Feb-Mar 2025 | Your health and healing

Welcome to a new issue of Buddies For Life; looking at health and healing. My new year movie was Eat, Pray, Love, and who better to quote when it comes to food and healing than the father of medicine Hippocrates, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

I started the year by picking two words per month that I would focus on (attitude and application), and a daily exercise programme. This is so I can be mentally and physically strong for work. In the words of John F. Kennedy, “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” 

In the gym one morning I overheard two ladies saying they go to gym for their mental well-being. I love that! But it also made me think of the quote from Edward Stanley, “Those who think they have no time for exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.”

Our Super Survivors always remind me that there are no truer words than, “The greatest wealth is health” and “It’s when we start working together that the real healing starts.” 

With nutrition as the focus, I can’t but chuckle at Doug Larson’s theory, “Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.” But let’s not forget what George Fuechsel teaches, “Garbage in, garbage out.” 

Don’t forget intimate health as Hannah Green is spot on with her saying, “Health is not just the absence of sickness.” 

I tried to unravel doctor communication; from how doctors should communicate to how you can understand them but as Benjamin Franklin said, “The best doctor gives the least medicine”, and my own prescription for health should be as Leslie Grimutter says, “Running barefoot through the grass.”


Your Buddie For Life
Prof Carol-Ann Benn

Feb-Mar 2025 | Your health and healing

Photos by Mandy Steenkamp Photography | Follow @mandysteenkampphotography

 – I N   T H I S   I S S U E –

L I F E S T Y L E

How to gain back weight after cancer treatment

S U P E R  S U R V I V O R

Jolene van Wyk – Alignment amidst diagnosis

A W A R E N E S S

Surgical management of lymphoedema

Breast Health Foundation News Feb 2025

Nature’s remedies

Do you need to drink eight glasses of water per day?

I want a sex life, but my partner is my caregiver

Forgiveness and healing

Out-of-pocket health costs

Oestrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer

T R E A T M E N T

Alternative options of rehabilitation and healing

Dr Dolittle or Dr Do-a-lot?

Partial breast reconstruction

Oncology Buddies – Your platform for cancer care

Lynette Nepaul details how she chose to face four cancer diagnoses with grace and continues to push on to fulfil her calling of being a mother. Read her story, I’m living proof of a miracle.

Check out the Big C Survivor Guides