How do you treat cancer?
I am a primary care physician, a Naturopathic Medical Doctor. I use natural treatments for cancer and other diseases. That is I use no chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. However, I do work with oncologists, the formal name for doctors who are cancer specialists.
How do you work with oncologists?
There are 2 types of oncologists in my experience: the old-fashioned kind, who only knows about chemo and radiation and surgery, and who are not interested in natural treatments for cancer. Some have shown a lot of hostility toward natural treatments for cancer. They have not been very cooperative with me regarding the patients that we share. And this has been detrimental to the patients’ well being, because necessary information such as PET scans, MRI’s etc. have been withheld by them.
However, there is a new forward-thinking, well-informed and open-minded type of oncologist, and they are taking an interest in the successes and tumor regression and remission that we have experienced with natural treatments. These oncologists have been completely cooperative about sharing information from CT scans, PET scans, blood work, etc., and the patient benefits from this shared information. Some of my patients have these newer kinds of oncologists, fortunately. One such oncologist even told my patient that he would do what the patient is doing – that is, the natural treatments – if he himself had cancer, and that he had nothing better to offer for this patient’s pancreatic cancer. That kind of honesty is very welcome to the patient, as well as to the public. Certainly oncologists do have a lot to offer to cancer patients, often lifesaving help. But when they cannot help, it makes most sense for them to welcome the natural treatments that do make a difference.
Here’s one reason the new generation of oncologists takes an interest in what we’re doing. We are now seeing that cancer is the most threatening epidemic of our time. It touches almost every family or extended family. This new type of oncologist is awake and smelling the coffee. If natural treatments are helpful, they might need to keep us naturopaths around in case any of their loved ones are stricken with this disease. Also, there is a genuine desire on the part of many conventional doctors to act with the patient’s best interests as a priority, despite where that road may go.
What natural treatments do you use?
It’s important to understand that that depends entirely on the patient. Each of my cancer patients came in with a different type of cancer and different pattern of metastases. Yet I have not lost any patient who followed my treatment program to death from any cause, which I will discuss further below.
As for an example of a specific treatment, let’s say a cancer patient has lung involvement. Then I will deliver anticancer medicine to the lungs by way of a nebulizer. This has been helpful with both primary lung cancers as well as secondary metastases to the lungs. What I put in there is a combination of herbs and nutrients, in a form that is tolerable to the airways.
More commonly though, I will offer intravenous anti-cancer nutrients, such as massively high doses of Vitamin C.
Linus Pauling is the only person in history to be awarded two solo Nobel prizes. His work with Vitamin C and cancer was groundbreaking decades ago. Now we know that we can use much higher doses of Vitamin C than Dr. Pauling did without side effects, and get even better results than he did in his day.
There are also herbs that have tremendous effect in slowing the growth of cancer and inhibiting metastases, so we use those when appropriate. Renée Caisse was a Canadian nurse who worked with the Ojibwa people, and together they put together a formula of herbs that works very well, and has a long history of productive use with cancer, called Essiac, so I often use that. But certainly not alone.
Several other cancer-fighting strategies are available from nature. For example, if a person is very acid, and their blood or urine shows high acidity, then I work extra hard to alkalinize them, because cancer cells only thrive in acid, not alkaline conditions. Several natural substances will alkalinize the body. I use some intravenously, and some are taken orally. The ones I like best are the ones that are attracted to the tumors and are more active there.
The different treatments for different patients can be expensive for some patients, which then further limits the number of treatments that they opt to receive.
How does Vitamin C work?
One thing that Vitamin C does is change the surface tension of cancer cells and to set them up for apoptosis, or death of the cell, which is what normal cells do naturally. Cancer cells are a problem partly because they are immortal, at least until we go in there with Vitamin C and other treatments and make them mortal.
Another effect of Vitamin C is a little complicated, but bear with me. We know from the 2005 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1], that Vitamin C used intravenously, hardly at all orally, but by IV, will increase the body’s own concentration of hydrogen peroxide in the extracellular fluid. Here’s the bottom line: Vitamin C makes the cancer cells to be bathed in extra oxygen, which kills cancer cells.
And better yet, and confirmed by the research, Vitamin C selectively kills cancer cells, and not normal cells. Which is why the patients feel good and keep their hair. Because we are not killing normal cells.
Plus Vitamin C is necessary to human survival. We have Vitamin C throughout our bodies, inside and outside our cells, unless we have severe scurvy, which is a deadly disease.
Does insurance cover any of this?
Things are changing very rapidly here. Just in the last few months, the major insurance companies have begun to cover naturopathic treatments much more than before, as they realize that we save them quite a bit of money over conventional medicine. Unfortunately, Medicare is still not covering this. But since insurance coverage is improving so rapidly, I am expecting Medicare to come around too.
CIGNA has been best at covering naturopathic medicine. Aetna and United Health Care are trying to catch up. Even Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Humana, which never used to cover naturopathic services, are beginning to get with the times.
Does the FDA approve of any of this?
All treatments that I use for cancer are natural substances, not synthetic, and all are available in some form or other to the general public, over the counter. However, the quantities and form differ greatly, if you really want to have a fighting chance against such a vicious disease as cancer. Some of this has to be given intravenously in order to be really effective against cancer. You can’t just get enough or the right amounts and proportion and form of these simply by visiting the health food stores. Although for certain items, I ask all of my patients, whether they have cancer or not, to go buy this or that item at the health food stores. I located my office near Whole Foods and Sunflower for that reason.
So yes, it’s all legal, all within the scope of practice of naturopathic physicians here in Arizona, licensed by the State of Arizona, with oversight by the Naturopathic Physicians Board of Medical Examiners, and our medical schools are accredited by the US Department of Education. There are 14 states total as well as the District of Columbia that license naturopathic medicine. They are (roughly from west to east, north to south): Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and Washington DC.
What happens to the patients?
Not only have the patients who followed my treatment plan all survived, but also only 2 patients have had decreased vitality during the time that they have been coming to me for my help. Now I tell my cancer patients (only half jokingly) that they’re not allowed to be the first one to go downhill. All of my chart notes in my files document that what I am saying is true.
As for what happens to the cancer patients, first, they start feeling better and their energy comes back. One patient just built a bathroom in his house with his own hands, hauling around tile and everything. This is while I was treating him for cancer. Another just went for a 3-mile walk recently, and then another walk on a beach in a strong wind. She has Stage 4 malignant melanoma. Or had; we got rid of the primary cancer and the metastasis to the brain, and we are now working on the last metastasis, a small tumor the size of a blueberry. That kind of well-being and strength and vitality shown by these patients usually begins within the first week or two after I start treating them, long before we have evidence from the CT scans, MRI or PET scans of shrinking tumors. Then the evidence comes back of shrinking tumors or tumors that are no longer there. Sometimes there will be new metastases while the primary tumors are shrinking. But that’s okay; we just keep fighting the cancer relentlessly till we win.
references
- Pharmacologic ascorbic acid concentrations selectively kill cancer cells: Action as a pro-drug to deliver hydrogen peroxide to tissues. Qi Chen, Michael Graham Espey , Murali C. Krishna, James B. Mitchell, Christopher P. Corpe, Garry R. Buettner, Emily Shacter, and Mark Levine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Published online on September 12, 2005, 10.1073/pnas.0506390102 http://www.pnas.org/content/102/38/13604.full
