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After a diagnosis of cancer there are generally two paths open to people. They can undergo an orthodox medical treatment program for the cancer or they can look at alternative treatments for cancer. A third option involves doing nothing and hoping things sort themselves out. So which is best?

Unfortunately it is practically impossible to say because there is no absolute research into this. The reason that there is no research is because medical professionals are not allowed to prescribe alternative treatments. The result is that in almost all cases a patient who is diagnosed with cancer undergoes an orthodox treatment program including chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. Very few choose to either do nothing or to pursue alternative treatment options.

The reasons that people tend to go the orthodox medical route are varied and complex, but if we want to simplify things as much as possible they boil down to this: Chemotherapy and Orthodox medication are the treatment of choice of those seen as ‘experts’ on cancer, the doctors, and it is doctors who will usually diagnose cancer. In other words, the choice is a bogus one and a combination of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation are usually presented as the only options there are.

But suppose you were to be told that there is an alternative to this trio of invasive medication. Suppose it had no side effects. Suppose it not only helped your cancer but also greatly improved your general health overall and suppose it wasn’t going to cost you over quarter of a million dollars(The US department of commerce reported that a cancer patients treatment will cost over $375,000).

The alternative does actually exist, and it remarkably simple. Where chemotherapy destroys the immune system, alternative treatment enhances it. Where radiation kills cells indiscriminately alternative medication only targets cancerous cells. Where surgery can often aid in the spread of cancer alternative therapy helps your body to use it’s naturally defenses to suppress that spread. The ‘cure’ is nothing new, it is merely hidden from the public as a viable option, or ridiculed as ‘quakery’. Perhaps most surprising of all is that it has been supported by some very reputable names who have put their reputation and careers on the line to get word of it to the public, and without fail that is exactly what they have lost.

When a doctor makes a diagnosis of cancer he will also usually include a prescribed course of action. This usually consists of 3 parts. First they will attempt a surgical removal of the cancer tumor, secondly chemotherapy and radiation will be used to kill the cancer cells. Alternative medicine will usually start with building up the immune system and cleansing the body of toxins. Which is better?

The statistics take a little wading through, but it has been suggested that around 45% of people will achieve a 5-year cure from cancer by following orthodox treatment methods. This is a misleading statistic – it is a 5 year cure not a total cure. Alternative medicine tends not to measure 5 year cures but rather total cure rate. Orthodox medicine does not release total cure rates though it has been suggested that their cure rate is around 3%. Of those who attempt orthodox treatment and, when told there is nothing more orthodox medicine can do for them ( or that they can afford to pay for) attempt alternative medication the total cure rate could be as high as 50%. Of those who seek alternative treatment instead of any orthodox treatment the likely total cure rate is close to 90%.

So if we have a 90% cure rate from alternative medicine and a 3% cure rate from orthodox medicine, why does the alternative approach not become the standard one. The answer is a little cloudy and is based on those numbers being very hard to prove. Orthodox medicine does not compare itself with alternative medicine and so the only official numbers we see are the increase in effectiveness of their own treatments. So to help you with your decision let’s examine what danger cancer presents and how it is dealt with.

The first thing that is probably not explained to you is that a cancer tumor usually is not fatal. A cancer can be benign or malignant, and only if it is malignant does it pose a serious threat(note that a benign tumor that places pressure on a major organ or blocks an artery is dangerous by itself – but not because of the cancer). Thus it is not the cancer that is dangerous to our health, but the spread of the cancer.

Alternative medication looks at the cause of this cancerous growth which is usually the combination of a weakened immunity system and a carcinogen. The alternative therapy will then seek to address this problem and destroy the atmosphere which leads to the cancer. The increased immune system, combined with fresh delivery of oxygen prevents the cancer from spreading and eventually starves it to death. The beauty is that this process targets only foreign cells, killing off the cancer but not harming (and usually benefiting) the healthy cells.

Orthodox medicine treats the tumor very differently. The tumor is very much the focal point of attack. It is treated as the problem when in fact it is merely a symptom of the problem. Often surgery is the first method of dealing with this problem and while this can remove the tumor it can also release cancer cells into the bloodstream. Remember that it is the spread of cancer that can be fatal, not the cancer itself. Surgery may very well contribute to that spread.

Secondly radiation treats cancer by killing off the cancer cells, but it does so indiscriminately and kills many healthy cells at the same time. Chemotherapy drugs also seek to reduce the size of the tumor and break down the cancer cells, but in doing so they can damage healthy cells and decimate the immune system. Chemotherapy drugs must be administered gradually. The reason for this is that is given all at once they would destroy too many healthy cells and probably kill the patient. The body must be given time to recover between chemotherapy sessions. For some reason it is assumed the cancer will not also recover in that time, when it will most likely spread as a result of damaged adjoining cells and a crippled immunity system.

The biggest frustration for the advancement of alternative cancer treatments is not providing evidence that alternative treatments work, but getting that proof recognized. Registered doctors are not permitted to practice alternative treatment if they wish to remain a member of the AMA, and experiments outside the AMA are usually rubbished as not being performed by real medical professionals. In 1976 when a ‘real medical professional’, two time Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling, took his experiments outside the country he was able to show in his Scottish study that a cancer patients life expectancy could be extended by 600% by merely administering 10 grams of vitamin C intravenously. Vitamin C is well know for it’s ability to build up the human immune system.

30 years ago this research by a Nobel Prize winner proved that natural treatment can greatly improve the life expectancy of a cancer sufferer. Natural treatment advocates have been able to refine that research to provide even more efficient vitamin C treatments, but mainstream medicine has not even replicated the study.

While the evidence is blurred, lied about, hidden and in same cases destroyed, it seems clear that there is plenty of merit in pursuing further investigation of alternative cancer therapies. There is at enough examples of successful treatment using alternative medicines that it cannot simply be dismissed out of hand as ‘quackery’ as has been the official line. There are plenty of examples of medical practitioners who have set out to prove alternative natural treatments wrong and have subsequently changed their opinion to support it. Alternative therapy is at least an adequate alternative for orthodox medicine and most likely a very suitable replacement.

Until 200 years ago what is now labeled ‘alternative treatment’ was based on the words of Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine”. Hippocrates is famously quoted as saying “Let food be your medicine.” It is a compelling quote which encapsulates the very simple, very common sense idea that the most efficient healer we know, or will ever know, is a correctly functioning natural immune system. In modern cancer research this common sense approach is not only ignored it is actively forbidden by the AMA for doctors to prescribe alternative medications to fight cancer. Doctors are allowed to prescribe natural remedies to treat the side-effects of the drugs which are used to fight cancer, but not allowed to treat cancer itself with anything other than the prescribed, orthodox treatment.

The purpose of this article is not to examine the state of affairs which sees natural substances shunned in favor of expensive, and often harmful medications, but to examine what you can expect to happen and receive should you elect an alternative treatment course to deal with cancer.

One of the biggest problems with discussing alternative cancer treatments is that it covers a huge amount of ground. Anything which is outside the mainstream practice(which will usually include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment) is, by definition, ‘alternative’. As such the ‘alternative’ label is often attacked broadly based on the ineffectuality or indeed harmfulness of specific treatments. For instance treating cancer by putting leeches on the skin to draw blood is not a mainstream medical response to cancer so it would be labeled as ‘alternative’ even though most alternative treatment providers would be horrified with the concept. Attacking unorthodox treatments broadly for the practices of a few extreme treatment providers is clearly not a rational response, yet it is exactly the line which has successfully kept alternative cancer treatment on the sideline for so long.

For the purpose of this article we will discuss the type of healthcare that Hippocrates was a strong supporter of and apply to it the broad label ‘alternative’. This form of alternative treatment works on a few basic fundamental ideas.

The first is the concept that the most efficient entity at healing a body is itself. The human body is a miraculous thing and even as we learn more and more about what the body does to treat disease we are still often left mystified by the how. The body will respond to a foreign organism long before medical tests discover it, and in fact this is usually how the problem is first bought to the attention of doctors. Diseases do not have ‘tiredness’ causing properties, this is the bodies natural response to an invasion – it attempts to enter a restive state where it can more effectively fight the invader.

A primary focus of alternative cancer treatment then is not the direct battle against the cancer and the tumor itself, but a strengthening of the bodies defenses and natural ability to fight disease. This is done via strengthening the immune system. Vitamin C is known to have strong immunity building properties and was shown by Linus Pauling (Two time Nobel prize winner) to be an effective cancer treatment by itself. In fact it was over thirty years ago that Pauling and his research partner Ewan Cameron MD showed that just 10 grams of Vitamin C taken intravenously each day would extend a cancer patient’s life 6 times longer than chemotherapy treatment. It is also worth noting that while Vitamin C builds up the immune system, chemotherapy breaks it down, which means that where chemotherapy is used it becomes the only defense the body has against cancer – the only way of continuing to fight the cancer is to continue chemotherapy. The clear conclusion is that Vitamin C is a more efficient treatment than Chemotherapy and has none of the debilitating side effects.

Alternative treatment providers have been able to use this type of research as a base for formulating a case by case plan to restore the bodies balance and fight cancer. The fact that it is ‘case by case’ is also another important component of alternative treatments. It has to be recognized that no two cases of cancer are going to be identical because there are two many different varying factors. The type of cancer it self is considered, the location of the cancer and the size of the tumor will all effect how the treatment is administered. The patients only physical state must be considered two and this will usually involve a detailed look at their body, diet and lifestyle. Everybodies DNA is different and some people are more likely to respond positively to some treatments.

This critical fact is often what is left out of a full assessment of alternative cancer treatments. Just because one person responds to a specific course of treatment does not mean another will get the same result. Imagine an auto repair shop. If you said to your mechanic that your car isn’t working he will not simply change the oil and give you your keys back. That may well work for some cars, but it will most definitely not work for them all. Your mechanic will ask you questions about what is wrong with the car. He will ask for the symptoms and from these discern the cause. Only then is any attempt made to ‘cure’ the car. Now compare that approach to the approach of orthodox medicine that will change the oil and water, give you a new set of tires and tune the engine. Too bad if you went in because your brakes didn’t work.

In most cases an alternative treatment is going to require some type of detoxification process. In modern society we are exposed to more harmful substances and processed foods that at any previous point in history. These toxins can dwell in our system for a long time and are often part of the cause of a disease. At the very least the body is wasting resources fighting them that could be assisting in it’s fight against cancer. The detoxification is an ongoing process, particularly if the other treatments are effectively killing cancer cells. The death of a cancer cell actually introduces more toxins to the system and in large doses these can be extremely harmful and even fatal. This is why all cancer treatments are undertaken gradually – because a treatment that killed all cancer cells immediately would release a massive toxic load into the system and put it in even more danger.

Alternative Cancer Treatment also puts a huge amount of emphasis on a patients diet. Conventional medicine ignores this and most orthodox cancer treatment will result in a serious loss of weight. Forty Percent of cancer patients die not from cancer but from malnutrition so it is vital to ensure that a healthy and regular diet is followed. The correct balance in the body is also going to mean less nausea and other symptoms associated with cancer treatments.

This article has touched on what you can expect in an alternative health treatment for cancer, but it must be stressed that it only touches the surface of the options available. There are over 300 treatments that have been shown to be effective in the treatment of cancer but are not part of mainstream medicines response. The important thing is not knowing how many options there are out there but knowing which options, and combinations of options are going to work in any individual case. Alternative Cancer Treatment takes a holistic approach to the treatment of cancer and seeks to assist the sufferer not just in overcoming their cancer but also in enjoying their life and living well while they do. A cancer survivor who beats cancer using alternative medicine will not just be alive, but they will be alive and healthy. This increased quality of life, both throughout the treatment and after it, is an essential element in what makes alternative cancer therapy such an attractive option to those with the good fortune to explore it.