Naturopathic Medicine Helps Cancer Patients Recover - Dr. simon barker, nd naturopathic doctor

cancer people who dye their hair, even. Certainly, people who eat in specific ways are at increased risk of certain type of cancer: red meat across the board seems to be strongly associated with risk for many cancers. So my patients come and see me who have already done conventional treatments for their cancer. They re in remission and they re looking to prevent future problems. And so I want to look for them to figure out, okay, why did they develop cancer in the first place? And sometimes there are tests that we can run that will give us some kind of indication that will look for toxicities, that will look for immune system problems that we can address, and I m going to use a variety of different treatments to help that. And a lot of that centers around lifestyle modification we can work with their diet, we can work with detoxification, we can work with exercise and discouraging certain bad habits and encouraging certain good habits that help reduce their risk of ever getting cancer again. I use certain very specific agents: I ll use mistletoe with patients; I will use high-dose vitamins with patients vitamin D, vitamin A, a number of vitamins which, in the right doses, can be really helpful in reducing people s risk of cancer, and that s certainly been shown in research. And so I m using a number of different agents combined with overall lifestyle changes and recommending other types of approaches to thinking about their cancer looking at things from an emotional perspective, looking at things from n spiritual perspective, to make sure we re treating the whole person to help them get better and to never have to face cancer again. So a patient comes to see me and they have active cancer. Almost always, they re already seeing an oncologist, and if they re not I recommend that they do. It s important they understand what their treatment options are, and they almost always require some conventional treatment. I want to make sure that they re getting the conventional treatment that they need. I want to make sure that they re getting what s necessary and not more. Sometimes they can get too much, and that can be a harrowing experience and we want to limit that. What I m looking to do in this situation is support them wherever they re at: so I want to do things that might produce side effects from any treatments that they re doing; I want to do things that support their immune system and help them to get through the process and to make it such that when they re trough, they re not going to have to do this again. And I use a variety of different things to do that. Sometimes, what I m looking to do is to help them maintain or gain additional weight because they re losing weight because of their treatments, so I m using fish oil, I m using specific dietary interventions, making sure that they re eating high-calorie foods that are healthy, that they re not drinking really sugary drinks to do that but they re actually eating whole foods that are healthy, that are going to make them get better in a real way. ll often use herbal treatments on patients who are undergoing cancer therapy. I might use asheraganda (sp?), for example, in someone who s doing radiation treatments something that will increase the effectiveness of the treatment and decrease the side effects. I might use aloe vera topically to decrease or prevent burning that can occur when people are doing radiation. And we use a variety of other herbs that can be really helpful for people that are undergoing cancer treatment. My success rate in treating people in remission, preventing future cancers, has been very good. When we look at patients who have had cancer, we re not talking about weeks or months here re talking about years. You can t tell in a short period of time whether or not your treatments have been effective, and certainly looking in the long term at the way my patients are, and how they re doing things have been good. So basically what we re talking about here is a natural-living lifestyle. Cancer, even though it is really scary and it can be very serious, is a lot like many other diseases in terms of what can cause it and what we can do to treat it. And at base, what we re looking to do is looking to change the way that people live, change the way that they think about how they eat, how they behave, the kind of exercise they get, the kind of interactions they have with other people so they can live more healthily if they can reduce their risk of having cancer in the first place, or if they ve had cancer, they can reduce the risk of having cancer again in the future. If you d like to learn more about natural medicine and the natural living lifestyle, you can read this informative book, The Beginner s Guide to Natural Living. 40 min total University of Colorado Health Sciences Center Simon Cancer Title Simon Cancer Justine Migdall Normal Larry Cook Microsoft Word 11.5.6 PICT` MSWD Cambria -Cancer is a problem that occurs when some of body cells start aving erratically and decidin that they their thing. Biologically, you can read this informative book, The Beginner s Guide to Natural Living. 40 min total