Simple answer to cancer?

02/11/10 | djf

[kara37]

No, my sister is really into this and she takes 16 pills a day to keep her body alkaline. However, I really have no idea what she is taking.

[aruanan]

Doctors like this guy have done dissections of tumors and in the center they usually find the presence of an initial infection or parasite that the tumor grew around.

Actually what they find in the center of a tumor is necrotic tissue. The necrotic tissue appears because there is not enough vascularization that deep in the tumor and the original part of the tumor dies for lack of nutrients and oxygen.

[proudtobeanamerican1]

“a clerk at the GNC with a GED and a certificate in herbal bowelology he got mail order from The Center for Wholistic Healing”

In case anyone didn’t make it to the end of your rant, this is hilarious.

[grey_whiskers]

Hydrogen peroxide is good for oral health, if "swished around" and not swallowed.

Most of the germs under the gum line don't seem to like elemental oxygen for some reason...

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Try the Richard Gere method:

1) Roll a gerbil in baking soda.

2) Get a cardboard tube and...

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Doesn't have to be that they're hiding anything from us -- but the medical profession does tend to be hidebound and subject to "groupthink" and fads.

This predates the "patent medicine" era in the US which gave rise to the FDA, by the way. Consider Lister being thrown out of hospitals for advocating asepsis during surgery, or the great practice of bleeding people for therapy.

The other issue is that there are so MANY d@mn cofactors involved in almost anything involving the human body, that there are bound to be any number of efficacious treatments, which really do work, but only for a relatively minor subset of the cases, in which certain very specific conditions hold.

So the large scale statistical studies which focus on the center of the bell curve for effectiveness, but look at the tail of the curve for risk, are likely to throw away a number of promising treatments.

The problem is that it would cost too much money, and take too much time, to narrow down the causes and conditions which led to success for the minor treatments.

On the other hand, there's always the H. pylorii type of thing...

Agreed that it is difficult to change the pH of the body by food or drink, due to the volumes invoved, and the body's tendency to be a self-buffering system; also agreed that food and drink will not change genes -- though they might affect *expression* of genes, or might allow explotation of genetic quirks present in certain classes of tumors.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

You can live without an alternator but you can't live without a liver.

So THAT's how it got it's name.

And by the same token then, an alternator must be the source of "alternative" treatments...

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

SH*T!!!

First time in living memory that I have misused "it's" as a possessive.

I know better than that.

No more FReeping during lunch while cooking dinner...

Cheers!

[reformedliberal]

My husband is a medical massage therapist. His work is based on Western anatomical science. A DO friend described what he does as “Osteopathy 101”. So, he is considered an alternative practitioner and therefore sees some interesting clients.

One woman, who had been cured of cervical cancer by modern medicine, decided that, when she contracted another form of cancer (can't recall which one), it _must_ have been due to her previous (10 years ago) cancer treatment. She began the oral peroxide treatment. She was dead within 6 months.

Another woman, a yoga instructor, had a 4 month period of inexplicable low back pain. She came into her massage appointments wondering how she could have pain when she “was opening the area to a large degree and often” (this refers to various yoga postures that stretch the muscles and ligaments). DH told her to see an MD after she got no relief from 3 treatments. This is one of his standard recommendations, as many organic conditions result from organ dysfunction and a physician should be consulted if soft tissue therapy isn't working. I'll add that she looked ill, with dark circles under her eyes, a sallow complexion and she was losing weight rapidly. She was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer and died within months.

A recent client was having a series of TMJ treatments, recommended by her dentist. They were not working, which is unusual. She finally saw her MD, got a referral to an endocrinologist based on other symptoms and imaging revealed a tiny tumor on her pituitary, causing acromegaly. Her prognosis is excellent because they caught it very early. DH was puzzled by the doughy texture of her palms and the fact that her *osteoarthritis* was showing in the proximal joints, which is unusual. Turns out, these are signs of too much growth hormone.

It is vital to get early diagnosis of cancers and other visceral conditions. Many, if not most visceral problems can manifest as muscular aches and pains. DH has compiled a long list of various such somatic symptoms that _may_ be caused by a visceral referral. If he feels that the soft tissue isn't responding in a normal manner, he will recommend that the client see the physician ASAP. The diagnoses can range from deteriorated discs, which are pretty straightforward, to liver failure which will present as a persistent, intractable pain on the right side of the neck. Persistent flank pain can be indicative of kidney stones.

Any alternative/complementary practitioner who does not understand the severe limitations of their modality is capable of denying someone prompt diagnosis and treatment. There is a lot of misinformation out there. Even if you are uninsured, it is worth $100 to get a competent diagnosis. Most physicians and hospitals will take payments over time. We just finished paying for my husband's yearly panel of blood tests, which included 2 physician visits and was under our deductible. There was not one bit of problem with the clinic/hospital for paying in installments, as we could afford.

Complementary practitioners can sometimes be of use for limited problems that really don't need the attention of a physician. But the key word is *limited*. I know a lot of physicians and APRNs. Not a one of them is a greedy person who wants to see serious illness in order to continue making a lot of money. I also know a lot of alternative practitioners, including a holistic veterinarian who will continue whatever it is that they do just to keep the appointments and the cash coming. The vet has a high mortality rate. The human practitioners are often also selling various nostrums and pills (which DH will not do and in fact, lost a job once because he refused to *prescribe* Bach flower remedies). Diagnosis and prescription are the sole province of licensed physicians. They are trained, have access to imaging and to labs and it is foolish, IMO, to not take advantage of this.

We all need to practice discernment.

[reformedliberal]

oooooooooops

"as many organic conditions result from organ dysfunction and a physician should be consulted if soft tissue therapy isn't working."

Should be:

"Many somatic conditions result from organ dysfunction..."

[aruanan]

In case anyone didn’t make it to the end of your rant, this is hilarious.

Thanks. I like to keep it light.

On a more serious note, having lost my father to anecdotalist self-treatment, I wish he had taken advantage of the state of the art medical treatments for non-small cell carcinoma. He remembered how he had seen people over the years respond to radiation and chemotherapy and didn't want to end up like them. Unfortunately, he did end up just like them, only much earlier than many of them did. Had he gone through with his initial series of radiation treatments he could have held the tumor back long enough to have tried Tarceva. I tried to tell him the goal of all these treatments was to hit the tumor in as many ways as possible to retard its growth, if elimination was not possible, so as to improve his quality of life and to give him a bit more time with those he loved. In the end he wished he had not been so hesitant, but by then it was too late.

My short essay, On Studying Cancer, though, was written about 9 years ago while in my doctoral program. I just updated the Google and PubMed hits for the various search terms.