Management of cancer

Cancer Trials Can Lack Clear Information on Biopsies.

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 Cancer drug trials often require participants to receive invasive procedures like biopsies, which are used to assess the drug’s effectiveness but have no therapeutic value – and can pose serious risks — for the patient.

Informed consent documents are supposed to inform study participants about these types of risks so they can make an educated decision on whether or not to participate in the trial, but a new study found this type of risk information to be seriously lacking.

Risks of Biopsies Not Clearly Stated

Writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers stated:1

“A better representation of the risks and benefits of research biopsies in study protocols and informed consents is needed.”

This was their conclusion after finding that more than 5 percent of biopsies in cancer drug trials may cause complications, but the informed consent documents did not adequately explain this. In fact, on average the consent documents had only 39 words addressing risks from invasive biopsies – less than the number of words used to address risks for simple blood draws.

Of the 745 tumor biopsies reviewed for the study, 39 resulted in complications, including lung air leaks, bleeding and other major effects that required hospitalization or surgery.

Whether you’re participating in a drug trial, or considering a biopsy for another medical reason, you should know that while biopsy risks are rarely discussed, there are risks, indeed.

Serious Biopsy Complications Every Patient Should Know

During a biopsy, a piece of tissue from a tumor or organ is removed so that it can be examined under a microscope, often to determine if it is cancerous. Needle biopsies, for instance, are widely used as part of the traditional allopathic approach to diagnosing breast cancer. But they may accidentally cause malignant cells to break away from a tumor, resulting in its spreading to other areas of your body.

According to a study from the John Wayne Cancer Institute, it appears that a needle biopsy may increase the spread of cancer by 50 percent compared to patients who receive excisional biopsies, also known as lumpectomies.2

The procedure also involves a serious risk of infection. For prostate gland biopsies, specialists have begun to worry about a recent, significant increase in hard-to-treat bloodstream infections that can require weeks of treatment.

Prostate biopsies inherently pose a risk for infection because:

  • The needles that collect a tiny piece of prostate tissue can transport bacteria through your rectal wall into the prostate and bloodstream
  • The needles can spread harmful bacteria present in your gut into your bloodstream

Pain, bleeding (that can be so severe it requires a blood transfusion or surgery to stop it), infection and accidental injury to a nearby organ are established risks that are present no matter what type of biopsy you receive. And then there is the issue of its questionable effectiveness.

In the case of prostate biopsies, an estimated one-third of men who receive “negative” results for prostate cancer actually do have prostate cancer that was missed by the biopsy. For breast biopsies, estimates suggest that 17 percent of D.C.I.S. (ductal carcinoma in situ) cases found through needle biopsy are misdiagnosed. And oftentimes it is an inaccurate mammogram (mammograms carry a first-time false positive rate of up to 6 percent) that leads to the breast biopsy in the first place, making the procedure completely unnecessary.

So, certainly if you’re considering taking part in a drug trial, you need to carefully assess whether the biopsy risks are worth it to you … and this is also true anytime you’re faced with a recommendation of a biopsy. You must measure the potential benefits against the risks in order to make an informed decision.

5,000 Combinations Of 100 Existing Cancer Drugs Tested To Find More Effective Treatments

Whereas biopsies are one of the go-to procedures conventional medicine uses to diagnose cancer, chemotherapy is the go-to procedure to treat it. But one of the reasons why conventional cancer treatment is such a dismal failure in the United States is because it relies on chemotherapy. Despite its reputation as the gold-standard in cancer treatment, chemotherapy has an average 5-year survival success rate of just over 2 percent for all cancers, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Oncology.3

The researchers concluded:

“ … it is clear that cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival. To justify the continued funding and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required.”

It’s no secret among the cancer industry that these drugs are often ineffective, or that oftentimes the cancer patient survives not because of — but despite — the treatment. Moreover, it’s now common for treatments to use combinations of drugs, as many cancers have become resistant to single drugs, rendering them useless. Chemotherapy often supports the more chemo-resistant and malignant cell subpopulations within tumors (e.g. cancer stem cells), as it kills both the more benign cells and/or senescent cells within the tumor that keep it slow-growing, or even harmless.

As a result, this unleashes a more aggressive, treatment-resistant type of cancer to wreak havoc on the body.

A new study recently tested 5,000 combinations of the 100 cancer drugs approved for use in patients in an attempt to find more effective treatments.4 They plan to move several of their novel combinations into clinical trials as quickly as possible, but is this really going to benefit cancer patients?

Chemo Drugs Destroy Your Healthy Cells, Including Your Immune System

Chemotherapy drugs are, by their very nature, extremely toxic and typically work against your body’s natural ability to fight cancer by harming your immune system (often irreparably) instead of supporting it. Combining them into new formulations could cause any number of unforeseen consequences. Already, it’s known that certain chemo drugs become so toxic when combined that they would have to be used at such a low dose they would no longer work against the cancer!

And one of the biggest drawbacks to chemotherapy of any kind is the fact that it destroys healthy cells throughout your body right along with cancer cells, a “side effect” that often leads to accelerated death, not healing.

Another study, “The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD)”, found that more than four in 10 patients who received chemotherapy toward the end of life experienced potentially fatal effects. And after reviewing data from over 600 cancer patients who died within 30 days of receiving treatment, it was found that chemotherapy hastened or caused death in 27 percent of those cases.

In the last 30 years the global cancer burden has doubled, and it will likely double again between 2000 and 2020, and nearly triple by 2030 — unless people begin to take cancer prevention seriously. We CAN turn this trend around, but to do so the medical community must stop overlooking the methods that can actually have a significant impact.

Why I Strongly Advise Avoiding Chemotherapy

I strongly advise everyone to avoid taking any chemotherapy drugs. In my experience the people who survive the chemotherapy do it in spite of the therapy not because of it. More typically, once a person starts chemo it can lead to death. It is the one form of cancer therapy that I strongly advise most to avoid.

Why?

Because the way your body fights cancer normally is through a healthy immune system, and if you take drugs to target and destroy your immune system you tend to radically reduce your likelihood of long-term survival. This is not the case for surgery and radiation, which although also overused, do not impair your immune system and may debulk the tumor enough to give your immune system a chance to fight it.

Please also be aware that avoiding chemo comes with massive responsibility and the need to do something positive. Typically this involves a radical application of my advanced nutrition plan in addition to severely limiting protein and carbs and using high-quality fats as a source of calories. This would include foods like avocados, coconut oil, butter, nuts, olive and olive oil. This will tend to lower the mTOR pathway and optimize leptin and insulin signaling.

Four Must-Know Tips for Cancer Prevention

If you’re facing a health challenge, I recommend seeking out a qualified natural health consultant. When it comes to cancer, you’ll want to identify someone that is well known and respected for their work in treating cancer patients. If you don’t find someone locally then scour the Internet and make calls to plenty of patients that the practitioner has seen.

For the rest of you, focusing on cancer prevention is essential. Here are four advancements that have not yet been accepted by conventional medicine, but are extremely powerful cancer preventive tools nonetheless:

1.  Avoid Fructose and Sugar

It’s quite clear that if you want to avoid cancer, or are currently undergoing cancer treatment, you absolutely MUST avoid all forms of sugar — especially fructose — and this is largely due to its relation to insulin resistance.

According to Lewis Cantley, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, as much as 80 percent of all cancers are “driven by either mutations or environmental factors that work to enhance or mimic the effect of insulin on the incipient tumor cells,” Gary Taubes reported,5 adding:

“As it was explained to me by Craig Thompson, who has done much of this research and is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the cells of many human cancers come to depend on insulin to provide the fuel (blood sugar) and materials they need to grow and multiply. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (and related growth factors) also provide the signal, in effect, to do it.

The more insulin, the better they do.

Some cancers develop mutations that serve the purpose of increasing the influence of insulin on the cell; others take advantage of the elevated insulin levels that are common to metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Some do both.

Thompson believes that many pre-cancerous cells would never acquire the mutations that turn them into malignant tumors if they weren’t being driven by insulin to take up more and more blood sugar and metabolize it.”

Some cancer centers, such as the Cancer Centers of America, have fully embraced this knowledge and place their patients on strict low-sugar, low-grain diets. But conventional medicine in general has been woefully lax when it comes to highlighting the health dangers of this additive.

As a standard recommendation, I strongly advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day, including fruits. But for most people it would also be wise to limit your fructose from fruit to 15 grams or less, as you’re virtually guaranteed to consume “hidden” sources of fructose if you drink beverages other than water and eat processed food.

2.  Optimize Vitamin D

There’s overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that vitamin D deficiency plays a crucial role in cancer development. Researchers within this field have estimated that about 30 percent of cancer deaths — which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States — could be prevented each year simply by optimizing the vitamin D levels in the general population.

On a personal level, you can decrease your risk of cancer by MORE THAN HALF simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with sun exposure. And if you are being treated for cancer it is likely that higher blood levels — probably around 80-90 ng/ml — would be beneficial.

If the notion that sun exposure actually prevents cancer is still new to you, I highly recommend you watch my one-hour vitamin D lecture to clear up any confusion. It’s important to understand that the risk of skin cancer from the sun comes only from excessive exposure.

3.  Decrease Protein

Ideally your protein level should be around one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. Be very careful not to exceed this level and be assiduous about calculating and following this important recommendation. If you exceed this level of protein you will activate your mTOR pathway, which has been strongly correlated with promoting tumor growth.

4.  Exercise

If you are like most people, when you think of reducing your risk of cancer, exercise doesn’t immediately come to mind. However, there is some fairly compelling evidence that exercise can slash your risk of cancer. One of the primary ways exercise lowers your risk for cancer is by reducing elevated insulin and blood sugar levels, which creates a microenvironment that discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells.

If you have cancer, exercising during and after cancer treatment can reduce your risk of dying from cancer; reduce your risk of cancer recurrence; boost energy; and minimize the side effects of conventional cancer treatment.6

It’s important to include a large variety of techniques in your exercise routine, such as strength training, aerobics, core-building activities, and stretching. Most important of all, however, is to make sure you include high-intensity, burst-type exercise, such as Peak Fitness.

Source: Dr. Mercola

Role of exercise in cancer patients.

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Mounting evidence shows that exercise can not only help cancer patients get well but also help keep their cancer from recurring. Yet, few oncologists tell their patients to engage in exercise beyond their simple daily, normal activities.

And many cancer patients are reluctant to exercise, or even discuss it with their oncologist.

A recent study1 by the Mayo Clinic investigated exercise habits among cancer patients and their clinicians’ roles in providing related counseling, and found that:

“Participants overwhelmingly cited usual daily activities as their source of ‘exercise.’ Symptoms, particularly treatment-related, discouraged participation, with fear of harm being a significant concern only among younger women. Exercise was recognized as important for physical and mental well-being, but seldom as a means to mitigate symptoms.

…Although respondents preferred to receive guidance from their oncologist, none reported receiving more than general encouragement to ‘stay active.’ A lack of direction was typically accepted as a sanction of their current activity levels. Participants appeared less receptive to guidance from ancillary health professionals.”

An Important Conversation You’d Be Wise to Have With Your Oncologist

Fear that exercise might be harmful appears to be largely unfounded, though it’s certainly understandable. It can be difficult to be enthusiastic about exercise if you struggle with nausea, fatigue, and other detrimental side effects from the treatment. However, it may be helpful to focus on the benefits you can reap from exercise. For example, research has shown that exercising during and after cancer treatment can:

  • Reduce your risk of dying from cancer
  • Reduce your risk of cancer recurrence
  • Boost energy and minimize the side effects of conventional cancer treatment (see additional listing below)

The fact that most oncologists overlook this vital aspect of their patients’ care is highly unfortunate, especially considering how most patients defer to their recommendations. However, it’s not unexpected. Conventional doctors are trained to prescribe drugs, not exercise.

Ideally, they’d prescribe exercise in the same manner drugs are prescribed – in specific “doses” and intervals. To do this properly, oncologists would be wise to develop relationships with personal trainers, and prescribe training sessions for their patients. If you have cancer, I would highly recommend discussing exercise with your oncologist, and/or work with a trained fitness professional who can help you devise a safe and effective regimen.

Exercise Needs to Be Part of Standard Cancer Care

A recent report issued by the British organization Macmillan Cancer Support2 argues that exercise really should be part of standard cancer care. It recommends that all patients getting cancer treatment should be told to engage in moderate-intensity exercise for two and a half hours every week, stating that the advice to rest and take it easy after treatment is an outdated view.

According to Ciaran Devane, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support:4

“Cancer patients would be shocked if they knew just how much of a benefit physical activity could have on their recovery and long term health, in some cases reducing their chances of having to go through the grueling ordeal of treatment all over again…”

Indeed, the reduction in risk for recurrence is quite impressive. Previous research has shown that breast and colon cancer patients who exercise regularly have half the recurrence rate than non-exercisers.5 Macmillan Cancer Support also notes that exercise can help you to mitigate some of the common side effects of conventional cancer treatment, including:

Reduce fatigue and improve your energy levels Manage stress, anxiety, low mood or depression Improve bone health
Improve heart health (some chemotherapy drugs and radiotherapy can cause heart problems later in life) Build muscle strength, relieve pain and improve range of movement Maintain a healthy weight
Sleep better Improve your appetite Prevent constipation

How Exercise Can Improve Cancer Outcome

This topic is near and dear to my heart, as I went to medical school in large part because I wanted to use exercise as a therapeutic tool to help people get healthier. I strongly believe that without fitness, it is virtually impossible to achieve optimal health. Lack of exercise can also severely hamper your recuperative efforts once disease has set in.

A 2005 study6 by researchers at Harvard Medical School found that breast cancer patients who exercise moderately for three to five hours a week cut their odds of dying from cancer by about half, compared to sedentary patients. In fact, any amount of weekly exercise increased a patient’s odds of surviving breast cancer. This benefit remained constant regardless of whether women were diagnosed early on or after their cancer had spread.

Similarly, researchers investigating the impact of physical activity on cancer recurrence and survival in patients with stage III colon cancer found those who were more active cut their risk of recurrence in half.7

One of the primary reasons exercise works to lower your cancer risk is because it drives your insulin levels down, and controlling your insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks. It’s also been suggested that apoptosis (programmed cell death) is triggered by exercise, causing cancer cells to die. This theory was demonstrated in two studies published in 2006. In one, mice who used running wheels developed fewer and smaller skin tumors.8 The second study found that exercise reduced the number and size of intestinal polyps.9

The studies also found that the number of tumors decreased along with body fat, which may be an additional factor. This is because exercise helps lower your estrogen levels, which explains why exercise appears to be particularly potent against breast cancer.

If you’re male, be aware that athletes have lower levels of circulating testosterone than non-athletes, and similar to the association between estrogen levels and breast cancer in women, testosterone is known to influence the development of prostate cancer in men. Strength training may be of particular benefit. In one 2009 study10, men who regularly worked out with weights and had the highest muscle strength were between 30 percent and 40 percent less likely to lose their life to a deadly tumor.

Other research has shown:

  • Exercising moderately for six hours a week may reduce colorectal cancer mortality11
  • Three hours per week of moderate-intensity physical activity may lower risk of prostate cancer mortality by about 30 percent12, and lower the rate of disease progression by 57 percent13

Of course, exercise also improves the circulation of immune cells in your blood, whose job it is to neutralize pathogens throughout your body. The better these cells circulate, the more efficient your immune system is at locating and defending against viruses and diseases, including cancer, trying to attack your body.

Exercise Tips for Cancer Patients

I would strongly recommend you read up on my Peak Fitness program, which includes high-intensity exercises that can reduce your exercise time while actually improving your benefits.

Now, if you have cancer or any other chronic disease, you will of course need to tailor your exercise routine to your individual circumstances, taking into account your fitness level and current health. Often, you will be able to take part in a regular exercise program – one that involves a variety of exercises like strength training, core-building, stretching, aerobic and anaerobic – with very little changes necessary. However, at times you may find you need to exercise at a lower intensity, or for shorter durations.

Always listen to your body and if you feel you need a break, take time to rest. But even exercising for just a few minutes a day is better than not exercising at all, and you’ll likely find that your stamina increases and you’re able to complete more challenging workouts with each passing day. In the event you are suffering from a very weakened immune system, you may want to exercise at home instead of visiting a public gym. But remember that exercise will ultimately help to boost your immune system, so it’s very important to continue with your program, even if you suffer from chronic illness or cancer.

Intense Workouts May Also Be Safe for Heart Patients

Another group of people often discouraged from exercise are those suffering with heart problems, but even here the mindset is starting to change. In an about-face in the way patients recovering from heart attacks or heart surgery are typically treated, a new study14 suggests high-intensity workouts may in fact be a safe choice. The study followed 4,800 Norwegian heart patients who did aerobics. Only three cardiac arrests occurred in over 170,000 hours of intensive exercise in these patients.

According to Reuters:15

“The number was too small to say for sure that high impact workouts are just as safe as moderate ones, but they show the overall risk of exercise bringing on cardiac arrest is fairly low, according to the authors. There is plenty of evidence that the harder people work out, the more benefit they gain in cardiovascular function, said Oeivind Rognmo, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and lead author of the study…”

The participants completed both moderate- and high-intensity workouts, spending a combined total of 129,456 hours working out at moderate intensity and 46,364 hours at high intensity. Moderate intensity workouts included an hour of walking, or other exercises resulting in exertion at 60-70 percent of maximum heart rate. The high-intensity workouts consisted of four-minute-intervals (cycling, running, or cross country skiing), pushing their heart rate up to 85-95 percent of maximum, followed by four-minute-long rest periods.

During the more than 129,000 combined hours of moderate exercise, one person died from cardiac arrest. And during over 46,000 combined hours of high-intensity workouts, two suffered cardiac arrest during or within an hour of exercise, but both survived. According to the lead author:16

“We found that both types of intensities were associated with low event rates… I think (high-intensity training) should be considered for patients with coronary heart disease.”

Remember to Listen to Your Body

One of the key principles I teach and believe in is to listen to your body. This applies no matter what your current state of health is. If your body will not allow you to exercise, either due to pain or worsening of your underlying condition, then you have no practical option but to honor your body’s signals and exercise less.

Even though your body desperately needs the exercise to improve, you will only get worse if you violate your current limitations. So you may have to start with as little as just minutes a day. That’s okay. As your body gradually improves so will your tolerance to exercise, and you’d be wise to do as much as your body will allow in order to achieve a high level of health.

Additional Strategies to Help Prevent Cancer

While exercise is an important facet of cancer prevention and treatment, it’s certainly not the only one. I believe the vast majority of all cancers could be prevented by strictly applying the healthy lifestyle recommendations below:

  • Avoid sugar, especially fructose. All forms of sugar are detrimental to health in general and promote cancer. Fructose, however, is clearly one of the most harmful and should be avoided as much as possible.
  • Optimize your vitamin D. Vitamin D influences virtually every cell in your body and is one of nature’s most potent cancer fighters. Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger apoptosis (cell death). If you have cancer, your vitamin D level should be between 70 and 100 ng/ml. Vitamin D works synergistically with every cancer treatment I’m aware of, with no adverse effects. I suggest you try watching my one-hour free lecture on vitamin D to learn more.
  • Avoid charring your meats. Charcoal or flame broiled meat is linked with increased breast cancer risk. Acrylamide – a carcinogen created when starchy foods are baked, roasted or fried – has been found to increase cancer risk as well.
  • Avoid unfermented soy products. Unfermented soy is high in plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens, also known as isoflavones. In some studies, soy appears to work in concert with human estrogen to increase breast cell proliferation, which increases the chances for mutations and cancerous cells.
  • Improve your insulin receptor sensitivity. The best way to do this is by avoiding sugar and grains and making sure you are exercising, especially with Peak Fitness.
  • Maintain a healthy body weight. This will come naturally when you begin eating right for your nutritional type and exercising. It’s important to lose excess body fat because fat produces estrogen.
  • Drink a quart of organic green vegetable juice daily. Please review my juicing instructions for more detailed information.
  • Get plenty of high quality animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil. Omega-3 deficiency is a common underlying factor for cancer.
  • Curcumin. This is the active ingredient in turmeric and in high concentrations can be very useful adjunct in the treatment of cancer. For example, it has demonstrated major therapeutic potential in preventing breast cancer metastasis.17 It’s important to know that curcumin is generally not absorbed that well, so I’ve provided several absorption tips here.
  • Avoid drinking alcohol, or at least limit your alcoholic drinks to one per day.
  • Avoid electromagnetic fields as much as possible. Even electric blankets can increase your cancer risk.
  • Avoid synthetic hormone replacement therapy, especially if you have risk factors for breast cancer. Breast cancer is an estrogen-related cancer, and according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer rates for women dropped in tandem with decreased use of hormone replacement therapy. (There are similar risks for younger women who use oral contraceptives. Birth control pills, which are also comprised of synthetic hormones, have been linked to cervical and breast cancers.)

If you are experiencing excessive menopausal symptoms, you may want to consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy instead, which uses hormones that are molecularly identical to the ones your body produces and do not wreak havoc on your system. This is a much safer alternative.

  • Avoid BPA, phthalates and other xenoestrogens. These are estrogen-like compounds that have been linked to increased breast cancer risk
  • Make sure you’re not iodine deficient, as there’s compelling evidence linking iodine deficiency with certain forms of cancer. Dr. David Brownstein18, author of the book Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It, is a proponent of iodine for breast cancer. It actually has potent anticancer properties and has been shown to cause cell death in breast and thyroid cancer cells.

The organization offers loads of helpful information about the benefits of exercise for cancer patients on their website, and also has a number of videos on the subject, available on their YouTube channel.

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mut3RTiVfD0

 

Source: Dr. Mercola