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PATIENTS'	NATIONAL	· By Recovered Patients
	CANCER	· Not Governmental
	INSTITUTE	· Not For Profit

Volunteer Support for Cancer Freshmen by Cancer Graduates

COMBINING CONVENTIONAL AND ALTERNATIVE THERAPY

Introduction Part 3 of 4

We often take for granted the miraculous way our body knows all the steps to heal a wound, including fighting the infection and rebuilding muscles, blood vessels and skin. But it took 20 years for Dr. Dean Ornish to prove conclusively to scientists that our body, when given a better diet and lifestyle, can also heal our number one killer - cardiovascular disease. Today, a increasing list of hospitals and insurance companies now give heart patients a choice between invasive treatments like bypass surgery, or letting the body heal itself through a better diet and lifestyle. Even Medicare is trying it.

We have almost the same two choices for cancer - the invasive treatments of conventional medicine and the diet and lifestyle treatments of alternative medicine. But in 20 years of helping each other get well, we have learned that it can be more work to heal cancer. So we often combined both choices to get our successful results.

These two schools of medicine are generally have two different strategies of treatment. Conventional medicine usually attacks the cancer directly by surgery, chemotherapy (including hormonal treatments) and radiation. Some see this as only first aid, since it solves the current tumor problem temporarily. But it doesn't address the long-range problem of why the patient's anti-cancer armies failed, so it doesn’t prevent future cancer.

Alternative medicine tries to find out why, in order to restore and fortify the patient's own anti-cancer armies. Then these armies can eliminate the current cancer and future cancers as well. Some see this as the real cure.

American doctors are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the virtual monopoly on cancer care that conventional treatments hold. One reason is that they have learned that these treatments can and do create new cancers. Surgery can spread cancer cells through out the circulatory system to almost any part of the body. Radiation and chemotherapy are well-known as serious carcinogens that can cause new cancer cells to be formed. Hormone therapies can alter the function of every cell in the body and can create new populations of abnormal cells that are ever more difficult to control. Even more troublesome, conventional treatments can damage the body’s natural defenses against cancer in the future. Maybe that is why it can keep coming back with conventional therapy.

It can take 5 to 20 years for these new cancer cells to grow large enough to see. That's why conventional therapy patients are not considered cured - the are only "in remission."

Hopefully, the patient's own immune system may destroy theses new cancers in the meantime. But if the immune system is damaged by these therapies, or the patient continues the same harmful lifestyle, such as smoking that overwhelms the immune system, these new cancers could grow back much sooner. What's a patient to do?

Alternative therapy provides a solution. By supercharging the anti-cancer systems of the body with super health, alternative therapy can be used to make the patient healthier, faster - in time to eliminate these new cancers before they cause trouble.

Even better, if alternative therapy is used BEFORE hand, the invasive therapies may be greatly simplified or become unnecessary.

A BEST CASE SCENARIO FOR ALTERNATIVE CANCER THERAPY

Month 1	Month 2	Month 3	Month 4
Strengthens immune system	Slows growth of cancer	Shrinks cancer	Eliminates cancer

(From one of our founders’ stories on the CANCER GRADUATES web page. The other founder was declared terminal because of widely metastasized cancer – she needed 6 months to eliminate her cancer this way)

According to studies by Professor Samuel Epstein, M.D, the overall success rate for conventional cancer therapy in America is 50 to 55%. Established international hospitals that routinely begin with alternative therapy before using conventional, quote success rates for the common cancers of about 80%. If alternative therapy can add 25 - 30% to the success rate against cancer, it should come as no surprise that one such international cancer hospital celebrated their 100,000 patient in 1999 - and many of them were Americans.

Regardless of figures, the hard fact remains that many of us had been considered terminal in America on conventional therapy, only to recover completely by using alternative therapy afterward. But that is a much harder road.

American doctors are demanding more medical training in alternative medicine, and medical schools are trying to respond. But often they don't know where to start. One purpose of the upcoming 7-step PATIENTS' PROTOCOL is to give doctors a head start, so they don't have to reinvent the wheel. This is what is alreaady working.

Twenty years of experience helping each other tells us that curing cancer is not a difficult mystery to be solved. It's more like baking a cake or fixing a car. If you follow all the recommended steps carefully, the results are usually excellent. If you leave something out, the results can be less predictable.

For the patient or the doctor wondering what to do, it only takes a few weeks to see the results for themselves. The PATIENTS' PROTOCOL includes getting second opinions to make sure the patient has enough time to test alternative therapy, and tells how to suppress metastasis in the meantime. Then the PROTOCOL explains the critical steps most of us have used to recover from cancer.

If alternative therapy doesn't do the whole job, at least the patient should be healthier and the immune system stronger to withstand the invasive therapies. And these therapies may be made much easier if the tumor has shrunk away from healthy tissue. Trying alternative therapy can create a win - win situation.

It is ironic that two of the main alternative therapies for cancer - nutrition and immune stimulation - used to be leading conventional therapies. They were pushed aside by the promises of chemotherapy and radiation. The good news is that the government's National Cancer Institute is now encouraging conventional medicine to reconsider these alternative therapies.

The bad news is that by the time research is funded, published in journals, confirmed, published in medical texts, taught to doctors, and they finally start to practice it correctly, historically over 20 years can elapse.

One reason for this web site is so you and your loved ones, and your doctors, don't have to wait that long.

OUR OPINION ON COMBINING THERAPIES

*CONVENTIONAL* *THERAPY*	*ALTERNATIVE* *THERAPY*
A Few Powerful Treatments	A Synergy of Many Gentle Treatments
Best For Emergencies	Best For Long Term Survival
Focus on Attacking the Tumor	Focus on Healing the Patient
Best on Large, Isolated Tumors	Also Great for Metastasized Cancers
Favor invasive biopsies	Favor less-invasive blood tests
Weakens the Immune System	Strengthens the Immune System
Can Cause Future Cancers	Can Prevent Future Cancers
Can Reduce Quality of Life	Can Improve Quality of Life
Can Make Hair Fall Out	Can Enhance Hair Growth
Use Narcotics For Severe Pain	Also Non-Narcotic Solutions For Pain
Most Powerful Modalities	Most Healthful Modalities
Works better after alternative therapy, if needed at all.	Use before, after or instead of conventional therapy

To finish the introduction, please click "Next Page" below for Part 4, a growing List Of Resources.

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(Last update September 1, 2009-www.PatientsNCI.org)