What recommendations do you have for myeloma patients that do not want to try a whole food plant based diet?

What recommendations do you have for myeloma patients that do not want to try a whole food plant based diet?

I don't think everybody needs to switch to a complete hundred percent change because I know that can be hard for a lot of people. I think incremental small changes are where the difference lies.

So most other data shows, like if you can move to around 80% plant forward diet and the 20% can be whatever else your craving and things like that, you are going to get most of the benefit out of it.

The rest, the last 20%, is important if you really want to go the full way. But you know that last 20% is not as important as the first 80% of moving towards it. And so you can start small with a few things like maybe having a fruit every day and then picking like thinking about your plate as to what you're eating.

So most people's plates have the meat as the main and the veggies as the side, but maybe switching that to having the vegetables as the main and then the meat as a side.

So changing the percentage of these foods on your plate, the Canadian food plate is a nice place to look at and you will see where a quarter of the plate is.

Whole grains, half the plate is fruits and vegetables, and a quarter of the plate is protein foods, out of which most of them are beans and legumes and lentils. And a small part of it is meat and the drink of choice is water in that food plate.

And I think that's a it's a nice food plate to go by.

Another way you could do it is instead of having about 80% of each meal,

you pick most meals being fully plant based and then you have some meals that are completely not because that's what you would want to do. But thinking about it overall as in a week, how many meals of mine or what percentage of my meals are there

and what it wherever you are just starting by changing and increasing like a 5 to 10% I think is important.

And then gradually as you see the benefit, you might that might drive you to change it further.

I personally don't have a specific pathway that I transition people in my myeloma practice.

I think that's a very individualized conversation.

it also does require knowledge base, right? Knowing what to do and suggestions. What are it's one thing to say go have a plan based. what does that mean? Do I eat salad and broccoli all day.

So, it's important to provide resources which which we do in our clinic, you know, giving people tips and ideas to help really get them going.

So that they can can do these things.

But also sustaining behaviors is also very hard.

For our clinic, we have a behavioral psychologist who helps with wellness plans. How can people find change within their lives that's doable and sustainable?

These are the important questions.

Is there a specific nutritionist patients should see? Is there an oncology nutritionist?

There are. So we have oncology, people who just see our cancer patients here, but that is kind of a luxury of a big city.

And so a nutritionist is a great place to start insurance. Usually we'll cover at least one visit. It depends on what condition you have. I'm sorry, each patient here gets one visit as part of their care.

But, insurance coverage varies depending on the diagnosis. But that is a great place to start.

And there are a lot of online resources, too. The American Heart Society, they show you what a healthy plate looks like. I mean, so there are tremendous it does require, typically having some kind of Internet access.

American Cancer Society has all this information on their Web page.

I think patients are looking for this. It is there. And there are usually visual pictures and other guidances that you can find pretty accessibly. I think the hard part is getting on a program and sticking with it. And sometimes it's not.

It's knowing what you should do.

And then and I think the one thing I would say to patients is it's not all or nothing changes. Incremental. No one's perfect and no one does, doesn't splurge or exercises every day or does everything right all the time. And the goal is not to be 100% perfect. The goal is to integrate things.

And two thirds of plants and vegetables, a lot on a plate. Even going from 0 to 1 or two per day is a step in the right direction. And so I just encourage people to try, try new things, try new activities, try new foods and don't be think you have to be perfect.