Defeat Cancer (18 page)

Once established in the body, cancer seems to thrive and reproduce despite the heroic efforts employed against it by oncologists, and without necessarily requiring that all seven of the above pro-cancer events remain in place. Therefore, without knowledge of the precise mechanisms governing any one patient’s cancer, any therapy that targets fewer than all seven disturbances will leave cancer patients potentially vulnerable to the continued growth of existing tumors. Shortchanging patients of a diverse range of available, effective, well-tolerated, well-targeted, compatible, complementary, and feasible treatment options will also allow too many of the conditions that gave rise to their tumors in the first place to persist. For this reason, successful cancer therapy requires that practitioners use multiple and multi-purpose agents on their patients, many more than what most oncologists use.

In our practice, we use exclusively natural therapies for cancer treatment. Because of my naturopathic medical training and extensive training in the use of natural agents, I am skilled at choosing appropriate combinations of natural therapies for my cancer patients which address all of the conditions that gave rise to their cancers. I can also take advantage of the fact that there is greater compatibility, and fewer interactions, among natural substances than among numerous pharmaceutical drugs.

I can’t emphasize enough that treatment selection needs to be made on a case-by-case basis. Two people who have the same cancer on paper may vary widely in the treatments that they need, and we are in a race against time to figure out what those are.

I administer a lot of natural substances intravenously, and for practical purposes, I put as many agents as I can into my patients’ IVs, so that they don’t have to swallow a lot of pills. Also, it’s important to attack cancer aggressively, and higher doses of anti-cancer substances can be given in an IV. Often, practitioners of natural medicine who treat cancer and don’t use IVs, end up having to give their patients dozens of pills to swallow, and this can become intolerable for some patients. Not only that, but IV treatments are necessary if doctors want to get high amounts of certain substances, such as Vitamin C, into their patients. Even ten percent of a normal IV dose of Vitamin C taken orally gives some people diarrhea, but if doctors put that dose into an IV, it’s well tolerated and doesn’t cause diarrhea or damage to normal tissue. Of course, for logistical reasons, some substances have to be taken orally. For example, mixing oil-soluble or fat-soluble substances into a water-soluble IV that goes directly into the bloodstream doesn’t work well.

Intravenous doses of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) have been found to produce from 25 to 70 times as much plasma (blood) concentration of the substance than what can be attained by oral dosing. Research has confirmed that Vitamin C in such high concentrations kills cancer cells while leaving normal tissue unharmed. The cancer patients whom I treat rarely experience side effects from these treatments, with few exceptions.

Vitamin C kills cancer cells because one of the byproducts of Vitamin C, when it’s broken down, is hydrogen peroxide, and tumors don’t tolerate hydrogen peroxide well. It can be tricky to have hydrogen peroxide in the veins, because it can cause phlebitis (or swelling of the veins), but Vitamin C doesn’t convert into hydrogen peroxide until it goes from the bloodstream into the fluid that surrounds cancer cells. There, it harms the cancer cells without harming the body.

This is the principal beneficial action of Vitamin C against cancer, as established by a landmark study by the National Institutes of Health. So Vitamin C’s primary cytotoxic (or cancer-killing) effects have to do with its ability to leave hydrogen peroxide within the vicinity of cancer cells. This is one mechanism that we know for certain works well. Also, as previously mentioned, Vitamin C helps the body to create stronger tissue with greater tensile strength, so that new metastases can’t get a foothold. This is one of its secondary roles in treating cancer.

Because solid tumors grow in a low pH (acidic) environment, alkalinizing the body is important. I use alkalinizing agents to correct abnormal cell signal transduction.

One of these substances is intravenous sodium bicarbonate, in sterile liquid form. Tullio Simoncini MD, first demonstrated the beneficial effects that sodium bicarbonate has upon cancer, and I find that I get better results when I use this substance as part of my patients’ therapy. Those that choose to have sodium bicarbonate in their IVs do much better than those who choose not to have it. It’s beneficial for most types of cancer.

The Gerson Clinic in Mexico operates under the belief that potassium is beneficial to the body, and that sodium isn’t. Basic biochemistry, however, teaches us that we have a sodium-potassium pump in our cells, and that we need both sodium and potassium in those cells at all times. Unfortunately, we’ve had patients who, out of deference to the Gerson Clinic’s protocol, don’t want to have sodium bicarbonate in their IVs. These patients don’t tend to do as well as other patients.

Vitamin A is a generally less appreciated but crucial part of our treatment protocol for its immune-stimulating effects and ability to help the immune system identify cancer. Another very important
quality of Vitamin A, with regard to neoplastic cells, is its ability to introduce differentiation. This means that Vitamin A forces cancer cells to mature into more benign, stable types of cells. It has also been shown to induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) in cancer cells, and to inhibit their proliferation. Recent objections have been made about Vitamin A for its allegedly competitive and detrimental effects upon Vitamin D, but older research supports dosing Vitamin A and Vitamin D together as part of an effective anti-cancer regimen.

Naturopathic training emphasizes individualized, comprehensive treatment of the patient’s symptoms. Therefore, there is no specific formula that I prescribe in cookbook fashion to all of my patients, or even to the same patient from one day to the next. Treatments vary from person to person, depending upon their symptoms, signs, and type of cancer. For example, I generally recommend a different list of herbs and supplements to my breast cancer patients than to my lung or colon cancer patients. Also, a breast cancer patient with high blood pressure would be treated differently than a breast cancer patient with normal blood pressure. My recommendations are based upon the preponderance of research about different agents and their effectiveness for treating cancer. With colon cancer, for instance, I often recommend IP-6 (Inositol hexaphosphate acid, also known as phytic acid, which is a powerful antioxidant that’s naturally present in whole grains and high-fiber foods), because studies have shown that it has beneficial effects against colon cancer and especially adenocarcinoma, which is often the form that colon cancer takes. For breast cancer, I have found artemisia, Co-Q10, and astragalus to be useful. These treatments are all supported in the medical literature for these purposes.

Patients who come to my clinic generally prefer to receive only natural treatments. They usually come to me because they don’t want to do chemotherapy and/or radiation. Almost all of them reject chemotherapy and most of them also reject radiation. Only half, or fewer, would do surgery, so sometimes, I am expected to do
the heavy lifting of tumor removal with natural treatments alone. That’s a tall order, indeed.

I fight tumors as aggressively as I can, and with every means possible, but with one abiding principle in mind: whatever I do can’t weaken or sicken the patient. My treatments must make people feel as good as they did when they first came to my clinic, or better. Otherwise, we have to keep working to troubleshoot their conditions until we find the right mix of treatments for them. This requires that they schedule a consultation with me prior to each treatment to make sure we always get it right. I don’t charge my patients for these office consultations, only for IV treatments. Given that they generally come in three times a week for treatments, I sometimes end up doing a lot of consultations. During the consults, I want to know how they are feeling. I ask them, for example, if they have had any reaction to their last IV. Through these conversations, I can generally figure out what we need to eliminate from their protocols and still have good success at treating their cancers.

I try to keep my patients’ dietary regimens simple. Basically, I have only one strong request—that they avoid sugars and sweeteners. Much research has been done on the correlation between blood glucose and tumor growth. Studies have shown a strong correlation between blood sugar levels or glycemic load and cancer growth in people with pancreatic, breast, gastric, colon, ovarian, liver, and prostate cancers. Given this evidence, it would be reckless to allow cancer patients to assume that sugar intake is harmless.

I also try to get my patients to consume whole, natural foods as much as possible. Vegetables are important. Raw vegetables offer more value than cooked, but I don’t require that people give up cooked vegetables. Fruits are mostly okay, too. I also tell my patients not to be afraid of animal protein. There are clinics that advocate vegetarianism, but I disagree on this dietary approach. Vegetarians and vegans get less protein than omnivores, which means that they consume more carbohydrates by default. And all
carbohydrates, when metabolized, break down to at least some form of sugar.

Besides avoiding sugar and alcohol (alcohol turns to sugar in the body), I also discourage my patients from consuming soy because of its phytoestrogenic component, which has been linked in some studies to cancer development. Other than that, I tell people to go crazy and eat whatever they want, but to try to consume more natural foods than processed, and to get a wide variety of nutrients into their diets. My patients ask questions like, “Should I have green squash or yellow squash?” And I tell them that they don’t need to be so particular; they can eat whatever they like, as long as they are consuming a variety of foods which offer good nutritional balance. Some people will say things like, “I’m only going to eat blueberries and salmon because I think those are the two healthiest foods,” and I tell them that such extreme diets aren’t necessary. A nice, varied, healthy diet is best.

I don’t like to prescribe a lot of hormones to my cancer patients. Since I have a number of ways to fight cancer which are safe, tried and true, and known to not cause any new cancers, I prefer to stick with those and stay away from hormone replacement therapy, which is complicated.

Instead of prescribing hormones, I make sure that my patients have enough natural hormone precursors like Vitamin D and cholesterol. Also, low cholesterol levels are a risk factor for cancer, so if I see that my patients have a total cholesterol level of 120 (normal levels are closer to 200), I may recommend that they eat foods containing cholesterol, such as eggs, to increase their levels. Nowadays, it’s very fashionable among doctors to prescribe statin drugs for high cholesterol, but I prefer not to do this. There are much healthier ways to bring cholesterol down to 200.

Peri-menopausal and menopausal women whose hormone levels are low can be especially tricky to treat because normal levels of
testosterone and progesterone have anti-cancer effects. Overall, estrogen tends to be pro-cancerous; however, there are several types of estrogen, and not all encourage cancer growth. Estriol actually protects against cancer, but estradiol tends to increase cancer risk. Some types of estradiol fight cancer, but no compounding pharmacy makes the latter type of estradiol, at least in the area where I practice. So replacing hormones can be a bit of a minefield—one that I prefer to stay away from.

PET scans are still the most reliable, state-of-the-art way to diagnose cancer and determine its location in the body, and they are useful for detecting cancers from the neck all the way down to the thighs. No other imaging technique will do that. They don’t work for the brain, so MRI’s are used to diagnose tumors in the brain. During a PET scan, patients get injected with radioactive glucose, which goes straight to their cancer tumors, which light up for the camera because of the radioactivity. Benign cysts and tumors don’t light up, because they don’t uptake glucose, which enables the PET scan to distinguish between benign tumors such as fibroids or lipomas and malignant tumors. One major flaw of the PET scan is that it produces fuzzy images, so sometimes patients get a PET/CT combination instead. Because CT (CAT) scans are crisp and clear, they can more accurately capture the size of the tumor. So while the PET scan reveals the tumor’s location, the CT scan indicates the tumor’s size.

Despite their effectiveness, I don’t recommend that people with cancer get PET scans frequently or at all if they don’t have to, because every time they do, they get injected with the radioactive glucose, which feeds their tumors. In our practice, we use them only sparingly when we come to a “fork in the road” with our patients and need to decide whether, or how, to continue treatment.

I recommend that all of my patients get sunshine. Here in Arizona, we have more sunlight per square foot per hour than anywhere else in the world. I also recommend that they exercise, because it really helps their overall well-being and is a necessary component of good health.

I keep track of my patients, past and present, whenever possible. As of my data from July 2009, the average time that my patients needed to do treatments in order to reach remission was 4.4 months. This includes patients who had lumpectomies. As far as anyone knows, there’s usually no tumor remaining in the body after a lumpectomy, but chemotherapy is often recommended after this surgery to mop up any remaining cancer cells. Many people will choose to come to me after having had surgery, instead of doing chemotherapy. And except for one person, all those who received treatment at my clinic after a lumpectomy were fine after eight weeks, but those who didn’t have surgery required, on average, six months of treatment. So if I combine these patients with those that previously had surgeries, the treatment time averages 4. 4 months.