Natural Cancer Therapies: Supplements and Drug Cautions
“XXX May Offer Health Benefits, But Evidence Still Limited” was the headline about a natural cancer therapy. This was in sharp contrast to an overblown television report about a new cancer drug which was reported to be the hope of all cancer sufferers for the decade.
When we hear about research results from the media we need to become aware of the types of language that is being used to describe the findings of the studies. In medical reports findings tend to be cautious unless it has been written by one of the pharmaceutical company ghost writers.
When the media reports on a positive finding about a natural product doctors are wheeled out and asked to provide a “balanced” report, discussing why it isn’t as great as it seems and everything that could go wrong by way of possible negative side effects. The doctors are very obliging.
However when the report is about a new drug that patients have trialled, the drug company provides the television reporter with a number of very happy patients who did well on the drug. In these cases I do not remember ever seeing a cautious doctor being paraded in front of the camera to provide warnings, nor to decode the company statistics which if done would show that the results are nowhere near as good as the drug company marketing would suggest. Cautions are only provided for a product that drug companies cannot make a huge amount of money from.
Not all natural products are worth taking, of course. There are a lot of natural plants and derivatives of plants which are poisonous, and a common sense approach is always needed.
However any plant which has been in our diet for generations and any mineral which is scientifically shown to be essential to the health of humans can be safely taken by most of us without concern. Where research has shown that an item like tea (black, white, or green) is likely to be beneficial to health then there is no need to be concerned. If you like it, drink it. Whether it is has been proven to medical standards to work for a particular inflammatory condition is irrelevant. One positive research finding can be sufficient to reasonably add it to your diet.
The same can be said about selenium and cancer. Selenium is an essential mineral and has been shown in a range of studies to be beneficial both in the prevention and treatment of a range of cancers, despite many cancer societies saying the evidence is not yet in to say so. As each person requires selenium anyway then taking the small amounts in a supplement is likely to do more good than harm.
I get very irritated about those professionals who gravely inform the public about the supposed dangers of supplements and the problems they can cause. I understand that there has only been one possible death in the last years that might have been attributable to an overdose of a supplement. Please note these qualifications as it wasn’t actually proven.
However properly prescribed drugs are the third highest cause of deaths in the US. That is, drugs prescribed in hospitals kill more people than all accidents and respiratory diseases. Only cardiovascular diseases and cancer cause more deaths than legal drugs prescribed in hospital. Note the “in hospital” component of the statement. Deaths from properly prescribed drugs taken outside hospital are additional, as are medical mistakes and patient mistakes.
There is a strong media bias both in medical journals and in the mainstream media against natural health products. It is time for us all to become educated to interpret what is being said.
Any drug which is not identical with what the body needs (i.e. as a food or natural supplement) is treated by the body as a toxin, a poison. This is not sensationalism. It is just a fact. When a toxin is given the immune system swings into action to remove it from the body.
There are occasions when it is useful to have drugs, such as painkillers after a car crash, or antibiotics for bacterial meningitis and in cases such as these, plus many lesser conditions, we may well decide to take the drugs on offer. However it is important to know that even these drugs are toxins and require to be removed from the body thus putting pressure on the immune system. Some drugs have the potential to really improve a person’s quality of life. All drugs have the potential for nasty side effects. It is drugs that we have to be very careful of, not natural products.
Dr Harriet Denz-Penhey is an internationally recognized health researcher who has done groundbreaking research into patient self care in serious illness. The web site http://www.cancerremedies.org discusses aspects of natural cancer treatment and remedies for good general health.
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Natural Cancer Therapies: Comparing Like With Like
The media often deals harshly with a person who has cancer who turns down medical treatment, turns to natural cancer therapies and subsequently dies. The success of a natural cancer treatment is measured on whether the person who is ill survives a natural lifespan. But this is not the case for medical treatments. Medical treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy often use much “softer” evidence of success.
When comparing results it is important to make sure that like is compared with like.
Success in radiotherapy and chemotherapy is often measured, not in terms of improved longevity but in terms of the regression of the tumor. There is an assumption that if the tumor reduces in size that the patient must do better in the longer term. This idea seems to be common sense, but it has not been proven to be the case.
It is clear that those who respond to chemotherapy do better than those who do not. But there is no research which shows that a reduction of tumor size is linked to improved longevity when compared to those who are not treated. And radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments cannot be said to be effective if this case is not made.
Would the patient (and his family) feel that regression of the tumor was a “successful outcome” if he still died in the same time frame as if he was not treated, and if he suffered terribly from side effects of the treatments during the process?
A second measurement is the number of people who survive to five years. A doctor who gets more patients to the five year mark than his colleagues might feel a personal triumph but the family whose mother dies at five years and three days will feel just as devastated as if the mother dies three days prior to the five years. In the first case the patient is designated as having a successful outcome and in the second as a less successful one. But for the family it is the same.
A third definition the medical profession use is the length of apparent tumor-free time until metastases appear. They call this disease free time, but if the disease commonly returns it seems disingenuous to pretend that the treatment made the patient disease-free. However the point as issue here is whether tumor-free time is a success if the patient then goes on to die in the same time frame as they would if they had not been treated?
Many medical professionals get very anxious and often very annoyed if you ask for evidence that the recommended treatment works. They may well spray around wonderful sounding percentages to “prove” that their recommendations will give a better chance.
However there have also been many a time when the doctor (reluctantly) hands over the research only to find that the patient or a member of their family dissects the research to find that the wonderful percentage improvements relate not to longevity but to tumor regression or to increased tumor-free time.
So if your doctor is making percentage claims of success for a particular treatment ask what this means in terms of additional years of survival. If he will not tell you or cannot tell you, then the probability is that the research does not show such an increase. If he does claim years of increased longevity then ask him for a copy of the research that says this. After all he is asking you to undertake treatment with potentially horrendous side effects (not to mention the cost to the family).
If the increased longevity is measured in only a few months then only you will know if the six to twelve months of treatments and side effects is worth two to four months of extra life, remembering of course that you might be one of the group of people who do not get that extra time.
If longevity with a high quality of life is your aim then think carefully as to how much the offered medical treatment may increase your longevity alongside the high cost of treatment side effects. It is a perfectly valid choice to decide against medical treatment for the time being and to choose to work with natural cancer therapies instead.
Remember that while natural cancer therapies have not been proven to work to the satisfaction of the medical profession neither have their own treatments (except in a few cases) been shown to be effective in treating cancer. This means that those tens of thousands of cases who recover may well have recovered anyway. Self healing is a natural process, built into our bodies.
Therefore any natural cancer therapies which support an improved immune system and a happier, more satisfying quality of life must be worthy of consideration.
Dr Harriet Denz-Penhey is an internationally recognized health researcher who has done groundbreaking research into patient self care in serious illness. The web site http://www.cancerremedies.org discusses aspects of natural cancer treatment and remedies for good general health.
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Natural Cancer Therapies and Mainstream Medicine
Medicine thrives on the concept of evidence based medicine. All our training of medical students encourages them to expect to practice using the best evidence available. And there will be few people out there who would argue that we would want to have a good reason to use expensive treatments – we want to know they will work.
So often in the media there are comments from the medical profession about the gullibility of people using natural cancer therapies, or any natural therapies for any serious condition as they haven’t been proven to work to the same standards as the pharmaceutical drugs and other medical treatments.
However at this point we need to be very careful. In 1991 an article in the British Medical Journal stated that only about 15% of the treatments in use were proven to the standards that they expect of natural cancer therapies and other holistic and alternative treatments. And there is evidence to suggest we have not improved the percentages since then.
As a case in point surgery as a treatment for cancer has not been proven to lengthen the life of patients. Organizations such as the various countries’ cancer societies claim that life expectancy is improving where surgery is the main form of treatment, but there is just no evidence in the medical literature to support that claim.
The reason this is the case is that surgery has been the first mode of treatment for decades. It was “believed” to work. And because it was believed to work it was considered unethical to do a randomized controlled trial where half of the patients wouldn’t be treated. It would also have been difficult for the doctors to admit that they had been using an unproven method for the last century or so.
So where does that leave us? For a start we need to admit that there are a small group of patients who do need surgery to remove a growth that is pressing on vital organs and preventing ordinary functions. These people are likely to gain improved comfort and their lives may be extended for a short period of time. But that is as far as we can say with certainty.
Scientists have undertaken other modeling of the cancer figures to endeavor to find out if they could deduce whether surgery improves longevity and despite using several methods they were not able to show that surgery has a positive impact.
So how can the various cancer societies around the world say that surgery is useful? They use figures looking at the improvement in the percentage survival rates across the decades. Two explanations have been used by researchers as to why these figures show an improvement: one relating to changes in the criteria for diagnoses over the time frame being considered and the other to do with the more aggressive treatments being used. The scientific paper by Benjamin, referenced below, suggests that these survival figures can be explained in other ways and are therefore unreliable as a measure of the success of surgery as a treatment for cancer.
Beliefs on causality are very emotionally held, even by the medical profession. Both medical professionals and the public usually assume that medical treatment is based on good scientific evidence when this is just not the case. Medicine has always been based on collegial agreement as to what constitutes best care under the circumstances and this has changed according to fads, fashions and financial and social incentives. Scientific findings which are contrary to these get short shrift until such time as the fads, fashions and incentives change.
Those with cancer may still choose to use both surgery and, or, chemotherapy but they need to know that any healing that occurs is more likely to be due to your own body’s ability to self heal than to the treatment that your doctor recommends. As the scientific literature shows that chemotherapy has less than a 2% contribution to the 5 year survival rates and as there is no evidence surgery prolongs life we can be reassured that the very large numbers of recoveries are due to the patients’ own improved immune function.
As a result patients are well advised to seek out natural cancer therapies which support them psychologically, socially, spiritually and physically. I suggest that you do not look for that one magic herb, pill or potion to replace the doctor’s surgery and chemo. If you are going to go natural remember that natural healing covers ALL aspects of self care. Think of the cancer as being a systemic problem and that you need to improve every system of your body so that you become healthier overall.
Benjamin DJ. The efficacy of surgical treatment of cancer. Medical Hyotheses, 1993;40:129-138. Morgan G, Ward R, Barton M. The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies. Clinical Oncology 2004;16:549-560. Smith R. Where is the wisdom…? The poverty of medical evidence. British Medical Journal 1991;303:798-799.
Dr Harriet Denz-Penhey is an internationally recognized health researcher who has done groundbreaking research into patient self care in serious illness. The web site http://www.cancerremedies.org discusses aspects of natural cancer treatment and remedies for good general health.
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