Despite 8 years ago having a golf-ball sized brain tumor (anaplastic astrocytoma), Andrew Scarborough shares how he is now in the best health of his life.

For complete show notes, visit http://youcuredwhat.com/podcast/scarborough[1:45] Andrew provides his health history. He was diagnosed with an anaplastic astrocytoma after suffering a brain hemorrhage on a train in 2013. (It is 2020 at recording time).

[3:00] Leading in to the brain hemorrhage, he had been feeling symptoms, including migraines. He had been stressed so he chalked the migraines and other symptoms up to the stress.

[5:00] On top of the migraines, Andrew was also suffering from focal seizures, runny noses, and muscular fatigue.

[6:00] What diet had Andrew been eating before (which he thought were perfect to manage his strange symtpoms)? He was eating a "rainbow", "Mediterranean", "plant-based" diet with some occasional oily fish.

[7:30] Andrew was in good athletic shape (low body fat, lots of lean tissue) prior to his brain hemorrhage.

[9:30] Leading up to the incident on the train, Andrew had been suffering from some of the aforementioned symptoms for about a year. They had gotten so bad that he could barely cope a couple months before the hemorrhage.

[10:20] Initially his tumor was misdiagnosed as a cavernous hemangioma.

[11:10] Andrew was told that they were going to take out the cavernous hemangioma (that's what they thought it was at the time). Andrew was suffering from seizures which were causing brain damage and also it was leading to other injuries such as a shoulder dislocation.

[12:10] They were not able to remove the entire tumor and the resulting histopathology report showed that it was not truly a cavernous hemangioma; it was an anaplastic astrocytoma.

[13:35] Andrew adopted a ketogenic diet to manage the debilitating seizures he kept having, which were keeping him from being able to even leave the house. Also, he was on medications which were making him feel like a zombie.

[14:30] Andrew had learned about ketogenic diets in 2012 (just before his diagnosis) while studying for his Master's Degree in Nutritional Therapy. Ketogenic diets have been in use for children's epilepsy for about 100 years. Andrew was skeptical it could help him beyond seizure control but he bought the book Cancer as a Metabolic Disease anyway.

[15:50] Andrew found out that some traditional ketogenic foods were still causing seizures for him.

[18:30] Andrew also leveraged the work of the UK group Matthew's Friends, which promote ketogenic diets (especially for epileptic children).

[20:00] Andrew noticed he had issues with dairy and with a lot of plant foods, especially ones containing salicylates. He ended up cutting out all carbohydrates.

[21:50] Andrew focused on eating nutrient-dense animal foods (carnivore diet) and on improving his fatty acid ratio (lower Omega-6, increase Omega-3).

[23:50] Through his nutrient-dense animal-food diet, Andrew was able to establish a therapeutic zone of blood ketones and blood sugar and completely manage his seizures. Eventually he was able to come off all medications.

[26:00] Andrew also found boswellic acid to be an effective supplement to reduce seizure activity. Likewise, frankincense essential oil under the tongue helped Andrew rapidly mitigate low-level seizure activity when a seizure came on. He also found that magnesium chloride spray was able to help.

[30:30] What was the timeline like for Andrew's health improvements take?

[31:50] Andrew talks a bit about gadolinium contrast agents for his cancer scans (for visualizing tumors in the body). He describes that gadolinium may be more toxic than conventionally accepted.

[32:40] Over time, Andrew noticed that the tumor activity and/or brain brain damage was getting better over time (in about a year). And his doctors had told him that would not happen. And over time he was able to include more foods back into his ketogenic diet