Help with Treatment Options

[seekay]

I meant “had to say” not “see.”

you might want to google “orthomolecular medicine” and “orthomolecular oncology.” Also, you can read about Michael Gearin-Tosh’s success living with Multiple Myleoma (MM) with a strict regimen of diet and supplements. His student’s case study of him is available at http://www.canceraction.org.uk, or something like that. You will find it when you google “orthomolecular oncology.”

He was an Oxford University and Stanford overseas (my alma mater) professor who looked at chemotherapy for several months, before deciding instead to do the Gerson therapy with additonal natural, non toxic supplements. He lived for 11 years after diagnosis, a very healthy 11 years, until he died from a tooth infection when he did not take antibiotics soon enough. Apparently, with MM, the humoral arm of the immune system is impaired, although through his diet, he managed to compensate enough to allow his body to function very well.

I corresponded with him briefly before he passed. He was very kind and helpful.

Sincerely,

Christine

[choijk]

Christine! You are too sweet! Thank you for this wealth of information!!!! I am so grateful that I was able to find this forum to share my thoughts and questions to a group of people who really understand what my dad and my family is going through at this time. I asked my hemotologist awhile back in regards to my dad’s diet and he just told me that basically my dad can continue to eat whatever he wants. but if organic foods and fish oil will help, i am by all means all for it. Thank you again! I hope to continue learning throughout this process and to pass this information one day to someone else in need. God bless.
I noticed that you live in the LA area too. Do you mind sharing which hospital you are currently treating at? My dad is currently being treated at Kaiser on Sunset in LA.

[Sara]

Choijk, just remember that none of these “natural therapies” will stall or cure a cancer such as MDS. If they could, there would never have been a need for FDA approved treatments. Patti, I hate to hear that your mom has transformed, because MDS can have a survival of 3–8 years with treatment, but AML survival is less than a year. The most important thing in MDS is to get the patient on one of the MDS therapies ASAP, and keep them on it no matter what. That is your best hope of prolonging life with this type of leukemia.

[cthomas555]

Choijk, there are those of us who have saved a lot of money by not running out buying up a lot of expensive supplements and overloading our liver trying to process them. Most of them you just pee out.

One of my sons in CA is a diabetic and he is using a lot of alternative medicines and supplements prescribed by 2 alternative medicine doctors working together plus prescribed medication for kidney failure, and now his liver enzymes are in the 300’s and he has too much copper in his body and god knows what else, they’ve just start testing, oh, and way too much biotin, and so on…

I use supplemental oxygen, blood transfusion and a good attitude and has a very good quality of life despite my multiple diseases/disorders.

Good luck,

Chris

[Jimbob]

Choijk and anyone else considering natural methods:
I firmly believe that seeking out more natural methods to improve overall general health can only give your body a better chance for long term survival and increased quality of life.
Our bodies were not meant to take in all of the toxins and garbage that currently make up most of food intake. Most of the processing and additives that are used to make food easier and quicker to prepare and supposedly “tastier” do more harm than good to our bodies. The general quality of our food is poor because most soil is poor – without adding possibly harming chemicals to increase harvests. Even most drinking water has things in it that are harmful. Remember the old adage, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Also, even the best gasoline engine will not run properly on contaminated gas or hardly at all on even the best diesel.
Do not simply go off half-cocked trying different things, though. Something that is great for one peron may put another totally out of balance. Find a naturpathic physician, nutritonist or (Yes) Chinese medical doctor that is experienced in treating you type of illness to guide you on the proper nutrition for you individually. Most will insisit upon some kind of detoxing to get as much of the toxins out as possible. Then you will probably be told what things to abstain from totally, and some things to at least limit for awhile. Then you will be given information on what you should eat, or more likely juice, to improve your condition.
I have detoxed, juiced various organic foods and added specific supplements that were recommended as proper nutrition for me and to help my body to heal itself. I also use a portable water distiller and a quality water filter for ALL of the water I drink or cook with.
Regardless of what some others may say, getting back to treating your body the way it should be can improve your quality of life, overall health, and chances for survival – whether or not you continue to also follow modern medical standards or trials. Make sure that all of your caregivers are kept aware of whatever you are doing to prevent adverse interactions.
Now I guess I’ll just sit back and only read posts again for awhile and watch as my rating goes down for not being in line with the closed-minded.

[patti]

Jim,

:)thank you.

patti

[shirlsgirl]

Hi Chris,

I’m really sorry to hear about your son. Hoping that his liver enzymes return to normal and that his other health concerns improve! Does he still see his alternative medicine doctors? BTW, do you know if Alternative medicine physicians order bloodwork on their patients to monitor treatments? It seems to me that they should.

My sister in law sees a naturopath regularly and some things that she shares with me are really mind boggling. Last Christmas she told me that she had a parasite. When I asked her if she submitted a stool sample for Ova and Parasites she said no, she said her naturpath had her touch an object and from that she deduced that she had a parasite! (on the side – I work in a hospital microbiology lab and I do parasitology and I know full well that what she said made absolutely no sense.)

Chris I love your positive attitude!!

[Jack_dup1]

Chris,

:)thank you

Jack

[choijk]

Thank you all for all your comments and sharing your experiences with me! I don’t know if nutrition has anything to do with MDS but all I know is my dad led a very unhealthy lifestyle. He ate a lot of processed, unhealthy foods, and smoked up until the time he was diagnosed with MDS. The only positive thing I can think that my dad did do is that he abstained from alcohol. I think I am going to buy a juicer tomorrow and start my dad on some organic green juices. I brought this up to my friend and she said that she thought she read somewhere that a lot of the green vegetables had a lot of iron. Any thoughts on this? My dad’s iron intake at this time is somewhere in the 290’s and it will only increase because he is transfusion dependent. All thoughts and comments are welcome!!! Thank you again! I wish I can express my gratitude to all of you better because I am really really thankful for any and all information.

[seekay]

Hi June,

You might want to check out the Omega 8003 juicer, which is like a Champion, only it is a lot lighter (15 lbs.), produces a drier pulp (meaning it extracts more of the liquid from the vegetable), and is much easier than the Champion to clean.

We bought it for $205 shipped from this website:
http://juicers.livingright.com/item211.Omega-Juicer-8003.html.

I researched juicers a lot before deciding on this one. You will get a much higher quality of juice from a triturator than a centrifugal (e.g., Jack LaLanne or Breville), although even a centrifugal produces a juice far more live and potent than the Nakeds and Odwallas.

Just compare, for example, the foamy texture of the freshly pressed juice next to the thickened, soupy texture of a store-bought one.

For the juice to do its trick, you should drink it right after juicing. In any case, no more than one half hour after juicing.

I’m not sure about the iron question, but I do know that juicing greens will help your dad’s body to detox and also to give his cells phytochemicals that have an “anticancer” effect. Also, drinking organic green juices, esp. juicing organic romaine lettuce (and those other things I mentioned before) will create an alkaline environment in his blood and fluids, which alkalinity is inhospital to cancerous cell activity.

It might be that the oxidizing effect of the juices reduces the body’s need for iron? I don’t know, just thinking out loud.

If you search back a few months, Marla, Patti, I and some others (Chuck?–I think it was his question that started the discussion) shared an informative exchange about juicing.

Look to real food, primarily, rather than vitamin and mineral supplements for the nutrients. There are many co-factor minerals and phytochemicals in vegetables that aid the body’s absorption of the vitamins contained in them, for example. When one “eats” equivalent amounts of vitamins or minerals in supplements, the body is less able to utilize them because that natural context is missing. Also, one cannot obtain many of the vast array of phytochemicals from supplements. There was a public debate many years ago about whether certain of these phytochemicals, identified in fruits and vegetables, should be labelled vitamins or not. Because the quantities that the body needed were comparatively small so as to be considered non-essential, there was a decision made not to refer to them as vitamins any more. (I think I have this somewhat right. Anyone, please feel free to correct/clarify.)

It is unfortunate that these phytochemicals have fallen out of the general lexicon, because most folks don’t really know too much about them these days, and yet they are the proven disease fighting, anti-cancer agents in food. I’m talking about things like quercetin, resveratrol, allicin (in garlic, onions, leeks), flavenoids, carotenoids, etc.

Perhaps at that time, it was felt, generally, that people would be eating them anyway, since we were eating fruits and vegetables, so why bother complicating the issue? We see today, however, that people are moving away from eating real foods, in favor of processed items: juices that claim to contain all the antioxidants you need (think of Pom juice for example, which is from a concentrate and not at all the same as eating a freshly picked pomegranate), vitamins and supplements we buy by the dozen at Costco (which can never take the place of eating the fruit or vegetable that contains the vitamin/mineral you seek).

Also, a second important factor that Jimbob mentioned is the quality of the soil in which our fruits and vegetables grow. Standard, store bought produce comes from soil depleted of natural nutrients; hence, the store-bought carrot of today is far less nutrient dense (and usually far more chemically-tainted) than the carrot grown, say, in rural France today, or the small farms of rural America many decades ago.

Here’s a short and illuminating excerpt touching on some of the cancer fighting and detoxing mechanisms of these phytochemicals, from The Case of the .005% Survivor (about Michael Gearin-Tosh), by Carmen Wheatley. The entire case study appears as an appendix in Prof. Gearin-Tosh’s book, Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny. Also, the case study can be accessed at the canceraction website I mentioned before.

“This is just one component in Gerson’s fruit list. When we look at Gerson’s chosen vegetables, a similar picture of intuition borne out by current scientific nutritional research emerges. Highlighted Gerson vegetables are cauliflower and radishes, along with cabbage and broccoli members of the cruciferous family. Crucifers are rich sources of isothiocyanates, which can modify carcinogen activation by altering the metabolism of nitrosamines. (46) Garlic and the rest of the allium family also feature high on Gerson’s list: a common volatile component of garlic, diallyl sulphide, is a natural detoxifier and has been demonstrated to be a strong inhibitor of cytochrome P450 2EI (47), an inducible liver isoenzyme, known to be activated in hepatic, colon and head and neck cancers, and which can activate carcinogens, including nitrosamines, hydrazines and carbon tetrachloride. Diallyl sulphide suppresses oxidative demethylation by competitively inhibiting P450 2EI. (47) Selenium, for which the allium family – onions, leeks, scallions, chives – are also a good source, has been demonstrated to enhance DNA repair mechanisms (48), which apart from cancer chemo-prevention may also be essential in switching cancer activity off.

Gerson’s fruit and vegetable diet could be subjected to exhaustive analysis in the light of modern nutritional oncology research. One can go on. Resveratrol, a phytochemical in grapes, has been shown to induce phase II enzymes, such as quinone reductase, in the liver. (49) Phase II enzymes are the liver’s detoxifiers, and, as Gerson posited, efficient detoxification in the liver is essential in both the prevention and treatment of cancer. To summarize, however, the World Cancer Research Fund’s Report for 1997 lists the following compounds under continuing investigation in plant foods as having proven or potential cancer activity: dithiothiones, isothiocyanates, sulfuropanes, terpenoids, isoflavones, protease inhibitors, phytic acid, polyphenols, glucosinolates, indoles, flavonoids, plant sterols, saponins and coumarins. Gerson did not have any of this scientific knowledge, yet, empirically, he devised a method which ensured that a large range of these compounds would be delivered to the cancer patient intact and in pharmacologically active doses: the intensive fresh juicing regime, with 12 juices daily, one every hour. The juices, which are ‘whole’ juices in that the juicing method ensures virtually nothing is discarded, are also rich sources of Vitamin E, carotenoids and retinoids for which an extensive literature and clinical work have demonstrated differentiating and apoptotic effects in cancer. (26,50,51) Both carotenoids and retinoids regulate gap cell junction communication. (50,52) It is via the cell gap junctions that growth regulatory signals are transmitted. Since cancer cells have poor gap junctions and consequent impaired communication, their growth is deregulated. Carotenoids and retinoids can reverse this and thus interfere with their proliferation and growth.”

Christine

[seekay]

sorry, I meant, “inhospitable” to cancerous activity. I proofread, but always something slips the eye.

[Jimbob]

I definitely hold to my opinion that one should seek alterrnative methods in addition to “standard medical practice”. Even standard medical practices are often put aside for numerous trials and off-label uses of various drugs. The medical doctors do the best they can with the knowledge and experience that they have but they are limited by ussually not even being “allowed” by their fellow MD’s, drug companies and medical schools supported by them to consider other possibilities. Yet, there are more and more doctors and pharmacoligists that are becoming more open minded.
As far as a few off-the-wall dx’s by some alternative healthcare providers, there are quacks or, to be nice, unusually misguided people in almost any occupation.
If you don’t know what possible options may be available, how can you make anything close to an informed decision? But, if you do decide to use alternative or complementary methods, you MUST make sure that all of your healthcare providers know what you are doing or using to prevent adverse interactions.
Cheeesh, do I need to follow Patti’s example with something like, “What I post is only my opinion from my limited experience and research and is not meant to diagnose or treat any medical conditon or illness. Consult your own medical doctor AND research other healthcare providers for how examples my relate to your condition and situation.” ?!?!?!?!
Thanks to all who have provided information and support to me over the last four years. Wtihout the options, I know that I would not be here now.
Jim

[choijk]

Thank you all for the juicing tips! My mom bought a juicer from Costco although I told her that I wanted to buy the juicer that Christine recommended. But wow…. juicing is awesome! I can’t believe how sweet these juices are without even adding sugar! This week I will begin my dad on the green juices.

[Author]

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