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Alternative Cancer Treatments
IN THIS CHAPTER YOU’LL DISCOVER
→ The Difference between Alternative, Complementary, and Integrative Medicine
→ Dr. Ashwin Mehta: Integrative Medicine
→ Donald Yance: Eclectic Triphasic Medical System (ETMS)
→ Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum: A Comprehensive Approach
→ Dr. David Brownstein: Holistic Medicine
→ Tips Regarding Alternative Cancer Treatment
WHEN BRETT JOHNSON WAS diagnosed with an oligodendroglioma — a particularly fierce type of brain tumor — he decided to marshal every weapon he could against it. To treat the tumor, he turned to surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of the nation’s top cancer centers. He also cast a wide net for ways to nourish his mind and soul as well.
Johnson employed healing modalities like meditation, acupuncture, and color visualization. But he was also aided in many ways by the other techniques, including asking those who would be treating him to say certain mantras. “As crazy as it sounds, it helped,” he says.
When faced with cancer, many patients turn to treatments outside mainstream medicine. Whether you call it alternative, natural, or holistic medicine, Americans spend $34 billion a year on it, and one survey shows that about 65 percent of Americans diagnosed with cancer have used such methods, compared to 53 percent of the general population.
Traditionally, such treatments have gotten a bad rap from the scientific community, especially when they are considered in place of Western medicine. But one of the biggest trends in cancer treatment today is the blending of traditional medicine with non-mainstream modalities under the umbrella term of “integrative medicine.”
Before getting into that, though, here’s a rundown on the terminology:
- • Alternative medicine: This generally means the use of non-mainstream approaches in place of conventional medicine.
- • Complementary medicine: The term describes the use of non-mainstream therapy in conjunction with traditional, Western-style medicine. Alternative and Complementary Medicine are often referred to together under the acronym “CAM.”
- • Integrative medicine: This approach to healing combines treatments from standard medical care with complementary approaches, for which there is high-quality evidence of safety and effectiveness.
A great deal of confusion exists in the use of these terms, so don’t be surprised to hear complementary and integrative medicine being used interchangeably, along with CAM!
One of the forces leading the way in this field is the National Institutes of Health, which is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services. The NIH established the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) with the goal of subjecting such approaches to rigorous scientific studies.
Another excellent resource is the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), which aims to advance evidence-based, comprehensive, integrative healthcare in order to improve the lives of people affected by cancer.
Both NCCAM and SIO offer workbooks for patients who want to talk to their doctors about integrative care. (See the appendix for resources.)
Who Pays for These Treatments?
Whether or not health insurance will pay for nontraditional therapies depends on your coverage. If the treatments are hospital-based, the cost may be covered as part of your hospital care. Many therapies may not be covered by traditional healthcare insurance, but are considered a medical expense so they may also be eligible under a healthcare flexible spending account.
Alternative Philosophies in Practice
DR. ASHWIN MEHTA
Director of Integrative Medicine at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, Ashwin Mehta, MD, believes in treating the whole person using an arsenal of tools that integrates Eastern philosophies into Western medicine.
“When you talk about alternative versus conventional medicine, there is an unfortunate connotation that you have to choose one or the other. I don’t believe that cancer patients should have to make such a choice,” says Dr. Mehta.
At the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, patients are educated about holistic measures that can complement treatment. This includes recommendations from physicians, dieticians, exercise physiologists, and there is also an acupuncturist on the staff.
“If cancer is a weed and the body is the garden, then it’s the job of the surgeon, the oncologist, and the radiologist to eradicate the weed. But once treatment is completed, it’s our job to strengthen and nourish the garden to minimize the chance of the cancer coming back,” says Dr. Mehta.
“Often, patients ask their oncologists questions about nutrition, exercise, mindfulness techniques, and other types of additional therapies they wish to pursue, but their doctors don’t have answers for them. In this case, integrative medicine can fill that gap.”
When it comes to nutrition, for instance, cancer patients are recommended to follow a low glycemic diet — a diet low in sugar and carbohydrates that avoids insulin spikes. According to Mehta, “Cancer cells replicate faster than normal cells. They have the ability to grab onto sugar particles in the bloodstream and are more adept at soaking up easy sugars, so one of the things we do is encourage clients to be mindful about how much sugar they are taking in.”
“Patients are also urged to stay away from processed, undercooked, and raw meats, and lean toward fruits and vegetables and other foods that strengthen the immune system,” says Dr. Mehta. “The nutritionist also guides patients toward foods that inhibit the body’s inflammatory response, which can be aggravated due to chemotherapy,” he adds.
“We also teach cancer patients how to do mindfulness meditation, because studies say that people who are regular practitioners strengthen their immune system, and the immune system can unleash natural cells that kill cancer,” Mehta believes. “These are just some examples of how integrative practices can help fight cancer,” he notes. In addition, all patients at the center are screened for depression, sleep problems, and given an exercise prescription as well as recommendations on vitamins and supplements.
“I’m very open-minded,” says Dr. Mehta, who trained at Dr. Andrew Weil’s Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. “For us to recommend a therapy, it has to be evidence-based; it has to have been validated in clinical trials. If a patient has advanced disease, we may be a little more cavalier, but for someone who has a good prognosis and is receiving treatment, we want therapies that are solid and evidence-based because we want to go for a cure,” he says.
Dr. Mehta’s department, like most other integrative cancer centers, offers services along these lines:
- • Herbal medicine consultation
- • Nutritional counseling
- • Physical activity/exercise counseling
- • Meditation, yoga, and tai chi classes
- • Education in restful sleep practices
- • Acupuncture
- • Art therapy
- • Animal-assisted therapy
- • Music therapy
DONALD YANCE, CN, MH, AHG
“Herbal treatment is the oldest medicine in the world,” says Donald R. Yance, Jr., co-author of Herbal Medicine, Healing & Cancer: A Comprehensive Program for Prevention and Treatment. Yance, a certified nutritionist and master herbalist, has created a system that he calls the “Eclectic Triphasic Medical System (ETMS),” which is both a diagnostic and therapeutic system for the care of the whole person. He also runs the Mederi Foundation and the Mederi Centre for Natural Healing in Ashland, Oregon.
Yance’s approach is a blend of science along with many other modalities, including traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic (traditional Hindu) medicine. His system incorporates the following fields:
- • Botanical medicine
- • Nutritional medicine
- • Dietary medicine
- • Lifestyle medicine
- • Pharmaceutical medicine
Yance includes the term “triphasic” in his system, as this program of care encompasses the three main dynamics of self — the body, the mind, and the spirit — but also takes into consideration the individual, the environment, and the disease process. He thoroughly assesses each patient (or host) as well as the cancer.
“We evaluate the person based on an energetic assessment by looking at the life force, which includes the five organ networks, the inner system of the person, and their symptoms. In addition, we look at the person’s microenvironment, which is influenced by the host and the cancer, with our goal of making it the most hospitable to the host and the least hospitable to the cancer,” he says.
“When you are diagnosed with cancer now, you are still going to get the same standard treatment, usually chemotherapy. That is the standard of care. We do a lot of testing, including blood tests and genetic tests, to arrive at the person’s particular genotype (their genetic inheritance), and then we hit that genotype with particular botanical compounds that target those particular genetic markers,” he says.
This customization of therapy is important so that when traditional cancer treatment such as chemotherapy is needed, it can be employed at the lowest possible dosages for the least toxicity. He also believes that a variety of healing methods, such as healing work, should be used to strengthen the person as much as possible so that eventually the cancer is weakened, loosens its foothold, and is eventually banished.
DR. JACOB TEITELBAUM
Affectionately known as “Dr. T.,” Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, is a board-certified internist and medical director of the Practitioners Alliance Network. He is the author of several books, including Real Cause, Real Cure, which discusses natural cures for cancer. He believes in a “comprehensive” approach to treating cancer, which incorporates both natural medicine as well as science-based therapies.
“I realize it is hard to know what to do when your oncologist (and most that I’ve met are incredibly caring and well-meaning) criticizes natural therapies on one side, while your natural doctor believes that chemotherapy is killing you. The premise of ‘Comprehensive Medicine’ is to use the best of natural and prescription therapies, and applies brilliantly to treating cancer,” says Dr. Teitelbaum.
One of the issues with alternative cures is the lack of scientific data supporting them, but this is not surprising, considering the costs (and profit) involved in bringing new pharmaceutical drugs to market.
“The FDA approves drugs not by how effective or worthwhile [they are], but whether they can show a statistically significant difference between placebo and the actual medication. The medication may add a week to your life, but make you sick as a dog and cost you $150,000. The doctors say we have to do something and they make their money giving the medication, so this results in a strong bias toward chemo,” he notes.
Dr. T. strongly believes that antioxidant supplements can help lessen the effects of chemotherapy, and he cites a 2008 study that looked at the effects of glutathione, melatonin, vitamin A, N-acetylcysteine, vitamin E, selenium, L-carnitine, coenzyme Q10, and ellagic acid on patients taking chemotherapy. “Five of the studies found that subjects taking antioxidants were able to complete more full doses of chemotherapy,” he says.
He notes that some oncologists believe that antioxidants can decrease the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation, so in these cases, Dr. T. discontinues them for a week before or after treatments if the oncologist is concerned.
“I have found that trying to starve you [in order] to starve and kill the cancer cells is a losing proposition in the long term. People do best when their own defenses are kept strong, so they can remain vital and otherwise as healthy as possible while the prescription medical treatments are doing their job,” he says.
In addition, he also recommends to all his cancer patients a special highly absorbable type of curcumin, which he says research shows has been getting good results and is now being studied for a variety of different types of cancer.
Dr. Teitelbaum suggests patients ask these questions of their oncologists:
- • How big a difference will this medication make in my treatment?
- • How likely is it that I will respond to it?
- • How toxic is it?
- • What are the likely side effects?
- • Do you know of any natural alternatives that have been shown to be helpful?
- • Would combining natural or alternative treatments interfere with the standard therapy and, if so, is the conflict in concurrent treatments documented?
Dr. Teitelbaum also offers a free app entitled “Cures A–Z” that is available for both iPhone and Android models. Check your phone’s app store.
DR. DAVID BROWNSTEIN
David Brownstein, MD, is a board-certified family physician, one of the foremost practitioners of holistic medicine, and the medical director of the Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield, Michigan. He also writes the Natural Way to Health newsletter for Newsmax Media.
Dr. Brownstein believes that nutritional deficiencies, especially those involving iodine, are a chief cause of cancers that arise from the body’s glands, which are the most common types, including breast, colon, lung, and prostate cancer.
“Your body is like an intricate, finely-tuned machine with tens of thousands of working parts. Some of the most important parts are essential nutrients, enzymes, and hormones. But everything is connected, and one part depends on another for normal and healthy body function,” says Dr. Brownstein.
“When you’re young, everything works fine, but with aging and toxin exposure due to the environment, this hormonal balance is thrown out of whack, leaving you more susceptible to disease — including cancer.”
Iodine is one of the most important nutrients because every cell in the body uses it, especially the white blood cells, which are part of the immune system and the body’s first defense against cancer. He also contends that the government sets the RDA, or recommended daily allowance, of iodine too low.
“We’ve got a very serious iodine deficiency in our country, which is one reason I believe we’re seeing increases in breast and prostate cancers, as well as no reduction in the death rates,” states Brownstein.
According to Dr. Brownstein, he (and his partners) have tested more than 6,000 patients and found 96 percent of them to be iodine deficient. In one study, he also found that breast cancer patients had iodine levels 50 percent lower than his average female patients without breast cancer.
“People who are iodine deficient get cysts on their glandular structures, and those cysts become nodular. If this continues, they take on the appearance of hyperplasia, which is pre-cancer, and the next stage is cancer. The interesting thing about iodine is that it’s been shown in animals and test tubes to not only stop, but also reverse this continuum. I’ve seen this happen in my patients as well,” he says.
Dr. Brownstein recommends the following steps to cancer patients — and non-cancer patients — to counteract an iodine deficiency:
- • Get your iodine level checked and if it is too low, take an iodine supplement of 12 to 50 milligrams.
- • Clean up your diet and rid it of anything with toxic chemicals, particularly products that contain brominated flour or vegetable oil. Bromide (found in many home products), blocks the absorption of iodine.
- • Use unrefined sea salt instead of conventional table salt.
For a more extensive discussion of Alternative Medicine for Cancer, and additional physician listings, see Appendix B.
TIPS Regarding Alternative Cancer Treatments:
Should you decide to pursue any non-mainstream cancer treatments, here are some important points to keep in mind:
- • Do not use any of these therapies as a substitute for conventional cancer care. There is no scientific evidence that such therapies alone cure or prevent cancer.
- • Ask about the benefits, risks, and side effects of the particular therapy.
- • Make sure you inform your doctor of any of these therapies that you are considering. Some herbs and dietary supplements may affect how conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiation work, and could lessen their effectiveness or cause an adverse reaction.
- • Don’t abandon your natural sense of skepticism. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.