Defeat Cancer (23 page)

Our treatment outcomes are variable, and often depend upon the patient. If patients take ownership of their healing process and say to themselves, for example, “This (type of treatment) is what I want. I have researched the procedure and I think it’s the best,” then they tend to do well. If they think, “I’m going to die, no matter what I do,” then they won’t do well. If they want the IPT therapy to work, that in and of itself will have a huge beneficial effect upon their healing.

If they say, “I’m scared that I’m going to die anyway. What can you do for me?” I have to ask them, “Well what can you do for yourself?” I try to talk to them about their anxieties, fears, and unresolved anger, because it’s important for them to work through these difficult emotions. It’s helpful if they have a counselor, pastor, or minister that they can talk to. At our clinic, my colleague’s wife comes in to pray and talk with our patients. We also know psychologists and counselors that we can refer them to see.

I have seen plenty of people who were initially given a death sentence who are still alive, several years after having done treatments with us. The results have been amazing. For example, I had one patient who didn’t think that he would make it until Christmas, and nearly two years later, he’s still on the planet. In conventional oncology, doctors will tell their patients that they are allowed six rounds of chemotherapy, and if that fails, then that’s it—it’s all that they have to offer them. At our clinic, we will keep doing treatments, while maintaining our patients’ quality of life. Some of them get treatments before work, and then go to work for the rest of the week without any problems.

We have a lot of success stories, but some people pass away, too. A lot of family members are grateful towards us, though, even when their loved ones don’t make it. They will say things like, “Thanks for treating her. We couldn’t even get other doctors to see her, because she was so bad, but you did.” And we typically find that during the time that they were alive, they had a better quality of life than they would have had if we had turned them away. It leaves tears in our eyes when family members are happy that we could do even this for their loved ones.

When people die, it’s not always because of cancer. One of our patients was responding well to our treatments for metastatic esophageal cancer, but because he had a mitral valve in his heart that was deteriorating, he died of heart failure. Sometimes, patients get tired and weary of their treatments, although thankfully, nobody has ever died as a direct result of IPT. I don’t think that conventional doctors can say that about their treatments. They give their patients high doses of chemotherapy, which ends up affecting their bone marrow. Then they wind up in the hospital, where they get a horrible septic infection and die. We’ve never had that happen at our clinic. We do see some bone marrow suppression, in perhaps ten percent of our patients (if that), but we do a lot of nutritional therapy so that they don’t wind up having serious problems.

The biggest roadblock to healing that we have come across is patients not being able to pay for their treatments, because insurance companies don’t generally pay for what we do. If they do pay, they will often let the claims sit for six to nine months, before they bring them before a medical board to challenge our work by telling the board that what we are doing violates the “standard of care.” They will do anything to not pay for treatments, and whenever they do pay, it often comes as the result of a lot of persuading. One patient of ours, a chiropractor, went and researched the beneficial effects of low-dose chemotherapy, and took the evidence that he found on IPT to his insurance company. As a result, they paid for 85 percent of his treatments! Another patient took his claim to the same insurance company, and the insurance company took his claim to the medical board. The board so far hasn’t said anything to us, nor has the insurance company paid for his treatments.

If patients don’t have money for treatment, they can go to church fundraisers or apply for assistance at the IPT for Cancer website:
www.iptforcancer.com
, where others have set up tax-free donations for people with cancer. These donations are given to treatment providers, who then invest the money in their patients’ treatments.

People with cancer struggle, but somehow, most of the time they come up with funds for treatment. The greater challenge might be when family members offer to help pay for treatments, but want to dictate the treatments that the person with cancer does. For instance, they will often tell their loved ones that they want them to go the conventional route, or do the type of treatment that they themselves prefer. So getting financial help from family can become a double-edged sword, which brings up another roadblock to healing—family and friends telling their loved ones that they are doing the wrong treatments, which is hardly encouraging. People with cancer should be able to choose the treatments that they want to do.

Also, just as some friends and family members want their loved ones to do conventional treatments when they would rather do IPT or other treatments, sometimes, it happens the other way around. I have patients who are here because their family and friends wanted them to see us because our therapies are less toxic, but the patients may be very conventionally-minded and unsure about what we do, which isn’t good, either.

The other roadblock to healing is closed-minded, uneducated doctors. Doctors must take care to not give uninformed opinions about treatments. I don’t give an opinion about things that I don’t know about, but some oncologists will give their patients opinions about therapies that they know absolutely nothing about—like IPT.
I want to say to them, “Why don’t you ask us our opinion about IPT, since we are the ones doing it? We have been doing these treatments and we know what goes on with them.” I wouldn’t go to a patient and say, “What kind of results does your oncologist get using conventional therapy?” I would instead ask the oncologist about his or her therapy, or go look up that therapy on the Internet and learn about it myself. Oncologists shouldn’t give opinions about treatments that they know nothing about, yet traditional oncologists and doctors are more than happy to do that.

The greatest challenge of healing, for both practitioners and patients, is creating an ideal environment where practitioners can educate their patients on the importance of lifestyle aspects of healing, such as diet, cooking, and exercise, and patients are able to comply with their recommendations.

Being able to create a mental environment that’s stress-free and relaxing is another challenge to healing. For example, when people get a chronic disease, they find that they can’t keep up with everyone else, so they automatically become reclusive. I mean, when you get the flu, you don’t want to go out and have a social life, do you? You want to crawl into bed and wait until it’s over. So if people are having chronic flu-like symptoms, it’s too mentally exhausting for them to be social with others. I don’t like to use a lot of anti-depressants in my practice, but I find it important to build up my patients’ brain chemistry with nutrients, which helps them to combat the depression that sometimes accompanies isolation. Also, exercising every day is important, because it releases endorphins. If it makes people feel good, they will want to keep doing it, too. There is some evidence that correlates exercise with an increased lifespan in people with cancer. So we encourage our patients to do gentle exercise for a half-hour daily. It’s also important for them to do activities that they enjoy.

Ideally, we would put a clinic on an island, and take all of our patients there! Creating the perfect environment where patients can get well is the greatest challenge to healing.

A chemotherapy drug called Avastin has gotten much bad press, so I wonder about its safety. There have been concerns about people having strokes while taking it. I get concerned about the frequent usage of high dose chemotherapy and how debilitated patients get while doing it. I think it can be dangerous. When evaluating the benefits of any therapy, it’s important for doctors to look at their patients’ progression with that particular therapy, or statistics of people’s overall survival with it. Oncology uses various techniques to monitor the effectiveness of conventional treatments, but there aren’t good parameters for knowing whether patients should receive these treatments or not. If you look at people with cancer, you can tell whether they are healthy and robust, but there has to be some better objective criteria to determine whether or not we can treat them with chemotherapy, because we are giving them a poison. A wise doctor I know once said that poison given in small dosages is therapeutic, but in heavy doses, is dangerous. Doctors have to know what drug to give, how much of it, and when the patient is ready for it. Some of the new chemotherapeutic drugs that are coming out on the market are very expensive and carry a high risk of serious side effects, such as anaphylactic-type reactions. These drugs include Erbitux, Vectibix, and Herceptin, just to name a few. Monoclonal antibodies (MABs) often cause reactions in patients and are potentially dangerous.

Are there cheaper, safer ways to treat cancer? Probably, but in the meantime, the majority of cancer patients are spending a lot of money on dangerous treatments, and whether the overall survival rate has increased as a result of these treatments is questionable. For example, there is a medication for renal cell carcinoma that is currently being talked about in the medical journals, which is supposed to extend the patient’s life from an average of 22 months to 24 months. Well, if it were me, I don’t know how willing I would
be to spend thousands of dollars to take a drug that has severe side effects, and to spend those extra two months of my life laying around on the couch staring at the ceiling, miserable because I am in so much pain. Such a treatment doesn’t improve the patient’s quality of life (in fact, it does the opposite) or longevity. Now, if they came up with a drug that extended the patient’s life from two to five years, then that would get my attention. Too often, we want full-dose chemotherapy regimens to do something positive, but they really haven’t proven to be all that effective.

I don’t want to criticize doctors in conventional medicine. They have spent a lot of time getting to where they are, but I think they have been a bit blindsided by the pharmaceutical industry. Drugs are all that they are taught, but medicine needs to be about more than just writing prescriptions for drugs. I want doctors to understand what people are about, because every person is different and has unique needs. No two people on the planet are exactly alike.

Our protocols are comprehensive and based on the individual person. We treat the whole person. Our patients are human and we treat them as such. We spend a lot of time figuring out what’s going on with them and their bodies. We address everything that we can: from diet, exercise, detoxification, inflammation, and angiogenesis to the nervous, immune and hormonal systems. We also address spiritual and emotional issues; and even dental care, because there are correlations between dental root canals and problems with the rest of the body. Do we have the answer to all of these issues? No, but we try to put them together in the best way that we can.

Genesis Health Systems: An Integrative Cancer Treatment Center

2204 El Camino Real Suite 104, Oceanside, CA 92054

Phone: 760-439-9955 Fax: 760-439-6755

Email:
[email protected]

Elio Martin Rivera Celaya, MD, is Chief Medical Officer of Hope Wellness Center in Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico. He is a conventionally trained medical physician with more than twenty-five years of clinical experience. Over the past fifteen years, he has also received cross-training in nutritional medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Monterrey, in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and is certified in chelation, oxygen, nutritional, and magnet therapy.

Additionally, Dr. Rivera-Celaya is a pastor and founder of a nondenominational Christian fellowship church in Mexico. He has written several bilingual Christian books and is an international speaker. He has also founded several orphanages in Mexico, one of which is next door to Hope Wellness Center. His compassion for people is evident throughout his medical practice and ministry.

Steven Hines is the co-founder and head of research and development for Hope Wellness Center. He has received extensive training in naturopathy and endocrinology, and has functioned primarily as
a clinical consultant for Dr. Rivera over the past fifteen years. He is also a master herbalist and has more than 12,000 hours of training in nutritional biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology. His deductive reasoning skills are invaluable to the patients at Hope Wellness Center. Currently, he’s writing a book on gastrointestinal diseases and has co-authored a book entitled,
The Road to Health
which contains information on a gut-healing, anti-inflammatory, and antifungal diet that has profound healing benefits for those with cancer. Steve is also an accomplished musician and humanitarian.

Hope Wellness Center takes a unique approach to clinical medicine. We treat our patients according to their individual needs, instead of giving them “cookie cutter” treatments for their ailments. Doctors in conventional medicine have given up on most of the patients that we see at Hope, but the word “incurable” doesn’t daunt us. We aren’t discouraged when some say, “No one has ever gotten well from this disease.” Our patients routinely recover from life-threatening or supposedly incurable diseases.