stressed you are. All of these other things means that really kind of your microbes are continually changing as a response, your, how your nervous system responds, how much sodium is in each cell. All of these things are changing from moment to moment. So to fully understand what’s going on with the human body with testing, you’d possibly have to find a way of testing every single cell in the body and all the fluids around and bathing the cell continuously and have a live prime reading and have their head space, the capacity to process that and understand it and interpret that as you’re going along. I mean, I don’t think AI is ever even going to be able to do that unfortunately.

Robin Daly
It’s good to have a, you know, there’s a great picture you put out there just to keep a perspective on the fact that a new test can come along and it could look like the last missing part of the puzzle you really need. You’ve got to have this, but it could be just another little tidbit of information actually in the scale you’re talking about.

Kirsten Chick
Yeah. And it can be a complete red herring as well. And it takes skill and judgment and experience and practice to avoid falling into pitfalls of red herrings or to even be aware that there are red herrings out there and to keep grounding it in the case history of the person standing in front of you and everything that you’re listening to, that they’re telling you, really listening to their experience, trusting their experience. So that’s putting that all together. Like I said, it’s like building up a jigsaw puzzle. And if you take that all together, you can build up the picture. Whereas if you’re just looking at a small part, you can get distracted sometimes. But having said that, testing is also quite wonderful. And I’ve had some really speedy breakthroughs with people that I may not have had as quickly or at all sometimes without the testing we’ve done. So I am a fan of testing, but I also am very aware of how you currently can and can’t use it.

Robin Daly
Yeah, and the last thing I’d like to throw in is I feel testing can be very valuable for us for the confidence factor of knowing the patient’s name and you know that they’re going in the right direction. I mean, just simply that.

Kirsten Chick
Absolutely, yeah.

Robin Daly
Okay, so I want to talk about a few things I’ve noticed coming on the scene the last 20 years, still fairly high level I have to keep it because there are a few of them. I will sort of start in with petrogenics. I mean, no one’s calling them that a while ago, but they’ve been around for a long time, basically. But it’s only just recently they’ve become linked up to cancer. And like many new kids on the block, it was initially seen as a one -size -fits -all solution, the answer. But over time, I think it’s settling into being seen as very useful for some people, which is a good result, actually, for anything new that comes along. Do you want to expand a bit on that?

Kirsten Chick
Yeah, so I’ve been working on and off with the ketogenic diet probably for 20 years now. So and in the last few years, it has gained a lot more traction. And I think one thing that’s been driven by certain practitioners that have really gotten behind it, but also the ability to understand what’s going on a lot more. So 20 years ago, we were kind of guessing at why ketogenic might work or that approach might work for some people, whereas now we’ve got a lot more information about what it is and what it isn’t doing. And as time goes on, we’ll get more as well. And we’ve got a lot more, again, with testing, we can resources to be able to work with that and, you know, see what’s going on. And if it’s having a beneficial impact, if it’s appropriate for an individual, that kind of thing.

Kirsten Chick
But what’s wonderful about it is when something like this becomes more popularized and and has, you know, is really helpful for people, it’s not going to be helpful for everybody, not everyone’s going to get bored with the ketogenic diet, it’s not going to suit everybody. But those people it does, because that’s growing, it’s a lot better supported. Now, there’s so many more resources out there. There’s so there’s a much better understanding of how to put a ketogenic diet into place in a way that’s going to really work for most people. Ironically, a lot of that actually, or maybe not ironically, but a lot of that came originally from the sports nutrition world. That’s where a lot of this research started. And it was originally people coming to me, he’d come from that background, he’d then had a cancer diagnosis, saying I want to work with the ketogenic diet that made me look at it all those years ago.

Kirsten Chick
So yeah, it’s there has been a lot of research and interest and the more that grows, the easier it is for people to follow it. But it’s, you know, it’s one of those things, it’s very on trend at the moment, which brings with it all of these positives in terms of support and resources and being taken more seriously, there’s a lot more research growing behind ketogenic approaches and more understanding of how, you know, different ways to do it that might be more helpful as well. But just because all of that is there, if you’re sitting there thinking, oh, I’ve, you know, I really gave it my best effort, but actually, it just didn’t work for me. And now, you know, you’re feeling really despondent about it or don’t because it’s not the only way. This is one thing I’ve learned about nutrition over the years is there are some really well proven, really helpful, useful approaches out there.

Kirsten Chick
Not just one, there are some. So one doesn’t feel right isn’t isn’t accessible for whatever reason, maybe you’re not supported well enough to be able to prepare it or, you know, prepare the food in the way or to afford to do it properly, or you haven’t got the energy to focus on that or the kind of psychological support that you need, you know, the headspace. There are other ways that can also be useful. But if it is a good fit, and it feels good, and it works well, then brilliant. There’s, there is a lot more understanding and research now, and that’s growing all the time.

Robin Daly
Yeah I think one of the most exciting things about the ketogenic diet has been for me it’s kind of a it’s a breakthrough diet. I mean there’s been diets for cancer ever since Max Gerson, they’ve all been universally attacked, has been quackery and this is the first one that’s actually gained some serious traction in the wider scientific community not just the kind of alternative world and I wouldn’t be that surprised to hear an oncologist saying oh yes ketogenic diet you know it’s got to that stage where it’s getting that sort of recognition and of course it is a Trojan horse for the rest of nutrition to get in the door and stop being trashed and ignored. That’s a really good point. Very valuable you know thing that’s happened there. Okay so another dietary invention that’s having a big impact is fasting. It’s sort of associated but it’s got lots of forms of its own as well. Do you want to tell us about the main types and the ways these are helping people?

Kirsten Chick
Yeah, well, ketogenic is a fasting mimicking diet, say, really fasting is about switching the body into that metabolic state where we’re making a huge amount of our energy from ketone bodies. And it’s encouraging metabolic flexibility, which is like a bit of a term at the moment in terms of not being stuck into that, needing sugar all of the time, but being able to switch into your rest and repair modes and things like that as well. So whether you’re doing that with a ketogenic diet or with some kind of fasting, there are similar benefits. And there are many, many different ways that people can fast. So there’s always been the classic three -day fast or five -day fast that people have been doing for millennia and different patterns of fasting.

Kirsten Chick
There’s fasting, there’s religious types of fasting that, you know, when something’s actually written into a religion, it does make me think, you know, there’s something important about this. So there are, there are those different patterns, there are things like the 5 -2 approach that became popular with Michael Raisley. And there’s the time restricted eating where there’s the patterns of eating through the day. So maybe you have like an eight -hour window where you eat and a 16 -hour window when you don’t eat. So there are all of these different patterns to play with. I suspect that they are all, they all have equal benefits if they’re done in a way that’s really nourishing and supportive. But if you do a longer fast, that might kind of keep you going for a while and then do another one.

Kirsten Chick
But if you’re doing regular fasts, maybe the time restricted eating or you’re fasting one day a week, then you’re kind of, or the ketogenic fasting or cycles of ketogenic fasting seem to be what’s, what’s coming up to be the more sensible way of doing this is you’re keeping on top of making sure that you can get into those states where you’re keeping, yourselves are able to keep themselves really, really healthy. I think the easiest one for most people is the time restricted where you’ve got an eating window each day. There’s been a lot of science and research into that as well. And I’ve got a little bug bearing that most of the science has done on men.

Robin Daly
That was it. That was so interesting.

Kirsten Chick
So that is changing. But female bodies respond differently to fasting. I imagine. Take that into account. And some of the research that is out there seems to suggest a difference between women and men, and even between women who are menstruating and post menopausal women. So there’s something about having a menstrual cycle, maybe the potential to be pregnant, that changes how we respond to a lack of food. And one thing that has also started to emerge that what most people find the easiest way of doing it, which is skipping breakfast, is not necessarily the healthiest way to do it. So actually, things seem to be or the science seems to be pointing in the direction at the moment to have an early breakfast and an early dinner and then do the the fasting in the evening and overnight, which ties in with things like Ayurvedic circadian fasting, the Chinese five elements, so the Chinese medicine approaches of 7 to 9am being the high time with the stomach.

Kirsten Chick
So that’s where we want to have our biggest meal and do our most digestion and then resting later in the evening. So that’s one thing I would say to bear in mind about fasting. But again, it’s something that’s always been around, but it’s so exciting to see so much more research starting here.

Robin Daly
Yes, the science is actually given in wings, isn’t it? Yeah, very interesting, yeah, and as you say, it’s the different degrees of challenge in these different methods for people and that’s a big factor, really, is what somebody can actually put out with, so, yeah, what they can work with.

Kirsten Chick
Yeah, this is all backed up in how accessible nutrition is. If somebody gets a cancer diagnosis and they just take a quick peek and think, all right, okay, now I’ve got to fast for a week every month and follow a ketogenic diet and I can’t cope, they’ll just walk away and not do anything. Part of accessibility to nutrition has to be about realizing that there are options and actually you can take this at your own pace and tailor this to what works for you right now.

Robin Daly
Okay, so the microbiome has moved steadily towards centre stage and is beginning to take up a fairly unique role in the attention it’s receiving from both conventional science and nutritional science. So would you tell us where things stand with our understanding of the importance of the microbiome, particularly in relation to cancer?

Kirsten Chick
Yeah, I mean, it’s super important. And it does change all of the time, which is really great. It means that it’s something that’s a varying factor. But I’ve I’ve gone from saying the microbiome is the frontline of our immune system to saying that the microbiome is the heart of our immune system. It regulates so much and it regulates inflammation, not just inflammation in the gut, but inflammation throughout the body. And it has an impact on how T cells behave and B cells and other aspects of the immune system, natural killer cells, human necrosis factor, various interleukins that are involved in in our immune activities. So it’s, it’s very much a point where we can interact with our immune system. So it’s, it’s a no brainer to really look at that. And I’ve been looking at the science of that really quite closely. And what seems to be interesting is, I mean, it’s so complex is there’s a jungle in there.

Kirsten Chick
And everybody’s is, a lot of the research has been done on mice who have similar microbiomes to us, but there are fundamental differences. There’s one thing that I’ve been looking at recently, which is so there are, we, we group the microbiota, the different microbes into different classifications, like classic biological classifications. And as you go up the scale, as we group them a bit more, they, we classify them into groups called phyla. And there are two main phyla called, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing these right, but I pronounce them femacutase and factorial adetase. And often research will look at the balance of those two things, we call it the FB ratio. So I’ll just talk about the FB ratio, it’s easier. So the FB ratio can actually be that because the two biggest groups in mice and human gut microbiomes, that’s one of the reasons we, we look at those, we look at mice a lot, but actually the ratios are really quite different.

Kirsten Chick
And the ratios in humans and in mice can be different. And according to one’s cancer diagnosis, for example, so they have been looking at the FB ratio with people with specific types of cancer, comparing to other types of cancer, and it’s been shown to be different. So it’s very much involved. And there is a lot of research now looking at, okay, is it worse trying to manipulate that? Can that make a difference on outcomes? And it does this, the science so far seems to be strongly suggesting that it can. And of course, one of the big things there is that treatments like chemotherapy can really mess up the microbiome. So you’re supporting it during and after actually can that improve the, the experience of chemotherapy.

Kirsten Chick
And, and it seems like the again, the science is suggesting that it can and also the outcomes as well, not just with chemotherapy, but also immunotherapy and radiotherapy are the different types of therapy if we can support, sometimes it’s not appropriate to put too much support in during treatment, but before and afterwards we can. There’s one, one feed group I’m particularly interested in, which is mushrooms, which is appropriate during treatment and very appropriate for almost everyone unless somebody’s got a mushroom allergy during treatment. And it’s a prebiotic. And that’s one thing I’m particularly interested in is whether that can have an impact and what the outcomes are. And what I’m learning is that there’s some really interesting information coming out again done on mice. I’d like to see a lot more human research. I mean, things like mushrooms, for example, have been, they’ve been approved for use in Japan, in Asia for over 30 years, they’ve been using it alongside chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Kirsten Chick
So we know, you know, it’s got a clinical history of safety. So let’s start looking at them more in clinical trials and also, you know, getting stool samples, looking at what’s going on with the microbiome there. I think we’re at the stage now, especially with AI being used increasingly in research, I think we’re at the stage now where we can look at really complex things like that much more effectively. And I think that’s, that’s another exciting area of nutrition and nutritional research is the arm of artificial intelligence coming in and how that means that this incredibly complex and dynamic body that we have would now maybe have a little bit more brain power to help us understand it and look at it.

Robin Daly
Yeah, we need it. Yeah, really interesting you talk a little bit there about really how nutritional science can actually support people undergoing traditional treatments. And of course, this is a new area. It hasn’t really, I mean, I say new area, it’s not new, but it’s new from the point of view of the recognition and science behind it in the last 20 years. It’s really emerged just how powerful integration can actually be. And so another reason to take these kind of nutritional interventions much, much more seriously than ever in the past is the way that they can actually improve the effect of chemotherapy or immunotherapy. This is extraordinary and, you know, is sort of waking a few people up to the fact that maybe it’s not all a load of hocus pocus. There’s something in this nutrition stuff. So it’s very good news.

Kirsten Chick
back to fasting and ketogenic approaches as well. I mean, there have long been studies again on mice and rats that have been suggesting a potential benefit there. And now we’re starting to see studies in human beings as well that are showing a lot more promise. And I know that in my own practice, I don’t suggest everybody, there’s some people fasting really isn’t appropriate. And as an example, somebody’s got a history of anorexia, you would want to start talking fasting with them. However, and where it’s appropriate, where it’s really, I think somebody’s really going to get on with it. I generally will recommend fasting around treatment, around chemotherapy, around radiotherapy. And what I’ve seen for many years now is that the vast majority of people that do experience incredible benefits from doing so. So I’ve had some people that have gone through their first round and had just really horrendous side effects.

Kirsten Chick
And then they’ve decided to try some fasting. And then the side effects have reduced remarkably, just really quite remarkably. And I’ve seen that enough times now to know that that’s not a clinical trial. I can’t say this is definitely what’s going to happen here. But it’s convincing me that it’s worth supporting people through that. And what’s usually being looked at is five days. That’s what’s usually recommended is five days around treatment. But I never recommend five days. It’s normally two or three days. And that’s still tremendously helpful. Because five days is quite a long time, especially when they’ve just given you steroids and you’re starving hungry. There’s lots that we know now around fasting and around ketogenic diets and how to put them into place in a way that can support people.

Robin Daly
Excellent, excellent. So while we’re talking about the microbiome, we can’t now ignore the gut -brain connection and all the burgeoning psychoneuroimmunology science that’s making the arenas of physical and mental well -being ever more difficult to separate. This is your kind of territory. Do you want to tell us some more about that?

Kirsten Chick
Yeah, well, we’ve always known about it, haven’t we? We’ve always known that you get butterflies or a nervous tummy. And, but again, the science is catching up. And we’re finding out more about the mechanisms by which this happens. So we’ve learned a lot more about the vagus nerve, for example, and how it communicates between the gut and other organs in the brain. And that 80% of the communication is upwards from the gut to the brain. And we’ve learned about the neurotransmitters that are produced by the gut microbiota and also by the lining of the gut wall. So I’ll take serotonin as an example. So we’ve known for a long time now that the gut wall produces serotonin, and that the brain produces serotonin. And up until even just, I think, 10, 15 years ago, we used to think that the serotonin in the brain influences mood and behavior. And the serotonin in the gut is really just about gut motility and gut related activity.

Kirsten Chick
And so when it was then discovered that gut microbes can also produce serotonin. And initially, from psychotherapists, there was a bit of a, well, you know, it’s not really going to affect how people feel or behave. But actually, very quickly, it became evident that the neurotransmitters produced in the gut, whether it’s by the gut wall, or by the microbes, do have a profound impact on mood and behavior. So that is something that we can also work with in terms of understanding people’s dopamine levels. And what I’m really interested in as well is understanding things like why, why do we feel like we’re addicted to sugar, there’s so many multiple layers of that going on. And that’s a big thing for people that get a cancer diagnosis is because one of the things that people have been saying for years is give up sugar, sugar, future cancer.

Kirsten Chick
And although that statement inherently is correct, I do have a little bit of an issue with just saying sugar, future cancer, because actually, sugar feeds every cell in your body. So you need some, and if you deprive cells of sugar, actually, they can be very good at cancer cells can be very good at finding other sources of energy. Well, all cells can be very good at finding other sources of energy. So it’s much more complex than that. But nevertheless, the big thing is cut out sugar. And for most people, actually reducing their sugar and refined carbohydrate intake is really important. And the extent to which they reduce it, whether it’s just to kind of really nourish it, sustainably nourishing levels, or whether it’s to ketogenic levels, there are lots of different options there. But in terms of why do we find that so hard?

Kirsten Chick
Why is it so difficult to turn around and just give up sugar overnight for most people, not for everybody, but for lots of people? And I think it’s not just there’s more to it than willpower. It’s not that all of these people don’t have any willpower, but that’s how it’s put across. And then we start beating ourselves up about it. And then it becomes really stressful and joyless. Whereas actually, if we understand that there are there’s biochemistry going on there. So part of the biochemistry might be that there is a gut microbiota imbalance, so dysbiosis, which is producing more microbes that, for example, like candida, that really try and get you craving more sugar, because that’s what they feed on. And if you feed candida sugar, it weaves out a little bit of serotonin. So that’s an interesting little pathway there to look at. And also, if you’re not in metabolic flexibility, you’re going to be tied into needing sugar for energy all of the time.

Kirsten Chick
If your insulin pathways are compromised, and if your dopamine levels are low as well, which is another neurotransmitter, then getting that hit from sugar is going to be important all of the time. So that’s where it becomes really quite interesting. Yes, good question.

Robin Daly
Yeah well one of the exciting things it does I think is it sort of gives you two ways into most problems it seems to me. You can come at them psychologically and emotionally or from a physical point of view of some nutrient or whatever and those two ways is a much better resource than just one or the other. It might be weighted one way or the other, it might seem much more of an emotional problem or it might seem much more of a digestive problem say but in fact it’s probably got both ingredients in it. Chances are and so to look at both simultaneously are in a much better position to help somebody.

Kirsten Chick
Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree with that. And that’s one of the reasons that I’m really passionate about making sure that people find nutritional approaches that they enjoy, might see, might see a stretch, actually really enjoy. Feed is about enjoyment. Feed is about we have an emotional connection with our food. We shouldn’t feel deprived. We shouldn’t feel that we are depriving of ourselves of things because we’ve got this horrendous illness. And if we want to get better, we’ve got to, you know, go through this sackcloth in action. I mean, it might feel like that a little bit from time to time, just a tiny bit whilst we kind of shift patterns and behaviours. But actually, most of the time it should feel joyful or if not joyful, at least satisfying.

Robin Daly
Well, but yeah, the knowledge, the confidence of doing something good for yourself is a big part of that, isn’t it? Okay. So when you started out training nutrition all those years ago, you were already convinced from your own firsthand experience of the vital role that a nutritionist could play in supporting someone with cancer. I’m just interested, you know, these decades later, how’s that changed at all?

Kirsten Chick
Oh, it’s changed massively, Robin. There was very little, very little awareness around of any difference that nutrition could make. I didn’t, when I had my own cancer diagnosis, I didn’t have much awareness around it. It all came from my own intuition. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear. Yeah, I’m very pleased to hear. I was off at Guy’s Hospital and getting fresh greens brought to me every day. I’d never been passionate about eating fresh greens before, but suddenly I was. When I was eventually allowed back down to Brighton again, I was seeking out seaweed. I had no idea why I was seeking out seaweed, but I was buying bladder rack from our local health food shop on a regular basis. I hadn’t read anything or heard anything about it. I’d never had it before. I just really was just going on intuition. Another big one was mushrooms. And at the time, everyone was like, oh, if you’ve got a cancer diagnosis, don’t eat mushrooms. But I felt so strongly that’s what my body wanted, that I just ate mushrooms.

Robin Daly
I mean, it sounds like, you know, pregnancy, where people go off and eat impulsively things.

Kirsten Chick
Exactly. So, there was no training at the time, specifically around integrative oncology nutrition or oncology nutrition. There was obviously nutritional training, which I did. And I remember one of my case studies had, just as I was graduating, one of my case studies had a cancer diagnosis and asked me to carry on working with her. And at that point, that was a huge decision and I talked it through with her. But at that time, there were, you know, there were very few specialists around. Precious view. So, I agreed. I said, you know, you know that I’m going into this, but, you know, there was nowhere else anyway. So, I’ll do my best. Word got around and I just spent the next, you know, however many years just reading everything I could, just learning what I could and working with people and really trying to listen to them in the way that I’d listened to myself.

Kirsten Chick
And then as time has gone by, now there are courses and there are trainings and there are kind of much more reliable books and more research. There’s so much more out there that I can actually imagine it being quite overwhelming now if you wanted it in a different way, if you wanted to work in that area. It’s like, where do you go? There’s so much, there’s so much to learn, which is fantastic. I think that’s really brilliant because a lot of the time I was, it was a really good grounding in learning to just be really disciplined with how I was working with people in terms of, you know, really focusing on them as an individual, really doing the very best I could for them, balancing research with listening,

Kirsten Chick
with intuition. And having the ability to develop that over the years has been such a privilege. I think that’s been a really fantastic way of learning how to work with people in that way. But it’s so, you know, going into that now with so many fantastic courses out there, fantastic trainings, resources, mentors. Yeah, that’s the explosion there is really encouraging, really inspiring.

Robin Daly
is such great news, isn’t it? It’s exactly what we need with the explosion of people with cancer needing support. We need a lot of people to be doing that. Fantastic, we’re out of time. Great talk, thank you so much Kirsten. I shall put the details of your fabulous book on nutrition with your show notes. And yeah, thank you very much indeed for giving us that great overview of nutrition in the last two decades.

Kirsten Chick
And, and thanks again for asking me to be the nutrition, the lead nutrition advisor for Yes to Life. It’s a real privilege. And it’s something that I feel, yeah, it’s just really lovely to, to take on this role or to accept this role. Because, as you know, I’ve been working with you and supporting you for so very long now. I have so much love and respect for Yes to Life. And there’s the many, many, many things that it does in terms of offers and provides in terms of nutritional education and support and advice and funding resources, and reading, making what could be something quite unattainable, really accessible to a lot of people. I’m very grateful for that. And I’m very grateful to be an official part of it now. So thank you.

Robin Daly
We love having you on board Kirsten. Thank you.

Kirsten Chick
You’re welcome, bye bye.

Robin Daly
If you enjoyed this interview with Kirsten with her caring, pragmatic, expert style, then you’ll love her book that I mentioned. It’s called Nutrition Brought to Life. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you’ll join me again next week for another Yes to Life show here on UK Health Radio. Goodbye.