Defeat Cancer (50 page)

First, people with cancer should know that it’s okay to get a second opinion when researching medical treatments. Every physician is a tool for helping them to heal. Also, it’s important that they ask questions about their treatments: any and all that are meaningful to them. They should understand that the word ‘cancer’ includes many different diseases and when they hear or read things like, “Product X is good for cancer,” know that the product may not be beneficial
for their specific situation. Also, the quality of supplements that they take matters, often significantly.

People with cancer shouldn’t wait until they have had a recurrence of cancer before they improve their dietary habits. They should begin working with a well-trained and experienced naturopathic physician or other integrative doctor as soon as possible. There’s so much more available to cancer patients than just oncology treatments. From an outcomes perspective, I believe most people do much better if they incorporate naturopathic strategies into their lives sooner rather than later, along with a chemotherapy regimen. I don’t think that a naturopath should be the only type of integrative provider that patients see, though. There are many other types of practitioners, such as integrative oncologists, who do the type of work that I do, in addition to conventional therapies, and who are good at what they do.

Some hospitals and community organizations have financial assistance programs to help people who don’t have the funds to pay for their treatments. For instance, I work with Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, which has a foundation to help cancer patients. There’s also a group here in Seattle called Cancer Lifeline. Their mission is to connect people with the resources that they need to heal from cancer, and this can include money for their treatments and living expenses. Thus, financial aid can come from places besides government and church organizations. Other resources exist, and I help my patients to find their way to those resources, whenever appropriate.

Fortunately, most of my patients’ insurance plans pay for my services, because the state of Washington mandates insurance coverage for naturopathic physicians and many other types of health care providers, including medical doctors. Typically, insurance plans cover naturopathic care only in states that offer licensing in naturopathic medicine, although not all insurance companies pay for naturopathic care, regardless of the state. I also give a “time
of service” discount to people who pay cash for their treatments, whenever they lack insurance benefits. This is considered to be industry standard. I believe that every practitioner should consider offering such discounts, so if people don’t have insurance and need to pay for their treatments “out of pocket,” they have an option to avoid paying the premium for services. I try to work with my patients to make cancer care affordable for them.

Friends and family should listen to their loved ones with cancer, and learn to prioritize their needs over their own. They should also try to be patient, understanding, and forgiving.

Sometimes I have patients that come to me because they have been dragged here by family and friends. They don’t necessarily have an interest in integrative or naturopathic care. They may be overwhelmed with other things. It’s common for spouses to push nutrition on their husbands or wives with cancer, but their spouses might not be interested in good nutrition. Family members and caregivers want to be able to do something to help, and doing things like offering dietary suggestions gives them a sense of control and a way to help. Yet it’s also important for them to listen to their loved ones, because trying to convince them to do something against their will can be a source of stress for them, which is the last thing they need while battling cancer.

I sometimes manage this stress relationship between family members, and end up becoming an authority that says to the patient, “If you want to have pizza tonight, that’s okay. If you can’t take 23 supplements today, that’s okay. Let’s back it up to just three capsules and next week, try to add in one or two more.” Such suggestions can relieve the person with cancer, while also providing a sense of legitimacy to the spouse who is pushing for him or her to get on a better diet and take supplements. So I try to help friends and family to be as effective as possible in their roles as helpers. I am not a counselor but all health care practitioners provide some
degree of counseling to their patients. Counseling is inherent in all practitioner-patient relationships.

The majority of medical interventions, whether conventional (standard of care) or otherwise, carry some degree of risk that needs to be weighed against the benefits in each patient’s situation. Of course, all therapies have limitations, whether they involve conventional drugs, radiation, or natural medicine. It’s important for patients to understand the potential benefits/risks that they might experience from different treatments, as well as the alternatives that are available.

Many ineffective and dangerous therapies are advertised on the Internet and described in seemingly authoritative books that are available at local markets. Ultimately, I recommend that people who are considering natural or complementary therapy consult with an expert before combining such therapies with their conventional oncology treatments.

Following are books which contain more information on integrative cancer care, as well as on whole foods nutrition and recipes for those with cancer.

1. Food Rules
   or
   In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
   – Michael Pollen.
   
2. Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life
   – David Servan-Schreiber, MD
   
3. The Journey Through Cancer: An Oncologist’s Seven-Level Program for Healing and Transforming the Whole Person
   – Jeremy R. Geffen, MD
   
4. Definitive Guide to Cancer: An Integrated Approach to Prevention, Treatment and Healing
   – Lise N. Alschuler, ND & Karolyn A. Gazella
   
5. Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment
   – Keith I. Block, MD
   
6. The Cancer Fighting Kitchen: Nourishing, Big-Flavor Recipes for Cancer Treatment and Recovery
   – Rebecca Katz
   
7. The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook: Whole Foods Recipes for Personal and Planetary Health
   – Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre, MS
   
8. Also, see The Environmental Working Group website at
   www.EWG.org
   for additional information on organic versus conventionally-grown produce, as well as healthier home cleaning and personal care products.
   
9. Society of Integrative Oncology (SIO) -
   www.integrativeonc.org
   
10. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: About Herbs, Botanicals and Other Products,
    www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11570.cfm
    
11. Oncologist-approved cancer information from the American Society of Clinical Oncology –
    www.cancer.net
    

Institute of Complementary Medicine

1600 E. Jefferson, Suite 603

Seattle, WA 98122

Phone: (206) 726-0034

www.instituteofcomplementarymedicine.com

Finn Skøtt Andersen, MD, has been the chief physician at Humlegaarden cancer clinic since 1979. Founded in 1945, Humlegaarden is situated amidst idyllic surroundings in the small town of Humlebæk, just five miles south of Elsinore and approximately thirty miles north of Copenhagen, Denmark. Through his work with cancer patients, Dr. Andersen has become one of the most well-known and innovative cancer doctors in Scandinavia. He uses holistic methods for treating cancer, and has treated thousands of patients from all over the world during his thirty-two years at Humlegaarden. He has achieved exceptional results in his patients, especially in those with prostate cancer.

Describing cancer in just a few words is difficult, because cancer is actually many diseases, and several factors are implicated in their development. All human beings have small, dormant tumors in their bodies. These tumors are very little: perhaps no larger than a
millimeter or two in size. Autopsies performed on the breasts of middle-aged women and the prostates of men (who died of other causes besides cancer) have revealed the presence of these dormant cancers. These little cancers are also commonly found in the thyroid gland. People can live with such small, dormant tumors for years without ever developing cancer.

The small dormant tumors can, however, start to produce growth factors such as platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and fibroblast growth factor (FGF). These growth factors attach themselves to receptors on nearby blood vessel walls and induce biochemical processes that create new blood vessels, which then sprout out from the walls towards the dormant tumor. The sprouting vessels then grow into the tumor, thus enabling it to obtain oxygen and nutrients and grow at an accelerated rate. The production of new blood vessels from existing blood vessels is called angiogenesis.

What triggers a dormant tumor to start producing these growth factors at a certain point in time is an interesting question. Perhaps a dormant tumor may be triggered to start growing when all of the well-known cancer-promoting factors that we are exposed to in our lifetimes reach a “tipping point.” However, our experience at Humlegaarden suggests that there is usually just one primary factor which finally triggers tumor development, which is different for everyone. If patients could discover this factor, and neutralize or eliminate it, their prognoses would be majorly impacted.

Emotional trauma may be the most relevant or important factor in the development of some cancers. Pancreatic and breast cancers are psychosomatic cancers, according to our experience, especially pancreatic cancer, which often occurs after an emotional shock. This shock can be a bankruptcy, a difficult divorce, or any traumatic event in a person’s life. Some people have an “inner balance” which allows them to cope with even the most challenging life traumas, while others can’t get them out of their systems. The energy of those traumas then accumulates in the solar plexus area of the body. Ancient Chinese doctors have said that cancers arise wherever a
person has an accumulation, or overabundance, of Chi (energy) in a specific area of the body. Setting this excess energy into motion so that it leaves the body is important and necessary for treating psychosomatic cancers. Of course, environmental contamination also contributes to cancer, and there’s no doubt that it has increased the incidence of cancer in recent years.

Humlegaarden is known as a center of excellence for hyperthermia treatments. Since 1984, we have been the only clinic in Scandinavia that does these treatments on cancer patients, so we have obtained in-depth knowledge about how to treat cancer using this method.

We don’t use a standard hyperthermia unit to do local hyperthermia treatments. Instead, we have been using an EHY-2000 OncoTherm machine for almost twenty years, which combines hyperthermia with electro-therapy. During this therapy, patients lie on a waterbed. A bolus electrode is positioned at the site where the patient is to be treated, and a counter electrode is positioned under the waterbed’s mattress. A modulated electric field with a carrier frequency of 13.56 MHz is then generated by the two active electrodes, which each have a diameter of 17 cm.

Since malignant tissue has a higher electrical conductivity than healthy human tissue, the electric field flows predominantly through the malignant tumor tissue. The combination of deep layer heating and the electric field stimulates malignant tumor cells. This, in turn, triggers increased apoptosis activity in the tumor and cancer cell death. Compared with classic hyperthermia, which can burn the patient, a significantly lower temperature is used in oncothermia. Classic hyperthermia increases the body’s temperature to 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but oncothermia achieves a greater effect in the body by only raising its temperature to 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees).

Oncothermia selectively heats tumor tissue while leaving healthy tissue virtually untouched. For this reason, it’s used primarily for treating localized solid tumors. It doesn’t matter whether the tumors are located deep within the body or on its surface. Oncothermia also allows “mobile” areas of the body to be treated, such as the lungs or thermo-sensitive regions such as the brain. It’s also effective in areas of the body where there is high blood flow, such as the liver, as well as in areas of high air circulation, such as the lungs.

In general, oncothermia can be used to treat all stages and types of cancer, although its principal use is for advanced solid tumors that are either barely operable or inoperable, or for recurrent tumors and metastases.

People can often be successfully treated with oncothermia whenever conventional therapy approaches such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy have proven to be inadequate or are unlikely to be successful. It can be used on all of the following tumors, even if there are metastases in other organs of the body: astrocytomas and glioblastomas; bronchial, cervical, colorectal, hepotocellular, stomach, renal cell, esophageal, ovarian, pancreatic, head, breast, squamous epithelium, urethra, and throat carcinomas, as well as malignant melanomas.