Ever since I watched Howard Stern’s autobiographical film, Private Parts, I’ve held a soft spot for Robin Quivers. She’s Howard’s long-running (and perhaps long-suffering) news anchor, and they’ve been working together since 1981. Of course this means that Robin is the longest-running (non-familial) female presence in Howard’s life, and she keeps him in line as much as possible. You know how that goes with Howard.
Robin is currently speaking out about her recent return to the airwaves after undergoing cancer treatment. Part of this tour involves some unavoidable promotion fo her 2012 book, The Vegucation of Robin, which detailed her switch to a vegan diet. Robin now credits her newfound vegan ways with helping her get through chemo and radiation intact. Her statements could be considered a bit controversial, but I’ll let you decide:
After a scary year or so, Robin Quivers is happily cancer-free, and back in the studio with Howard Stern as his radio sidekick. But as she told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday, she credits the healthy lifestyle she’d been adhering to since just after Sept. 11, 2001, as what got her on the road to recovery faster.
After 9/11, she said, “I thought I would be one of the people who couldn’t help myself out of that (World Trade Center) building. If I was there, someone would have to help me. I’d be one of those people you had to come and get. And I thought, this is not any way to live and I need to figure out what’s wrong.”
What she figured out, and how she feels it helped her body to be strong when the cancer hit her in 2012, has been detailed in her book, The Vegucation of Robin: How Real Food Saved My Life. (Read an excerpt here.) The book, which is available in stores now, is not a diet book or a cookbook, but it explains her journey from that revelation to getting her daily nutrition on track.
“When you consider that I went through chemo and radiation and hardly had any side effects – I saw other people and they were going through the same thing I was, my situation wasn’t complicated by other illnesses, other medications,” she said. “Basically I was strong going in.”
Quivers announced on Stern’s show in June 2012 that she had undergone surgery to remove a growth in her pelvic area. On Sept. 9 of this year, she spoke about the cancer battle, which had occurred in her uterine tissue. She continued to broadcast from her home during recovery, and is now back at work in person.
Stern’s support in her time of need was invaluable; Quivers called him “my heart.”
“I feel fantastic,” she said. “I’ve been declared cancer-free for about three or four months now. It’s just a matter of still recovering at home, past all that treatment that kept me out of the studio for this long. But I’ve been feeling really good.”
[From Today]
Hmm. I’m not going to knock Robin at all for her belief that a vegan lifestyle is what helped ease her way through chemo and radation therapy. I think it was a factor, and a vegan diet is usually a pretty healthy diet. That’s not always the case. I’ve been vegetarian for 20 years, and I can attest to having a number of years where Pringles formed the staple of my diet. I imagine veganism has its own pitfalls as well. The key is treating a diet as a means of achieving a healthy lifestyle, and I think that can be done while eating meat as well as excluding it.
Diet, exercise, hydration, and all sorts of things can be rolled into one holistic treatment plan. It sounds like Robin managed to do just that, and I am thrilled that she has defeated cancer.
Photos courtesy of WENN
VERY happy that she is cancer free now, and I am sure that a healthy lifestyle helped make that possible.
ita
she looks great
Cancer is a bitch. I am glad Robin is doing well.
Amen!
I have no theories or opinion on the cancer/veganism aspect, but damn she looks amazing for 60+ years.
Is she really in her 60’s? WOW! She could pass for mid/late 40’s.
Howard really has nice hair.
She looks fantastic.
there’s a proven connection between animal protein/products and cancer growth. several studies were done where they could quite literally control cancer growth like a light switch on and off based on what kind of protein (plant or animal) they fed the test rats. it’s not an “opinion”, it’s been proven. a LOT.
Angel, I can tell you’ve likely read the China Study. There is a lot of info out there refuting much of the data bias used in that book, here is but one:
http://www.westonaprice.org/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/the-china-study-myth
Robin seems to have become a vegan after 9/11/01 yet developed cancer after years on that diet? That hardly supports veganism being a cancer fighting diet.
Whatever works for her, great! Glad she’s recovering and doing well.
Whatever gets you through right? I’m glad she’s doing better.
As for her and Stern, I think they have a great relationship.
They definitely do. They’ve been through so much together and while so many people have come and go from Stern’s show, she’s been there through everything.
I think their personalities really compliment each other.
So happy to see that she’s healthy now.
Exactly…and as for “Howard’s long suffering newswoman” lol…Nobody can put Howard in his place like Robin…they would always call each other on anything…You can tell, they respect each other and love each other…
I’ve only heard a couple of Howard’s shows, and I like him. But, people generally don’t. Why?
There are many people who perceive him to be misogynistic based on soundbites from his show or quotes taken out of context. That and the fact that his show features a lot of strippers and porn stars and he has a filthy sense of humor at times.
I’m not going to get into a debate with people who hate him, but I can 100% say with confidence that the man is no misogynist. I’ve been listening to his show for 20 years so I think I have a pretty accurate perception of the guy.
Personally I find him highly intelligent, witty, very politically-savvy, generous and caring, and an overall sensitive human being. He’s a complex and multi-faceted kind of a person so I think it’s a huge mistake that people make to box him into the stereotype of an overgrown fratboy with a derelict sense of humor.
As you can tell, I’m a huge fan of the guy 😉
ITA with OK’s description of his show. And Robin def keeps him in line at times.
The food you eat while fighting cancer, the strength you have, it all does not matter in the face of this disease. Cancer has killed many many strongminded people living on vegetables. It always annoys me when people boast about being strong and healthy. What about the countless of people who have died, not strong and healthy enough?
+1. While a healthy lifestyle can’t hurt, I think surviving cancer is based on the type of cancer you have, access to good health care, genetics, and luck.
As a survivor myself, I tend to agree with you.
My position is “WHATEVER it takes”.
For me, I swore and still swear that drinking Kombucha assisted me in keeping my life. It may sound CRAZY, but I do not care how it sounds – only how I feel. I tell anyone who asks – KOMBUCHA was key, for me.
Love that she has beaten that beast. GO ROBIN
How is this any different than someone saying that their belief in God helped them overcome Cancer?
Whether a Cancer survivor credits positive thinking, their faith, the support and prayers of friends and family, their dog, or their diet is all irrelevant. The point is that she SURVIVED.
Quivers isn’t claiming to be a doctor and she’s not mandating that anyone follow her advice, she’s just sharing her experience and what she believes worked for her. I see nothing wrong with that.
+1, yep.
I agree with the second part, but as for the first question: nutrition is a science and the effects of diet can be tested. Faith can’t be tested, so I think there is a difference.
Faith certainly CAN be tested.
Faith healing is founded on the belief that certain people or places have the ability to cure and heal—that someone or something can eliminate disease or heal injuries through a close connection to a higher power.
Available scientific evidence does not support claims that faith healing can cure cancer or any other disease.
http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/mindbodyandspirit/faith-healing
I think anything that makes the patient feel more confident and more comfortable is a positive thing. The food itself might not have specifically helped her, but the feeling that she was participating in her own recovering and nourishing her body with healthy nutrients probably put her in a good place mentally. I think that a patients’ attitude and outlook play an important part in their recovery process.
I truly believe what we put into our bodies in form of food can absolutely have an effect! As Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food” I really wish this was an angle discussed more by mainstream physicians.
I agree. You can’t put junk in your body and think it doesn’t effect the way it functions. Keeping it fueled with the right foods can help your body fight infections better than if it’s being fueled with toxic crap.
I’m not a doctor, but I am reading more and more how what we eat and how we think effects our health.
The medical system is too much in the pocket of pharmaceutical companies for this to happen. Also that the food supply is controlled by the gpigs – greedy people in groups- corporations.
Amen.
This is a story about my dog, it’s not intended to compare with people, but what happened to us.
He had Hepatitis, the kind that would have got him on the transplant list if he were human. His regular vet said there was nothing he could do, and we’d just have him until he died of it.
I ended up calling a holistic vet and Rudy saw him for three years. He had acupuncture, and ate only non processed food with supplements. Seriously, feeding him felt like a chemistry experiment at times. As I said, he saw this vet for three years, until he died of kidney cancer. His liver values at the time of his death were normal.
I have seen athletes who are meat eaters and vegetarians fight cancer who have been healthy all their lives suffer through cancer and effects of treatment.
I dearly hope, someone doesn’t take her words seriously and think they shouldn’t listen to a Dr’s advice.
This is the same woman who promoted the master cleanse – basically starvation with a some sugar drink to lose weight.
Celebs pray on stupid star struck people.
I pray for someone that would listen to a celebrity over their doctor when it comes to their own life or death.
Both meat eaters and vegetarians are consuming animal-based protein…dairy is animal-based protein. To clarify veganism is PLANT-based. The animal-based protein can feed cancer when it is more than a certain percentage of your total diet.
I have always kind of loved Howard Stern. I don’t listen to him anymore because I don’t have sirius or whatever, but even though he is childish and raunchy, he always comes across as a very devoted person: devoted to his family, devoted to his friends, devoted to his work. I did hear a snippet of him welcoming Robin back, and it was really sweet. Howard seemed a little timid, and very honest, about how he was afraid he was going to lose Robin forever. He sounded as though if that were to happen, he would not quite know how to handle it. He certainly loves and values her as a sister.
I agree with Robin that a vegan diet is the best option for fighting cancer. If you go to nutritionfacts.org and do a search on cancer, you’ll come up with a plethora of videos that all give the links to the scientific research to back up the push for a plant-based diet. Lots and lots of scientific studies illustrate the benefits of a vegan diet. I’m not a vegan, just an ovo-lacto vegetarian of 47 years. I aspire to be vegan but my love of cheese and butter are still a work in progress. Do some research and check out the studies and then see what you think.
I agree with you Blannie. I am vegan and whole foods plant based most of the time. It has already been established that one should limit red meat, processed meat like everyone’s favorite bacon, eggs, and that dairy is not as healthy as everyone assumes, except for calves, so cheese is worse with all the useless fat fat fat and concentrated casein.
What can be the harm in filling your diet with whole grains, legumes, beans, fruit, and vegetables?
+1 I’m on my own vegetarian journey. I mostly eat vegetarian, sometimes eat vegan and this past summer I was able to do a raw vegan diet for 2 weeks. I finally cracked when I HAD to have something warm.
I’ve stated this elsewhere, but I feel good when I eat vegetarian, I feel better when I eat vegan and I felt absolutely amazing when I was eating raw vegan for those 2 weeks.
wow! Amazing you did this! Hats off to you.
I’m pretty sure it was the surgery, chemo and radiation that saved her life not a vegan diet. I do not buy that vegetables kept her from all the horrifying side effects of chemotherapy. Sorry, I just don’t buy it.
Veggies are FULL of nutrients & antioxidants! That helps boost your immune system! Chemo wrecks havoc on your body killing the good w/ the bad. You can disagree but it’s facts! A healthy diet can do wonders for your body! It may not work for everyone but it can work!
As John Lennon so famously said, “Whatever gets you through the night is alright”. I don’t know if it was her diet but I think it helps to have a good diet and a better attitude. My friend used acupuncture to get herself through chemo and credits that as making her feel good enough to get eat. And the eating part was very important. Another friend credits pot to helping her get through it. So there is more than one way to help fight cancer in my book.
I saw Robin on Wendy Williams yesterday and she looked great. She talked about making out with David Arquette and wigs. It was nice to see her giggling and happy.
First, I love Robin & I’m thrilled she is doing so well & recovering. Perhaps her diet & other alternatives therapies/practices did give her strength. However, sometimes that very strength
can be a problem when fighting cancer.
My husband died while enduring a very rare form of leukemia. He went through induction chemo 3 times in 9 months, because the remissions were unstable. He suffered relatively mild effects from the brutal chemo, & every induction cycle different drugs were used because his disease was very smart, & would mutate & become stronger each go-round. A nurse once told us that NOT suffering bad side effects is not a great sign — when the body is so strong, it actually helps the disease become stronger because it is challenged by its
host. I realize this does not sound scientific, & is based on the anecdotal evidence of said nurse.
Anyway, in the end it wasn’t the leukemia that killed him, it was the chemo, which caused a brain
hemmorhage. 🙁
@Azurea Sorry for your loss.
Blessings and peace to you, Azurea. So sorry to hear of your husband’s passing.
Thanks, guys. The only good thing about it is that he died quickly, instead of going into a long, slow, ugly, painful decline. Which was probably going to happen, as they didn’t know what else to treat him with. The chemo that killed him was “maintenance” chemo — ironic, eh?
Ok, I’ve been a listener for almost 20 years. I love robin and I’m so glad she’s ok but the truth is, she was writing this book for at least a year before she found the tumor. Had she released it then, people wouldn’t have bought it. It was about a woman who gained her health back after juicing and a vegan lifestyle – well that woman nearly died of cancer after starting the diet. I’m guessing she changed the concept when she realized western medicine was going to save her life and this diet is just a side note.
I noticed the interesting timeline too Sarah. She started veganism in 2001, years before her cancer diagnosis.
What kind of cancer did age have? Just curious as that seems to bit be addressed at all here.
Uterine cancer. In the lining I think
I’ve never heard her say what stage it was, but Howard said he thought they were going to lose her, that he was scared. So it had to have been farther along than like stage I.
My mother had Stage II uterine cancer I think. It had barely managed to get through the lining. After surgery, she had three radiation treatments and that was it. So if Robin had chemo she was way past that.
I’m so happy for her recovery, but just being a vegetarian isn’t what saved her. I think all of us have had our lives touched & assaulted by cancer. It’s not something that’s treated by one thing. I too hope someone doesn’t read the book & disregards common sense and doesn’t seek out a doctor. I wish her well.
You misunderstood what she said. She got medical treatment for her cancer: surgery, chemo, radiation. Why would someone not seek out a doctor for an illness when she clearly did? She stated that her new healthier diet of whole foods and her being in better health because of it she felt helped her handle the effects of the cancer treatment compared to how she would have handled it before when she wasn’t healthy and got winded easily and tired all the time from a poor diet and excercise routine. Beyond cancer, she was otherwise healthy when diagnosed, not on lots of other medications, other illnesses, so felt it helped her during her cancer battle.
Go Robin!
So happy she is doing better. As for the Vegan Diet, My husband and I watched “Forks Over Knives” and a few other documentaries about Food as a Healer or Killer. After Forks, we switched to a semi Vegan diet, we did eat Organic Lean Chicken or Wild Caught Seafood once a week and the rest were all vegan meals; but nothing that was processed e.g., Pringles. Within a matter of a two weeks, less then that actually, we both noticed a HUGE difference. Our energy levels went up, we could endure longer at the gym, our skin, hair, appearance drastically improved. Hair was fuller, skin was brighter and glowing and we became leaner, fitter. But the biggest change was when we went in for our annual physical and our doc got our lab results back. Our doc was floored at how perfect all our results came back as if we were 40 year olds but in a 20 years old body. I TOTALLY believe that a fresh Vegan, non processed food diet is the the preventive and healing measure to good health.
Go Rux!
Very inspiring! It’s so interesting to me how the skin is the telling sign when your body is getting the right stuff.
Our skin is the bodies largest organ! Skin does tell your health tale.
I really do not want to come off as being preachy, I am just giving my/our experience. I do suggest, for shits and giggles, to anyone to go Semi Vegan for 10 days.
Rux, and you might actually get the shits during the initial phases!!
I’m ovo/lacto who’s too lazy to go totally unprocessed. I know I’m bad.
Hmmm…I recently finished a book called The Whole 30. It promotes a more paleo type diet and makes the same claims about reducing or eliminating all sorts of diseases in the body. Honestly, I don’t know what to believe anymore.
Basically, your food is fuel. If you’re putting bad fuel in your body, then your body isn’t going to run well. Eating better can help get rid of some issues bad fuel are causing your body. There are a ton of fillers, additives, preservatives, chemicals in our food that some people’s body are not handling well, so eating better can eliminate those issues. There’s also the idea that if your body is fighting something, like an illness, the last thing you want to do is put crappy fuel in it – that’s taking away resources to fight the illness. That’s not boosting your systems to fight. And that’s basically what she is describing in her book, I think.
It’s pretty simple really, but unfortunately some people think it’s quackery and don’t see the connection between how our food industry has changed and the rise of chronic illnesses. Just try out the ideas and clean eating and see how you feel. That’s really the only way you can see if it works for you.
I think it boils down to eating whole foods and NO processed or factory farm foods, something Paleo certainly promotes and what many vegans and vegetarians prefer as well. If you go from a processed food diet to a natural food diet you see amazing benefits, be it juicing, raw, vegan, vegetarian, paleo, etc.
Exactly. It’s not so much just eating vegetarian, it’s removing soy, gluten, certain dairy, sugar, corn syrup and all that other junk from your system.
Robin did not say her vegan diet cured her, she said it made her feel better when she had to endure chemo. So, really, her diet was good for her but someone who is not a vegan could feel just as good during chemo just because chemo affects different people differently.
I’ve never been a Stern fan but I’ve always liked Robin so I’m happy she’s doing so well.
I’ve listened to Stern for 25 years and I love Robin. I was so happy to hear that she’s cancer-free. The longer she worked from home, the more I feared we would eventually get bad news. This is the best outcome! Cheers to Robin!
I love Robin. The show was never as good when she wouldn’t be on at times, like vacation or something. I saw her in an interview the other day. She said Howard was by her side every step of the way from the very beginning, taking over when need be as far as what she needed with doctors, treatments, etc. It was a sweet interview.
Think too much sugar and processed foods are the real dangers for your health and body. People have been eating meat since the dawn of time, if animal protein was the food cause for cancer, most of us would probably have it. Cancer rates have increased as our diet has got worse. Its increased since processed foods have been a staple. Robin looks amazing for her age, something is working for her.
I agree that sugar and processed foods are dangers to our systems, and of course the two things I love most in life. But I don’t give meat a pass either. Prehistoric people didn’t ingest hormones given to animals raised in agrifarming warehouses (which is what I call them), meat isn’t safe either unless you can afford organic, humanely raised/killed meat.
Although not a vegan or even a vegetarian, several years ago I started buying only the freshest farmer’s market seasonal produce, and eating less meat/more fish, also organic and hormone/antibiotic free. No more bagged greens, no more pre-prepared sauces or entrees, lots of raw veggies and fruit, eggs from free-run chickens, quinoa and amaranth grains instead of white rice or pasta, etc. Sure it means more prep time and it’s more expensive but my body’s worth it and at 61 I’m healthy and can pass for 45.
Glad she is doing better and finally on the road to being healthy again! Whatever got her there is great, and whatever keeps her there and makes her happy is the way to go. I just wish this wouldn’t get folded into the thousand and one other reasons friends of mine blast me about ‘why I should be a vegan’. Healthy diets are pretty person specific and what one body needs can vary drastically between folks. I’ve got celiac so wheat is evil in my system – but if you aren’t, get yourself some bread and rolls and eat them with glee (butter a few and down them for me!). As for the vegan thing, it does work for some folks – but there are others like myself who can’t ever go that route. I stick to grass fed & local, avoid the factory farmed crap, but due to a genetic ‘flaw’ I either eat animal protein or get bimonthly blood transfusions and that… just not a way to live for me.
Wish we could all just finally get some basic ‘this is a healthy path-ish’ lines down and then allow folks the ability to discover how to keep themselves healthy without it being a this or that, only one option is healthy. One of the big reasons I respect Robin – she says this is what got HER through, without going the “you differ and are damned” manifesto rants of a lot of celebs. A really cool woman who I hope just gets healthier and happier!
I like her, she seems like a nice person but she really adds nothing to Howard’s show.
I think it is interesting that she is crediting veganism.
My dad is diabetic and he recently began a vegan diet, just to see if it would have any effect. His need to inject insulin has lowered considerably and is now down to about half of his usual dose, without making any other changes. I was really surprised when he told me because I always thought that veganism was a little extreme, all though I don’t really advocate drinking cows milk and eating dairy, it’s pretty gross when you think about where it comes from. Can you imagine if the tables were turned and human females were kidnapped, taken to a farm and were forced to get pregnant every year, only to have their babies taken from them and killed and then they were hooked up to machines that took their breast milk? That’s a creepy, extermely traumatising situation. Yet we do it to cows like it’s nothing. The pain and fear those poor cows must feel.
ive always been freaked out by dairy products. i remember being little and finding out where they came from and thinking, why would i drink out of that
I followed a vegetarian diet through my chemo and radiation and I do think that it helped me overall, but still, in other ways it was difficult. Had to drink a lot of gross smoothies with protein powder to make sure I was getting what I needed, especially since my cancer meant I was dropping soy and you’re told to up your protein content to avoid muscle wasting. My blood levels stayed good all through chemo.
That said, chemo is chemo. You feel like crap and your taste buds are all messed up. I wasn’t eating meat but there were plenty of times that the only thing I wanted to eat was ice cream, sour candy, ramen noodles or canned soup. And I did. Because cancer.
The diet she follows is ‘whole food plant based diet’ rather than just veganism. Meaning, no processed food, no fats, no junk food. And a vegetarian diet is very different from what she follows. Veganism is a philosophy, plant based diet is a ‘way of eating’.
People should read The China Study to see the connection between Western diseases and diet, especially animal products and fat.
The rate of breast cancer in China is 1 in 10000, while it’s nearly 1 in 8 in the UK. This is because their diet is healthier, high starch and plenty of veg. And no dairy! Breast cancer is becoming more common there because they have adapted the Western diet.
Many cancer survivors used a ‘plant based diet’ to heal themselves. Dr Ruth Heidrich for one.