Nutrition + Medicine = Improved Results
While chemotherapy and radiation can kill cancer cells, these therapies are general toxins against your body cells also. A well-nourished cancer patient can protect healthy cells against the toxic effects of chemo and radiation, thus making the cancer cells more vulnerable to the medicine. Proper nutrition can make chemo and radiation more of a selective toxin against the cancer and less damaging to the patient.
No Magic Bullets in Cancer Treatment
We need teamwork in cancer treatment because of the formidable “Predator” that we face. We cannot discard any cancer therapy, no matter how strange or perpendicular to medical theories, unless that therapy does not work. There are no “magic bullets” against cancer, nor can we anticipate such a development within our lifetime. We need to use restrained chemo, radiation, hyperthermia, and surgery to debulk the tumors, which can remove 10 or 20 trillion cancer cells and give the cancer patient’s system a fighting chance. At the same time, we need to re-regulate the cancer back toward healthy cooperation in the body with agents like protease enzymes.
Nutrition and Naturopathic Options
Then we need to apply nutrition and other naturopathic fields to bolster “non-specific host defense mechanisms” in the cancer patient to reverse the underlying cause of the disease. This threefold approach, reduction of tumor burden without harming the patient, re-regulating the cancer to convert to normal healthy tissue, and nourishing the patient’s recuperative powers, will be the humane and clinically effective cancer treatment of the new millennium.
Chemotherapy can be Useful
Chemotherapy can be useful, especially for certain types of cancer and when administered in fractionated dose or via intra-arterial infusion to a therapeutically-nourished patient. Radiation therapy has its place, especially as the highly-targeted brachytherapy or intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Surgery has its place, especially when the tumor has been encapsulated and can be removed without bursting the collagen envelope. Hyperthermia can be extremely valuable.
Combinations of these traditional therapies are becoming better accepted in medical circles. Later in this book, you will see the synergism in creative combinations of conventional and unconventional cancer therapies, such as quercetin (a bioflavonoid) with heat therapy, or niacin with radiation therapy. The take-home lesson here is: “Just because traditional medicine has failed to develop an unconditional cure for cancer doesn’t mean that we should categorically reject all traditional approaches.”