Category Archives: Alternative Cancer Treatment

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Care Tips

What Are Probiotics and How Are They Beneficial

Probiotics
Probiotics can benefit cancer treatment

You have many options for receiving treatment for your cancer, and the use of probiotics may be one companion treatment you’d want to investigate.

The link between cancer and probiotics is still being assessed by researchers, but there’s evidence that this “good” bacteria often found in a healthy gut may lessen the often damaging side-effects of chemotherapy.

About probiotics
Probiotics are live-culture organisms like bacteria and yeast, which grow naturally in our body’s digestive systems. Although the word “bacteria” may sound risky (think about all the antibiotics prescribed for various ailments), when processed correctly these organisms actually contribute to a healthier gut and a boosted immune system.

Cancer and probiotics
Probiotics’ benefits to the immune system is particularly relevant in terms of cancer treatment. If you have undergone chemotherapy, you know that this treatment works by seeking out and killing not just the cancerous cells, but fast-growing cells of all descriptions – that’s why you lose your hair.

And among other targeted cells are the ones that contribute to your immune system. When those are killed off, you risk infection. So a regimen of probiotics may help keep your immunity stronger during and after chemo.

Forms of probiotics
Because they are a supplement and not a drug, probiotics are widely available over the counter, added into products like yogurt, chocolate and granola bars. You can also find probiotics capsules.

Probiotics can become part of an alternative or  holistic cancer treatment program. But before jumping into probiotics on your own, make sure to check with your cancer team at Issels for their recommendations and program.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research, Cancer Survivors

Which Cancer Is Most Deadly for Women?

Lung Cancer in Women
Lung Cancer in Women

If you answered breast cancer, you are not alone; but you would be wrong. Most women are surprised to find out that lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer for women. Lung cancer accounts for nearly 40% of all cancer deaths among women, compared to 22% for breast cancer and 13% for colorectal cancer, the third leading cause of cancer death among women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Perhaps because breast cancer receives so much press and is so obviously linked to women, many people assume that breast cancer poses women’s greatest cancer fatality risk. However, while it is the most common “female” cancer, breast cancer is only the second leading cause of cancer death among women and is one of the more treatable forms of cancer. (Among women of Hispanic heritage, breast cancer is the No. 1 cancer killer with lung cancer running a close second.) Particularly when discovered early, breast cancer frequently offers a high rate of successful long-term remission. As Issels treatment cases indicate, even when discovered late, integrated immunotherapy has helped many breast cancer patients achieve long-term remission.

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, an excellent opportunity to discuss risk factors and treatment options for the cancer that causes more deaths among women than breast, uterine and ovarian cancer combined! While smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer, the disease also strikes many women who have never smoked. As it has for women with breast cancer, Issels personalized immunotherapy has also helped numerous lung cancer patients achieve successful remission.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

New Genomic Model Could Accelerate Cancer Trials of Targeted Therapies

Lung Cancer Therapy
Lung Cancer Therapy

Study of the cancer genome, a field of research called genomics, has been instrumental in helping researchers unlock cancer’s mysteries. Research into cancer’s genetic code is allowing scientists to explore and experiment with cancer’s most basic building blocks. The result has been phenomenal growth in the area of personalized cancer treatment and advanced targeted cancer therapies.

Now researchers are exploring the use of genomic technology to accelerate patient trials of new cancer drugs designed to target the specific molecular profiles of individual tumors. Set to undergo its first major clinical trial in 2014, the genomic trial model is being heralded by some scientists as the possible beginning of a new era of advanced personalized cancer treatment.

The clinical trial will match new lung cancer drugs to the unique molecular profile of each patient’s tumor and test treatment effectiveness. “If successful, the trial could help bring cancer genome-targeted medicines to patients more quickly than has been possible to date,” an article in MIT Technology Review explained; adding, “One of the great promises of genomic medicine is that doctors will be able to tailor treatments to an individual patient’s disease.”

With our colleagues in the U.S. cancer community we will await the results of this new trial model with great interest. At Issels alternative cancer treatment centers, we have been practicing individualized, targeted cancer therapies for decades with remarkable success. We also found it interesting that the new trial will test immunotherapy drugs designed to stimulate the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells. We have been leaders in the use of immunotherapy to treat cancer for more than 60 years.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Survivors

Women Call Alternative Cancer Therapies “Empowering”

Happy young woman with a white background
Alternative cancer therapy use is on the rise.

Four British women with cancer called their use of alternative cancer therapies “empowering” in interviews published in The Telegraph. As is true in the U.S. and Canada, more cancer patients in the United Kingdom are seeking alternative cancer treatments either instead of or in conjunction with standard chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The British breast cancer charity The Haven told the Telegraph that “89% of its service users found that non-medical, complementary therapies (including herbal medicine and nutritional, energy, touch and mind-body therapies) were ‘essential’ to their recovery.”

Surprisingly, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, the UK’s National Health Service has so far failed to recognize the importance of diet in boosting the immune system and fighting cancer, prompting an outcry from UK cancer patients. Like the other cancer victims interviewed, Alyssa Burns-Hills, a health specialist, cited diet change as integral to her successful fight against stage one invasive carcinoma. Carefully planned diet change is recommended by the immunotherapy and cancer experts at Issels Medical Center in Santa Barbara, California. Now 50 and cancer-free for 12 years, Alyssa credits her diet for playing a major role in her recovery and continued good health.

Alternative cancer therapies evoke much discussion, and there are all kinds of alternative treatments. But many cancer treatments that were once considered “out there” have proven to be reliably effective, including immunotherapy and diet, and are now embraced by traditional medicine. As the four women interviewed discovered, keeping an open mind about alternative cancer therapy could save your life.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Cold Sore Virus Could Hold Key to New Cancer Treatments

Cold Sores Are a Cure For Cancer?
Can the Cold Sore Virus be a Cure For Cancer?

“We’re trying to give cancer a cold sore,” is how Dr. Timothy Cripe, a pediatric oncologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, explains his team’s research on viral therapy. Viral therapy uses altered forms of common viruses, such as the herpes simplex virus that causes cold sores, to fight cancer. When injected into cancer tumors, viruses trigger the body’s immune system response and serve as bull’s eyes, allowing immune system cells to find and attack the tumors. To date, most viral therapy has focused on adult cancers. Dr. Cripe and his colleagues are among the first to research its potential to fight childhood cancers.

Earlier this year, research findings presented at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Switzerland showed promising results using modified herpes simplex virus to target liver and colorectal cancer cells. Scientists were successful in creating a genetically modified herpes virus that killed cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. One of the biggest problems with the most prevalent traditional cancer treatments — chemotherapy and radiation – is that they cast too wide a toxic net, killing both healthy and cancerous cells which can cause patients to suffer traumatic side effects.

Herpes simplex virus “doesn’t replicate in normal, healthy cells, so our hope is that it will help fight cancers without causing side effects in the rest of the body” Dr. Axel Mescheder of German biotech company MediGene said in a statement issued at the conference.

Viral therapy has the potential to join other successful, non-toxic cancer treatments such as targeted cell therapies and cancer vaccines in expanding the treatment horizons of immunotherapy.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy: Cancer’s Kryptonite

image of cells
Finding a way to pierce the shield that cancer cells use to hide from the body’s immune system attackers.

As noted in our previous post, immunotherapy is redefining cancer treatment and providing answers to questions that have long puzzled cancer researchers. Of critical importance has been finding a way to pierce the shield that cancer cells use to hide from the body’s immune system attackers. In what is being heralded as a new era in cancer treatment, researchers are finding in personalized immunotherapy the key to unleashing the immune system’s super powers and smashing through cancer’s shields.

In studying the cancer genome, scientists have discovered that some cancer cells are able to thwart immune response by co-opting for their own use the molecular mechanisms that govern cell communication and turn on and off certain cell functions. In effect, these cancer cells seem able to disguise their biological signature in such a way that immune system defenders no longer identify them as invaders. However, by augmenting the natural power of the body’s immune system, immunotherapy is proving to be highly effective in unmasking these disguises and allowing immune system defenders to penetrate cancer’s shields and attack.

Top U.S. cancer researchers described the results being achieved with immunotherapy as “amazing,” “a game-changer” and “a watershed moment,” in interviews with the New York Times. According to the Times, “This period will be viewed as an inflection point, a moment in medical history when everything changed.”

A pioneer in the field of immunotherapy Dr. Josef Issels opened his first alternative cancer treatment center in Germany more than 60 years ago. We were among the first to demonstrate the success of immunotherapy in achieving long-term remissions of advanced and treatment-resistant cancers.