Alternative medicine/treatment
Alternative medicine/treatment I have posted this in here on behalf of Greta
Kind regards
BCC Host
I am naturally skeptical to the word alternative medicine / treatment when it comes to cancer. By this I do not mean exercise to keep fit or eating a normal healthy diet. Sometimes I get very annoyed when friends or family ring me up with something they have read in a magazine, although they do make me laugh as well. One friend called me to say that she had asked a church congregation where she lives to pray for me (I am not very religious). Another friend sent me a magazine article that told me to ditch all medical treatment and start some type of strict non diary, non this and that diet.
My mother called a healer. Acupuncture. What to eat and not eat (I already eat healthy organic (as far as possible) home cooked food).
What are your experiences and have they worked. And when I say worked I mean mentally and physically.
Love
Greta
Indeed you are wise to mistrust most “alternative” therapies. There have been remarkable stories, but they are rare and often cannot be substantiated or repeated. Having said that, there are treatments that come under “alternative” that can benefit, notably iscador which is much used in Europe as a booster for the system. Someone who contributes here who is using it. There is a group of women (chiefly in the US) who are trying alternative methods and run a website and forum. The chief impression is how much time they have to spend! Some of their reports are interesting but it’s clear that enormous commitment is required. if you are interested have a look at
Many of the dietary systems being touted are expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes positively dangerous. Sensible eating, avoidance of too much sugar, increased intake of a range of fruit and vegetables, increased use of pulses, will all be beneficial ( and would be benefical to most people anyhow).
If someone wants to pray for you, it’s not going to do you any harm and I would let them. Doesn’t really matter one way or the other - I was touched by the offer from my local church.
Acupuncture is useful in pain control, but is not a cure and has never claimed to be one. Healers - well, who can say? Some people do have a remarkable ability to help others (I’ve met one), but many seem to me to be battening on the uncertain.
Hi
Just thought i’d let you know my experience from when i was undergoing treatment. In my past i’d not been too considerate of ‘alternative’ therapies. The prevoius year i had been for aromatherapy massage for a bit of ‘feel good’ pampering and that was about it.
Since diagnosis, i have taken advantage of the Complimentary Therapies offered by the hospital, which have included Reflexology. I must say it certainly made me feel a lot better - i have walked in there feeling good for nothing and came out almost floating. A similar thing happened when i had some Reiki healing although I was a great sceptic beforehand. My new local beauty/therapy salon had an open evening, at which therapies were offered free of charge so i had a 15 minute ‘taster’ Reiki session. It was very powerful and i felt great afterwards, but extremely calm and relaxed.
The one thing that ocurred to me was that the actual therapies could be having no effect whatsoever - it could just be the darkened rooms, nice smells & music, and one-to-one pampering that was making me feel good - but if that was the case and it worked, did it matter? The affect was positive, no matter what it was that ‘did it’ for me. I also had acupuncture to help my fear of going into hospital and to deal with pain in my dodgy neck - again it was successful. I understand its good for control of menopausal symptoms too. Plus acupuncture is the one therapy that has stood up to scientific tests as doing what it says on the packet.
On the diet front, its a really close call as to what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ - there is much divided opinion (and a very good article in the Times on Saturday about milk & dairy products), with the general consensus being to cut down on fat, and everything in moderation. I changed my diet to cut out a lot of fat (including my usually weekly consumption of a small country’s worth of cheese!). I upped things like brown rice, seeds, fruit & veg, & water. On the whole, I’m just eating a bit healthier now, which has to be a good thing.
I am also taking part in a 5-year trial run by the London teaching hospitals, to see if diet has any affect on the likelihood of recurrence. You do not have to eat or not eat anything in particular, but you are just asked to record what you have eaten, and at the end of the 5 years they are going to analyse all the diets against the recurrences and see if there is a pattern.
Personally, i would find it down right dangerous to go along the route of cutting out conventional medicine completely in favour of alternatives - convetional has been proven to work, which is more than can be said of most of the ‘fad diet’ approaches. Conventional medicine does, however, see the benefit of running complementary therapies alongside.
As for praying - well, I don’t know either - but as Phoebe says, it can’t do any harm - at least its positive, and makes one feel good to know that others are rooting for you - take all the help you can get!
Alternatives I cut out the oncologist and did the Gerson diet, with Dr Rath’s supllement regime, and advice from a Plaskett trained nutritionist. Then I went to a homeopathic doctor and hospital, where I was prescibed Iscador.
I am still here after 4 years, which considering my initial chances, is excellent. (surgeon just shakes his head and says we are ‘very lucky’)
Luck? There are lots of esoteric supllements in my organic diet, (now almost normal) but I do my research well and use many modalities.
Some it will not work for, but there are equally far more for whome the conventional approach does not work either, and I do not have the experience of having been ill. It is a great shame that more peop[el do not try this method.
Reply Hi Darklady
I am very interested to know about your diet and supplement regime, can you tell me what supplements you use and your diet guidelines and if you are naughty sometimes.
What do you think to the Bristol Cancer Centre and Breast Cancer Haven’s nutritional advice?
Love Lesley x
For Greta and anyone else undecided I have moved this post to this thread on the request of JaneRA
Kind regards
Froum Host
Breast Cancer Care
I was sceptical before I got cancer and have remained sceptical about the big business which is ‘alternative’ medicine. I’m a fan of John Diamond’s book Snake Poison…read it for a brilliant analysis of the rubbish put about by alternativists.
I think that many people, faced with a cancer diagnosis, turn to alternative and complimentary medicine as a a way of ‘staying in control.’ I understand that but I hate the way that some alternativists exploit people with cancer when they are at their most vulnerable.
I don’t think conventional medicine has all the answers about cancer, and I think in years to come the treatments we have today will seem primitive but they are the best there are at this moment in time, and some people live longer beacuse of them…and there’s evidence to support this.
Dark Lady…I’m pleased you are still surviving…you and I have been exchanging views on these forums for 3 years now. (I think you have had a local recurrence in that time…so far I’ve been well) I think I was diagnosed a little while after you (October 2003 though misdiagnosed in March 2003.) Like you I survive despite having a bad prognosis … we are both lucky to be on the right side of poor stats…I remain as convinced as ever that the alternative solutions you have sought for yourself are unsubstantiated nonsense…but long may we both survive…maybe its having pedantic views which does the trick…
Jane
Physiological effects of the mind and meditation Hello Greta, DarkLady and others.
I wondering why some alternatives work for some and not for others, it may be to do with the engagement of the power of the mind in the whole process.
I am not talking “alternative mumbo jumbo” here, as one can ask the same question about why conventional treatments succeed or fail.
Every one of us is an individual and extremely complex box of biological, psychological and social tricks after all. But recently researched and published work in the relatively new field of brain science demonstrates unequivocally that meditation affects body chemistry.
At the simplest, biochemical level we know that stress releases adrenalin and prolactin and that at high sustained levels, prolactin favours tumour cells, for instance.
Now it has also been shown that meditation can increase levels of melatonin and melatonin has long been shown to be protective against breast cancer.
So, Greta, maybe meditation is one of the alternatives to adopt. I go with the complementary approach to treatment until such a day when the conventional treatment’s damage potential outweighs its benefits. At which stage, the complementary approach I have will be renamed Alternative!
Check out the book “Full Catastrophe Living” by Jon Kabat Zinn, together with the meditation tapes to get an excellent and straightforward way to start mindfulness meditation practice. It’s very simple and has got me meditating (almost) daily after years of failing to get the hang of it…
Wishing you wellbeing,
Jenny
message for jenny w Hi jennyw
am glad to see your well after poor prognosis. This is my second primary cancer in three years, this time lobular cancer in both breasts, one 8cm tumor, two small ones, and 19/19 lypmh nodes cancerous.
Onc is convinced that i have a secondary spread, but they cant find anything conclusive so far, my ca15-3 is very high still.
the fact that you are still here is most encouraging for me, even though i know everyone is different, ive felt like my poor prognosis has been a death sentence for me.
all the best
lesley donna
Good Luck Hi Lesley Donna
Just want to wish you all the best with your treatment.
Thinking of you
Love Lesley x
Hi darby
Thanks i wish you well too, nice name by the way.
lesley donna