David Servan-Schrieber was 31 when his world imploded. Ambi­tious and arro­gant, with French blue­blood cours­ing through his veins, he was a found­ing mem­ber of Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders and a ris­ing star in neu­ropsy­chi­a­try. But when a vol­un­teer for a brain scan exper­i­ment didn’t show up, he slid into the scan­ner himself—and dis­cov­ered a malig­nant tumor nes­tled deep in his brain. After surgery and chemother­apy, he asked his oncol­o­gist what he should change. “Noth­ing,” replied the oncol­o­gist. So Servan-Schrieber con­tin­ued liv­ing his life as he had before, eat­ing a diet high in sugar and red meat, exer­cis­ing lit­tle, and aban­don­ing an ear­lier inter­est in med­i­ta­tion. When the tumor returned a few years later, he used his med­ical train­ing to inves­ti­gate how best to pre­vent can­cer. The result was remission—and a best­selling book called Anti­cancer: A New Way of Life. For the cur­rent issue of Psy­chol­ogy Today, I reached him in Paris. —Jay Dixit

How did you feel when you first saw the tumor in your brain on the scan?

That this was not in the plans at all. All I had done was invest in the future. I’d spent my life prepar­ing for a future that would not exist. My mind just stopped.

Then what happened?

Some­thing quite mirac­u­lous which some­times hap­pens in extreme sit­u­a­tions. I had this inter­nal dia­logue: “This can’t be true. It’s unfair. It can’t be hap­pen­ing to me.” Then a voice said, “It’s going to be OK. This is going to hap­pen to every human being at one point or another.” It was a voice so absolutely sure. You don’t argue with that. I real­ized this capac­ity to con­nect to some­thing larger than your­self is an extra­or­di­nar­ily impor­tant aspect of the psy­che. In ret­ro­spect I feel I was quite incom­plete before.

Why did you get cancer?

Expo­sure to chem­i­cals, pes­ti­cides, elec­tro­mag­netic fields, years in front of a com­puter screen, what I ate, my inabil­ity to deal with stress. There were a lot of things I could have done differently.

If I were try­ing to get can­cer, what would I do?

Expose your­self to chem­i­cals, car exhaust, diesel fumes, plas­tics, the chem­i­cals of house­hold prod­ucts. Smoke. Drink. Don’t exer­cise. Eat McDonald’s, eat fast food, make sure you don’t eat veg­eta­bles because they take too long to cook and they rot in the fridge. Man­age your stress with alco­hol and cig­a­rettes, and don’t pay much atten­tion to your per­sonal life.

If I want to avoid can­cer, what should I do?

Pay atten­tion to what you eat. The food you eat every day three times a day plays on your biol­ogy like a pianist’s fin­gers on a keyboard.

It doesn’t have a major effect on health, of course. You can could eat ice cream every day and noth­ing hap­pens. You can eat pizza every day for a week and noth­ing hap­pens. You can eat McDonald’s every day three times a day for a month and noth­ing hap­pens. But the things you do every day three times a day start to have a very pro­found effect on your biol­ogy over the mid– to long-term. You notice things after a few months. Def­i­nitely after a few years, and you can’t escape them after 10 or 30 years. So pay atten­tion to what you eat. Reduce white sugar, white flour, and omega 6 fatty acids, which includes red meat and a num­ber of dairy products.

Then add a num­ber of anti­cancer foods, which are mostly veg­eta­bles and fruits. But that’s not enough, to just eat fruits and veg­eta­bles. There are some that are much stronger anti­cancer foods then oth­ers, so include some of that and try to include them every day three times a day. That makes an enor­mous dif­fer­ence in your biology’s abil­ity to resist disease.

Phys­i­cal activ­ity, which doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily even mean exer­cise. Women who walk 30 min­utes six times a week reduce by half their chance of relapse after breast can­cer. So walk­ing to work or bik­ing to work, which I’ve done for years now, makes an enor­mous difference.

Then learn­ing how to man­age stress dif­fer­ently. Don’t man­age stress with cig­a­rettes and alco­hol. Learn how to man­age stress in rela­tion­ships at work, learn how to con­trol your breath­ing and your concentration.

And then learn how to avoid envi­ron­men­tal con­t­a­m­i­nants that can help pro­mote can­cer. It’s OK to do dry clean­ing, but make sure you air your gar­ments for a cou­ple hours before wear­ing them. For years I would put the plas­tic bag straight into the closet. Which meant they’d keep the high­est pos­si­ble con­cen­tra­tion of chem­i­cals that I would inhale if I wore them. So avoid that and cos­met­ics and creams. We need to avoid some of the expo­sure to clean­ing prod­ucts that can be toxic. Try to use as much as pos­si­ble white vine­gar, bak­ing soda, or eco­log­i­cally safe clean­ing products.

What insight did your expe­ri­ence give you about the abil­ity of peo­ple to man­age their own health?

Most of my physi­cian col­leagues believe adamantly that most peo­ple do not want to change. Cer­tainly when I was given the infor­ma­tion about things I could do that would slow down can­cer growth, I was quite will­ing to change. It’s hard for me to imag­ine I’m the only one in that situation.

What made you ques­tion the advice you got from your oncol­o­gist about pre­vent­ing relapse?

As a physi­cian I had had that same atti­tude. Nobody invites us physi­cians for a week for free to give us a course on the ben­e­fits of yoga, jog­ging, broc­coli, and garlic.

In the con­ven­tional model, we turn over our health care to doctors.

I hope it will change. As it stands now, they do very lit­tle to help your body do its part to fight the dis­ease. They do not sup­port the ter­rain, they only tar­get the tumor. We also need to know we can go further.

What did you do in your case that mat­tered most for your health after you got cancer?

I got surgery and chemother­apy and radio­ther­apy, and that saved my life. There is no alter­na­tive to con­ven­tional treat­ment for can­cer. Still, I do very firmly believe it would not have been enough. I know a lot of peo­ple who had the same tumor I had who are dead today. I think the things I did on the side played an extra­or­di­nar­ily impor­tant role.

There’s a feel­ing among some peo­ple that get­ting can­cer was the best thing that ever hap­pened to them.

Part of me still wishes I never had can­cer. But a big part of me feels like it was a sec­ond birth. I was born to a new being com­pletely. Which is more grate­ful, more appre­cia­tive, friend­lier, more ener­getic, more enthu­si­as­tic about life, more aware, happier.

Did being a doc­tor give you an advan­tage in nav­i­gat­ing the sys­tem or at least ques­tion­ing the advice you got?

Huge. I knew how much my col­leagues did not know. When they said it doesn’t mat­ter what you eat, I knew they did not know that. I had given this stock answer to peo­ple myself not know­ing what I was say­ing. I was able to count through the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture with per­spec­tive. It’s hard to know which ones are promis­ing and which ones are dead ends. I had a trained eye.

Does despair under­mine the body’s abil­ity to cope?

They say, “Don’t cry, you’re mak­ing the can­cer grow!” That’s not what hap­pens. It’s the chronic sense of desperation—feeling stuck and powerless—that’s dan­ger­ous. In fact a good cry is a way to get beyond that chronic sense of despair, espe­cially when it’s being heard by a mate or friend or inti­mate part­ner. This kind of inti­macy is a strong pro­tec­tive factor.

How should we man­age stress?

The first line of defense against stress is phys­i­cal exer­cise. Jog­ging three times a week has the same effec­tive­ness as an anti­de­pres­sant, but much more last­ing ben­e­fits. Plus yoga, qigong, and meditation—the so-called relax­ation response. It’s so easy and so sim­ple based purely on con­cen­tra­tion of atten­tion and breath­ing. But it is not taught in med­ical school and it’s not part of our health sys­tem in spite of the well-documented and pow­er­ful effects.

Are you sug­gest­ing that our default state is to develop cancer?

Yes. One hun­dred per­cent of peo­ple over 50 have can­cer cells in their body. That the major­ity of peo­ple don’t develop can­cer proves we have defenses in the cells of it ever becom­ing an illness.

Is Amer­i­can cul­ture dis­pro­por­tion­ately expos­ing Amer­i­cans to cancer?

Every sin­gle place where Amer­i­can diet has spread has seen mas­sive increases in obe­sity rates and can­cer rates. Japan is increas­ing con­sump­tion of red meat and dairy prod­ucts and see­ing an enor­mous increase in obe­sity and great increases in prostate can­cer and breast can­cer, which were extremely rare before.

Who would you be today if he hadn’t got­ten cancer?

I don’t want to mis­judge the young man I was. Maybe he would have wised up anyway.

For the full ver­sion of this inter­view, click here.