Cancer: A Controversial Subject
Why Should Dealing With Cancer Be So
Controversial?
Today, many people seek an alternative or complementary route to
medicine. This may happen for various reasons. Conventional medicine may
not be providing the answers or the cure they seek, or it may be too expensive and
out of reach of the patient's finances to explore (i.e., many cytotoxic
chemotherapies).
Conventional medicine often takes the approach that all cancer cells have to be killed. This notion of killing comes in part from thinking
about cancer as a foreign invader that gets into the body and grows
continuously until it takes over. In fact, cancer starts in your own
cells, which develop mutations, allowing them to replicate without limit
and invade outside their own territory. These cancer cells are not in
isolation. The cells around them, and the general state of the body
influence their capacity to thrive. Cancer cells may be able to be
reversed or controlled if the environment of cells, hormones, and the
immune system around them is changed.
All of this becomes important in the way we, as a society, and you, as a patient, approach cancer therapy.
Oncologists would agree that chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy,
albeit the best we have, have not proven to be the ultimate cure for cancer. These approaches have certainly been shown to make some difference in
survival from some cancers, but these treatments are focused on killing
cancer cells rather than changing their environment. The conventional
focus tends to be on disease treatment. Very simply, we must consider factors
critical to public health - such as preventive strategies, including
lifestyle changes, behaviour modification, diet, supplementation,
exercise and stress management – or society will continue to see more disease.
Perhaps the most significant issue is that we publicly continue to spend
vast amounts of money on drug therapies, as if treating a disease after
it has manifested is more important than using resources to prevent the
conditions that cause the disease in the first place. This paradigm is
contrary to good health. (see “Why We’re Losing the War on
Cancer, Leaf, Fortune, 2004)
CCRG advocates for a medical focus
on strengthening the body’s metabolism and altering the immune system to
make important changes in the internal body environment.
Complementary medicine is experiencing a huge growth in public, scientific and professional medical interest and application. So why are some professionals wary?
- There are thousands of bonafide studies on hundreds of complementary medicine therapies yet, people still often cite an absence
of scientific studies for complementary therapies. This is truly applying a double-standard. The reality is that patients are often prescribed "approved" drugs that have not been proved fully effective (or safe) by the
"gold standard" of randomized controlled clinical trials. It is
little understood by the public that powerful drugs used to treat disease have
potential side effects that may, in some cases, be life threatening
themselves. For example, the recent experience when thirty thousand
women underwent high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue, before
studies demonstrated that it was not better than standard
chemotherapy, illustrates how modern medicine is not always based on
science. Because prescription drugs may not be properly researched from the start or they are improperly taken or prescribed, it is estimated that prescription drugs kill 100,000+ North
Americans each year (Lazarou, 1998).
- CCRG component products in CCRG compounds, all are safe natural health products as defined by Health Canada.
- There are many forms of beneficial complementary therapies. Clearly, not all are standardized. However, many
physicians will likewise argue that conventional medicine also cannot and should not be standardized. A common example of this would be when physicians are interacting with
insurance companies.
- Naturopathic training at naturopathic colleges across North America is increasing exponentially. However, current conventional medical schools provide minimal focus on the use of complementary or alternative
treatments. Pharmaceutical companies are often the
largest contributors to conventional medical schools and also to drug research. This may be in some way responsible for the restricted medical curriculum focus. Regardless of why this has occurred,
the lack of awareness of valid complementary medicine is often carried into the profession. With the extreme lack of time that is experienced by physicians in today's overwhelmed healthcare system, many doctors simply
downplay the effectiveness of complementary medicine.
- Complementary therapies can be personality driven. Even within conventional therapy, we often search for the "best" surgeon or oncologist with the
understanding that the person delivering the care is as important as
the care.
- With more focus on training new doctors about the benefits of complementary medicine, more and more practitioners will move toward an integrative form of healthcare, where other disciplines are openly considered for the ultimate good of the patient.
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