The Ultimate Consultation starts with the premise that the most important part of the Ultimate Consultation is the Ultimate Patient, one who participates actively in achieving their best health outcomes. This includes enhancing their general, overall health as well as dealing with the specific clinical problems they are facing.

Development of routine is very important and should be emphasised to the patient—this may be developing a routine of exercise, eating healthy foods, getting out in the sunshine, developing good sleep habits, and unloading stress. It is about changing unhealthy habits and replacing them with healthy habits. A healthy patient with cancer will fare better than an unhealthy one. And a patient who participates in getting better will invariably get better results.

The focus of the integrative medicine consultation, in terms of questioning during the case history and information shared by the clinician with the patients, is on Seven Key Health Strategies:

This will involve discussion of stress and its role in cancer, the role of diet in cancer, including foods to eat as well as avoid, the importance of sleep in assisting healing and how sleep becomes disrupted in cancer, the benefit of sunlight and Vitamin D, the role of exercise, useful nutritional supplements and herbal medicines, and innovative investigative technologies and treatments. These seven key health strategies will be discussed in the next six chapters.