Defeat Cancer (42 page)

In summary, cancer is caused by many things, including poor immune system function, environmental toxicity, emotional stress, and a poor diet. Ultimately, a strong immune system is what matters
most in preventing and beating cancer, and all of the aforementioned factors affect immune function.

My therapy program consists of three components. The first is a complete, ten-page diet protocol which outlines the foods that patients should and shouldn’t eat. The diet is tailored specifically to people with cancer. Its main goal is to alkalinize the body and remove substances which cause cancer cells to grow. The second part of my program involves giving my patients pharmaceutical-grade nutritional supplements that feed the body antioxidants, vitamins, and amino acids, and increase white blood cell activity. The third, and most important, component involves administering intravenous and injectable substances to the body to boost immune system function. The main reason why people come to my clinic is to do these high-dose intravenous therapies and injections.

Depending upon their specific needs, my patients may receive therapy for anywhere from a few days to six to eight weeks, for three to five days per week. The duration and timing of these therapies depends upon factors such as patients’ schedules and those of their conventional doctors, other treatments that they do outside of our office, their lab test results, and whether or not they are also receiving chemotherapy and/or radiation.

As previously mentioned, part of my diet manual for patients contains a list of foods that they should avoid. These include table sugar, salt, dairy products, wheat, and red meat. The manual also contains a list of alkaline foods that I encourage them to eat, as well as a variety of different juicing protocols and alkalinizing agents, such as alkaline water ionizers.

Consuming alkaline foods is important because many studies show that cancer cells feed on sugar and have a hard time surviving in an alkaline environment. Many cancer books discuss the importance of
an alkaline diet. We drink alkaline water at our clinic and provide our patients with alkaline water that has a pH of 9.5. The higher we can push our patients’ pH to bring it into an alkaline state, the better. The premise behind my therapy plan is that if I can increase my patients’ white blood cell counts, boost their immune systems, and put them on an alkaline diet, then their white blood cells and immune systems will be able to overcome and effectively fight their diseases.

Finally, my diet protocol also includes information on organic labels that are put on fruits and vegetables in the grocery store. These are to help patients identify the right types of foods to eat so that they know whether they are purchasing healthy, true organic foods, without pesticides, herbicides, and other harmful additives.

I also prescribe my patients a regimen of pharmaceutical-grade quality supplements (which can only be purchased by health care practitioners) to which they must strictly adhere. I often recommend that they take nine or ten different oral supplements, in addition to the nutrients that they receive intravenously. These supplements are used to boost immune function, alkalinize the body, cleanse the liver and colon, and provide additional nutritional support. The combination of supplements may include vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, and mushroom formulas (the latter of which are used to boost white blood cell counts). Some of the pharmaceutical grade supplements that I prescribe are products that I have manufactured for my patients and are made specifically for people with cancer.

The immune-boosting intravenous substances that we use depend upon what each patient needs. My average patient receives five or six different intravenous preparations daily, which may include all of the following:

a.  high-dose vitamins

b.  minerals

c.  anti-inflammatory substances

d.  amino acids

e.  herbal and homeopathic remedies

f.  hydrogen peroxide

g.  other immune-boosting therapeutic elements

All of these treatments are designed to super-saturate the body with nutritional substances that increase white blood cell counts and boost immunity. They are also designed to eliminate toxins from the body, which also improves immune function.

When patients see that their scans and blood tests are normal for the first time, they tend to think,
I’m cured, so why do I need to continue doing therapy?
However, just because we get a clear scan back, doesn’t mean that patients are done with their therapies. It just means that they are moving in the right direction. PET, CT, and MRI scans are fairly accurate, but they can still only pick up certain sized images, which means that some cancer cells may still be present in the body and are simply not being detected by the scans.

I once had a patient with late stage colon cancer whose scans came back normal. Because of this, he believed that he was done with his treatments and that he didn’t need to come back for maintenance therapy. He didn’t follow up with me or his oncologist after receiving the results of his first PET scan and so quit his treatment protocol. He went back to his old, unhealthy diet. Unfortunately, somewhere in his body, he still had microscopic cancer cells that the tests didn’t pick up; those cancer cells spread and now he has widespread metastatic disease.

The term “remission” means that there is no more cancer that doctors can find in the body. Here in the United States, doctors aren’t allowed to use the term “cancer free” with their patients. I haven’t had cancer for over fourteen years, and would say that I am cancer free, but I can’t legally say that to patients. I have to tell them that I’m in remission, due to the legalities involved in saying “cancer free.”

Once my patients are considered to be in remission, I usually put them on a maintenance regimen for a few months and then carefully monitor them over the next couple of years. I do periodic scans and follow up from time to time with their oncologists. They get PET and CT scans and blood work done every few months for a while, and eventually get tested less often.

I try to make sure that my patients understand that the maintenance care that I provide is of utmost importance. Such care might involve them coming to my clinic twice a month for nutritional IVs or lab tests, or so that I can talk with them about their progress. I always follow up with my patients for months, even years, after they complete their therapies.

While patients are receiving their initial IV’s at my clinic, I teach them about preventative care, maintenance, nutritional, and other supplemental therapies that they should continue to do for the rest of their lives, after they have completed their therapy with me. If they attain remission, it’s important that they not return to the same lifestyle that caused them to get cancer in the first place.

Anyone who sees me quickly realizes that I am a very hands-on type of doctor. I do more frequent physical exams and lab tests than the average doctor. I often call my patients after they complete their therapies, and will even go to their houses to see how they are doing on a particular day.

Treatment outcomes vary for people who have terminal cancers. Again, most people don’t visit a naturopath until they have a stage three or four cancer and conventional medicine has failed them, or they are in hospice. In all the years that I have been studying and practicing medicine, I have only seen a handful of people come to my clinic with stage one or two cancers, because most don’t know about the benefits of naturopathic medicine when they are first diagnosed. Their choice of treatment is, by default, usually based on the standard American healthcare system. After patients go to their primary care physicians, they are referred to oncologists who participate in their insurance plans. It’s as if they are led down this “dot to dot” path, according to their insurance plan, and when that path doesn’t work, they show up at my door, two years later. By the time they get to me, they are usually in a later stage of disease. This is one major problem with our health care system: patients don’t know the treatment options that are available to them, and if they do, their insurance plans don’t pay for many of those treatments. I spend a lot of my free time lecturing and trying to spread the word that chemotherapy and radiation aren’t the only types of cancer treatment available in medicine.

Despite these challenges, and even if patients are in the later stages of disease, I am often able to significantly extend the length and quality of their lives. I never know how well they are going to do, though, because I’m not God. I just try to do my best, with the understanding that God has given me. The bottom line is that people tend to do better if they pursue naturopathic therapy, and the sooner they do so, the better. Naturopathic treatments reduce their symptoms and pain; increase their lifespan, or both.

Everyone responds differently to therapy, though. For instance, about two years ago, I saw two breast cancer patients who were in a similar condition and stage of disease. I put them on the exact same regimen. One began to respond to the therapies within four to five weeks, but the other needed a few months to reach the same point
in her healing. People respond differently to my therapies because everyone has a unique biochemical make-up.

If patients have low white blood cell counts, and/or nutrient deficiencies, if their hemoglobin and hematocrit levels are low, and if they are so severely anemic that they need a blood transfusion, this can negatively affect their treatment outcome, as will their failure to comply with a treatment regimen. Sometimes, it’s the small things, when taken collectively, that make the biggest difference. But if I could narrow it down to just one thing that affects treatment outcomes, more than anything, it would be the timing of patients’ treatments. The sooner that people can get to my clinic following a cancer diagnosis, the better off that they will be! If they wait until the very end (after having failed conventional treatments), as most do—simply because they don’t know that other options are available to them—then their chances for a full recovery are lessened. The sooner that they get the right information, and get started on good naturopathic treatments, the more likely they are to have a favorable outcome. Knowledge is power.

The biggest roadblock to healing from cancer is the conventional medical system and the fact that insurance and pharmaceutical companies in the United States have limited people’s access to alternative health care. Sometimes chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are the most effective cancer treatments, but not always, and oncologists have been taught that these are the only and best ways to treat cancer. Sometimes, these therapies are the worst thing for patients. For example, even conventional research shows that giving stage four patients chemotherapy won’t improve their long-term survival or prognoses because they are already immunecompromised. Yet in our society, doctors often give late-stage cancer patients chemotherapy, because it’s the only treatment that conventional medicine has to offer.

In conventional medical school, students are taught that as doctors, they are supposed to figure out what their patients’ symptoms are, treat those symptoms with a drug, and then see them periodically for follow-up visits. I know a lot of conventional medical doctors who believe in nutritional supplementation, the importance of a healthy diet, and other alternative approaches to healing, but who will not recommend such treatments to their patients out of fear of punishment by the American Medical Association (AMA) and associated governmental organizations. One oncologist in my area, who works with about six to eight other oncologists, has been practicing oncology for twenty-five or thirty years. He’s a very smart doctor, but when patients go to see him, he tells them that all of the “naturopathic stuff” is garbage. He tells them that it won’t affect their healing and that they shouldn’t waste their time with it. What he doesn’t say is that he is a vegetarian, takes pharmaceutical-grade supplements, and even receives intravenous nutrition from my clinic. Why won’t he be honest with them? The answer is simple: because he could lose his medical license! Some conventional doctors will “come out of the box” a little by referring their patients to my office, but they won’t make specific nutritional recommendations to their patients because they will get ostracized by other MDs, and possibly get in trouble with the AMA.

My biggest challenge as a practitioner is making people with cancer aware of the fact that there are other, sometimes better, options for treating their diseases besides chemotherapy and radiation. Another challenge is getting naturopathic medicine integrated into mainstream medicine. In the United States, the medical system is set up such that primary care physicians only refer their patients to specialists who are covered under their patients’ insurance plans. These are never doctors of naturopathy. One of my goals is to get naturopaths completely integrated into the medical and insurance systems. I also want my name, phone number, and website to be located in places where people with cancer can readily access them. I want it to be as easy for people with cancer to find me as it is for them to find a McDonald’s sign. This isn’t for my personal gain, but
so that if someone gets cancer they can just look up and say, “There’s Doctor Joe!” I want it to be that easy for them to find me. I want them to know who I am, because if they are desperately seeking help, like I once was, it will be easier if they know where to go for that help.