Category Archives: Cancer Research

Joan Luden Poses Bald to Promote Breast Cancer Awareness

The Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Ribbon
The Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Ribbon

Former Good Morning America co-host Joan Luden shocked many fans when she recently posed bald on the cover of People magazine to promote cancer awareness. In an interview on Today, Joan, who lost her hair while undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, told fans, “We’re losing our hair in order to live and survive.”

Not an Easy Decision

While talking about her cancer journey and decision to bare her bald head in public, Joan admitted to Hoda Kotb that she was initially reluctant to pose for the magazine. “You just are never prepared for it,” she said about losing her hair during chemo. “You feel less like a woman. You feel less feminine. You feel less beautiful. You feel kind of embarrassed. You feel kind of like the ugly duckling. You lose a part of your sense of yourself.”

One More Loss

In the grand scale of things, you would think hair loss would be a small matter for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. But you have only to think how it feels to find a few gray hairs or notice a little thinning on top to realize how important our hair is to our appearance and sense of self. Its sudden loss during cancer treatment can be devastating to someone already struggling with the fear and loss that accompany cancer diagnosis.

A Better Solution

Non-toxic alternative cancer treatment offers a kinder, gentler way to combat cancer. Issels integrative immunotherapy works with your body to fight cancer. Our alternative cancer treatment battles cancer without the horrendous side effects, pain and embarrassing hair loss typical of chemotherapy. Find out more about the benefits of integrative immunotherapy at Issels.com.

Cancer Drug Research Will Change Lives in the Future

Cancer Drug Research
Cancer Drug Research

Cancer drug research is moving medicine toward a new frontier of personalized cancer treatment that is expected to change our lives for the better in the not too distant future. Tremendous strides in genetic and cellular research have vastly extended our knowledge about how cancer attacks and spreads on the cellular level, opening new avenues for cancer research and potential treatments.

Targeting Cancer Triggers

Focusing cancer research on genetic and cellular behavior has revealed the existence of specific genes and proteins that affect cell growth and development. When these genetic switches malfunction, uncontrolled cell growth can occur which can lead to the development of cancer tumors can occur. Recent cancer news indicates that drug manufacturers are racing to develop new cancer drugs designed to target these cancer triggers and turn them off. The first of this new wave of cancer drugs is beginning to reach the marketplace and early cancer news reports are promising.

Personalized Cancer Treatment

As cancer drugs become more effective in isolating and neutralizing genetic and cellular cancer triggers, personalized cancer treatments are expected to become the norm. If, as many believe, personal genome mapping becomes commonplace in the future; cancer specialists will be able to order personalized cancer treatments based on your own genetic code.

At the Issels Centers in Tijuana, Mexico and Santa Barbara, California, we recognize that every patient is unique and that each individual’s response to cancer is equally unique. Cancer demands an individualized response. Our highly personalized cancer treatment protocols have produced an admirable record of complete long-term remissions of advanced and standard therapy-resistant cancers. Visit our website to hear what our patients have to say.

Five Things to Know About Lung Cancer

Things To Know About Lung Cancer
Things To Know About Lung Cancer

Perhaps you’re feeling overwhelmed and you’re struggling to learn all you can about your lung cancer diagnosis. There is a great deal of information available online, however, we would like to offer you five facts you should know about lung cancer.

Fact #1: Smoking isn’t the only cause of lung cancer

While it’s true that smoking causes around 87% of all cases, it’s not the only cause. Lung cancer occurs when the cells in the lungs mutate, and this is often caused by breathing in toxic chemicals, but it can also be due to genetics.

Fact #2: Lung cancer symptoms usually do not appear until the cancer has spread

Early cases of lung cancer generally produce no symptoms, which is why it can sometimes take years for doctors to find the cancer.

Fact #3: Researchers are working to find ways to diagnose lung cancer early on

Lung cancer is most successfully treated when it’s found early. Researchers are looking for more ways to perform early diagnostic tests. Lose dose CT scans might be one option.

Fact #4: There are many different types of lung cancer

Small cell and non-small cell are both types of lung cancer, but there are many more variables involved that will help your doctor decide which lung cancer treatment is right for you.

Fact #5: There are many effective alternative lung cancer treatments available

Chemo and radiation are no longer your only options. Alternative treatments are getting great results.

If you would like more information about Issels, we would love to talk with you and answer any questions you might have about available lung cancer treatment options. Please contact us today.

U.S. Lung Cancer Rates Start to Decline

Lung Cancer On The Decline
Lung Cancer On The Decline

Major research on lung cancer has determined some significant, positive trends: overall rates have dropped about 12 percent over the last thirty years according to Denise Riedel Lewis of the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Some types of lung cancer are stagnant or even increasing, however.

Smoking causes at least 90 percent of lung cancer cases, so declining usage of tobacco products directly accounts for decreasing rates overall. Scientists believe that smoking habits also contribute to increasing rates for certain cancer types.

Adenocarcinoma and “Light” Cigarettes

People who smoke “light” cigarettes may believe that lower nicotine levels offer a health benefit, but this new data points to rising lung cancer rates for these smokers.

Dr. Norman Edelman of the American Lung Association points out that carcinogens reach the outer areas of lungs more often when people deeply inhale low-nicotine cigarettes rather than taking shallower inhalations of standard cigarettes.

Rates are increasing for adenocarcinoma, or lung cancer that begins in the outer lungs. Women, who smoke “light” cigarettes at higher rates than men, have had notably high rates of adenocarcinoma in recent years.

Some Lung Cancer Rates Hitting a Plateau

According to Edelman, men’s lung cancer rates have been falling for years while women’s rates have held steady. Women starting to smoke later in life than men contributed to lower rates among women in the past, with rates now evening out between the sexes.

The NCI study looked at lung cancer cases from 1977 to 2010, covering significant changes in smoking rates as well as advances in lung cancer treatments.

To learn more about innovations in lung cancer treatments, contact Issels Integrative Oncology Centers.

Venoms May Be Used to Fight Cancer

Could Venom Be The Answer
Could Venom Be The Answer

Scientists are optimistic about attacking cancer cells with the poisonous venoms most of us desperately try to avoid. Dr. Dipanjan Pan led a team at the University of Illinois that has successfully and safely targeted breast cancer and melanoma cells in a lab.

While being able to kill cancer cells and prevent them from multiplying is good news by itself, another important breakthrough is Dr Pan’s success at concentrating the focus of scorpion, snake, and bee venom on the cancer cells without destroying healthy cells and ultimately harming the patient.

Dr. Pan and his team were able to “camouflage” the venom in a tiny particle. This takes the venom directly to the targeted cancer cells without allowing it to leak into the bloodstream of patients and damage the heart, nerve cells, or other healthy tissue.

The researchers discovered that venom from snakes, scorpions, and bees contain peptides and proteins that will attach to cancer cell walls. They also verified that bee venom contains a substance called melittin that prevents cancer cells from spreading. Bees produce such a small amount of venom that extracting a sufficient amount of the substance from them for laboratory testing or clinical use is impractical. The team developed a way to synthesize the melittin.

Dr. Pan stressed that, while the venom from snakes and scorpions can be deadly, his team is able to control the potency and utilize them as a possible cancer treatment. The positive results from cloaking these venoms in nanoparticles could lead to human trials in then next three to five years.

For more than 60 years, Issels Integrative Oncology has been providing safe and successful immunotherapy.

How Is Systemic Hyperthermia Used for Cancer Treatment?

What Is Hyperthermia?
What Is Hyperthermia?

Heat is one of the natural tools your body uses to fight disease. The fever generated by bacterial infections, flu and other viruses indicate not only that your body’s immune system is under attack but that it is fighting back. Raising your body’s internal temperature is like taking a flame-thrower to the attacking disease. Uncontrolled fever can, of course, have serious consequences for the patient. But carefully administered and controlled heating of the body – called systemic hyperthermia — can produce therapeutic benefits in the treatment of cancer tumors.

What Is Hyperthermia?

Issels extensive experience using systemic hyperthermia as part of our integrative immunotherapy program for cancer treatment is now being replicated at university hospital centers in the United States and Europe. Also called Thermal Therapy, systemic hyperthermia is the deliberate heating of the whole body for the therapeutic treatment of disease. Over our 60 years of experience using thermal therapy to treat cancer, Issels has found that thermal therapy can also be applied to affected parts of the body with similar benefit.

How Does Hyperthermia Fight Cancer?

Used in cancer treatment, the deliberate heating of the body promotes a beneficial general stimulation of the body’s innate immune system. But thermal therapy also triggers immune system responses that specifically target cancer tumors, allowing the body to vigorously and effectively attack cancer tumors. Research has shown that systemic hyperthermia has a positive effect on cancer-fighting immune system components, including accelerated maturation of dendritic cells, activation of T-cells, increased production of T-lymphocytes and accelerated production of Natural Killer Cells.

Visit our website to find out more about alternative cancer treatments that offer cancer patients quality of life benefits.