Defeat Cancer (39 page)

So when pathogens become great in number, they populate and inflame the gut, which in turn throws off the immune system and other systems of the body. It’s in this environment that cancer has the opportunity to develop. In my opinion, the normal, beneficial flora in the gut should be considered an organ. That is how important, and vast, they are.

My initial visit with new patients lasts two or three hours. I will sometimes even spend an hour or two talking to them on the phone after my office closes. We (my staff and I) follow them closely. I have three cancer care managers—one of whom has been with me for over eighteen years—who help with this. We love our work, and are a phenomenal team that works well together. We don’t even look at treating cancer patients as work, actually. It’s our passion! I talk to my patients anytime they want, and they can call me anytime, day or night. They have my office, home, and cell phone numbers. I work seven days a week, but again, it’s not work; it’s my life.

To be legal and ethical, I require that my patients have a primary care physician (in addition to me), and that they see an oncologist, to get a diagnosis and learn about their treatment options, before they do treatments at my clinic. I do this because cancer is a conundrum of a disease and people with cancer need a lot of help from many people in the medical field. Conventional medicine has some beneficial things to offer, and I want people to know about all of their available treatment options. Also, primary care physicians can take care of routine matters for my patients, such as tests, and their services are usually covered by insurance, whereas a lot of what we do at my clinic isn’t.

Once patients’ oncologists have given them advice about the treatments that they think they should do, those patients can then come to me for a second opinion. Then they, and they alone—not their families—can decide what type of treatment they want to do, having understood the pros and cons of the different treatments that are out there.

What we do here, above all, is support people’s immune systems so their bodies can fight the cancer. Our main goal is to improve their longevity and quality of life and minimize their treatment complications from any radiation and chemotherapy that they may also be doing. We treat them with nutrition, herbal and homeopathic remedies, psychological interventions, and IPTLD (Insulin Potentiation Targeted Low Dose Therapy), along with a spectrum of other approaches. These are discussed in the following sections.

We accept all of the following for treatment:

1. Patients who prefer IPTLD as their primary anti-cancer therapy and who have refused traditional oncology treatments
   
2. Patients who have failed traditional oncology treatments
   
3. Patients who can’t tolerate traditional oncology treatments
   In all cases, we work closely with our patients’ primary physicians and oncologists.
   

We offer a comprehensive program involving both drugs and natural remedies, and this seems to be the most effective and complete treatment approach. We find that targeted low-dose chemotherapy gets rid of most of our early to mid-stage patients’ cancer cells within six weeks, but it all depends upon the person and the cancer. In addition, we do therapies to lessen the body’s overall toxic burden, because when we do that, then everything else, including the immune system and our IPTLD treatments, work better.

My treatment program consists of seven important components. Some of these are discussed more in-depth in the sections that follow. In general, the more of my program that patients can do, the greater are their chances for recovery and a better life. The components of this program are:

1. To de-bulk the tumor through oncological, traditional or alternative therapies.
   
2. To destroy other infections and infectious vectors, or causes of infection, in the body.
   
3. To de-agglutinate the blood cells, which involves thinning and cleaning up circulating immune complexes in the blood, so that red blood cells don’t stick together and the tissues receive more oxygen and nutrients.
   
4. To increase energy at the cellular level and increase mitochondrial energy production.
   
5. To support the body’s overall functioning with a multifaceted approach that includes: nutritional
   recommendations, hormone balancing, alkalinizing and botanical therapies, enzyme therapy, and detoxification.
   
6. To heal emotional trauma, build and re-build relationships.
   
7. To encourage patients to develop a spiritual life, through meditation, prayer, and forgiveness.
   

IPT/IPTLD is one of the main therapies that we do at our clinic. IPT was developed in the 1940s by a Mexican doctor named Donato Perez Garcia, MD (who’s also referred to as Dr. Donato). He did a study on cancer patients at his clinics in Mexico and Texas, and observed that most of them obtained very good results with IPT. (Note: IPT/IPTLD is described in further detail in other chapters of this book).

I once visited Dr. Donato’s office in Mexico, and was amazed to find three generations of physicians working there. They also had thousands of patient charts! When I asked him how many of his stage one and two patients did well with IPT treatments, he replied that over 90 percent had extremely good results. Fifty percent of his stage three patients did fairly well; meaning, they went into remission. For his stage four patients, he primarily expected to extend their lives and alleviate their symptoms. However, a very small number of his stage four patients also went into remission.

Because IPT involves administering much lower doses of chemotherapy than what’s typically given in conventional medicine, patients experience less nausea, vomiting and hair loss, and fewer complications and major side effects than if they had done full-dose chemotherapy.

Practitioners all have their biases. I’m not sure that one type of treatment is better than another. By itself, IPT isn’t superior to
regular chemotherapy, and regular chemotherapy isn’t superior to IPT. What matters is treating the whole person. Practitioners can’t say that one type of therapy is better than another, because they must take into account all of the factors involved in healing. In our practice, we do a total revamping of the emotional and physical body, part of which involves choosing the correct therapies for each of our patients. This process is complicated but necessary.

Our nutritional treatments are based on the work of A. Kornberg, an American biochemist who has made some phenomenal discoveries. For instance, he demonstrated that twenty basic amino acids are required to duplicate a DNA chain. Cancer cells require twenty essential amino acids to replicate, and if they don’t have all of these, they can’t do that. He discovered that it was possible to manipulate the DNA polymerase of cancer cells by putting people on a diet that didn’t contain all twenty of the amino acids, and that if they followed this diet, their cancer cells would die; this clever invention won him the Nobel Prize.

According to Kornberg, people with cancer should avoid sugar and animal protein so the cancer can’t get all of the amino acids that it needs to replicate. Instead, he recommends a diet of plant-based foods and herbs. Practitioners who have recommended this diet to their patients claim to get good results from it and we recommend it to some of our patients. While I (Dr. Kotsanis) follow it myself, I don’t recommend it to all of my patients, because not all of them are able to follow it and/or they may have different dietary needs. So I customize my patients’ diets and make recommendations that will most benefit their immune systems and promote healing. In addition to being a medical doctor, I’m a certified clinical nutritionist, which better enables me to help my patients in this aspect of their recovery. I also have a network of clinical nutritionists and dietitians that I work with and to whom I sometimes refer my patients for further help.

We’re currently in the process of writing a cookbook, tentatively entitled
Free Food,
which is for people with special dietary requirements. It will contain recipes that are casein, gluten, sugar, and dairy-free, as well as vegetarian. It will be published around May-June, 2011.

We also give our patients generous amounts of Vitamins A and D, which studies have demonstrated to be beneficial for strengthening the immune system. Other remedies that we prescribe include beta-glucans, which improve neutrophil counts (neutrophils are a type of immune cell involved in fighting cancer), the herb artemisinin, IP-6 (inositol hexaphosphate, which is an anti-oxidant), and curcumin. All of these boost the immune system and increase NK (natural killer) cell activity. Vitamin D-3 and Vitamin A are essential for all of my cancer patients, as well as for people who don’t have cancer.

Beyond this, I supplement nutrients, including minerals and antioxidants, according to what my patients need. We also administer Vitamins C and K intravenously, because they have cytotoxic effects upon cancer cells when given in high doses. I also recommend alkalinizing agents, such as wheat grass, asparagus (best when juiced), and Essiac tea.

It’s important to treat cancer patients for other infections that are weighing down their immune systems, so that their bodies can better fight cancer. The best way to control or eliminate parasitic, viral, and fungal infections is with the use of botanical remedies; the naturopathic approach is the best for treating any type of chronic infection. We use herbs such as catechu, black walnut, cloves, and wormwood, in combination with ionic minerals, to control infections in our patients with cancer.

Cancer patients have increased blood agglutination (red blood cell clumping). Blood agglutination promotes infections, low oxygen in
the tissues, and cancer growth. A key component of all of our cancer treatments is supplemental enzymes such as amylase, lipase, protease, and bromelain, which break up blood cell clumps and thin the blood. This approach is known as “Kelly’s Protocol.” I find that patients who do enzyme therapy have better treatment outcomes.

We prescribe our patients substances for various detoxification purposes: everything from citrus pectin to DMSA (Dimercaptosuccinic acid) and EDTA (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid). We have a wide spectrum of heavy metal chelating agents at our clinic. Patients do some of our detoxification procedures at our clinic; others they do at home. Since all cancer patients have higher-than-average levels of toxicity, all of them are placed on some type of detoxification protocol. Detoxification must always be done under the strict supervision of a physician.

We encourage our patients to address their infected teeth, if they have any. Clearing out infections in the mouth decreases the immune system’s burden. Cancer must be fought on multiple fronts, because the battle occurs on multiple fronts. If patients are battling infections in their mouths and cancer in their colons, for instance, then they are fighting disease on two fronts, because the health of the mouth has a direct impact on the immune system and rest of the body.

We correct our patients’ hormones if they are out of balance. We test their thyroid and adrenal gland function, as well as their Vitamin D levels, using blood and saliva tests. If we find, for instance, that they don’t have enough cortisol, then we may give them supplemental hydrocortisone. If their cortisol levels are too high, then we will give them herbs to lower those levels. Most people with cancer also suffer from hypothyroidism. For this, we often prescribe
Armour thyroid, which is natural thyroid hormone made from animal (pig) thyroid glands.

I recommend a healthy, toxin-free, low-calorie, organic food diet to my patients. Americans eat too many calories, and that has to stop if they want to avoid cancer. The amount of calories that people need depends upon their work and daily activities, but most can survive on 1,200-1,500 per day. Proper food combining is also important. For example, when people drink while they eat, their digestive enzymes get diluted, so they don’t end up receiving the necessary concentration of digestive enzymes to properly metabolize their food. Ideally, people should drink before they eat a meal, and wait two hours after eating before they drink again. This makes the digestive enzymes and the body’s overall digestion more efficient. When food is fully digested, nothing remains in the small intestine for pathogens to feast on. Pathogens will have a picnic whenever undigested food enters the small intestine. The byproduct of this is bloating and inflammation in the body. Mixing acidic and alkaline foods also interferes with the body’s ability to produce proper digestive enzymes, which again, leaves pathogens with plenty of undigested food for a picnic.

I also individualize my patients’ diets. The majority of my cancer patients are acidic with acidic cancers, so I may prescribe them alkaline water, in addition to an alkaline diet, to help alkalinize their bodies. I also encourage them to measure their pH levels at home by doing a saliva pH test, which is more accurate than a urine pH test. Ideally, I like to see people attain a body pH level of 7.4 or above, because at a pH of 7.0, cancers stop growing, and at 7.4, they begin to die.

Cancer begins in the body anywhere from two to ten years prior to its expression, and is usually initiated by an ugly emotional event. When people come into my office, I sometimes say to them, “Who
are you mad at?” because I believe that they wouldn’t have cancer if they weren’t mad at someone. Everyone with cancer is angry at someone else, because cancer is usually initiated by a traumatic event (which produces anger), along with a garbage lifestyle.