Cancer Therapy Today

This Journal entry develops some lines of thought about how today’s conventional cancer therapies might evolve into a more health promoting therapeutic offering. Most current day conventional medical industry cancer therapies continue to fall short of the mark that is needed in these times.

An important companion Journal writing to this writing is Minding your Mitochondria where some specific nutritional approaches for cancer therapy are made.

The reading list at the end of the Journal will be updated to reflect emerging trends and practices in cancer therapy.

A Valuable Story

An emotionally moving writing composed by a medical doctor came to my attention in the past few days. This piece is beautifully and succinctly written. It serves as a testimony about the profound limitations and difficulties faced by those who must be continuously entangled with today’s conventional cancer therapies. It is an indictment of the shortcomings of what I feel is a misguided industry.

This article appeared in the New York Times, and portrays one of the difficult dilemmas faced by patients who are considered to have a terminal illness. The physician author tells the story of a patient who can no longer afford expensive therapies for his terminal cancer. At issue in this story is the financial price tag concern which often works to abbreviate the (inadequate) therapies for many patients.

The patient had exhausted his personal finances on yet more ineffective cancer therapies. He had prepared himself for his crossroads decision by making peace with his life as well as his approaching physical demise.

The article is reprinted below, and may also be seen in its original form at this link. The comments from your peers which accompany this writing at the linked writing site are very insightful and valuable.

“The Punishing Cost of Cancer Care” by Mikkael A. Sekeres, M.D., appearing in the NYT on December 11, 2014…

“I think it’s time to switch therapies,” I told my patient, as he and his wife sat next to each other by the wall of my exam room.

He stared at me, unblinking, through his chipped, wire-rimmed glasses as his wife looked quickly down at the medication list she clutched in her hands. Her worn purse sat on the floor by her chair. “Switching therapies” was a euphemism for “your cancer is progressing,” a point I didn’t need to hammer home with them – they both knew the score.

“O.K.” he said, taking a deep breath. “What’s next?”

We had been navigating his cancer together for a year-and-a-half, balancing the most effective treatments we could devise with what his health insurance would cover, and what he could afford. The 90-mile drive to Cleveland was itself an economic strain, gas prices being what they were and their aging car becoming increasingly more finicky, particularly during the cold winter months.

“The next drug I’d suggest is a pill that you’d take every day. It can get you into a remission, and may even allow you to live a little longer. It’s the one we’ve talked about before,” I told him. He nodded, remembering.

“The real expensive drug?” he asked.

This time I nodded. When I first suggested he take this pill as part of his chemotherapy regimen, I warned him about the possible cost, as this has become a part of my standard informed consent process. I review potential risks, benefits, alternative medications, the people involved in a patient’s care, and now economic risks.

After checking with his insurance plan, which did not cover chemotherapy pills the way it did intravenous chemotherapy, I had the unpleasant task of telling my patient that the medication would cost him $5,000 per month. At the time he had laughed, a mixture of surprise and incredulity. He was too well-off to qualify for patient assistance, but too poor to afford the drug. His face was grave now.

“I won’t bankrupt my family for a month or two more time,” he said. “I have to leave them something.” His wife looked up briefly, about to interject, but remained quiet. This was ground they had already covered, and she would make her case for his taking the pill when I wasn’t present. They were private people, proud, and wouldn’t disagree with each other in front of someone who wasn’t family.

As the price of chemotherapy now routinely reaches $100,000 for a full treatment course, my patients are forced more and more into making the equivalent of Sophie’s Choice when it comes to treating their cancer: Spend down their savings for an improvement in survival that might amount to a few weeks, secretly hoping that they will be one of the lucky few at the “tail” of the survival curve – the handful of people who live years more; or decline the therapy and in so doing ensure that their families will be provided for after they have died.

I had to wonder whether anyone should be forced to make such a decision.

My patient and I discussed a couple of other treatment options, and ways that he might receive his therapy closer to home, a plan that made him visibly relax.

“Not that we don’t like seeing you,” he joked. His wife didn’t smile, though. Perhaps she wasn’t ready yet to let him go, or didn’t agree with his reasoning that she would be destitute if he chose the pill. Maybe she was incensed that hard-working people like themselves would be placed in such a quandary precisely at the time of their retirement, and in such a wealthy nation. The way she set her mouth, I guessed it was a combination of all three.

“I’ll miss seeing you,” I told them both as we all got up to leave. There was nothing else I could say – this was the part of cancer care I didn’t have the tools to fix.”

The Cancer Problem is Worsening

Cancer is a chaotic cell growth pattern which is created and enabled by peoples’ chaotic biochemistry, chaotic lifestyle, chaotic emotions, the chaos of unresolved traumatic imprinting, and other associated chaotic lifestyle epigenetic influences which abound and surround us in our present day modernity.

Cancer is a metabolic disease, not so much a genetic disease. The Human Genome Project revealed that most cancers are not genetically based. In fact, genetic mutations in some cancers are actually a downstream effect of malfunctioning energy metabolism in the mitochondria. Nonetheless, our genetics and our practice of epigenetic lifestyle influences does impact how we respond to cancer.

Thomas Seyfried, Ph.D., professor of biology at Boston College, is a leading expert and researcher in the field of cancer metabolism and nutritional ketosis. He is one of the pioneers in the application of nutritional ketosis for cancer, following in the footsteps of Dr. Otto Warburg, who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1931 for the discovery of how malignant cells conduct their metabolism.

Seyfried (see Reading Reference #10 below) believes that mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of many serious health conditions. This core principle alters treatment options for those suffering from cancer. To date, the cancer industry focuses on the downstream effect of the problem and not on mitochondrial dysfunction that may be the primary upstream trigger of the metabolic chaos.

Cancer cells have developed powerful biochemical mechanisms to insure their own survival. This results in cancer cell’s advantage of being biochemically and mechanistically unboundaried in their cellular growth dynamics. This fact clearly parallels our addictive, consumerist, compressed, and sped up unboundaried lifestyles. Could there be an association between our unboundaried way of living and consuming and the rise in cancer rates?

There are valuable therapeutic ideas and options which are implied in the wording of the previous paragraphs.

For example, we have reached the time in the evolution of medical science when everyone should be afforded some basic knowledge about their personal genetic blueprint, and important mutations therein. Knowing key biochemical individuality from one’s foundational genetic information is a good place to start in the molding of therapeutic considerations when a difficult disease process is present.

Knowing about your genetic mutations, which we all carry in significant numbers, is a pretty simple process, and is quite affordable. Such knowledge might be used in a preventive lifestyle manner to improve our epigenetic lifestyle practices. Epigenetics is the study of everything that influences genetic expression. Knowledge and practice of good epigenetics will help us avoid the kinds of suffering which are now so ubiquitous in the so-called developed societies.

There are negative and positive epigenetic influences which are becoming well defined. Epigenetics refers to the host of very important external forces such as environmental exposures, nutritional exposures, drug exposures, oxidative load, inflammatory chemistry, sleep health, stress, electromagnetic exposures, and emotional processes.

A variety of valuable genomic studies are now available and are quite affordable. As an example, one affordable, easy-to-do and enlightening study is available from www.23andme.com. This simple study assays your genome via an easy at-home sample collection. Anybody can order this study and learn much about their foundational health blueprint. The assay provides important information about heterozygous and homozygous mutations in the key biochemical areas of detoxification, neurotransmitters, methylation, cardiovascular parameters, digestion, endocrine function, antioxidants, vitamins, and vitamin receptor activity. See Reading Reference #4 below for more information on how to conduct your own genetic analysis.

Highly proactive nutrigenomic recommendations can then be made to assist the dysfunctional enzyme pathways which result from mutations in these interlocking wheels of biochemical life. All physicians should seek training in the new science of genomics. Physicians today have some grasp of genetic science from their medical school training. Genomic science is the practical extension of genetics. Genomics seeks to extend the vast information obtained from the gene mapping program into applicable therapies via nutrigenomics and pharmacogenomics. This is now known as personalized medicine. Every physician and patient should be aligned with this information.

In the post WWII period we have enabled Big Pharma and the insurance industries to back us into the no-choice problem zones described in the physician’s account reprinted above. I can only echo his insightful recounting based on my long experience as a general, vascular, and trauma surgeon when cancer patients received my daily attention.

How many times in my past have I been involved with cases which failed the usual harsh treatments of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation?

There is no easy answer to this self imposed rhetorical question. If an easy answer existed, I would have to qualify it by saying that not enough was done to invoke and assist the patient’s natural healing intelligence. This natural healing mechanism, which makes our lives possible, is always silently at play inside of our being to assist the healing and evolution of the 4 aspects of our lives…body, mind, emotion, and spirit. That which I call the Divine Healing Intelligence, the DHI, is the inner physician and healer.

When we, as health care consumers and health care providers, gain more development in our cultural and spiritual evolution then we will begin to understand and more fully embrace the DHI principle. This will enable new paradigms of healing at individual and larger social levels as technology begins to align, investigate, and develop tools and applications to further the movement. We will move forward as a human race, saving humanity and our planet. The DHI principle of holism extends into the ecological healing of our planet as well. Earth will heal itself if we quit soiling it.

We have become a society which is enamored of and entangled with an unbelievable array of chaos inducers: electromagnetic field effects, GMO’s and glyphosates in our food supply, over 80,000 xenobiotic chemicals in use (a number said increase at the rate of several thousand per year now, and only a handful of them extensively studied for their toxicity effect), the speed and compression of modern day urban lifestyles, overwrought consumerism, and many other complex lifestyle et ceteras which disconnect us from nature and spirit.

The oncology industry is currently one of medicine’s most lucrative specialties. This fact is more than just a commonly observed paradox, which is a muted way of describing the issue….it is an example of a sort of cancer in the medical industry itself. It is becoming well known that chemotherapy makes cancer cells more resistant to conventional therapies. Oncologists will never mention certain biological facts about cancer cell survival dynamics. This is the reason why chemoRx has such a high failure rate.

This important article, Chemotherapy Spreading Cancer, substantiates these facts and is recommended for anyone with cancer who is considering chemotherapy.

That oncologists are in the upper echelon of medical industry income earners is a challenging consideration at the moral and ethical level. Good hearted and conscious oncologists are probably caught inside of a significant cognitive dissonance about the paradox and irony of the toxic treatments they offer which fail so often, cause so many to suffer, but make them so much monetary income.

No substantive progress has been made in “the war on cancer” which was introduced by the Nixon administration in 1971. At the time of Nixon’s imperial mandate the rate of cancer was 1 in 30 people. Now the rate of cancer in our society is 1 in 3 people. As the oncology industry, Big Pharma, and the insurance industry have profited from the suffering, the cancer rates and the mortality rates for the major cancers are not improving in any meaningful sense. In fact, the rates are quite obviously going up in a parabolic fashion.

It is distressing to me when I counsel clients on nutrition to use during their extraordinarily toxic chemotherapy regimens, only to have the oncologist and their staff tell the patients that such nutrients and antioxidants will interfere with the chemoRx or the radiation Rx. In my experience, and in the experience of many other health practitioners, the use of supportive nutrition during cancer therapies serves well to enhance the effectiveness of the therapies as well as serving to mitigate the negative side effects of the therapies.

Furthermore, there are no studies which support what the oncologists contend regarding the negative effects of micronutrient usage during cancer Rx. Their reflexive “standard-of-care-no-antioxidants-during-chemoRx” mandate is a recommendation which has not been substantiated in any clinical trial. Well designed trials should be undertaken. I believe such trials would crack the prevailing treatment paradigms, and help shift cancer treatments into more merciful and effective modalities. Such a shift would reduce much suffering and improve outcomes.

Micronutrient Therapy for Cancer

There are actually many studies which support the opposing hypothesis which shows that micronutrient supplement usage not only assists the cancer cell die off induced by some of the chemoRx regimens, but they also help mitigate the negative side effects of the chemoRx.

One example of biochemical literature which is referred to in the last paragraph is a review article authored by 2 M.D.’s and 2 Ph.D.’s, appearing in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition in 1999, entitled “High Doses of Multiple Antioxidant Vitamins: Essential Ingredients in Improving the Efficacy of Standard Cancer Therapy.” This article studied only 4 classes of the many classes of antioxidants which exist: retinoids, tocopherols, carotenoids, and vitamin C. The article affirms that these chemicals improve the results of cancer therapies, and reduced the co-morbid complications of the therapies.

The lead author, an earlier teacher of mine, is Kedar Prasad, who received his Ph.D. in radiation biology, and was Professor and Director for the Center for Vitamins and Cancer Research in Department of Radiology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, CO. Kedar is the author and editor of many books and several hundred publications in peer reviewed journals on the subject of micronutrient therapy and degenerative diseases.

In 1993, which was 20 years after I began my study of holism, he gave me a book he had authored in that year, Vitamins in Cancer Prevention and Treatment, A Practical Guide. This simple 114 page book is just about vitamins alone, and does not even introduce the subject of other phytochemicals and other natural biomodulators in cancer therapy. A full 21 pages of this now “dated” text is devoted to clinical trials in progress, and well over 200 referenced readings on the subject of the book’s title.

The corpus of the text is a brief 83 pages and only mentions the anti-cancer roles of vitamins A, beta carotene, E, C, and the mineral selenium. Included is the earliest mention of vitamin D (in vitro) research in cancer therapy that I have seen. We now know that vitamin D has a broad and enormously important range of health enhancing effects. Vitamin D’s role in health is especially important to consider in those who have heterozygous (43% of the population) or homozygous (9% of the population) Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) mutation events.

Kedar published a more recent text in 2011 entitled Fighting Cancer with Vitamins and Antioxidants. If you go to the link and open the web book to the table of contents and first few pages you will appreciate the amount of substantiating information on this subject. This book was written with his son, K. Che Prasad, M.S., M.D., who is director of microbiology and co-director of cytology at Marin Medical Laboratories

There are hundreds of antioxidants and other biomodulators from the natural world. Many more await discovery. An example of one excellent antioxidant which has other direct affects on cancer prevention and mitigation, and is one which is rarely considered, is a hormone which is produced in our pineal gland…melatonin. You can read a bit more technical information about its broad important effects in our lives here.

Shifting the Cancer Treatment Paradigm

The treatment paradigms which most patients have to contend with will slowly shift into more effective, merciful, affordable, and simpler forms. These more evolved forms of therapy will also be tailored with high specificity to the individually unique patient who is being considered for treatments. Genetic information will become a bedrock of consideration in treatment designs, as will the epigenetic lifestyle considerations which drive genetic expression.

Chemotherapy and radiation therapy work against cancer cells by creating oxidative stress for the cancer cells, which display rapid cell division and propagation. The drugs and radiation only act within a short time period of 24 hours, and only at certain phases of the cell life cycle. As the catabolic cancer cell die-off (as well as die-off from other rapidly dividing, but normal cell lines) begins, the patient has to muster some significant biochemistry to deal with this load of cellular toxicity, as well as drug metabolite toxicity.

Micronutrients assist the patient in the healing effort of such catabolic stress. Because of the blow-back which patients on supplements currently face from their ignorant and biased oncologists, I offer patients a “middle of the road” approach while using cancer treatments and nutrients concomitantly. I recommend that they stop the antioxidant components of their supplement array the day before, the day of, and the day after the chemoRx or radiation Rx. After the second day away from the treatment, the supplements can be resumed if nausea is not prevailing.

Using this approach as one of the arms of a clinical study might be informative. Another arm of the study would be no supplement usage during treatments, and a third arm could be using supplements all the way through the treatments. This would be a very helpful study to do, especially if it is done at multiple centers with good controls of the patient populations, the treatment protocols, and the micronutrient quality and quantity. The study could even have a fourth arm; incorporating individualized tailoring of the micronutrients per individual genomic and nutrigenomic considerations. Who is going to fund such a meaningful and humane study?

To more fully assist your understanding of micronutrient and dietary choices you can incorporate to help yourself or another in healing their cancer problem, please read a Journal entry on this website entitled Minding your Mitochondria. This Journal entry addresses good biochemical steps one can take with solid dietary choices and practices.

Successful healing of cancer involves a full immersion into all aspects of healing in the quaternary of body-mind-emotion-spirit. The entire life must be healed and rebuilt based on all of the good things and potentialities which are present in that life. The health care consumer patient of the post WWII period has been strongly indoctrinated away from this principle of holism in the course of their busy consumerist life. Sadly, people in our society regard their health only when it is convenient to do so, or when it is necessary to do so. And then they run into the medical industry expecting, or hoping, that their problems can just be whisked away. This is an illusion which has been fostered by the prevailing “fast fix” propaganda of the post WWII period.

More people are becoming self accountable and proactive in selecting and creating their own health. This self awareness is an important first step in a needed shift in health care delivery. The holistic healing movement is growing with many new and viable front venues, such as…a rapidly growing base of holistic practitioners, many medical schools offer courses in holistic theory and therapies, holistic clinics are becoming more common in metropolitan centers, and practitioner and consumer learning courses abound. I receive promotional material announcing well designed conferences for holistic practitioners on a weekly basis.

I attended Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans which became the first medical school to offer courses in culinary medicine to medical students, faculty, and citizens. This has now been emulated at many other medical schools. This is one important timely development and marks a paradigm shift in health education.

If one has the wherewithal and the motivation and the skillful life means to do it, one should endeavor to learn about and use only the best and most appropriate facets of the medical industry in their cancer therapy until this industry evolves into a more reliable and and less toxic art and science.

Natural healing is the true traditional medicine. If natural healing does not work, then the alternative of the conventional medical industry can be utilized. It really is that simple, but we have been indoctrinated away from regarding this concept as the basis of health maintenance and disease prevention. Fortunately, this old paradigm is beginning to crumble as more people begin to understand the limitations and toxicities of the conventional medical industry.

The current medical industry treatment standards of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy do have an important place in one’s treatment considerations. Indeed, in many cases, these modalities can be immediately life saving. I can readily attest to this fact after 25 years of direct surgical experience in using these modalities to stabilize the lives of many patients. However, there is another side, or half, of the treatment story which patients should be empowered to pick up and incorporate into their healing.

As an example, patients should be taught how to make their native chemistry inhospitable to the cancer cells’ micro-environment and to circulating cancer stem cells. Stem cells replenish the cancer cells which are negatively impacted by conventional therapies. Please take the time to view this interview with some health experts who discuss how the cancer treatment paradigm can be improved by shifting the biochemical environment of the cancer cell.

In this interview, as well as in some of the interviews and presentations seen in the References below, you can learn about the ketogenic diet as a very important dietary approach in the prevention and treatment of cancer. I covered the science and value of the ketogenic diet in the Journal entitled “Minding your Mitochondria.” In the interviews with various researchers and medical doctors in the References section you can spend some time reviewing some very precious information on the science and value of the ketogenic diet.

Here is a most valuable article which I am posting to this Journal on 12-8-19, entitled Why Glucose Restrictions Are Essential in Treating Cancer, by Dr. Thomas Seyfried, PhD, and Joseph Mercola. Cancer cells are obligate sugar feeders. The implications of this science is clear.

One of my current offerings is to assist patients as an advocate who is seasoned in conventional and natural therapies. I have found that in many cases the combination of conventional and natural holistic therapies provides the best outcome. Unfortunately it is the tactic of many conventional medical doctors that I have tried to work with to use fear tactics with the patients. Some have simply said that they will not be the patient’s doctor if they are using holistic healing techniques. This is a kind of insanity born from an undeveloped and insecure physician who practices a paradigm based on fear and hubris.

Conclusion

In the near future of the next 10 years, conventional cancer therapies will become more pinpoint, less invasive, less systemically toxic, and more readily, openly, and efficaciously integrated with supportive holistic, biochemical, and natural therapies. Results of therapy will improve in a meaningful way for the first time since Nixon’s 1971 presidential mandates about the war on cancer. It will be health consumers and open minded physicians who drive the new paradigms of therapy. The pharmaceutical industry will resist this movement strongly, but the physician corps will begin to wake up to meaningful ways to assist their patients lives and health.

The post WWII rise of the pharmaceutical industry has paralleled  the decline of the art and science of natural healing, an art and science which is now being reborn and should be more embraced by those in the ranks of conventional medical care. We have become a society which has been brainwashed into regarding our lives as unfit, unhealthy, and unmanageable without constant visits to the medical system. This is a kind of insanity.

Here is a pertinent and noteworthy quote from an esteemed and seasoned source, Clifton Meador, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt Medical School, …”Nothing has changed so much in the health-care system over the past twenty-five years as the public’s perception of its own health. The change amounts to a loss of confidence in the human form. The general belief these days seems to be that the body is fundamentally flawed, subject to disintegration at any moment, always on the verge of mortal disease, always in need of continual monitoring and support by health-care professionals. This is a new phenomenon in our society.”

It is an unfortunate paradox that the health of people in our society has become so imperiled that we have to go into a high risk medical industry just to be able to get some kind of health stabilizing toehold established. The food industry, the environmental degradation from chemicals, the promotion of addictive consumerist lifestyles, and our counterproductive sped-up fast-fix mentality….these are some of the most obvious post WWII social dynamics which have disabled the health of Americans.

If you have a cancer diagnosis, I recommend that you figure out how to utilize the best of the conventional therapy modalities while you also learn about and develop your own natural healing abilities. You will have to control the fear that you have so that you do not just capitulate into blindly receiving a concentrated raft of highly toxic chemicals and other treatments.

You have to learn how to get your oncologist on your side as a cooperative member of your health care team. I recommend that you become educated and grounded in integrative care and utilize the very best practices and practitioners that you can find and afford. You should do this now, proactively, before you succumb to some illness. Some time in the future the current conventional medical industry will evolve its standard of care to take full advantage of our innate healing intelligence. The members of the medical community will be taught how to partner with you and advocate for you. They might even begin teaching you how to become highly proactive in the prevention of disease.

Until that time comes, you might become the one who teaches your physicians how to advocate for you. You should become their best teachers. Of course, in order for you to be a teacher of your own natural health, you will need to be a student of it first. So…start studying your natural health and what your inner physician can do for you.

If you have an emergent life threatening medical situation that you are faced with, go to the emergency room nearest you and get some life saving and life stabilizing help. I shouldn’t need to write that statement, but I want the reader to understand that I am well grounded in useful treatments of the conventional medical industry, and I am an advocate for the same.

The best facets of the medical industry, as it is in its current form, are the emergency and interventional services. The usage of the pharmaceutical services on a long term basis should be regarded with a high degree of measured concern. Pharmaceuticals should be used with the intention of bringing the patient back to a health equilibrium such that the drug can then be discontinued in favor of lifestyle improvements to assist the DHI.

Our DHI is constantly in motion to secure our health and growth in body, mind, emotion, and spirit. The current medical paradigm seeks to outsmart this Intelligence…and makes a lot of money while pretending to be so clever.

Signing off from Crestone and Beyond.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”…. J. Krishnamurti

Associated References:

The reading list will be updated regularly as new research, information, and articles emerge. Please check back from time to time.

1. Modifiable Risk Factors of Cancer…posted here on 8-24-24. “An up-to-date analysis of the number of cancer cases and deaths in the U.S. preventable by modifiable factors was recently published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. This analysis was based on data from 2019, estimating the number of cancers (including 30 specific types of cancer, but excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer) that could be prevented using well-established relative risks derived largely from meta-analyses for modifiable factors with strong/sufficient evidence establishing risk.”
2. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer…Siddhartha Mukerjee, M.D., Ph.D. won a Pulitzer Prize for this elegant 2010 masterpiece. Read this book and be informed about the history of cancer, as we know it.
3. Minding your Mitochondria…a writing on this website about the importance of mitochondrial chemistry in health and disease. All of the references at the end of this writing are pertinent when considering cancer therapy. The ketogenic diet is addressed as one means of starving cancer cells and shifting the entire metabolism of the body into a more healthy metabolism. The tactics presented in this writing will potentiate conventional cancer therapies and reduce morbid side effects. Once again, I recommend this interview as a starting point.
4. Cannabidiol…a writing on this website about CBD.
5. Adverse Childhood Events…a writing on this website about an early source of cancer, and other common diseases in our society. This is a very important concept that should be taught in all medical schools.
6. Your Personal Genetic Analysis…a writing on this website about our genes and how to do a simple and very helpful genetic analysis.
7. Pfankenstein’s Monster: The Morbid Creation of Big Drugs…my friend Mark Macy, who I surgically treated for colon cancer in 1988, offers his opinion about the damaging drugs currently used to treat cancers, and the patients who have them. The cancer industry needs to evolve into incorporating more supportive and non toxic therapies. I believe effective therapies to assist healing exist, but are suppressed.
8. The Addiction Anathema of Disease and Treatment…perspectives on our addiction to the cancer treatment industry
9. Culinary Medicine is Born Anew at Tulane’s Goldring Center…a writing on this website about the culinary medicine program at Tulane Medical School.
10. Tripping Over The Truth, by Travis Christofferson…published in 2014, this book details the story of “the return of the metabolic theory of cancer and illuminates a new and hopeful path to a cure.” This book is a must read piece of well written scientific investigative journalism for anyone who has any of the diseases which can be helped by assisting one’s mitochondrial health, and that would be most diseases, not just cancer.
11. Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, by Thomas Seyfried, Ph.D….published in 2012. This 400 page text is written by a professor of biology at Boston College and covers the subject of cancer’s true origins in technical detail. Chapter 11 is entitled “Mitochondria: The Ultimate Tumor Suppressor.”
12. The Cancer Revolution: A Groundbreaking Program to Reverse and Prevent Cancer, by Leigh Erin Connealy, M.D…published in 2017.
13. Starving Cancer…Researcher Dominic D’Agostino delivers a 10 minute TED talk in Tampa on the ketogenic diet as a therapeutic modality in cancer treatment.
14. Revolution Health Radio: The Ketogenic Diet and Cancer…holistic and functional medicine researcher and commentator Chris Kresser posts a nice summary of considerations involving the use of ketogenic dieting in cancer therapy.
15. Ketones–Understanding These Precious Molecules…an excellent brief summation of ketones which includes a very good exogenous ketone supplement…Keto-Nootropic, from Designs for Health.
16. The Code Purple movement to help develop awareness and early detection technology for pancreatic cancer is explained. Pancreatic cancer has a 91% mortality, which is the highest of the major cancers. See the short video which compares the mortality rates of breast, prostate, and colon cancers before and after improved detection methods became standard of care.
17. Medical Errors are No. 3  Cause of US Deaths, Researchers Say
18. Pharmaceuticals Kill 100,000 Hospital Patients per Year
19. 25 Most Dangerous Drugs…this is from mainstream MSN.
20. Health Care for All Beings…a woman is well treated for breast cancer in Germany’s free health care system and learns valuable lessons about being accountable for her own self care. The current healthcare model of conventional medicine must also become accountable and free itself from the perverse grip of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Except for some great technological interventions and emergency medical services, much of the current healthcare system is not helping people become well…it is only attempting to tend to peoples’ symptoms with unnatural pharmaceuticals. We need for medicine to become less corporatized; a model where the pursuit of the financial bottom line drives the model. Modern medicine also should be teaching people how to be well. Here is one example of how an attempt was made by President John Kennedy to teach the American society how to be fit and healthy. Please watch the film The Motivation Factor.
21. Ultra-processed foods and added sugar in the US diet…according to this March, 2018 article from the British Medical Journal almost 60% of calories in the American diet come from ultra processed foods. These ultra-processed foods contribute over 90% of all added sugars to the diet. These are “food products” created by the American food industry to be “accessible, convenient, and highly palatable, ready-to-drink, ready-to-eat, or ready-to-heat,” with the specific purpose of replacing real food which is prepared from raw and native food ingredients. This trend started in the 1950s and was known as “fast food.” These so-called foods include: confectionery, soft drinks, sweetened juices and dairy drinks, powders for juices, sausages, chicken and fish nuggets or sticks and other pre-prepared frozen dishes, dried products such as cake mix, powdered soup, instant noodles, ready-seasonings, and an infinity of new products including packaged snacks, morning cereals, cereal bars, and “energy” drinks.
    In a separate article in the same issue of BMJ, researchers found that a 10 percent increase in the consumption of ultra-processed food leads to a 12 percent increase in the risk of cancer.
22. BfitBwell Clinical Exercise Program for Cancer Patients Improves Fitness, Fatigue, and Lowers Depression…a clinical exercise program for patients with cancer demonstrates its effectiveness.
23. New review demonstrates effectiveness of vitamin intake on pancreatic cancer risk…a meta-analysis of 25 studies, from 1991 to 2014, of 1.2 million individuals and 8000 pancreatic cancer cases reported in the journal Medicine in March, 2018, showed that vitamin intake reduces the incidence of the 12th most common form of cancer.
24. Many women with common breast cancer can safely skip chemo, study says…an overused cancer Rx is using chemoRx for Stage I breast cancer. New stratification tools are now being developed which helps women make safer decisions about their therapy.
25. Cancer–The Seed and Soil…smart people are starting to understand the big picture about how cancer growth starts. The answer lies in the soil which supports the abnormal cell growth.
26. Vitamin D and Colorectal Cancer Study: More Evidence it is Time to Rethink the IOM Recommendations…this article addresses the issue of the use of vitamin D in the prevention and treatment of colon and rectal cancers which is the 3rd most common form of cancer.
27. It is now June 28, 2018. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) endorsed a clinical practice guideline for integrative therapies during and after breast cancer treatment. The endorsement was published on June 11, 2018, in ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology as Integrative Therapies During and After Breast Cancer Treatment: ASCO Endorsement of the SIO Clinical Practice Guideline. That guideline, with a few added discussion points, has been published in 2017 by the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO). According to one major cancer center, ASCO’s move “sent a clear signal to breast cancer patients and their care teams: It’s OK to integrate.” So, things are improving in conventional cancer treatment paradigms. This will make a big difference for many people.
28. Integrative Oncology & the Important Role of Frontline Clinicians…Nalini Chilkov, OMD, leading integrative oncology expert and founder of the American Institute of Integrative Oncology Research and Education, discusses the importance of focusing on a patient’s overall health while treating cancer.
29. A cure for cancer: how to kill a killer…an article from The Guardian on 11-4-18, about Nobel Prize winning advancements in the use of immunotherapy modalities to cure cancer.
30. Keith Flaherty, M.D.: Deep dive into cancer–History of oncology, novel approaches to treatment, and the exciting and hopeful future…posted here on 7-22-19 is this 3 hour podcast exchange between 2 forward thinking physicians. When advanced medical technologies aligns with the techniques to enhance our natural healing abilities, we will begin to see cancer lessen in incidence and severity, as well as lessening in severity of treatments.
31. New Research–Gut Solutions to Chemotherapy…simple natural solutions to the gut chemo-brain problem are presented here. Chemo-brain is caused by gut lining damage from chemotherapy drugs. Prebiotics and probiotics are important healing elements to help the gut lining and chemistry weather the onslaught.
32. New review demonstrates the effects of various vitamin E isomers in cancer prevention…as reported in the February, 2020 edition of Molecular Carcinogenesis, delta and gamma tocotrienols are effective agents in cancer prevention…not the commonly used alpha tocopherol which is used in “fortified foods” and cheap poor quality supplements. The product I recommend in this regard is Annatto-E 150 or Annatto-E 300 from Designs for Health.
33. Two Vitamin D Studies: Reducing Homocysteine & Chemotherapy Side Effects…potential benefits of using vitamin D during chemotherapy are explained in this article, posted here on 7-3-20.
34. Choosing Naturopathic Oncology…posted here on 1-18-21. This is a good article from a practitioner at the Riordan Clinics in Kansas. I hope you will have a look and consider this author’s perspectives. It continues to amaze me that people flock to the conventional industry as their only means to help them deal with cancer. When considered on its own, the track record of the conventional industry is poor. Cancer is a much bigger life process to consider; over and above what the conventional industry has been able to offer and acheive in the past 100 years.
35. Eat These Foods to Starve Cancer Cells to Death…posted here on 8-19-22, this article covers the importance of angiogenesis and its contribution to cancer formation and progression. A variety of phytochemicals in common foods are then covered which prevent angiogenesis.
36. Beat Cancer by Balancing Your Autonomic Nervous System (Video)…”Thankfully, there are alternatives to the all-allopathic route.  In a captivating new video, Jonathan Landsman of NaturalHealth365 interviews Mary Beth Gonzalez, wife of Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, offering hope to everyone battling cancer and anyone wanting to prevent it.”
37. Dietary Tips and Healing Recipes to Ease Discomfort of Cancer Treatments…some pork bone soup recipes with Chinese herbal ingredients are presented here. During the years when I was practicing surgery, I often referred post operative patients with a cancer diagnosis who were to receive chemotherapy and/or radiation on to Chinese medicine practitioners for help with unpleasant treatment symptoms. These patients tolerated their harsh treatments with less side effects, and had better long term results. For nausea due to chemoRx I often recommended umeboshi plum paste, and this has helped to alleviate this problem in many.
38. Botanicals…a partial listing of important herbal botanicals and their beneficial effects. The author of this nice list has only posted the herbs alphabetically through the letter “L.” I hope he gets to writing about the herbs in the second half of the alphabet.