Cancer Stress Mindset

Cancer is not a battle; it’s a dance—take the lead. Have you been left wondering and worrying about the role of stress in your cancer diagnosis? Is there scientific evidence that stress can cause cancer? Integrative clinician, speaker, and cancer patient Brandon LaGreca will be your guide to distill the related science and offer support during this challenging time. Glean insights he has used to treat countless patients during their journey back to health. Cancer, Stress & Mindset will explain the contribution of stress to the initiation and progression of cancer; how stress affects the body and mind; and simple strategies to cope with the stress of being a cancer patient, from diagnosis through remission. Part 1 examines the science of stress, including the history of stress research, the evidence for a stress-cancer connection, and mechanisms that explain how stress affects our health. Part 2 explores the power of cultivating an anticancer mindset. Here you will learn to leverage language and self-talk to help you make decisions from a calm and centered place. An anticancer mindset is prerequisite to success with any conventional or holistic oncology treatment. Part 3 focuses on therapies to counter the negative effects of stress, especially as experienced by a cancer patient. This section explores evidence-based strategies used in cancer clinics around the world and advice on optimizing sleep, exercise, and diet to build stress resilience.

The author of The Willpower Instinct delivers a controversial and groundbreaking new book that overturns long-held beliefs about stress. More than forty-four percent of Americans admit to losing sleep over stress. And while most of us do everything we can to reduce it, Stanford psychologist and bestselling author Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., delivers a startling message: Stress isn’t bad. In The Upside of Stress, McGonigal highlights new research indicating that stress can, in fact, make us stronger, smarter, and happier—if we learn how to embrace it. The Upside of Stress is the first book to bring together cutting-edge discoveries on the correlation between resilience—the human capacity for stress-related growth—and mind-set, the power of beliefs to shape reality. As she did in The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal combines science, stories, and exercises into an engaging and practical book that is both entertaining and life-changing, showing you: • how to cultivate a mind-set to embrace stress • how stress can provide focus and energy • how stress can help people connect and strengthen close relationships • why your brain is built to learn from stress, and how to increase its ability to learn from challenging experiences McGonigal’s TED talk on the subject has already received more than 7 million views. Her message resonates with people who know they can’t eliminate the stress in their lives and want to learn to take advantage of it. The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress, but a guide to getting better at stress, by understanding it, embracing it, and using it.

Cancer care today often provides state-of-the-science biomedical treatment, but fails to address the psychological and social (psychosocial) problems associated with the illness. This failure can compromise the effectiveness of health care and thereby adversely affect the health of cancer patients. Psychological and social problems created or exacerbated by cancer-including depression and other emotional problems; lack of information or skills needed to manage the illness; lack of transportation or other resources; and disruptions in work, school, and family life-cause additional suffering, weaken adherence to prescribed treatments, and threaten patients' return to health. Today, it is not possible to deliver high-quality cancer care without using existing approaches, tools, and resources to address patients' psychosocial health needs. All patients with cancer and their families should expect and receive cancer care that ensures the provision of appropriate psychosocial health services. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient recommends actions that oncology providers, health policy makers, educators, health insurers, health planners, researchers and research sponsors, and consumer advocates should undertake to ensure that this standard is met.

A Mind-Body Approach to Healing If you have received a cancer diagnosis, you know that the hundreds of questions and concerns you have about what's to come can be as stressful as the cancer treatment itself. But research shows that if you mentally prepare yourself to handle cancer treatment by getting stress and anxiety under control, you can improve your quality of life and become an active participant in your own recovery. Created by leading psychologists specializing in oncology, the Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery program is based on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a therapeutic combination of mindfulness meditation and gentle yoga now offered to cancer survivors and their loved ones in hundreds of medical centers, hospitals, and clinics worldwide. Let this book be your guide as you let go of fear and focus on getting well. With this eight-week program, you'll learn to: • Use proven MBSR skills during your treatment and recovery • Boost your immune function through meditation and healing yoga • Calm feelings of fear, uncertainty, and lack of control • Mindfully manage difficult symptoms and side effects • Discover your own capacity for healing and thriving after adversity

In Meeting Psychosocial Needs of Women with Breast Cancer, the National Cancer Policy Board of the Institute of Medicine examines the psychosocial consequences of the cancer experience. The book focuses specifically on breast cancer in women because this group has the largest survivor population (over 2 million) and this disease is the most extensively studied cancer from the standpoint of psychosocial effects. The book characterizes the psychosocial consequences of a diagnosis of breast cancer, describes psychosocial services and how they are delivered, and evaluates their effectiveness. It assesses the status of professional education and training and applied clinical and health services research and proposes policies to improve the quality of care and quality of life for women with breast cancer and their families. Because cancer of the breast is likely a good model for cancer at other sites, recommendations for this cancer should be applicable to the psychosocial care provided generally to individuals with cancer. For breast cancer, and indeed probably for any cancer, the report finds that psychosocial services can provide significant benefits in quality of life and success in coping with serious and life-threatening disease for patients and their families.

This book discloses the true causes of cancer, why it appears in a specific person, how to eliminate its root cause, why conventional treatment is not enough, the ways to avoid its recurrence, and if you are healthy, how to stay well.

The reason why clinical science has not solved the riddle of cancer may not lie totally within the realm of the laboratory. It may lie in part in the mind and emotions of the patient. After two decades of research and psychotherapeutic work with cancer patients, Lawrence LeShan offers new evidence and startling insights into why some individuals get cancer while others do not--and why some are able to fight successfully for their lives while others rapidly succumb to the disease. Dr. LeShan has accumulated strong evidence that the mind can make the body receptive to cancer--and that the mind is also capable of fighting back. This is a book of hope. For while cancer kills, it can also be killed. You Can Fight For Your Life is a major humanistic work by an author with a passionate commitment to life.

A comprehensive work that brings together and explores state-of-the-art research on the link between stress and health outcomes. Offers the most authoritative resource available, discussing a range of stress theories as well as theories on preventative stress management and how to enhance well-being Timely given that stress is linked to seven of the ten leading causes of death in developed nations, yet paradoxically successful adaptation to stress can enable individuals to flourish Contributors are an international panel of authoritative researchers and practitioners in the various specialty subjects addressed within the work