If
you have been diagnosed with cancer, you obviously have
the choice to opt for either orthodox or natural methods,
or a combination of both. Most individuals reading this
will be inclined to use conventional as well as natural
cancer therapies in various combinations. However, the effect
of natural therapies is different when used on its own than
in combination with orthodox methods.
The
German cancer researcher P.G. Seeger has experimentally
demonstrated that the virulence or malignancy of cancers
can be reduced and even be removed with high-quality live
food. Cancer cells can gradually be converted back to normal
cells. However, the more malignant the cancer cells are,
the more difficult is this conversion. Above a certain degree
of malignancy this no longer works, although even strongly
malignant cancers may still become less malignant.
The
degree of malignancy of a cancer depends mainly on the lifestyle,
past and present, of the individual. With good nutrition
and balanced emotions malignancy tends to remain low, and
vice versa, but the main impact on malignancy comes from
any kind of chronic stress and particularly medical treatment.
Drugs, radiation, exposure to chemicals, and negative emotions,
will all encourage a tendency to malignancy. Therefore,
most medical treatments work against the nutritional normalization
of cancer cells.
Surgery
can have a positive effect by removing a toxic load from
the body and stimulating healing responses, but a strongly
negative effect comes from the chemicals used in general
anaesthesia. They compromise the immune system for several
weeks afterwards. If the tumour has been cleanly removed
and there is good nutritional and emotional support, then
this may not matter, the patient may be cured. However,
if there is metastatic spread or other tumours are already
present, then these may start growing much more strongly
and become more malignant.
Surgery
for a primary tumour is almost always “successful”. However,
the real success becomes apparent only several years later.
In many cancers the appearance of secondary tumours or metastases
has been convincingly traced to the surgical removal of
an earlier primary tumour. Orthodox medicine is aware of
this danger and tries to minimize it with radiotherapy and
chemotherapy. However, the latest statistics demonstrate
that the survival rate is minimal and the patient usually
only consents to this treatment out of fear and/or pressure
from their practitioner and family. While it may slightly
reduce the incidence of local recurrences and of patients
dying of the same type of cancer, more individuals die instead
as a direct result of the treatment, or of a different cancer,
and generally these treatments lead to a much poorer quality
of life.
Because
radiotherapy and chemotherapy impose a considerable toxic
load on the body and impair the immune system even more
than surgery, they tend to increase the malignancy of any
metastases that might already be present, or promote the
formation of new tumours. Any perceived benefit, such as
shrinking of tumours, is usually only temporary with much
faster growth afterwards. In this case nutritional therapy
will not be able to normalize the metabolism of any cancer
cells present, and the only option is their destruction.
At this stage nutritional therapy is still important to
support the body, but it is no longer a primary therapy.
The more toxic therapies are used, the less the cancer will
respond to nutritional therapy.
At
this stage nutrition and other lifestyle improvements will
only have a minor effect on the eventual outcome. However,
non-toxic tumour-destroying methods, in combination with
nutrition and emotional therapy, may still be effective
in destroying some tumours, rendering others dormant, or
reducing their rate of growth, while also minimizing pain
and improving quality of life.
There
have been warnings that antioxidants may interfere with
chemotherapy. However, more recent studies have shown an
enhanced effect of chemotherapy when antioxidants were used
in addition, and patients had less side-effects. To my knowledge
the only good evidence for the use of chemotherapy is with
some blood and lymph cancers, especially with leukaemia
in children. However, even then there is a high price to
pay.
A
long-term follow-up study shows that such children develop
18 times more secondary malignant tumours later in life,
and girls face a 75 times (7,500%) higher risk of breast
cancer by the time they are 40. Chemotherapy for solid tumours
also can cause leukaemia, a clear dose dependency has been
shown whereby the incidence of induced leukaemia doubled
between low dose and moderate dose groups and then quadrupled
between the moderate dose and the high dose groups. A study
of ovarian cancer found that the risk of developing leukaemia
after treatment with chemotherapy increased 21 fold or 2100%.
Also other tumours commonly develop after treating malignancies
with chemotherapy. Therefore, if you choose, or in the case
of children, are compelled to use chemotherapy, then it
is essential to have high-quality nutrition not only before
and during treatment, but continuing for many years afterwards.
A
Better Option
Now
let’s look at a different scenario. You have found a suspicious
lump or been told that cancer is suspected. The first problem
is to decide whether you want a biopsy. While it is the
medical consensus that these are harmless, there is a considerable
amount of research showing that biopsies may actively encourage
the spread of metastases. For instance in 2004, a highly
respected team at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in California
reported a 50% increase of metastatic spread to nearby lymph
glands after needle biopsy of breast tumours as compared
to lumpectomy.
If
you intend to use only natural therapy, at least initially,
there is no real need to know whether it is malignant. A
suspected cancer is hardly ever so urgent that something
needs to be done immediately. On the contrary, regardless
of whether you want to use only natural therapies or eventually
may have surgery, you can expect to benefit greatly from
an initial period of nutritional and emotional preparation.
If
you do opt for surgery, make sure by prior written agreement
with your surgeon that only the minimum is cut out, or just
the 'lump', without making an effort to 'get it all' by
removing all the surrounding lymph nodes. While removing
lymph nodes may reduce the likelihood of a local reappearance,
there is no evidence that it increases the survival rate,
and generally, the more is taken out, the greater the traumatic
after-effects. Lymph nodes are essential for healing the
diseased area with subsequent holistic therapies; commonly
only one or two lymph nodes are affected, usually the sentinel
node and related nodes, and these can now be identified
and selectively removed.
Another
consideration is to have only local anaesthesia if at all
possible. There is evidence that general anaesthesia causes
considerable damage because it knocks out the immune system
for a considerable period. This is a major factor in the
development of metastases, or the later appearance of secondary
tumours. With breast cancer, and probably all female cancers,
any surgical intervention is preferable between days seven
and twenty of the normal menstrual cycle. A study has shown
that with surgery in the first and last week of the cycle,
it was four times more likely that cancer recurred and patients
died within ten years. Also avoid surgery close to full
moon. At this time there is a much higher rate of complications
from excessive bleeding.
Furthermore
the vitamin D status before and after surgery is important.
Recently, (April 2005) researchers from Harvard University
reported that patients with the highest vitamin D intake
who had surgery in the summer had a three-fold better disease-free
survival and a four-fold better overall survival than patients
with the lowest vitamin D intake who had surgery during
winter. While this study was for lung cancer, similar results
have been shown for most other cancers. Skin exposure to
sunshine up to 20 minutes (producing about 20,000 IU of
vitamin D) is much more effective than food sources of this
vitamin.
Follow
an optimal nutritional and emotional program for 3 to 6
months and see what happens. If the tumour has remained
dormant or even regressed, then just continue what you are
doing. If it has continued growing and you want to have
it removed, then your body is now in a much better condition
to prevent any metastatic spread and later recurrence. Keep
up a good program for several years after surgery.
This
article has been written for the newsletter of the Cancer
Natural therapy Foundation of Australia (Melbourne).
