The Survivorship Project
The Survivorship Project is a podcast dedicated to sharing inspiring stories of cancer survivors and thrivers who have defied the odds, expert insights from leading health professionals and holistic healers, and practical tools for thriving beyond a diagnosis. This show is a beacon of hope, resilience, and empowerment for anyone navigating the survivorship journey—whether in recovery, treatment, or supporting a loved one.
The Survivorship Project
Nine Years Later: Chris Joseph on Healing from Stage III Pancreatic Cancer
When Chris Joseph received a stage III pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2016, doctors gave him what they offer most pancreatic cancer patients – limited time and limited options. In the face of a disease with a 70% first-year mortality rate, he initially followed the conventional path of aggressive chemotherapy. But when the tumor continued growing despite treatment, something within him shifted.
Taking his health into his own hands, Chris embarked on a journey that combined the best of traditional medicine with alternative approaches. From a specialised clinic in Germany offering vitamin infusions and stem cell therapies to immunotherapy treatments that became unexpectedly available, he crafted a personalised healing approach that defied his initial prognosis.
What makes this conversation truly special isn't just Chris's survival story – though thriving with pancreatic cancer for over eight years is remarkable. It's his profound perspective shift around illness itself. Rather than viewing cancer as something to battle or fight, he came to see it as communication from his body – an opportunity to transform his life at every level. This reframing allowed him to move beyond fear and into a place of empowered action.
Today, Chris maintains his health daily, including infrared sauna sessions, yoga, extensive walking, and mindful nutrition choices. Through his coaching practice, he helps others navigate their own healing paths.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
• Chris Coaching via Terrain Navigators
• Connect with Chris on Instagram
• Book: Chris Joseph - Life is a Ride
• Book: Brad Willis - Warrior Pose
• Book: Richard Bach - The Bridge Across Forever
Connect with Chris via email at chris@terrainnavigators.com or chrisjoseph@mac.com
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If you want to be a guest on the show, email Carsten directly at ckpleiser@gmail.com
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Chris Joseph was a successful business consultant, living life in the fast lane until he was brought to a hard stop with a stage 3 pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2016. Told he had limited time to live, Chris was offered the standard path of treatment, but he made a bold choice to question the system and find his own way through a combination of traditional medicine, integrative therapies and profound shifts in his mindset, purpose and spiritual life. He's the author of the deeply personal and honest memoir Life is a Right, a book about second chances, awakening and what it really means to live. In this conversation, we explore how Chris navigated the uncertainty, pain and unexpected beauty of the Survivorship journey. Chris., It's a pleasure having you here. I'm about to finish your book, which is amazing and really, really resonated with me because of all of the great stories that are so true. Thank you.
Chris Joseph:I'm grateful to be on here talking with you and that we're both helping to spread the word that people have choices.
Carsten:Exactly. Before we start with the choices you made, please take us back to the moment when you were first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. What thoughts went through your mind when you had this diagnosis?
Chris Joseph:So am I allowed to curse on this podcast? Yes, of course. So it was October 31st 2016, which, in the United States where I live, that's Halloween day, where kids go out and collect candy, and probably incredibly unhealthy, but that's a whole other thing. But anyway, it was October 31st. I had been feeling that summer of 2016,. I had been having some indigestion that had lingered for a while. I had lost weight, but I wasn't heavy at all, but I was losing weight and I was really depressed, and the depression part was really puzzling because my life was going really well, other than I wasn't feeling well, but everything else was going really well my work, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with my girlfriend. So for all three of those reasons, I went to my regular doctor in early October of 2016. He felt around and he said you should go get a scan. He didn't tell me until later that he felt something in my pancreas area. I guess he didn't want to scare me, which is totally legitimate, but anyway.
Chris Joseph:So October 31st, I went to get the scans and that's when they told me that you have a mass in your pancreas and you asked me how I felt when I heard that. It scared the crap out of me. Honestly, it scared me. I mean, I was petrified. You probably know this I'm not sure if your listeners do that. In the United States, 70% 70% of people who get diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are dead within one year from diagnosis. I didn't know the exact number back then, but I knew that pancreatic cancer was bad. The survival rate wasn't good. Immediately it scared the crap out of me and I thought I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Yeah, it was a horrible start.
Carsten:In your book you write about how film directors use pancreatic cancer as the killer to get actors off the screen and basically let roles die. And it's one of the scariest cancers you can face, right Because it's adapting so quickly to treatment and can be a silent killer, because by the time you have the symptoms it really is often like stage three or even stage four, sometimes right. In your case. It was then later on diagnosed at stage three, correct?
Carsten:It was stage three. Yeah, yeah, and you know many people, I think, feel immense pressure of when they get a diagnosis, they want to start treatment immediately. Did you kind of like pause and reflect and explore other options from the beginning, or did you also fall into this route of immediately following what the doctors are saying?
Chris Joseph:I fell immediately into what the doctors said and it's kind of what we're trained to do. I mean, I call it now brainwashing Listen to your doctor, put your doctor on a pedestal. And I'm not trying to be critical and I hope I'm not being critical of doctors there's lots of great ones but for my journey, listening to my doctor within a few months was a big mistake, a big, big mistake. They put me on chemotherapy, probably within a week or two after I got diagnosed in early November. The chemo wasn't working. So in January, two months later, they did a scan. The tumor was still growing. I was feeling horrible on the chemotherapy. So in January they upped the chemotherapy. They changed the dosing and the frequency and changed the chemicals, the type of chemo they were using, and it still wasn't working. And so that's, yeah, the pivotal day which I'm sure you're going to ask me about, but that I was going to die even more quickly because of the chemo, and so I just quit chemo.
Chris Joseph:I fired my oncologist. I have not talked or seen him since March of 2017. And when I did that, I just sort of figured there has to be another way. There has to be another way. Now. I didn't know there would be another way, and I didn't know if another way would work. The decision to quit could have turned out to be a disaster, but in hindsight now, eight and a half years later, it turned out to be the best thing I ever did. It just opened up a world of opportunity that I knew a little bit about, but I didn't know a lot about.
Carsten:And I know from your story that you were quite open with your diagnosis to all your friends. You opened up and you immediately published things on Facebook. Now, I assume when you decided to change treatment or look for alternative options, you were also posting something on Facebook Let everyone know. Posting something on Facebook let everyone know. Did you experience resistance or people having some kind of you know argument with you, let's say, about your decision, or were they quite open to it?
Chris Joseph:I would say I didn't encounter any resistance. I'm sure there were people who thought I was crazy, because part of me thought I was crazy for doing it. But I think what was larger than that was people were aware of how deadly pancreatic cancer is. So I think people were just kind of giving me some room to make my own choices, which I appreciated. But yes, I was publicizing everything. I was writing a blog, I was doing Facebook Live posts where I would you know, especially when I I'll tell you about the treatment in Germany. I did.
Chris Joseph:But when I went to Germany, almost every day I was doing a Facebook Live and some of the posts I was crying because I wasn't sure. Even when I went to Germany I wasn't sure. I mean, I still thought I was going to die. It took me many, many months to come out of that negative thinking and to come out of it with, oh, I'm not going to die from this. But yes, that's a long answer to your question. I'm sure some people thought I was nuts, even my girlfriend, who's much more conventionally oriented in medicine than me. She's much more inclined to stick with Western medicine. But she gave me the room to make my own choices and I'm always grateful for that.
Carsten:Fantastic and I love. Also, in your book you write how you don't want to make this about. Oh, this is the right thing, this is the wrong thing. You know, as you say, some people can react to chemotherapy very well, others can react very badly to chemotherapy. Some have much success, some have no success. So this shouldn't be about like recommending one thing or the other. It just like in your case, I think you had some genetical not problem but like a challenge where it means that your body couldn't release please help me there couldn't release toxins or something like that, and this also probably made your journey a bit harder. Right With the chemotherapy.
Chris Joseph:Yes, I had a genetic anomaly where it was really hard and it still is hard to get rid of toxins in my body. So, yeah, some people can tolerate chemo better than others. I was one of those people. I'd always had trouble, and still do, with prescription drugs. I'm the guy that gets the side effects that are posted on the labels that they put in with the drugs. Some people don't, some people it doesn't bother, but I am the person that it does bother. Yes, I mean what I tell people.
Chris Joseph:Now maybe this is jumping the gun a little bit here, but I do think chemo and radiation and surgery can be helpful to some, but none of those, none of the Western medicine treatments, are curing cancer. There is no cure for cancer in Western medicine. And even more importantly and I'm going to give you an analogy If you had mold in your basement, you would call out a mold remediator, someone to clean it up. They would test it to make sure it wasn't really toxic. Then they would clean the source of the problem. And the problem with mold in a basement is rainwater getting in or leaky pipe or some combination of those things. But the mold remediator would fix the pipe, would seal where the leaks are coming in, so the water wouldn't get in and the mold wouldn't come back.
Chris Joseph:The reason I bring up that analogy is Western medicine doesn't deal with that last part. They deal with cleanup, with radiation and surgery and chemo. That's the cleanup side. They do not deal with even thinking about it coming back in the future and that's where, on the lifestyle things, that people can do alternative treatments, because those do deal with root causes, making sure either cancer doesn't come back or making sure you don't get cancer in the first place.
Carsten:And these tools include, like spiritual work. It includes nutrition. It includes so many factors, and I know you're a big fan of radical remission. I'm too. The first book I've read was Radical Remission and the Nine Healing Factors, and you're a big fan of radical remission I'm too. The first book I've read was Radical Remission and the Nine Healing Factors, and you're a big fan of this too, and I totally agree with this. There must be additional or alternative things you can do to really work on the root cause.
Chris Joseph:I also think it applies to how much we don't know about curing things like cancer or preventing things like cancer. I mean, I am a thousand percent convinced that integrative alternative means can and do help. I mean, I'm living proof of that. But there are also things that we just don't know. Like you read, radical Remission and one of the factors you remember is having a strong reason for living. How does one define that? How does one define that? I don't really have. I mean, I can define it verbally and I know I had a strong, many strong reasons to live, and I still do. But is there something that we can't even measure with that? You know, how do you measure will, I guess. Anyway, I feel like I'm sort of rambling here.
Carsten:I struggled with this healing factor as well, the most Like how do you define that part? The rest made sense to me somehow, but this part was really hmm, I don't really know what to do with it, but that's maybe a different story now. We come to the exciting part now. So somehow you stop the treatment. You probably were scared let's excuse my word scared, shitless. Yeah, right, you're going to be gone. You know, in a few months you have two kids there. You wrote this heartwarming letter. You prepared this. You didn't send it to them. And then how did you got connected to this german clinic, immunio, or what was it called? Infusio?
Chris Joseph:infusio yeah, yeah, um, I had to remember it for a second because it's been a few years. So, after I quit chemo in march of 2017, like I said, I knew I wanted to still live. I started looking things up on the internet and then then I had a friend a casual friend, not a close friend, but a casual friend in Los Angeles, who had been following me on Facebook and he reached out to me and he told me about his journey to Infusio the year before, in 2016. He had had bladder cancer and he went there and he had really good success with it. So I started looking into it. By the way, I'll just skip ahead for his journey he's still around. He's still doing great, so the clinic was a great thing for him, as it was for me, but, yeah, so I decided that's where I wanted to go.
Chris Joseph:I've since learned and there are more clinics now I mean in Mexico and Germany, around the world literally and I just didn't know about all of them back then, and some of them are new. But my friends and family raised a bunch of money for me to go, because those things are not cheap, and I should mention I can only speak to how the United States healthcare system works, which is a deeply flawed system. It's a very sick sick care system, but insurance is not going to cover anything to Germany not a penny. So my friends helped raise the money and it was like $60,000 US dollars. So I was able to use that to get over there for the three weeks of treatment, to rent an apartment there because I was an outpatient, and it helped. I had people flying over to stay with me most of the time. I had my two brothers, had some friends one friend who flew with me, one friend who flew back with me so I was able to be there and not be alone, which was also really critical. My girlfriend couldn't go because she had a very young son to take care of.
Chris Joseph:Having the community. You know I don't think I really knew this at the time how much it really, how important it was, but looking back, it was really really important to have that community and to see how many people were in my corner. I think people have a right to whatever they want to do on their journey and if they want to keep it secret or if they want to be very public about it, like me. But I will say, keeping it. Public invites people in, and I do think that is a very important part At least it was, like I said, it was an important part of my healing journey. People want to help. They really do. People want to help. Some people don't know what to do, they don't know what to say, but people want to help. Luckily, I let them in and it worked out well.
Carsten:That's wonderful. It's one of the things I struggled with the most. I was only letting, dripping it through to a few people and friends. I never went really public, but I'm working on this because I know it's important to be open to help and not being the man who you know, kind of like, goes through this alone. I also feel like a lot more women are sharing their journeys online versus men. They often hold everything within them, but I think from your journey as well and I do the same I got much more in touch with my emotions and started crying much more because I was just letting things go, and I think you experienced the same right. Yes, yeah.
Chris Joseph:Yeah, I mean I wasn't shy about showing people my emotions. The reality is I couldn't really keep it in. I just couldn't and I just sort of figured if anyone was going to be uncomfortable with it. And I think some people were uncomfortable. They didn't want to see me getting on Facebook and broadcasting. Some people were totally into it but some people were not, said it was too hard to watch. I respect that. I do respect that. And, plus, people are bringing their own journeys to the table. Some people have lost relatives or friends or kids to cancer or to other chronic illness and so it was too painful for them to relive their own journey through me. And totally respect that. Totally respect that. I respect whatever choices you are making on your journey, you know what's best. You do. You know what's best.
Carsten:It's about following your intuition a little bit and kind of feeling what's right for you. But I love the fact you raised over 60,000 US dollars and I think it wouldn't be possible if you weren't in the public about it. So ultimately it really helped you right with this journey to Germany. So in Germany you met doctors that had a different approach. They were doing some scans with you initially and then they took you through a variety of different treatments. So tell us like what kind of treatments and how did they work? What did your day-to-day look like in this clinic?
Chris Joseph:Yeah, I do want to say one thing about, I mean, the German clinic was great and it definitely helped and they were very caring, supportive people. I'm just thinking of a story. Probably about a week into my journey there, I was there for three weeks and they decided they wanted me to get a scan and so, which is in one of the main hospitals in Frankfurt, where I was and of course I had never been to Germany before, I don't speak a word of German I was by myself and everyone at the hospital was really nice. But it was the one day in Germany where I was petrified. First of all, I didn't know why they wanted me to get a scan. That came out of the blue and so I went dark. I went down that rabbit hole which I use that term a lot in the book, the rabbit hole of fear, and I discovered the waiting in Germany is just as difficult as waiting in the US for results. I had to wait in that clinic most of the day to get the results. That was the one day that was really really difficult there. But they were giving me in the clinic itself. They were giving me all sorts of alternative things lots of vitamin infusions, vitamin C, mistletoe, ozone therapy. I did dendritic stem cell therapy. I did hyperthermia, heat treatment, laetrile, which is vitamin B17.
Chris Joseph:I'm forgetting all the things I did, but I would usually go there from like 9 am on weekdays I had the weekends off. I'd go there from 9 am to about 2 or 3 pm and just do various treatments. I would get lunch there. It was like being in a spa almost. Like I said, it was really supportive and the main doctor there kept telling me you're going to get better, you're going to get better and I have to be honest about it, I really didn't believe him. But I've learned. You know, our thoughts are just our thoughts. Sometimes they have meaning and sometimes they don't. My dark thoughts about my impending death had no bearing on my journey whatsoever. It was just sort of a waste of time because obviously I'm still here eight and a half years later. But what I think, if I can summarize? So I was there, like I said, three weeks.
Chris Joseph:What I think that that trip did? It had only been a month since I had quit chemo, which I and I was really unhealthy from that. I was really weak and emotionally a wreck. So going to Germany a month later really started turning things around. I don't think on its own that it cured me, although I can't prove that one way or another, but I do think it helped me get healthier. I started supporting my immune system, which is a huge thing in the alternative cancer world. I started eating better. I was walking every day, which is, I think, a critically important part for anyone who's going well, even people who aren't going through a health journey. But I was walking around Frankfurt every day, so I got to know the city pretty well. I just it helped me get healthier. It really did.
Carsten:Amazing and a lot of things have to do with what authorities tell you. I remember the story when your traditional doctor said to you ah, don't worry, you know, don't worry, or something. And how can the doctor say that? Who never went through this journey themselves, like himself or herself? And I can see. Then, when the doctor says to you, the alternative doctor says to you, you're going to get better, I can see how you probably didn says to you the alternative doctor says to you, you're going to get better, I can see how you probably didn't believe him.
Carsten:But I guess, getting these initial treatments, they have shown you so many tools that you can use and it kind of triggered something in you where you just double down on all these beautiful things like walking, yoga, meditation, infusions, eating healthy and just supporting your immune system. So that had probably a big impact on you. Still, even though no one can really show if these alternative treatments work because studies are hard to do, because you have often multiple factors, including a lifestyle change, not just one, and it's really hard to do these studies on these but I truly believe as well that this is the way forward. You know, you have to kind of like look at these, and if you're doing it 100%, that's great. If you're doing it in combination with traditional treatment, that's great. Whatever you do, it's totally up to you, but I think it has to be part of every journey and I'm so happy you're sharing this because I hope many other people find hope through this and don't give up, because there's hope and there's alternative treatments out there.
Chris Joseph:The system in the US is so screwed up so I've started taking the degrees of doctors in the United States. Literally they are MDs, which is medical doctors. They know medicine. That's what their primary training is is in medicine, it's not in health. They actually get very little training in health and nutrition and prevention and things like that. They work on symptom management and sometimes they're really good at that.
Chris Joseph:I can think of a story a couple years ago when I was living in Los Angeles. I was walking along the beach and I stepped on something in the water. I couldn't see where it was, but it had me doubled over in pain. It was really hurting. Pain subsided it didn't go away, but it subsided. A couple days later, in the middle of the night my foot started swelling up and I thought I better go to the doctor here, and so I went to the emergency room in Santa Monica in the middle of the night, told them what happened. They knew exactly what it was. I had stepped on a stingray and got stung. They gave me antibiotics and a week later I was fine.
Chris Joseph:Western medicine is great for that. I mean, if I got hit by a car, take me to an emergency room. Western medicine is great for that. They're great with sports injuries. I'm 68 years old. I don't wear glasses. I've had cataract surgeries and stuff.
Chris Joseph:There's some things that Western medicine does that are incredible. It's not so good with chronic illness and in the United States the system is so messy that a doctor even if a doctor wanted to do alternative stuff most of them don't. But even if they did, they can't. Their hands are tied. They can get sued, they could lose their medical license. They don't get reimbursed by insurance, meaning they're not going to make any money. So when I go to a doctor in the United States, it's for a very limited reason, unless it's an emergency. Again, I'm not sitting here telling you that anyone listening should take my advice, but I do hope that people think about the system we're living in. And again, I don't want to speak to where you're living in Europe. I don't know the systems there very well at all, but right now I'm talking about the United States.
Carsten:Right, yeah, and I agree with you Great for heart attacks, great for strokes, great for trauma injuries, fantastic Western medicine. But cancer is something that goes much deeper than that, I think, and it has to do with finding the original symptoms, what caused it in the first place, and looking at these origins.
Chris Joseph:Can I interrupt? Even with heart attacks, yeah, they're good at treating that and then they'll put people on statins for cholesterol levels and all that. But they are not here in the US. They are not good at talking to people about lifestyle changes which probably in all likelihood cause the heart attack. I mean, most people in the United States, like 90%, are metabolically unhealthy.
Chris Joseph:I always bring up and it makes people raise their eyebrows when I talk to people. I'm going to bring it up with you now. I bring up COVID, but not in a controversial way. I don't bring up COVID to talk about masks or vaccines or lockdowns or anything like that, because those are too triggering for people, including me. But the reason I bring up COVID is COVID. The United States did really really poorly in COVID compared to other countries. The primary reason is because we're so unhealthier and so there was just lots of vulnerable people and that virus preyed on vulnerable people. And so I bring up COVID to say, hey, we had an opportunity to start getting people healthier so they can avoid pancreatic cancer, so they can avoid your type of cancers, they can avoid heart disease. That's what I want to talk to people about. I want to talk to you know, as I've been talking to you about, I want to talk about getting healthier, getting prevention.
Carsten:I want to talk to you know, as I've been talking to you about I want to talk about getting healthier, getting prevention and, if you do get diagnosed with something, increasing the odds of not just surviving but thriving Right, which is important, and thank you for doing such a great job in this, and we're going to talk about your coaching side and what you do later on as well. I just want to quickly go back before I forget this. After the three weeks in Germany, there was something, because I've been on this medication as well Keytruda also that I took as well. I think it's a great medication, but tell us a journey about that a little bit. You went back on that for how long Right before.
Chris Joseph:I left to go to Germany, I had been contacted by Johns Hopkins University in the eastern part of the United States. They had seen my biopsy that my subsequent doctor had sent in not my original oncologist that I fired, and I can't remember the gene right now. But it was a red flag for them Like, oh my God, you know he would qualify for this clinical trial we're doing for pancreatic cancer and it was Keytruda. Keytruda, up to that point, had been used for other cancers, but it had never been approved for pancreatic cancer, and it's particularly the rare type of pancreatic cancer that I have. Anyway, long story short, by the time I got back from Germany a few weeks later, keytruda had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States for my type of cancer. So all my doctors, all my integrative doctors both in the US and in Germany, thought, yeah, let's give that a shot too. They didn't want to discourage me from doing anything. They wanted to, like throw the kitchen sink at it. So, yes, I did Keytruda off and on while I was doing other things in the US all these infusions and eating healthier and coffee, enemas and mistletoe. I was still doing all that stuff.
Chris Joseph:But I also did Keytruda for about a year and a half or so, if I remember, maybe through 2018, I think. And yeah, I think it helped. I do, I think it helped. The one cautionary note I have is I'm only on one medication. I haven't done any Western medicine cancer treatments for a few years now. I haven't had a scan in three years, but there's only one drug that I'm on which is not bad for a 68-year-old person, right, and it's a thyroid medication, because the side effects of Keytruda the number one side effect is it screws up your thyroid and, sure enough, it screwed up my thyroid. So that's the downside of Keytruda that it comes with some side effects. But I do think it can be very helpful in a person's cancer journey.
Chris Joseph:And I think one of the things I'll say about it the whole idea of immunotherapy, which is what Western medicine is going towards now and I do think 10, 20 years. Chemotherapy will be looked upon as barbaric, because it is barbaric. But immunotherapy is where the drug companies are going and the hospitals and doctors are going and conceptually it makes much more sense because that's what all the alternative stuff is is boosting your immune system. Same thing now with immunotherapy. So I do think that's the wave of the future for Western medicine, which is a good thing.
Carsten:Good thing, absolutely. And then, what was the status of the disease when you, completely, when you figured out okay, now, this is it. Was it NAD? No evidence of disease? Was it stable?
Chris Joseph:I have not. As I mentioned earlier, I have not had a scan since January of 2022, which is what three years and three months. In the last scan I had, it showed that my cancer had been reduced to about 25% of its original size and that whatever was left could very well be just dead tissue. And so they've actually never told me I mean, that's the last time I talked to my doctor they have actually never told me that there's no evidence of disease. They've never used that term with me. They never use remission, anything like that. I just go by how I'm feeling. I know I've been feeling great. I mean, I said I'm 60 years old, I'm working two jobs, I'm still a parent, still a boyfriend traveling. I go by how I feel and I feel great.
Chris Joseph:Cancer in a body is actually not that unusual, but the ability to keep it in check is really the goal. We all have the potential to have cancer or to have cancer go out of control, but if you're healthy, if you're eating right, moving your body and doing the spiritual work and the emotional work and reducing toxic exposures so many things that people can do If you're doing the work, you're increasing the odds. Like I said earlier, you're increasing the odds of being healthy or withstanding a diagnosis of cancer. My life is so much different now, eight and a half years later, it's so much better. I mean I wish I didn't have to go through that because it was not a fun thing to go through, but it changed me. It changed me for the better.
Carsten:So in some respects.
Chris Joseph:I'm grateful for it. I will say also that I never, ever, ever and again. I don't ask people to believe me or to do what I do, but I don't use the terms fighting cancer or battling cancer. The terms fighting cancer or battling cancer it actually just drives me crazy, and I'll talk about thriving and surviving in a second. But the battling and fighting to me it's like why would I want to battle with my own body? It's not rational, it doesn't make sense. Now I look, and I've thought this for a few years now. When I got diagnosed eight and a half years ago, it was an opportunity. Cancer gave me the opportunity. It was my body telling me hey, you need to get healthier. You can do whatever else. You can do chemo and radiation, whatever but you need to get healthier. And it turned out to be true. So when I tell people now because I do coach people I say cancer is giving you the opportunity to get healthier.
Carsten:It's almost like cancer being a communicator to tell you something. Yes, oh my God. This resonated so much with me because I never use this word fighting or, oh my god, battling this. I never use this, I think like it's part of me. It's just part of my body telling me something I gotta. You know I can't hate it. Why would I hate it? You know, it's just part of me. I need to do the best to keep it in check or whatever, but it's not like I have any aggressive emotion towards it, not at all, and I totally agree with you. It's almost like the blinders are going away the moment you get diagnosed and you're on this journey of new discovery, of discovering your life in a different way, and it's like an opportunity that opens up.
Chris Joseph:I'll see so many people using the fighting and battling cancer phrases. I see people writing on facebook oh fuck cancer. I see people writing on Facebook oh fuck cancer. I see them writing that fucking bitch cancer. I'm like, all right, you know you got to do you. But that's not how I think at all and I'm not. I don't say this to minimize it. Cancer is a very serious thing. I mean, you and I are both here to. We've both experienced that it's very serious, but that doesn't mean that we have to go against our gut instincts and what we believe. I think people are slowly coming around to seeing that cancer is more preventable. I think that people are realizing that there are things they can do to prevent cancer and other chronic illnesses. Being passive is how we get in trouble in the first place Eating whatever we want, thinking we don't need to exercise. The people who succeed, I've seen, are the ones who are very active Nice.
Carsten:Yes, absolutely so. Our audience. They're always obviously looking for hope, but they're also looking for tools, strategies, suggestions. How does your day-to-day look like? Can you run us through it, and what kind of holistic integrative therapies do you still do today?
Chris Joseph:yeah, I mean I'm lucky because I work from home and I and I realize that not everyone can do that, but today I wake up early. I'm up by five, sometimes a little earlier, but I I'm usually I'll have a small bowl of very low-carb granola and low-carb organic coconut milk, I think. And I'll just say as an aside, going low-carb. There's all different diets that people say for dealing with cancer. I think there's some basic things to adhere to. I don't really have a comment on veganism or or not being a vegan, but eating healthy, eliminating processed foods, is important and I do think going low carb. You don't have to go as far as being keto, although for some people, keto is a good thing. I never did keto, but sugars and carbs feed cancer and they cause cancer. So I think that's an important one. And I think eating organic, which is not always possible I don't eat all organic, but eating real food, clean food, whole food. So I start out with a very light breakfast. I get in. I have a portable infrared sauna here in my house and so I'm in that when I'm home, which is, you know, 80% of the time. I am in that sauna every day and I'm in there for 90 minutes. I don't recommend that people need to do this. I just have the time and luxury to do 90 minutes. I have it most of the time at the 170 degrees, 170 Fahrenheit, and I bring you know, I have my iPad in there because my arms are outside of it, my head's outside of it. It's just heating up my body. So I watch a show or I read a book on my Kindle, or it's a productive 90 minutes watch a show or I read a book on my Kindle, or it's a productive 90 minutes. Sometimes I meditate, but that's an everyday thing. I do yoga, generally 20 to 30 minutes every day.
Chris Joseph:I walk a lot, a lot. I do 10,000 steps almost every day, sometimes more, sometimes a little less, but I try to average 10,000 steps a day. So I you know I'm lucky. I live in climates that generally are not that cold, that are conducive almost all year round to walking, and I know not everyone has that luxury. But you don't have to walk 10,000 steps a day like I do. You can walk 3,000 steps, you can walk 5,000. Some steps are better than zero steps. So walking is an everyday thing for me. That's my primary exercise. I mean, sometimes it's hiking, sometimes it's just walking around the neighborhood. You can check so many boxes, you get fresh air, you get vitamin D, natural vitamin D. You get your heart moving. It's good for the mental, emotional aspects.
Chris Joseph:A friend of mine, a childhood friend of mine's mother, lived till she was like 85 or something like that. She was a three-pack-a-day smoker for 60 years. More than 60 years. She lived till she was mid-80s. She didn't die of lung cancer or anything like that. She smoked three packs a day. She walked five to seven miles every day, every day. Now I'm not recommending to your listeners that they should go out and smoke cigarettes. Clearly it's an unhealthy habit and I can't prove that the reason she lived so long and so healthy is because she walked every day. But I'd put my money on it. I would put my money on it. She kept in shape.
Chris Joseph:So yeah, moving the body is really important and I guess the last thing I do on a normal—so what I eat I pay attention to every day the infrared sauna, the yoga, the walking. I am much more. I live with more gratitude now than sometimes I forget, but I just live with more than I used to Even I mean. There's so many things I'm sure you read about or hear about what's going on in this country and things are pretty crazy here right now and have been for the last few years. It used to bother me like crazy, and it's not that it doesn't bother me now. But now I try to incorporate, paying attention to what I'm grateful for, for love with my kids, my girlfriend, my friends. I get to help people every day through coaching. My dog is sitting here. I'm grateful for my dog. There's just so much to be grateful for. Even amidst when things are shitty whether things are shitty in one's life personally or in the politics or whatever there's still things to be grateful for.
Chris Joseph:I don't watch, by the way, I don't watch television news anymore, and I haven't for a few years, because it's just agitating and people are going through hell journeys. It's already agitating enough, you don't need to add to it. So that's another thing I actually tell people is turn off the TV. You can keep up with the news by reading about it, talking to people, things like that. But television news is a cesspool. And I also think social media is great for some things, great for connecting. It's great. I mean, that's how you and I connected. Social media is great for some things great for connecting. It's great I mean, that's how you and I connected and it's great for keeping up with people you grew up with and relatives. It's not so great when it comes to politics and it's very divisive and so, yeah, that's another thing. I tell people Just minimize your social media time, minimize television time, get outside get outside.
Carsten:Yes, enjoy every day, enjoy the life and the beautiful world we live in. I want to quickly touch base. So your book what inspired you to write your memoir, what was the hardest thing about writing it and why did you write it?
Chris Joseph:so after I started doing better, like later in 2017, early in 2018 I was still posting about that too just as I was posting when I wasn't doing well I started posting about doing better. Pancreatic cancer is so unusual for people to do better. I started getting calls from people either friends who had relatives who had cancers or people themselves who had cancer. Most of the calls were from people in the US, but some from people around the world. And then I started thinking, oh, I have a really good story here. I had never written a book. I'd done technical writing for my career, but I had never written a book before and so I started thinking about it in early 2020. And then COVID hit in March of 2020 in the US and I had a lot more time than I did, and so I just used that time to write, and you know it was a hard book. I mean I wrote it very quickly. The first draft I wrote in four months because I hadn't I had lived the story. I plus I could go back to social media and look at some of the blogs I wrote, so that helped refresh my memory and stuff.
Chris Joseph:I felt compelled to write it. I had to write it. I wanted to write for other people. I wanted to write it for my kids. I just felt like I've learned all this stuff about how to get healthy. I really need to start talking to people about it, and there's obviously there's other people in the space too. I'm not the first one. There are many, many people. But yeah, I had to get that book published and it was. It was published in late August, early September of 2020. I'm writing another book now.
Chris Joseph:This next book is is going along much more slowly than the first book the kitchen sink approach to cancer right yeah, yeah, the kitchen answer I've actually got another book idea that I've been writing which has nothing to do with well, it does have to do with cancer, but it's more the. You know what I see in the us about politics and and our, our stuff I've talked about in this podcast, our sick, sick care system, so I'm sort of writing more social commentary now that I post on Substack and I've written enough that you know, if I wrote 10 more essays I probably have enough for a book, and so I might publish that book first before the kitchen sink approach. We'll see. Like, I mean, all these things, 10 years ago none of them were on my radar. Writing a book getting cancer, healing from cancer I mean all these things, 10 years ago none of them were on my radar. Writing a book getting cancer, healing from cancer I mean what a roller coaster.
Carsten:Yeah, it is.
Chris Joseph:It's been a roller coaster and it's also a very humble reminder that we really don't know how our lives are going to turn out. I mean there's some things we can control many things we can't.
Chris Joseph:But yes, I do want to talk a little bit. I am coaching people now. I've been informally doing it for a few years, but I took some formal training a couple of years ago. Now I'm trained via erratic remission, I'm trained via Dr Nasha Winters, and so I have more tools to bring to the table, not just my own journey. It is one other thing. I'll say it's really scary because cancer rates are increasing and I'm convinced, at least in the United States. I'm convinced because the shitty food and people not moving their bodies and all that stuff. I'm old enough to remember this. How old are you, by the way? 42.
Chris Joseph:So when I grew up in the 60s, kids were outside all the time. That's what we did. We played outside. We played outside so we'd get exercise, We'd get our vitamin D, All the stuff I was talking about we would get. We'd get exercise, we would move our bodies. Then in the 60s, air conditioning became predominant in the United States. So instead of being outside because the houses were too hot because of the heat, we would be inside because it was more comfortable. And then television. Everyone started getting television black and white television, then color TVs, and then computers, and then phones and then game consoles and yada yada, yada, right, and so people have just been staying indoors and that's not healthy. It is not healthy. Yeah, Like I said, part of my coaching practice is just to talk to people about lifestyle changes. Get them outside, get them eating healthier, things like that.
Chris Joseph:Wonderful and if people were interested in coaching. How do they best get in touch with you is to go to my website, which is Terrain Navigators. So it's two words, but it's when you're typing it in it looks like all one word the word Terrain T-R-R-A-I-N Navigators N-A-V-I-G-A-T-O-R-S. I hope I spelled that right. Dot com Email address is Chris at TerrainNavigatorscom or ChrisJoseph at Macmaccom. I'd get my phone number out, but that's probably not the best thing to do. But yeah, I mean they can. There's any number of ways they can find me on social media. I'm very I mean if they just google my name and my name in quotes and then cancer things pop up, because I've been on a lot of podcasts and stuff.
Carsten:yes, yes, lovely, and we share all these links in the show notes, of course, so you can check them out Before we go. Can we do a few quickfire questions where you just answer quickly? Awesome First word that comes to mind when you hear cancer.
Chris Joseph:Now opportunity Back, you know, eight years ago Sear.
Carsten:Fantastic. What's always in your fridge today?
Chris Joseph:Oh, that's a good one. You know I'm not. I don't cook, which is a whole other story that we don't have time for. So there's actually not a lot of stuff in my fridge, you know. Usually it's leftover salads or something leftover. You know, I try to eat healthy from like a local health food store, so it's usually some leftovers. I do have vegetables in the refrigerator. I know this is not one word, but I couldn't give a one-word answer to that.
Carsten:That's totally, totally fine. What is the biggest misconception about healing that?
Chris Joseph:it's passive. It's that you just have to listen to what your doctor says and everything will be fine. No, this is a you take charge of your health. That's the number one thing I teach people. I teach them that it's a lot of work. Yeah, you can listen to your doctor.
Carsten:That doesn't mean you have to do everything. Your doctor says You're in charge. Amazing. I often feel like this whole healing journey is like a full-time job. I mean literally it is. You have to do so many things and stay on top of things. It's crazy. It's a full-time job. The book that changed your life? Obviously besides your own, I mean a couple of books.
Chris Joseph:Warrior Pose. Brad Will's book was definitely instrumental. I read a book a few years probably 20, 25 years ago, maybe longer called Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach, and it really it was a memoir, but it was a story about love and it just really taught me a lot about love and relationships. It was written by a guy who was very vulnerable and so it taught me a lot just about being vulnerable. Yeah, I've never forgotten that book. I will say that the relationship he wrote about they split up about 10 years after the book was written, so it didn't have a happy ending, but the book itself is really great, amazing.
Carsten:And how would you title the next chapter or this chapter of your life?
Chris Joseph:Wonderment, gratitude, curiosity. No excuse my language, no fucking clue what's going to happen next, you know, staying humble, which I think is really, really important. Staying humble.
Carsten:Amazing. And, before I forget, is there anything that, like randomly, you want to share with the audience, because you know the audience are people either just being diagnosed having like, for example, pancreatic cancer, or on the healing journey already, or have finished treatment. What's one thing or two things you just want to share with them.
Chris Joseph:Yeah, I mean just so you know and so your listeners know I work with people with all types of cancers. I actually don't really it matters very little to me what the cancer type is, because I'm not necessarily teaching the same thing to every person. It's not a one size fits all, but I am teaching under the general headings of lifestyle changes, that is, to everyone.
Carsten:So ask me a question again what would you just share with the audience, something you want to share with the audience that we haven't covered in the podcast?
Chris Joseph:I just think a gentleman came up to me. I spoke at a conference about a month ago and what I talked about was my journey, very similar to what I've talked about with you today. And a gentleman with brain cancer came up to me after my talk and he said you just showed me what was possible. And that really struck me. I mean, it was very emotional and I'm so happy he told me that. So, yeah, this is not just possible. Like I said I said this earlier getting healthier means you're going to increase your odds of surviving and thriving from cancer. Just got to do the work.
Carsten:That's, I think it's a really, really good wrap up for this show. Chris, I'm deeply humbled by you joining this. I really hope we stay in touch, because you're a very inspiring man and just listening to your story, hearing your story now gives a lot of people hope, and this is exactly what we want to do. We want to spread the positivity, showing people what's possible with the right choices, with taking control of your life, with doing changes and actively working on it. Thank you, thank you so much, and I hope you also enjoyed this hour with me.
Chris Joseph:Thank you I did Thanks for having me on. You ask great questions.
Carsten:Oh, thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. I know your day is starting and we stay in touch and I follow your journey and I will share everything that you shared with the audience in the show notes. Thank you so much. Perfect, thank you. Take care, bye-bye.
