Alternative Cancer Treatments: Are Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy and Surgery The Only Options?

As I have mentioned in my previous post about the categories of cancer patient that I manage, many sought alternative cancer treatment because they did not have the choice. Before they consulted me, patients or their family members who are educated and well read have already concluded that at stage 4 of any cancers, conventional cancer treatment (chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery) may not change the outcome anyway, so why go through the side effects of chemotherapy unnecessarily? What could be done for them at least is to buy some precious time and comfort (palliation). The best that we can offer these patients are dignity, love and respect as a human being throughout the last phase of their lives.

Here are 2 videos which I think anybody who is considering NOT DOING CHEMOTHERAPY or conventional cancer treatment in the hospital should watch before deciding what is best for themselves or their loved ones. It explains why patients are still considering alternative cancer therapies for STAGE 4 ADVANCED CANCERS despite the availability of chemotherapy:

CANCER CARE MANAGEMENT

Cancer is a dreaded life threatening disease that is affecting more and more people lately. There are some factors contributing to cancers namely, genetic predisposition, environment, diet, lifestyle and habits, infections and some other unknown causes.

Most patients would go for conventional cancer treatment at the hospital that offers chemotherapy, surgery or radiotherapy. And these are the recognized medical therapies that are covered by medical insurance. Despite the advances in medical therapy, the fact remains that the 5 year survival rates for most cancers have not improved significantly over the past 50 years. I must agree that chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy has saved, helped and benefited many patients. Therefore whenever appropriate, I would encourage patients to go for such treatment if such treatment would help improve survival rate and enhance quality of life. To advise against such possibility is simply wrong.

However, there are many patients who has succumbed to such treatment. I shall not go into why chemotherapy, surgery or radiotherapy has failed to help patients especially in advanced Stage 4 cancers. Suffice to say that conventional cancer therapy has it successes and failures just like any other medical therapies. To claim that any medical therapy has succeeded 100% all the time for all patients is nothing short of charlatanism.

In this age where information technology is so assessible, patients are able to google for any information they want, just like how you have arrived here reading this blog. Of course there will be conflicting opinions on any subject on the internet. It is important for patients to make medical decisions with medical professionals for their own safety. Do not believe blindly everything you read on the internet. Do your own research. Talk to your doctor, then make a decision.

In my practice, I have encountered 3 categories of cancer patients who has made a decision not to go for conventional cancer treatment namely surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

The first group of patients are those who are diagnosed with advanced Stage 4 cancers where conventional cancer therapy would be futile. These are the patients who are 'given' 3 months or 6 months to live by the oncologist. They are asked to go home and make preparations for their imminent death. So I was sometimes involved in the palliative management of these patients in terms of providing whatever medical assistance necessary in terms of pain management, wound care, bed sores, feeding tubes, nutritional support and etc. so as to provide comfort and minimize pain as much as possible. The aim here is to improve quality of life whenever possible and not cure.

The second group of patients are those who have started chemotherapy or radiotherapy and half way through the treatment protocol, were unable and unwilling to continue further because of the side-effects. When such patients come to see me at this point, as a primary care physician, it is my obligation to encourage patients to continue their treatment at the oncology centre if the evidence is showing that their cancers are improving significantly. I would appreciate much when my highly esteemed oncologist colleagues would give me a medical note with the plan to strategize the return of these patients back to the hospital to continue treatment. Quite often, I have patients who do not have any idea what they are having and what treatment they are going through in the hospital. All they cared about is that the treatment is unbearable and felt that they are not getting better. In fact it is making them worse and they do not wish to continue knowing fully that they themselves are accountable for the decision. At the end of the day, it is up to the patients to decide what is the best for themselves.

The third group of patients are those who had completed surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy and are declared 'cancer free'. And so they are told that they can eat anything they wanted because they are cured. Unexpectedly, they were shocked with the discovery of cancer relapse not long after completing treatment. As though that is not disappointing enough, the cancer has spread and became Stage 4. The first thought that comes to the patient's mind is, "How could this be?! I have gone through so much suffering and side-effects and thought I was cured." There are patients who are offered more chemotherapy which they adamantly refuse. Usually those who refuse would have realized by now that a Stage 4 cancer relapse has little hope for cure. Treatment is now aimed at maintaining quality of life as much as possible.

All the 3 categories of patients have valid reasons to refuse conventional therapy. The question is what options do they have? I could see their desperation and helplessness at this point when they become vulnerable to all suggestions of 'cure'. They would come to me and seek for opinion about some direct sales supplements or diet introduced by their friends and relatives. They would come for reassurance about the safety of herbs that they are taking from traditional healers. They would bring to my clinic some gadgets claiming to shrink cancer cells in the most extra-ordinary way. I realized that these patients are doing all sort of things suggested by all sorts or people. It is so disorganized and so confusing to the patient and the doctor.

The doctor can either rubbish off everything that seems foreign and unexplainable and continues unperturbed in his comfort zone. I seemed to attract these patients not because I am any better than my colleagues. I simply gave them my precious time to listen to their sufferings, hopes and fears. This is the least that I could do without being judgmental about the supplements or herbs that they consumed and the routine Qi gong that they practiced or the bio-electric chair/bed that they sleep on or the Bioresonance treatment course that they have committed. I am contented to see them preoccupied with something that they perceive as useful. My part as a medical practitioner is to provide an objective assessment of improvement or deterioration clinically. Their energy level, appetite, weight, pain level, quality of sleep, bowel and urinary habits, range of movements, mobility and mood are assessed clinically. An objective feedback is given to them to gauge if what they are doing on their own as an alternative to cancer treatment has a positive or negative effect. And because there is nothing more that my esteemed oncologist could offer this group of patient, the least that I could do is to 'pour cold water' on their effort to get well, no matter how hopeless it may seem. If there is anything that could be done for them from the conventional cancer treatment point of view, please let me know. If it really helps my patient, I would be a very willing partner to advocate to my patients to do what is right and helpful for my patient's reversal and remission form end stage cancer.

Otherwise what harm does it do to patients by advising them to eat right, improve oxygenation, improve blood circulation and assist body detoxification systems eg. liver and bowel detox. Patients should be given the choice and not condemned when opting for alternative therapy when conventional therapy failed.

Chemotherapy is war (killing) against the cancer cells, Changing the extracellular surrounding of the cancer cells restores its non-cancerous state!

Extracellular Matrix Regulates Gene Expression & Cancer

The surrounding environment of the cancer cell matters? Click to watch.

Gene mutations are part of the process of cancer, but mutations alone are not enough to cause cancer to take hold and spread, thus threatening people’s lives through domination of precious life resources (nutrition) as well as precious real estate where other healthy cells live. Genes do become damaged and sustain mutations in some cells and not others during people’s lifetimes. An oncogene—a gene that causes tumors in animals and uncontrolled growth in cells in culture—cannot in and of itself change cells from normal to cancerous. It is the cells’ surroundings, known as its microenvironment, that contribute in some way to how cancer has occurred.

Cancer involves an interaction between rogue cells and surrounding tissue. This is the clear message that Dr. Mina Bissell, who is the director of life sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California (LBNL), and she is now sharing this with the world. The interactions between cancer cells and their micro and macroenvironments create a context that promotes tumor growth and protects them from immune attack or, on the other hand, prevent tumors from making any kind of beachhead so they cannot take hold or spread themselves around. Cancer cells routinely form in most people’s bodies but that does not mean they are going to succeed in capturing their host’s valuable resources so they can invade (inland so to speak) as they win their war and take our life.

What this means is that the surrounding cells and the surrounding extracellular matrix interact to shape cancer cell behaviors such as polarity, migration and proliferation. The microenvironment includes a complex scaffolding on which cells grow and develop, called the extracellular matrix. The microenvironment is what actually surrounds a cell. The extracellular matrix (microenvironment) has been shown to regulate gene expression so it has more to do with the state of cancer than the cancer cells themselves.

“If tissue architecture and context are part of the message, then tumor cells with abnormal genomes should be capable of becoming ‘normal’” if grown in a healthy microenvironment. Dr. Bissell and her students tested that hypothesis with some malignant cells, growing them on a healthy scaffolding. And yes, they were able to revert the malignant phenotype to a normal one. They could even inject the cells into mice where they didn’t cause tumors, unlike malignant cells, which would cause cancer. This, says Bissell, indicates that there is another way to look at cancer—that cancer genes are regulated by the environment around them.

Dr. Bissell’s basic idea is that cancer cells cannot turn into a lethal tumor without the cooperation of other cells nearby. It is not just the other surrounding cells but also the interstitial environment, which of course would include pH and nutrient levels being supplied by the blood. That may be why autopsies repeatedly find that most people who die of causes other than cancer have at least some tiny tumors in their bodies that had gone unnoticed. According to current thinking, the tumors were kept in check, causing no harm.

“Think of it as this kid in a bad neighborhood,” said Dr. Susan Love, a breast cancer surgeon and president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. “You can take the kid out of the neighborhood and put him in a different environment and he will behave totally differently.” She added, “It’s exciting. What it means, if all this environmental stuff is right, is that we should be able to reverse cancer without having to kill cells. This could open up a whole new way of thinking about cancer that would be much less assaultive.”

Dr. Bissell is now hailed as a hero, with an award named after her. “You have created a paradigm shift,” the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology wrote in a letter announcing that she had won its 2008 Excellence in Science award.

Dr. D. W. Smithers, then at Royal Marsden Hospital in London, argued that cancer was not a disease caused by a rogue cell that divides and multiplies until it destroys its host. “Cancer is no more a disease of cells than a traffic jam is a disease of cars,” Dr. Smithers wrote. “A lifetime of study of the internal-combustion engine would not help anyone understand our traffic problems.”

The death rate has barely budged for most cancers, and the gene mutation strategy so far has been a failure—a senseless one that has been used to reinforce the insane and very deadly form of medicine contemporary oncologists practice. Dr. David Agus, a conventional oncologist, agrees that cancer treatments have a shortsighted focus on individual cells.

Cells that are in harmony move and work together to create and work toward the conditions necessary for overall health. We can turn to physics and remember what happens to a bunch of grandfather clocks on the wall. They can all be swinging in wide opposition to each other but come back a while later and they will all be swinging together. Our cells are like that, all the many trillions of them. There is coherence to the entire colony of cells until what we call cancer occurs and then that coherence begins to break down.

Chemotherapy Provokes More Not Less Cancer

Chemotherapy can cause damage to healthy cells, which triggers them to secrete a protein that sustains tumor growth and makes cancer more resistance to any further treatment. We are beginning to see clinical evidence across the board show that what happens to healthy cells during cancer treatment determines much if not the entire outcome of treatment.

“Cancer cells inside the body live in a very complex environment or neighborhood. Where the tumor cell resides and who its neighbors are influence its response and resistance to therapy,” said senior author Dr. Peter S. Nelson, a member of the Hutchinson Cancer Center’s Human Biology Division. “Our findings indicate that the tumor microenvironment also can influence the success or failure of these more precise therapies.” In other words, the same cancer cell, when exposed to different “neighborhoods,” may have very different responses to treatment.

Researchers at the center tested the effects of a type of chemotherapy on tissue collected from men with prostate cancer, and found “evidence of DNA damage” in healthy cells after treatment, the scientists wrote in Nature Medicine in August of 2012.

The scientists found that healthy cells damaged by chemotherapy secreted more of a protein called WNT16B, which boosts cancer cell survival. The researchers observed up to 30-fold increases in WNT production! “The increase in WNT16B was completely unexpected,” said Dr. Nelson. The protein was taken up by tumour cells neighboring the damaged cells. “WNT16B, when secreted, would interact with nearby tumor cells and cause them to grow, invade, and importantly, resist subsequent therapy,” said Nelson.

Rates of tumor cell reproduction have been shown to accelerate between chemotherapy treatments. “Our results indicate that damage responses in benign cells… may directly contribute to enhanced tumor growth kinetics,” wrote the team. The researchers said they confirmed their findings with breast and ovarian cancer tumors.

Dr. Nelson describes the normal insanity/methods of chemotherapy saying, “In the laboratory we can ‘cure’ most any cancer simply by giving very high doses of toxic therapies to cancer cells in a petri dish. However, in people, these high doses would not only kill the cancer cells but also normal cells and the host.” Therefore, treatments for common solid tumors are given in smaller doses and in cycles, or intervals, to allow the normal cells to recover. This approach may not eradicate all of the tumor cells, and those that survive can evolve to become resistant to subsequent rounds of anti-cancer therapy.

What mainstream researchers are failing to find is that we can approach cancer treatment from a completely different and opposite angle to chemotherapy. Instead of trying to kill the cancer and harm the surrounding cells we imprison the cancer in a solid wall of healthy cells, thus that area being strengthened as opposed to being weakened by treatments. We create the conditions where we first limit the ability to grow and then send in some cruise missiles that directly target the cancer cells, choking the life out of them with waves of increased alkalinity and oxygen.