The FORCE Program: The Proven Way to Fight Cancer Through Physical Activity and Exercise - Hardcover

Berman, Jeff; Fleegler, Fran; Hanc, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345440889 ISBN 13: 9780345440884

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2001

Synopsis

In your hands right now is the FORCE to fight back against cancer. FORCE (an acronym for Focus on Rehabilitation and Cancer Education) is a new, comprehensive lifestyle approach to cancer treatment. Clinically proven, endorsed by growing numbers of doctors at leading cancer centers, designed for easy at-home use, the FORCE program works in tandem with traditional cancer treatments to boost your overall health, make you stronger and fitter, and put you back in control of your life.

FORCE was created from the experience of cancer survivor and author Jeff Berman who decided to put his own physical fitness conditioning to work in fighting the disease. From this simple but revolutionary concept evolved the complete program of exercise, diet, and stress management known as FORCE. Over the past five years, Berman has turned FORCE into the nation’s most successful and most accessible cancer treatment program, with referrals coming from world-renowned hospitals. Now, in collaboration with oncologist Dr. Fran Fleegler, M.D., and veteran fitness writer John Hanc, Berman has brought the FORCE program home . . . to the home of any cancer patient battling the disease.

Thanks to the FORCE program, hundreds of cancer patients in the New York area have already experienced dramatic improvements in every aspect of their lives, both physical and emotional. Now it’s your turn. This book takes you step by step through a special exercise and activity program tailored to the needs and abilities of all patients, from those who are bedridden to those who are trained athletes. You’ll learn how to redesign your diet quickly and economically to maximize your body’s ability to fight the cancer, with tips on shopping, food preparation, and dealing with restaurants. Here, too, is a complete guide to stress management that will teach you how to change your physical and emotional response to pain, tension, and upsetting situations. You don’t need a gym, a clinic, or any special equipment for the FORCE program–just a willingness to try the movements and information contained in the book.

Your body can fight cancer if you give it a fighting chance with exercise. That’s what The FORCE Program is all about. Upbeat, informative, full of easy-to-use advice and inspirational success stories, The FORCE Program is exactly what you need to start feeling better today.

About this title

About the Author

Jeff Berman is a cancer survivor who now runs FORCE (Focus on Rehabilitation and Cancer Education) full-time. He worked with the legendary founder of the New York Road Runners Club, Fred Lebow, to establish the first exercise support group for people with cancer, which became the FORCE Program five years later. He later established support programs at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and has been awarded grants to spread the word about FORCE’s effectiveness and to establish more branches.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The FORCE Program

"As a neuro-oncologist and pediatric oncologist who is also a twenty-five year survivor of recurrent, disseminated testicular cancer, I recognize from my own personal as well as professional experience the valuable role of programs like FORCE as an integral part of the therapeutic process. This book should be essential reading for health care providers as well as for patients."
--JONATHAN D. FINLAY, M.D.
Director, Stephen D. Hassenfeld Children's Cancer Center
NYU Medical Center

"Growing clinical evidence supports the value of exercise to promote overall health and fight depression. The FORCE program, incorporating physical activity and strength-building, has made a real difference for many cancer survivors. Mr. Berman's commitment and energy have served as an inspiration and example to hundreds of patients who often feel defeated and helpless after a diagnosis of cancer. FORCE lets them take an active role in their recovery, and truly 'move on' to a better way of life."
--KARRIE ZAMPINI, M.S.W., C.S.W.
Director, Post Treatment Resource Program
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

"The FORCE program provides a practical step-by-step approach to improved nutrition and fitness that will optimize health. The authors should be congratulated on an eminently readable book that will empower patients to fight disease recurrence and live full and healthy lives."
--JOANN MANSON, M.D.
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Chief of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Author of The 30-Minute Fitness Solution

"If you or a loved one has cancer and you want 'to do more' in managing it, you can turn to this highly readable book by three people ideally qualified to produce it: a superb writer on health and fitness, a top oncologist who uses exercise in helping her own patients manage their disease, and a man who both has lived with cancer and has created the FORCE program, one that truly works!"
--STEVEN JONAS, M.D., M.P.H., M.S.
Professor of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Stony Brook University

"The FORCE program exemplifies the how-to-do-it for cancer patients who want to eliminate the bad stress in their lives, utilize positive coping strategies, and lead healthier lifestyles by using good nutrition and suitable physical activity. The authors have done an excellent job of taking the content of the group sessions into the home of every cancer patient."
--KATHRYN M. KASH, Ph.D.
Beth Israel Medical Center, New York

Reviews

Berman was physically fit when he was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1990, and he found that being physically active through everyday activities and exercise helped him in his fight against cancer. In 1994, Berman and Fred Lebow, founder of the New York Road Runners Club, established the first exercise support group for people with cancer, which became the FORCE (Focus on Rehabilitation and Cancer Education) Program a few years later. This book by Berman, oncologist Fran Fleegler, and fitness writer John Hanc tells cancer patients how they can help themselves by making gradual lifestyle changes in exercise, diet, and stress management. This book does not claim that doing so will cure cancer but suggests that patients will be in a better position to fight cancer when they strengthen their bodies and minds in conjunction with cancer treatments prescribed by their doctors. Included are illustrated exercise suggestions, nutrition tips, sample menus, and relaxation techniques, as well as a chapter on the K-FORCE Program for Children and a section of cancer resources. This inspirational and easy-to-follow book is recommended for all public libraries and other libraries with consumer health collections. (Index not seen.) Samantha J. Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

HOW THE FORCE PROGRAM WAS BORN: JEFF BERMAN’S STORY

At the beginning of 1990, Jeff Berman’s life was almost perfect.     He had been married since 1987, became a homeowner the following year, was a rising star in the lucrative TV ad sales business in Manhattan, and commuted home to suburban Bridgewater, New Jersey, every night. Life was good and looked as if it was going to get even better. Berman was, in his own words, “ready to fly.”

But his flight was rerouted, as he explains.

“Sometime in February, something in my neck just felt wrong. It was swollen in one spot. I figured I’d give it a few weeks and it would go away. But after three weeks, I could still feel it. So I had my doctor take a look at it. He said it was probably nothing, and to give it a few more weeks. I asked him, ‘You think it’s a problem?’ And he said, ‘Nah, you’ve got a million-to-one shot of this being a problem.’ ”

Those sounded like good odds. So Berman went back to his day-to-day life, which included sports. A wrestler in high school, Berman had maintained a similar fitness regimen as an adult. He lifted weights three or four times a week and, a few years earlier, had started running and cycling. He was planning to do his first triathlon—the swim, bike, run event—in April.

Three weeks after his first visit, Berman returned to the doctor. The lump on his neck was bigger and longer. This time the doctor ordered tests: chest X rays, blood tests, and more. Everything came up normal. The one test left that they needed to do was a biopsy.

“I go in for this biopsy, and I’m sitting in the hospital, in one of these gowns they give you. There’s a guy next to me in a wheelchair. I remember he started telling me how the same thing happened to him. It was a ‘Let’s just do a precautionary test,’ and the next thing he knows, he’s got lung cancer and they’re operating on him. I remember listening to him sympathetically, but it still never clicked that the same thing could happen to me. In fact, I was so relaxed that when I went in for the biopsy and lay down on the operating table, I fell asleep.”

The weekend after the biopsy, Berman completed his triathlon. Two weeks went by, and he was back into his normal routine, when his physician called. “We need to talk,” he said. “What’s the matter?” Berman replied. “Just come in,” said the doctor. Berman arrived at the doctor’s office between sales calls. He had his briefcase in hand and his three-piece suit on.

“I was brought into his office, and there he is—Dr. Newman, a great guy—with his head in his hands. I thought, ‘Oh, shit, the million-to-one shot came through.’ ”

Newman looked up at Berman and gave him the bad news. He had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a disease that primarily strikes people over sixty-five. Berman was told to seek out the help of specialists. The first one he went to, an eminent oncologist in Manhattan, told him that there was nothing that could be done for him until he developed symptoms. In other words, he had to get sick before he could be treated for the cancer that was already there. The next specialist, Dr. Bruce Raphael at New York University, told him something a little different. He said that Berman was the youngest patient he’d ever met with the disease and that the best thing to do was to track it and retest it every six months. Other than that: Go back to leading your life.

“I left his office thinking that now I had a guy to work with. Now I had a plan. I kept training, I kept working, I felt good.”

At the urging of his primary physician, Berman went to see another specialist, a noted oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. So noted, in fact, that Berman had to wait four and a half hours to see him. And he told him the same thing as the first specialist: Yes, you have this disease; no, there’s nothing that can be done for you now.

“So I figure since I waited half a day to see this Dr. Big Shot, I better ask him a couple of questions, and one of them was about my training. I said, ‘Doc, I’m lifting weights, I’m running, I’m cycling, I’m training for my second triathlon. Won’t that help me?’ And I’ll never forget the way he looked at me. Like I was a fool. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘You probably won’t die of a heart attack.’ Then he paused like that was his punch line. ‘But it won’t have anything to do with your cancer. It’s going to progress until you get sick and you’ll need chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant or you’ll die.’ ”

Berman stormed out of the office.

“I wanted to pummel that guy. I was not angry about the disease. I was not shocked or dismayed. I didn’t think I was going to die. But I was angry with him. Angry at the way he dismissed me, angry at his arrogance, angry that I was, to him, just another line on a predictable graph. Since then, I’ve heard similar stories from other cancer patients about other doctors. Some of them may be good at treating cancer, but they’re no good at treating people.”

Berman finally threw in his hat with the oncologist at NYU. Bruce Raphael, M.D., had impressed him with his honesty and his sense of humor—and the fact that he was willing to develop a plan to monitor the disease: blood tests every three months, CT scans and bone marrow biopsies every six months. The first bone marrow biopsy was also Berman’s first clue that maybe his lifestyle was a factor in his favor.

“The way they explained the bone marrow biopsy to me was: Think of the patient as a fine bottle of wine. They’ve got to stick a corkscrew into you deep enough to get a taste of what’s inside. So I’m on the table, and Raphael is trying to do this, using this long needle that they can push all the way down into the bone until they strike marrow. And soon, he’s sweating, he’s grunting and groaning. And I’m giggling. Giggling despite the fact that this is the most indescribable pain I’ve ever felt. The anesthetic doesn’t help, because they’re going six inches deep into your body. But I was still laughing. Because, as Raphael later told me, my bones were like steel from years of weight training.”

Between the laughter and the tears, Berman got a flash of insight: “For the first time, I realized that maybe my strength, my conditioning could be an asset.”

That strength would be put to the test in other ways. A few days after the bone marrow biopsy, Berman and his wife met, as they usually did, at the PATH station near their home in New Jersey after commuting from a day’s work in the city. They stopped to pick up pizza at a little place in the station they frequented. They got into their car, and were preparing to drive home. Suddenly:

“I just started to cry. I don’t know where it came from. The floodgates opened. It was because for the first time, I had stopped thinking about the future. I was, as they say, ‘living in that moment.’ And I guess, quite frankly, it all caught up with me. I felt better afterward, but I haven’t cried about the disease since. My approach to the cancer began to crystallize in my mind. I had now accepted the reality of it, but at the same time, I had formulated my plan. I decided I was going to beat up on the disease before it beat up on me. And the way I was going to do that was by always looking forward, always looking to the next step, and always doing something to improve my health, improve my body, and improve my mental condition. I intended to stay one step ahead of the damn disease.”

Some people talk about fighting cancer with optimism, with cheer, with laughter. Berman, being naturally a cheerful and good-humored guy, did that and something more: he decided to fight it by taking further action. He had already spent nearly $50,000 on medical visits, so he began to spend time trying to gather information about the disease, about cancer support, cancer services, cancer treatment. He was disappointed in what was available. All he got from the established cancer foundations and organizations were brochures and talk about “loss” and “bereavement.”

“Loss, loss, loss. That’s all I kept reading, all I kept hearing about. I never for an instant thought about my disease as a ‘lose’ proposition. I always thought in terms of How do we get over this? Where can I get more information? Who can help me? What actions can I take?”

One of the actions was not pleasant, but it was necessary.

“I realized that although I’d been married for five years, I didn’t have a partner. I didn’t have somebody who understood what was happening or what I was trying to do. She smoked and she continued to smoke after my diagnosis. That caused friction. We tried to get on the same page in terms of diet and trying to exercise and helping me attack the disease. But it never seemed to work. I realized that I had to make a change.”

The couple separated and, in September 1992, Berman and his wife divorced. Things got complicated for a while. Jeff even had to declare bankruptcy. Eventually, he found an apartment in Manhattan and a new job. For a year, he forgot about his cancer and focused on rebuilding his life. But one night in October 1993, he woke up to the sound of his own breathing—a prolonged wheeze every time he inhaled. The disease had come alive and attacked the lymph nodes that surround the neck and throat. Raphael told him it was time for chemo. A month after finishing the 1994 NYC Marathon, Berman began six months of chemotherapy.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘You better be...

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345440889
• ISBN 13: 9780345440884
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208