Monthly Archives: June 2014

Cancer Care Tips, Living with Cancer

Chemotherapy Patients Can Retain Dignity and Beauty

Wigs
Wigs

Faced with a cancer diagnosis, the biggest fear among many patients is losing their hair. There are however alternatives to losing your full head of hair. Cool Caps during chemotherapy and fashion and designer wigs are just two great choices. One respected wig source for chemotherapy patients provides an extensive collection of designer medical wigs specially designed to cradle the sensitive scalps of chemotherapy patients while giving them confidence in their appearance.

Heartbreaking Hair Loss

For many cancer patients, hair loss is the most emotionally devastating side effect of chemotherapy. Our hair is such an important part of our self-image that losing it can be heartbreaking, shattering our sense of attractiveness. In most cases, hair grows back within a year, but it may not look or feel the way it did before.

Chemo Can Change Hair Quality

After chemotherapy, many patients find that when their hair grows back it has changed in texture, fullness and sometimes even color. After waiting so long to look like your old self again, the changes to your hair can be another disappointing blow. A beautifully styled wig can not only restore your confidence in your appearance and give you a huge emotional boost during chemotherapy, it can also allow you to return to the look and hair style you loved before cancer. In other words, if nature doesn’t cooperate, a beautiful fashion wig can make you feel beautiful again!

Chemo Wig Tips

If you are a chemotherapy patient, use these tips from the experts to choose the right medical wig for you:

  1. Choose a light-weight wig that won’t place too much pressure on your tender scalp.
  2. Baby your tender scalp by choosing a wig that is soft to the touch.
  3. Choose a monofilament wig for its superior breathability.

It could be that conventional cancer treatment is not the “right” path for you and you would like to consider alternative cancer treatment options. At Issels, patients undergoing immunotherapy treatment will typically not experience hair loss. Other options including cancer vaccines and our immunobiologic core program boost your immune system to fight your cancer without the side effects of toxic medication. If you would like to find out about treatment options that have no dreaded side effects such as hair loss, we invite you to visit the Issels website to find out more about our specialized advanced cancer treatments that are kinder to your body.

Immunotherapy, Living with Cancer

Using Your Own Immune Cells to Fight Cancer

Immune Cells
Immune Cells

In several research studies that employed a cancer patient’s own immune cells against her cancer, news reports have called the results “unprecedented” and “miraculous.” If researchers seem surprised by the power of the body’s own immune system to fight cancer, it is because the mainstream Western cancer community has only recently begun to recognize and harness the considerable cancer-fighting benefits of alternative cancer treatments such as immunotherapy.

Immunotherapy Results

Called a “game-changer,” immunotherapy is producing some truly amazing results:

  • Her tumors “melted away.” A woman with a deadly form of cancer that had metastasized to her bile duct, liver and lungs despite traditional treatment saw her tumors “melt away” after immunotherapy. Researchers identified tumor-invading T cells in her immune system that would attack a critical mutation in her cancer cells. Billions of these T cells were manufactured in the lab and infused into her bloodstream. While the woman’s cancer has not disappeared, her tumors are shrinking at an amazing rate and she is hopeful for the first time in years.
  • Cancer-free in 5 months. Another woman whose body was riddled with tumors from metastasized cervical cancer now appears to be cancer-free after a similar immunotherapy treatment. After isolating the immune system cells that were attacking her tumors, researchers multiplied the cells in the lab and infused billions of them back into her body. Just five months after treatment, the woman’s cancer scans started coming back clean and have remained cancer-free for 17 months and counting.

Issels Integrative Oncology has 60 years experience using immunotherapy to fight cancer. Call our alternative cancer treatment centers for information about our T cell treatments and immune system-boosting cancer vaccines.

 

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

How Is Hyperthermia Used in the Treatment of Cancer Tumors?

Thermal Treatment
Thermal Treatment

Heat is one of the body’s primary defense mechanisms against disease. It is the reason you run a fever when you’re fighting the flu or an infection. Heating cells well beyond their normal tolerance can eliminate the harmful substances that are making you ill.

What Is Hyperthermia?

Hyperthermia, also called Thermal Therapy, is rooted in this natural defensive strategy and can be a valuable component of integrative cancer treatment. In hyperthermia, the entire body or the diseased portions of the body are purposefully heated to produce a therapeutic response.

When administered by Issels experienced cancer treatment teams as part of our immunobiologic core treatment for cancer, hyperthermia has produced beneficial results for many cancer patients. The healing technique is used not only at Issels Centers for Integrative Oncology, but also at a number of well-known university hospital centers in the U.S. and Europe.

History of Hyperthermia

The use of fever therapy can be traced back to the early Greeks and Romans. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, wrote, “Give me the power to produce fever, and I will cure all disease.”

Over the centuries, fever therapy has been a common disease treatment used by Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese and 18th century Europeans. In the 19th century, German physicians saw sarcoma regression or cure in patients who had endured high fevers from infectious diseases.

Hyperthermia and Cancer

Hyperthermia continues to be a valid disease-fighting treatment. Beginning in the 1950s, our founder Dr. Josef M. Issels administered fever therapy to thousands of cancer patients with remarkable results. There is continued and strong evidence that hyperthermia stimulates and regulates the immune system and is especially beneficial to cancer patients.

Visit our website to find out more about hyperthermia and other alternative cancer treatments.

Testimonials

Can You Save Your Hair in Chemotherapy

Save Your Hair
Save Your Hair

Others may see a cancer patient’s bald head as a badge of courage, but hair loss is the chemotherapy side effect cancer patients fear most. Our hair is such an integral part of our self-image that losing it is a traumatic experience.

Not all chemotherapy drugs cause hair loss, but many do. Hair loss typically begins a few weeks after chemotherapy begins and can range from mild thinning to total baldness. Hair usually grows back in 3 to 10 months; but it may be a different texture, fullness or color. Hair may also grow back unevenly, looking thin or patchy.

Why Does Chemo Cause Hair to Fall Out?

Chemotherapy drugs are designed to attack fast-growing cancer cells. Unable to differentiate between cancer and other fast-growing cells in the body — such as hair cells — these chemicals kill everything. And chemotherapy doesn’t just affect the hair on your head. Eyebrows, beards and body hair may disappear.

Can You Prevent Chemo Hair Loss?

There is little that can be done to prevent chemo hair loss. Applying minoxidil (Rogaine) to the scalp has not been shown to prevent hair loss but may encourage faster hair re-growth. Scalp cooling is another strategy for preventing hair loss (read one woman’s story), but results have been mixed.

The only sure way to prevent chemo hair loss is to avoid chemotherapy. Integrative immunotherapy is a holistic approach to cancer treatment that does not result in hair loss or produce the other painful and dreaded side effects associated with chemotherapy. Working with, not against your body, immunotherapy empowers your immune system to fight cancer naturally. Visit our website to find out more.

Cancer Research, News

Google Ventures and Big Data on Cancer

Big Cancer Data
Big Cancer Data

Google Ventures has recently made a large investment into Flatiron Health Inc., a medical software company whose cancer patient data is used to help doctors make cancer treatment decisions. The $100-plus million investment reportedly enabled the company to purchase another software firm, Altos Solutions, which compiles oncology data and whose electronic medical records are cloud-based.

A plethora of alternative cancer treatment information – soon to be accessible via the cloud.
Flatiron’s software compiles a wide array of data, including clinical and genomic data, information on patient outcomes, notes from doctors, billing, and more for the use of oncologists. Compiled with Altos’ treatment data and cloud accessibility, this information will give doctors wider access to clinical trial information including past cancer treatments and outcomes which would have otherwise been difficult to access.

An investment in hope…
Bill Maris, managing partner with Google Ventures, stated they typically don’t make investments of this size unless they really believe in the team, the product, and the good it can do for the world. The acquisition of Altos by Flatiron is very complementary, offering a significant step forward in cancer care.

Google Ventures also investing in other medical data software companies.
Other Google Venture investments include DNAnexus, Inc., who is building the world’s first searchable archive of DNA information, as well as Foundation Medicine, with its tumor analyzing software, and Predilytics Inc., which tracks hospital discharges and re-admissions.

This combination of healthcare and internet technology offers an elegant solution for patient care, and with the help of Google Ventures, a clearer view of cancer patient needs and treatment options appears to be on the horizon.

 

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Kids and Cancer Is There New Hope?

New Hope For Childhood Cancer
New Hope For Childhood Cancer

Cancer has plagued the world since the time of dinosaurs, and medicine has struggled to find a cure. When conventional treatments fail, however, new alternative cancer treatments may offer new hope.

A breakthrough in alternative cancer therapies
In one case of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Emily, age 6, was given an experimental therapy after chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant failed to cure her. Blood was taken from Emily, passed through a machine to remove white cells, and returned to her body. University of Pennsylvania scientists then constructed CARTs, chimeric antigen receptor T-cells, from a modified HIV virus, using them to reprogram Emily’s white blood cells to hunt down and destroy the cancer cells in her body. Two years later, she is still cancer free and the poster child for this radical new alternative cancer treatment developed by Novartis.

Fast-tracking therapy
Similar treatments in 25 children and 5 adults with Emily’s disease showed a 100 percent remission rate, in which cancer remained undetectable. As a result, Novartis is running clinical trials worldwide, determining how to limit side effects, and readying a manufacturing plant to create individualized treatments – forecasted to be completed by 2016. Novartis’ previous success with the breakthrough drug Gleevac, very successful against chronic myelogenous leukemia, a blood cancer, is seen as a good omen.

Novartis has purchased GlaxoSmithKline’s line of cancer drugs in order to focus on cancer cures in general, and could potentially transform cancer therapy in upcoming years. Hope is that this will be an historic period for breakthroughs in alternative cancer treatments such as cell-based and gene therapies, opening a new door for not only cancer patients, but those suffering diseases worldwide.