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Chemotherapy Is Only Part of the Healing Process
The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
Thomas A. Edison
Cancer and Chemo
In recent years, according to the American Cancer Society's Global Cancer Facts & Figures, over 12 million new cancer cases were diagnosed each year and 7.6 million cancer deaths—about 20,000 cancer deaths a day—occurred worldwide.
Around 150 people are diagnosed with cancer every hour in the United States. Over a year, that amounts to almost 1.6 million people in the United States alone.
One out of every four Americans is diagnosed with cancer each year. This year about 564,800 Americans are expected to die of cancer—more than 1,500 people a day, day after day, week after week.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease.
One of every four deaths in the United States is from cancer.
Cancer is expensive: the health care industry in the United States—which includes doctors, hospitals and clinics, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers of medical technology, insurance companies, and so on—comprises around 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or around $1.5 trillion in 2011.
Of the million and a half plus American people with cancer, the vast majority opts for treatment by conventional medicine...and at least 75% receives chemotherapy as part of the routine method for dealing with the disease.
Chemotherapy, either by itself or in conjunction with radiation and surgery, has become the standard treatment for most cancers in conventional medical practice.
We Can't Rely on Chemo Alone
Many cancer patients seem to have attached themselves to the idea that chemotherapy solves all the problems that cancer poses. They believe that between chemo and radiation treatments, everything that can be done to destroy the cancer and bring the patient back to good health is automatically being done.
Call it the antibiotic mind-set. When we take antibiotics, we assume that they are combating an infection in the body brought on by bacteria or fungi or parasites, and we don't need to do anything else to push the process of infection-fighting further. The antibiotics are taking care of everything.
Let me say immediately that chemotherapy is not the same as antibiotic or antibacterial therapy. The medications are quite different and so are the processes of how they work. But the mind-set of “let medicine do the work while I just sit back and wait” is the same with chemo as it is with antibiotics for many people.
Cancer patients who are not suffering from a cancer related to the digestive process—such as stomach, pancreatic or colon cancer—are usually allowed an “unrestricted diet” by their oncologists. For instance, my partner who was diagnosed with lymphoma needed to be hospitalized for his first round of chemotherapy because he had a history of hepatitis-B and his doctor did not want to risk a flare-up of that disease during the chemo treatments. Chemo would suppress the immune system, leaving the door open for other diseases to come out of hiding. So the first chemo cocktail was administered as a round-the-clock drip over five days.
All during that week in the hospital, since his diet was officially “unrestricted,” he was served the same kinds of food available to anyone eating in the cafeteria-style restaurant down the street. A typical dinner was Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, a salad with ranch dressing, bread roll and butter, a glass of milk, a cup of coffee, and for dessert, a generous slice of chocolate cake.
During the time that chemo was being administered—his entire stay in the hospital—he was not allowed supplements of any kind, because of the concern that vitamins, minerals, and amino acids might have interfered with the intended effects of chemotherapy, and in some cases might have actually caused dangerous chemical reactions in the body. This, in spite of the fact that most foods naturally contain vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
So my partner was left with chemo and an “unrestricted diet,” which is to say that there was precious little to rely on for healing beyond chemotherapy and a business-as-usual eating plan.
Once out of the hospital, he was put on a regular schedule of chemotherapy treatments every three weeks. His prescription was for five day-long treatments following the week-long drip in the hospital—making six rounds of chemo over eighteen weeks, a period of five months, six counting follow-up blood work and PET scans.
All during that critical half-year period, he was left in chemo treatment only with the usual unrestricted diet directive and the admonition to avoid all supplements on the chemo days. Nothing was said about adding or subtracting foods and beverages from his diet or engaging in some gentle exercise such as walking or yoga, or anything else beyond getting chemo and, as best he could, recovering from one round in time to take another round.
Left with this regimen for healing, which is no regimen at all, a cancer patient can look forward to weeks and months of feeling bad from the side effects of chemotherapy as the body processes and then finally eliminates the toxic chemicals along with the dead cancer cells. Meanwhile, the body is left in such a weakened state that the patient often becomes a professional sick person, open to all kinds of lesser diseases that a compromised immune system lets in.
Something is missing. There must be a way for a cancer patient to withstand the forceful work of chemo in the body and feel good at the same time. There must be a way to speed up the process of healing from cancer and enjoy high energy and a sense of well-being while the healing is taking its course.
There is a way, of course, and it is nature's way.
What Chemo Is Designed to Do
To understand more about what really goes on in chemo treatment, it is important to know what chemotherapy is designed to do. Chemotherapy treats cancer with an antineoplastic drug or several antineoplastic drugs in combination. “Antineoplastic” means that a drug acts to prevent, inhibit, or stop (anti) the development of a tumor (neoplasm).
The task of chemotherapy chemicals is to kill rapidly dividing malignant cells in the body. Cancer cells divide and multiply at a rapid rate, causing a breakdown in bodily systems. Chemotherapy kills those cells, and along with them the reproducing cells of normal tissues. The chemicals can be given through a vein, which is the usual way of getting them into the body, or injected into a body cavity. Sometimes one or more of the chemicals are given orally in pill form.
When chemo descends to do fatal damage to malignant cells and stop the disease from spreading, it also damages normal cells. And when that happens, unwanted side effects appear. Since chemo cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a healthy cell, it attacks both the rapidly growing cancer cells and other fast-growing cells, such as hair and blood cells.
A cancer patient already knows most of this, because it is part of the experience of living with chemo treatment. Naturally, an oncologist tries to find a delicate balance between destroying the malignant cells to control the disease and leaving the normal cells alone, so that there are as few negative side effects as possible.
So, chemo is designed to kill. There is some interesting history behind this language of killing, destroying, and attacking. The chemical treatment of cancer goes back to the world wars of the past century and the development of weaponry.
During World War I, one of the weapons deployed was chlorine gas, which was used as early as 1915. Another was mustard gas. So devastating were the effects of these and other chemical gases—killing, in many cases, both sides in a battle—that their use in warfare was banned. But it was found that mustard gas was a powerful suppressor of hematopoiesis, or blood production.