Category Archives: Living with Cancer

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Living with Cancer, Stress Management

Pet Therapy – Improving Your Quality of Life

Pet Therapy
Pet Therapy

Is there anything more adorable and heart-warming than a four-legged friend who offers unconditional love? Pet therapy has become an increasingly popular means of providing physical and emotional support for cancer patients and others dealing with serious health problems. Mayo Clinic oncologist Dr. Edward Creagan has referred to it as “medication without side effects”.

Sigmund Freud was known to use dogs as relaxation aides for his psychotherapy patients, but it’s only fairly recently that pets have been used to “treat” those suffering from cancer. Therapy Dogs International and Pet Partners, the two earliest animal-assisted therapy groups, date back to the mid-1970s.

Cancer patients who receive visit from therapy pets have demonstrated emotional benefits such as lowered stress levels and improved moods. Interacting with the pets can help relieve the loneliness and isolation that often accompanies medical treatment. Some patients have even demonstrated a reduced need for pain medication.

While pets have been known as good companions since the dawn of mankind, researchers have tried to find the specific reasons that pet therapy has proven to be so effective. Studies have shown that visits with pets can reduce the levels of cortisol in the bloodstream. Cortisol is a hormone that produces the “fight or flight” response during high-stress situations. In addition, it can raise the level of endorphins, which are the body’s natural pain-relieving hormones.

Pet therapy can provide a valuable boost to your quality of life during cancer treatment. It’s a good complement to the integrative approach used at Issels alternative cancer treatment centers. Please contact us for more information.

Cancer Care Tips, Living with Cancer

Cancer Caregivers Must Take Care for Themselves Too

Being a Caregiver is an Important Role.
Being a Caregiver is an Important Role.

Two out of three Americans can expect to serve as a family caregiver at some point in their lifetime. With cancer predicted to outstrip heart disease as the leading cause of death in America, many family caregivers will be caring for cancer patients. But those cold, impersonal facts are far removed from the intensely personal and emotional experience of caring for a family member with cancer.

Highs and Lows of Being a Caregiver

Serving as a cancer caregiver for someone you love can be a tremendously rewarding experience. But trying to juggle your own life with your responsibilities as a caregiver can also take a huge toll on your physical and mental health. Many family caregivers place the needs of their loved one ahead of their own needs which is completely human and sometimes necessary. But failing to take care of yourself can leave you feeling stressed and overwhelmed which helps neither you nor the family member you are caring for.

Caring for the Caregiver

To be an effective caregiver for a family member with cancer, you must take care of yourself.

Use the following strategies to stay emotionally and physically healthy: 

• Caregiving can be an isolating experience. Establish a good support network and enlist family and friends to help out. Accept help when it’s offered and call on your support team when you need a break.

• Know the warning signs of stress: exhaustion, irritability, trouble sleeping, forgetfulness, eating too much or too little and loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities. Chronic stress erodes your physical health and may lead to depression. Monitor your health and see your doctor regularly.

You know your loved one is receiving the best possible care at Issels alternative cancer treatment centers. Family caregivers must take equally good care of themselves.

Cancer Survivors, Living with Cancer

Young Skin Cancer Survivors at Greater Risk of Later Cancer

Skin Cancer Risks
Skin Cancer Risks

Most of us are aware that sun exposure and tanning beds increase the risk of skin cancer. The most common kind of skin cancer is nonmelanoma skin cancer which, when discovered early, is highly treatable and rarely spreads to other parts of the body. However, a recently released study of 502,490 individuals in the United Kingdom has now linked nonmelanoma skin cancer to a greater risk of future cancer; and young people who are least likely to protect themselves from harmful sun exposure are at greatest risk.

A large, long-term study of people with a history of nonmelanoma skin cancer found that they were more likely to develop other types of cancer. For people under the age of 25, the risk was a disturbing 23 times higher. For adults 25 to 44, risk decreased but was still 3.5 times greater than for those who had never had skin cancer. Risk continued to decrease with age, although it remained slightly higher for all age groups.

“Our study shows that [nonmelanoma skin cancer] susceptibility is an important indicator of susceptibility to malignant tumors and that the risk is especially high among people who develop [the condition] at a young age,” noted Dr. Rodney Sinclair, director of dermatology at Epworth Hospital in Australia, on Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

It was found that people who had nonmelanoma skin cancer before reaching the age of 25 were 53 times more likely to develop bone cancer, 26 times more likely to get blood cancers, 20 times more likely to be diagnosed with brain cancer, and 14 times more likely to develop other cancers other than skin cancer. The study also suggests a significant risk of developing other cancer types–salivary gland, melanoma, bone and upper gastrointestinal tract cancers, in particular–among people with a history of the disease in general.

Issels integrated immunotherapy offers non-toxic alternative cancer treatments for cancers of all types including melanoma.

Immunotherapy, Living with Cancer

Why Cancer Patients Should Consider Immunotherapy

The Issels Inpatient Hospital in Mexico
PR Newswire billboard headline on Issels (including the hospital photo) in Time Square, New York City

“The immune system is an evolutionary learning system. If you can engage it and get it to work successfully, it learns how to attack the cancer. And the wonderful thing is that it works,” immunologist Gordon Freeman of Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute recently told the Washington Post in an article about a new immunotherapy cancer treatment called immune checkpoint blockade. While still in the trial phase, the therapy shares distinct similarities to advanced targeted cancer therapies that are already being successfully used at Issels Integrative Oncology Centers in Mexico and California.

Freeman was attempting to explain why U.S. cancer researchers have started looking beyond the traditional cancer treatment trinity – surgery, chemotherapy and radiation — that has ruled Western medicine for decades. “Cancers are like the Road Runner cartoon character,” Freeman explained. “If you choose one target in the cancer, it will sidestep it eventually by mutating. Chemotherapy usually fails, eventually, because the tumor evolves a way to beat it.” Increasingly, U.S. cancer researchers are looking to the body’s own immune system for new and more effective cancer treatments and discovering a gold mine!

Individualized immunotherapy has been called “cancer’s kryptonite” and is now considered by many to be our best hope for beating cancer. By targeting not only cancer tumors, but also the microenvironments in which they develop, Issels integrated immunotherapy is redefining cancer treatment. By individualizing immunotherapy, Issels cancer specialists can fine tune treatment to maximize the patient’s immune system response. For many of our patients, our methods have resulted in a unique record of complete long-term remission of advanced and standard therapy-resistant cancers. The limited outcomes offered by surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are no longer a cancer patient’s only treatment options. Immunotherapy offers new hope. Visit our website to find out more.

Cancer Care Tips, Cancer Research, Living with Cancer

New Study: Antioxidants Might Speed Lung Cancer

Antioxidants and Cancer
Antioxidants and Cancer

A new study calls into question one of the most widely accepted beliefs about cancer prevention: Eating foods that are rich in antioxidants can help decrease cancer risk. Not necessarily, say researchers at the University of Gothenburg Sahlgrenska Cancer Center in Sweden. Antioxidants may actually increase lung cancer risk for smokers and people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Antioxidants are supposed to protect the body from cancer by preventing free radicals from damaging cells. “These radicals can damage almost anything inside the cell, including DNA, and DNA damage can lead to cancer,” explained study leader Dr. Martin Bergo. By neutralizing free radicals, antioxidants should decrease the possibility of DNA damage and cancer risk.

However, Swedish researchers found that in people with cancerous or precancerous cells, the body’s response to antioxidants appears to backfire. Instead protecting, antioxidants short-circuit a key immune response to cancerous cells, accelerating cancer progression, according to a HealthDay report posted on WebMD.

The study tested response to vitamin E and acetylcysteine, an antioxidant supplement, in mice with early lung cancer. “We found that antioxidants caused a threefold increase in the number of tumors and caused tumors to become more aggressive,” Dr. Bergo said. “Antioxidants caused the mice to die twice as fast, and the effect was dose-dependent.”

The findings are of concern not only because they fly in the face of current cancer prevention recommendations, but also because acetylcysteine is commonly used to improve breathing in COPD patients. Until further testing can be done, researchers recommend that people at risk of lung cancer avoid taking antioxidant supplements. Issels cancer experts point out that study findings were limited to lung cancer and that antioxidants received through food were not implicated.

Living with Cancer, Testimonials

Valerie Harper on Cancer Part 2: Being Prepared for the End Can Free You to Live Now

Cancer
Cancer

For actress Valerie Harper, getting her affairs in order and making decisions about end-of-life issues after being diagnosed with inoperable cancer (see our previous post) was a necessary part of taking care of her family. But in making sure that she was prepared for the end of life when it came, she found a sense of peace that freed her to live life to the fullest.

In an interview published in the October/November 2013 of AARP Magazine, Valerie said she facing the possibility of death head on; but her husband, Tony Cacciotti, “didn’t want to discuss it.”

“Most people don’t do it because they think it’s never gonna happen to them or that by talking about death you speed up the process,” Tony said. But with coaxing from Valerie, the couple saw a lawyer to update their wills and draft healthcare directives spelling out the types of medical care they did and did not want to receive in their final days.

It was during those discusses when Valerie voiced a wish to be cremated that Tony was finally able to overcome his reluctance about dealing with end-of-life arrangements. “I wanted to be buried next to her,” he told AARP. “That meant I had to muster my fear and deal with the cemetery thing.” The couple chose a plot in Hollywood Forever where many of Hollywood’s most famous stars are buried and, to Valerie’s delight, peacocks roam the gardens. “It’s a life-giving place,” Valerie said.

Valerie encourages everyone, not just people undergoing cancer treatment, to talk to their families and discuss their wishes about life-and-death.