A Gentler Way Through Chemotherapy: Reaching
Zero Malignancy Without Adding Stress
What to Focus On—and What to Leave Out
This lifestyle didn’t begin as a plan. It began the way many cancer journeys do: with searching and gathering information. Scientific papers, articles, book chapters—trying to understand what was happening and what could really help. Over time, that search settled into something much simpler: days shaped by decent food, warm tea, music, laughter, and rest.
None of this is revolutionary. Much of it has been known for a long time. But reading and learning helped clarify one essential thing: what to focus on—and what to consciously leave out.
Early on, it became clear that there are endless complementary therapies promising to reduce chemotherapy side effects or improve outcomes. Too many. Trying to follow all of them would mean constant scheduling, running from one place to another, working harder to pay for it all, and living in permanent tension.
That didn't feel like healing. That felt like another illness.
So, we made a decision that shaped everything that followed: we would not turn survival into a full-time management project.
Whenever something began to feel like a burden rather than support, I stopped and turned around. From the outside, that might look like laziness. It isn't. It's selectivity. Energy during chemotherapy is limited, and how you spend it matters.
There was also a practical point here. Many integrative approaches are expensive. Even good-quality food costs more. But by simplifying everything else—no running between therapies, no constant appointments, no eating out—we actually spent less overall. Cooking at home replaced restaurants, cafés, and convenience food. What we paid for was ingredients, not logistics.
What Mattered Most: Two Priorities
Instead of trying to do everything, we narrowed things down to two priorities that quietly support almost everything else:
Reducing stress
Protecting daily life and emotional energy
Reducing inflammation
Supporting the body through food and rest
These two are inseparable. Stress fuels inflammation. Inflammation worsens fatigue, digestion, sleep, and immunity. Once you recognize that loop, food, emotions, rest, and daily rhythm stop being separate topics. Everything is connected, and even small positive changes can influence overall health and life.
Reducing stress: protecting daily life
Slowing down doesn't come easily to everyone. It certainly didn't to me. What helped was changing the daily question from What do I need to do today? to:
- How do I want to feel today?
That single shift reduced rushing, decision fatigue, and the emotional highs and crashes that come with constant pushing. Things still got done—but with less strain.
We also learned to question necessity:
- Do we really need this?
- Does this have to happen now?
- What happens if we don't do it at all?
Many things were cancelled. Others postponed. Life became quieter, and in that quiet, more livable.
He began spending more time in his electronics lab. Once inside, he lost track of time—it was his kingdom. For some people, meditation looks like stillness. For him, it was the lab.
Some stress reduction came through the senses—small things that cost little and ask even less energy:
Pleasant aromas
We used an essential oil diffuser to fill the air with pine and eucalyptus during the day, and lavender in the evening. No schedule, no rules. We even named our diffuser Aladin, because it looks like a magic lamp—and sometimes felt like one.
Music
Classical pieces, film soundtracks, gentle instrumentals. Music had quietly disappeared from our adult life. Bringing it back felt like reclaiming a part of ourselves.
Laughter
Choosing comedy and lightness on purpose.
A doctor mentioned a Japanese animated series, Cells at Work. It turned out to be the most accessible explanation of cancer biology I had encountered. One episode explains how immune cells—Killer T cells, Natural Killer cells, Helper T cells—fight together against cancer cell, and how constant fighting exhausts them. What stayed with me was learning that laughter stimulates neurochemical signals that help revitalize Natural Killer cells. We already loved to laugh and had our daily doses of humor, but this animated series gave us another reason to invite even more laughter into our days.
Even for a scientist who prefers everything to be proven, some experiences resist neat measurement: aromatherapy, music, laughter, love. On their own, they may seem small, but in my opinion, alongside chemotherapy they become powerful in a familiar way.
A doctor once explained pain management to us using paracetamol and tramadol. Each works alone, but together their effect is multiplied rather than merely added. I imagine chemotherapy works in a similar way when combined with aromatherapy, music, laughter, and love. Chemo itself is strong enough to destroy cancer cells, but it also weakens the body.
Good food, rest, aromatherapy, music, laughter, and love cannot destroy large numbers of cancer cells. What they do is support the body that must endure the treatment. Each has its own effect; together, they amplify resilience.
With some adjustments—food, rest, and a smaller social circle limited to people without colds, flu, or other acute infections—life remains recognizably normal. Within that combination, intensive treatment does its job, the body holds, and zero detectable malignancy becomes possible.
Where Food Fits In
Food wasn't a separate project or a strict regime. It grew naturally out of the same principle: reduce stress, reduce inflammation, support the body doing hard work.
The main rule was simple:
If a dietary change becomes a constant source of stress, it's not helping.
We live in cities—between Chile and Serbia—and don't grow our own food yet. But we cook almost everything ourselves. Bread every few days. We make cheese once a week. Simple meals built around whole ingredients.
During chemotherapy, we followed a few flexible principles:
- Sugar: almost completely removed, allowed mainly through limited fruit. This helped keep meals low to medium glycemic—especially important with corticosteroids, commonly used in multiple myeloma treatment.
- Gluten: almost eliminated, with rare exceptions. His oncologist mentioned emerging research on gluten and inflammation even in people without intolerance. Once reduced, digestion has improved noticeably.
- Weight: avoiding overeating mattered. Excess weight adds inflammatory stress to an already burdened body. He lost about 15 kg in total, much of it intentionally.
- Processed meat: dried meats like prosciutto, ham, sausages, and the like. In an ideal world, cutting them out completely would probably be better for health. In the real world, my love’s love for meat runs deep, and forcing it out of his life would have felt heartbreaking—and pointless. He would have gone straight back to it, so that was a clearly lost battle. We kept it, but after reading far too many alarming things about additives in processed meat, I stopped eating it myself. That led to an unexpected twist: without company to enjoy it, he started eating a bit less too. So, we moved from a totally lost battle to an almost satisfying reduction. Not bad at all.
To balance occasional indulgences, we leaned heavily into anti-inflammatory foods:
- Olive oil, salmon
- Berries
- Nuts and seeds
- Oat, whole-grain rice, legumes, vegetables
- Garlic, ginger
- Mushrooms (worthy of a separate post)
The gut as a priority, not a side note
Chemotherapy is brutal on intestinal flora, and gut health is central to immunity. This became non-negotiable.
Sugar and gluten heavily reduced
Fermented foods daily: home-made kefir, yogurt, sour cabbage...
NO probiotic supplements, following medical advice
Warm, regular meals rather than extremes
Cells at Work Season 2 made this point strikingly clear. Two episodes show how healthy gut bacteria aren't passive helpers but an actual advantage in the fight against cancer. When beneficial bacteria are strong, immune responses work better, toxins are handled more efficiently, and the balance shifts. In the series, that difference literally decides the outcome. That framing stayed with us.
The rhythm of our days
A predictable daily rhythm became one of the most important forms of support. It helped stabilize energy, digestion, mood, and sleep—things chemotherapy tends to disrupt all at once.
On workdays, I handled most of the cooking while he continued working, adjusting intensity. Chemotherapy days (Thursdays) were kept deliberately light, with simple tasks and no heavy problem-solving. Fridays were often more productive. By the weekend, fatigue usually caught up with him, reminding us that chemotherapy rarely follows the calendar.
Evenings were early. Bed around 7 p.m., cuddling, a light series, and rest. After about two months, he felt strong enough to cook lunches on weekends. That moment mattered. It wasn't about the food—it was a quiet sign that strength, autonomy, and confidence were slowly returning.
A steady rhythm doesn't cure anything—but it makes treatment survivable.
Where we are now
No, we are not on that beach—yet. But suddenly, the prospect of being there feels very real and very positive.
After four months of high-intensive chemotherapy, he reached negative minimal residual disease. Following a break and full testing, he underwent autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). The procedure went smoothly, without complications. He didn’t even develop pneumonia in the hospital—something that, we were told, happens quite often.
We are now at day 100 post-ASCT. He remains minimal residual disease–negative—no detectable malignancy.
What comes after chemotherapy is a different phase, with different needs, especially around nourishment and rebuilding strength. It deserves its own discussion. This post focuses on the earlier stretch: how to live during active treatment without letting survival take over life entirely.
This lifestyle was never about control or perfection. It was about choosing carefully where to spend energy—money included—and creating conditions where the body could endure treatment while daily life remained recognizably human.
Many details and small decisions couldn’t fit into a single post. If parts of this resonate, you’re not alone, and shared experiences or questions are welcome in the comments. They may even help shape future posts.
And, as always, any medical decisions should be made in close discussion with your doctors.
SUBSCRIBE
Want to follow our story, get updates, recipes and laughter straight to your inbox?