Natalie Proenca conquered breast cancer for over 10 years. Her cancer diagnosis was in 2008 with conventional treatment. Then a few years later she had tumors in ovaries and uterus. Her oncologist confirmed that it was caused by hormonal therapy. She took this chance and used a natural approach and treated it by changing diet and exercises.

She has transformed herself using mind-body-spirit and decided to leave her Software Engineer career and was trained as a Cancer Coach with BeatCancer and TrulyHeal, and certified Holistic Integrative Health Coach with IIN. She is also a certified Plant-based Nutrition Graduate at eCornell (with T. Colin Campbell). She's helped many cancer patients recover from the treatments and even help them healed from different types of cancer such as breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer, kidney cancer, colon cancer, thyroid cancer, and brain cancer. She offers online programs; Colon & Kidney Detox and Beat Cancer Naturally. She has a strong passion to guide you to find the best protocol for you to fight cancer and get well. Connect with her on facebook.com/Natalie.Proenca or email at CoachNatalieProenca@gmail.com or 508-282-6698.

Natalie:  For someone who just found out that they've been diagnosed with cancer. What should they do? I think the very first thing you need to understand is that you have had cancer for years. You did not have cancer two days ago or two months ago, it has been for a long time. It could take seven to ten or twenty years. If you have lung cancer, it could be thirty years. So do not rush. I want you to step back and then just take a quiet moment and ask yourself, how did you get cancer and what you should do next. Most people, when they learn that they have cancer, get frustrated. They have fears. When you make decisions with fears, you make the wrong decision. I want you to learn, I want you to search, ask people who have been there, who have experience guide you, what you should do. So you have the right path. You don't want to try left and right and back and forth. You're going to lose time. Even though I said, you have been having cancer for a long time, but sometimes when you choose the wrong road, you're losing time and the cancer, it's true that it's growing all the time, but it's not as fast as when you know it. Think about two years, five years ago, you did not know that you have cancer. You never care about cancer. You never really think about it, but now you know that you have cancer, you start having fears, you start worry and that causes cancer to grow very fast.

So the first thing you should do is to just step back and ask yourself, what is the right protocol for you? You want to do conventional, or you want to do naturally or you want to do integrative? I want you to sit down and then take a piece of paper and write down pros and cons of each approach and think about what will fit your lifestyle the most, and what's best for yourself because each approach is not the best for everyone. You have to come up with your own protocol and that's the very first step that I want to suggest to anyone that has just been diagnosed with cancer.

Intro: Hello and welcome to the Beat Cancer Answer brought to you by beatcancer.org. The center for advancement in cancer education.

Carl: This is Carl Wagner. I'm here with Beat Cancer. We're here with another one of our great coaches, Natalie Parenza and I'm going to just shut up and let her speak. So Natalie, please tell us a little bit about yourself, your journey and how you came to beat cancer?

Natalie: My name is Natalie. My journey about cancer; I have been diagnosed since 2008, when my youngest son was just 10 months old. I had breast cancer and my son was just learning how to walk. At that time  I had no knowledge. I had no information about alternative medicine or alternative approaches so I don't know what to do. I just took the conventional treatment, just like a lot of people did. So I had surgery, I had chemotherapy, radiation. Then one day I saw one of my friends, she had cancer returned. She had breast cancer before and then she had cancer returned. The second time she had brain cancer and she didn't make it and I have seen a lot of people and I started to realize that conventional treatment is not the answer. I had that experience myself. I was on Tamoxifen, I was on hormone therapy for two years, then it started showing tumor in my ovaries and uterus. So the doctor kept watching the tumor growing, by that time I already told myself that I don't want to be like others, I don't want cancer to return. What should I do? I start taking control of my health and I start searching for the answer, how can I be cancer free?

So I study a lot. I started reading books, any books about cancer, I just read it and I started changing my lifestyle, changing my diet. So I told my doctor that I don't want any surgery anymore. I don't want any drugs, nothing. So I started changing, implementing a new diet. I make green smoothie every day and then start cutting meat one by one until finally I was able to switch everything. So I was on a plant based at some point. So I'm not completely vegan or vegetarian, I'm just trying to find what is best for me. So six months after that, the doctor said, what did you do? Your tumor is gone, but the doctor's still giving me Tamoxifen, I still kept taking it because she said, I'm still young. I was diagnosed when I was 36 and she said, okay, because you have an aggressive type, your cancer can come back in five years so you should be on hormone therapy. So I told my doctor that I don't want anything removed, no more surgery. So the first time the tumor was gone, she just said it was a surprise. Maybe it was something of a fault test or something. So I kept taking Tamoxifen more and more and the tumor started growing again.

The second time I was able to shrink the tumor, it happened three times until my oncologist said, okay, yes, your hormone therapy is actually causing your tumor to grow. So it took three times for my oncologist to convince me that it was the hormone of therapy that caused that. I knew that, so that time I already have knowledge, I already know what to do with my body so I was not afraid of cancer anymore. So that's my turning point, that's why I want to take control of myself and I start changing. It seems like I have my new life since then. So I have been doing this for more than 10 years now. I've been cancer free for 10 years.

Carl: Congratulations.

Natalie: Thank you so much, that's how I started to really pay attention and really interested and I want to become a cancer coach and help other people.

Carl: Yeah. Make your cancer mean something.

Natalie: It does.

Carl: Yes. So I hear many similar stories. In fact I might've shared this before with some other coaches, but my mother had breast cancer and she did radiation and I'm not sure if she did chemo, I was pretty young at the time. So she was a statistic of somebody who lived through breast cancer because she lasted more than five years. So they say you're a survivor, but she did die of cancer and it was cancer and that was in her intestinal area. It was actually on top of it. It was strange. So just like you said, the cancer came back and just like you said, a lot of people that the cancer comes back, they must change their lifestyle.

Natalie: So that was the thing that I started questioning because when I took the conventional treatment, I did not have any knowledge. My doctor did not tell me, she just said, oh, you can eat everything, but just reduce red meat to just a couple of meals per week and I hear a lot of information from my friends, from the media and it just gets confusing. At some point at the beginning, I actually refused everything because I don't trust anyone. Then I realized why a lot of people have cancer return. So conventional treatment is not the answer. Then I start searching for the truth. Then I realized that, oh my God, I have to do something because I don't want to be like others that have cancer return again. So that's what I start searching and learning and learning and here I am, I believe that my knowledge can help others and if I can save someone's life or someone can use my information, my knowledge that I have been studying for more than 10 years, I want to help other, I want to be the person who opening that door and show them and tell them here. There are so many roads, so many paths that you can choose how to get well without using a conventional treatment or if you want to integrate it both, you have to do something. You have to protect yourself, not to really get cancer again; I have seen some people, some of my clients, that they did not prepare themselves and then when they receive chemotherapy or radiation and they just get sick and sicker, and then they cannot tolerate the medicine, they cannot tolerate the drugs and they didn't make it and that is so sad.  That is why this information is not there for people to know this.

Carl: Yeah. It seems that well here in America, when somebody has any type of heart issue, anything, they usually leave the doctor's office with a laundry list of things to do, eat less salt, get more exercise, lose some weight, less red meat. But when we go to the oncology office with cancer, they don't tell you anything it seems, at least in regards to how you can participate in your own healing the way that they deal with heart issues say you get to be a participant, you get to be part of the healing process. So yeah, and what you said about integrative approach. So we don't ever say to anybody don't follow your