What does this word “Integrative” mean? And what does it mean to you?
A good integrative cancer physician has trained in how to intelligently combine the approaches of modern oncology with the intelligent, well-researched and published literature on how alternative cancer medicine can help you get better from your cancer, if you need to be doing regular oncology therapies.
How can integrative cancer medicine help you? Let me give you a few examples:
- Every cancer differs, as does every person with a cancer diagnosis. Some cancers have specific mutations in their DNA that enable them to evade being killed by whatever therapy we decide to pursue. Specific herbs and nutrients can help compensate for these mutations, and therefore help you to have a better outcome from your cancer therapy.
- If you are suffering from side effects of chemotherapy, such as peripheral neuropathy with numbness in your hands and feet, there are very good herbs and nutrients that can help alleviate or even prevent these uncomfortable symptoms that can make daily life difficult. Ask your integrative cancer physician about these.
- Cancers can often make the blood too thick, so they can hide from our white blood cells and evade being destroyed. It is similar to the game that some of you may have played as a child, if you grew up on farm, where you hid in the haystack to avoid being found by your friends who were trying to find you. In this analogy, you are the cancer, trying to not be found by your white blood cells. There are very good herbs and nutrients that can help with this problem, such as gingko biloba, and the nutrient bromelain, both of which are inexpensive and can often be purchased from good health food stores. Again, best to review this with your integrative cancer physician.
- Underlying most cancers, as well as most chronic conditions of today, is inflammation. An integrative cancer physician will often order blood tests on you, like C reactive protein and sed rate, to see if they are elevated, which means you have chronic inflammation that can impair getting better. Specific herbs, often ancient, like turmeric, curcumin, and boswellia or frankincense, when taken on a daily basis, can help you to lower the inflammation that is always present in people who have cancer, and these herbs will not interfere with most oncology therapies, although there is some controversy about this. Best to check with whatever integrative cancer physician who is your guide in these approaches. Although the key findings in one study revealed significant clinical benefit, as represented by study measures, for those subjects in the curcumin group compared with those who did not take curcumin.
Curcumin’s multiple immune-regulating benefits and anti-inflammatory characteristics are well proven. This constituent of the pungent, yellow spice offers preventive properties and has been studied in the management of numerous cancers. Some of its actions include (but are not limited to) the following:
- The inhibition of certain genes that trigger cancer.
- The prevention of metastases and angiogenesis (the capacity of cancer cells to make new blood vessels and spread).
- The stimulation of apoptosis (cell death) in malignant cells.
- The enhancement of chemotherapy and radiation without potentiating toxic side effects.
- If your bone marrow is being affected by chemotherapy, such that your white blood cell count is too low to continue chemotherapy, and requiring an injection of a drug to raise your white blood cell count, there are herbs that you can take daily that will help prevent this or treat this side effect of chemotherapy. These will not in any way interfere with your therapy.
- IV Vitamin C has been well researched in a number of well-known national cancer centers, and has been found to be helpful in improving outcomes for people who are undergoing chemotherapy, when it is administered IV on a day of the week other than the day of chemotherapy.
Finally, who is an integrative cancer physician? These are most likely naturopathic physicians trained in oncology, or integrative medical doctors who are so trained. And make sure to keep your oncologist or surgeon advised as to what alternative medicine treatments you are taking or receiving.
Many people today go online to find out what they can about how to use alternative medicine to help them heal their cancers or minimize side effects of modern oncology therapies. There is nothing wrong with doing this. But when you learn something, run it by your integrative cancer physician to make sure it is something that may help and not harm you, or that it is financially worthwhile for you. QCBN
By Dr. Robert Zieve
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