Chemotherapy’s sorry record and how stress affects the treatments
Stressing during chemotherapy
In a recent and enlightening study in Molecular Cancer Research, scientist found that patients who get stressed out before a round of chemotherapy (and who wouldn’t be…) awaken the stress protein HSF-1, AKA heat shock factor-1. This horrible “side effect” of chemotherapy by itself makes the chemotherapy treatment worse than the actual disease by allowing cancer cells to repair themselves – even in the presence of poisonous chemotherapy treatment. Even when used “correctly”, the toxic side-effects of chemotherapy drugs can kill you, destroy your digestive tract, immune system and vascular system. Chemotherapy drugs cause other cancers later on coupled with the grossly impaired immune system, cellular and genetic damage.
Most chemotherapeutic drugs are cytotoxic and work by impairing mitosis (cell division), and targeting fast-dividing cells for destruction. Chemotherapy is supposed to kill fast-growing cancer cells but it also targets the body’s white blood cells that also grow quickly. This destruction also targets the rapidly growing healthy cells in your hair, digestive system, and bone marrow (where blood cells are produced). Unfortunately, in older tumors and in the center of solid tumors, cell division has already ceased, making them insensitive to chemotherapy even if the chemotherapeutic agent does somehow reach the core of the tumor.
Point of diminishing return
Each year, more than 1 million cancer patients receive outpatient chemotherapy, radiation, or both.
On the US National Library of Medicine website (PubMed), – is the news of a study estimating the overall contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year “survival” in adults in the US at a shameful 2.1%. Top this off with 201 side effects listed on the Chemocare website alone. The American Chinese Medicine Association says that “most cancer patients die of chemotherapy”. How does this factor into the medical dictum “First Do No Harm”?
It is actually misleading to promote chemotherapy for cancer treatment because it permanently damages the body and immune system and causes other cancers to spring up later. Ooops! No double-blind testing with chemo. In conventional medicine all you hear about how is that everything needs to be double blind/ placebo controlled to really know the scientific facts. But chemotherapy drugs are NOT double blind/ placebo controlled. If they were, the placebo might do as well or even better than the chemotherapy.
Anything that out-performs chemotherapy would wreak havoc on the Big Pharma hold that is gripping millions of Americans. And yet medical scorn is heaped on natural cures and botanical medicine that only has hundreds if not thousands of years of clinical trials.
No cancer cure in sight? R. Webster Kehr of the Independent Cancer Research Foundation, says that we are not to believe that the federal government is looking for new cancer cures. He goes on to claim: “The medical establishment could have a 90% cure rate for cancer tomorrow if they really wanted to cure cancer…”
There are many alternatives to chemotherapy that work and work very well. If you have been put in the position to have to consider chemotherapy, or if you have tried chemotherapy that failed to put your cancer in remission, you will want to make a careful and informed decision before putting your health in the hands of a chronically failed Big Pharma system.
Sources for this article
- Halperm, M.T., Yabroff, K.R. (2008). Prevalence of outpatient cancer treatment in the United States: estimates from the medical panel expenditures survey (MEPS).
- Cancer Invest. 2008;26:647-651.
- Kehr, R. (2011). Cancer Tutor Cancer Options: The Surprising Power of Mother Nature! Retrieved from http://cancertutor.com
- Moritz, A. (2008). Most Cancer Patients Die of Chemotherapy. American Chinese Medicine Association. Retrieved from http://www.americanchinesemedicineassociation.org
- http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/09/two_percent_gambit_chemotherapy.php
- http://www.americanchinesemedicineassociation.org/Most%20Cancer%20Patients%20Die%20of%20Chemotherapy.htm
uthored by Cancer Nutritionist Craig Stellpflug NDC, CNC, Dayspring Cancer Clinic Scottsdale, AZ
Copyright 2012 Craig Stellpflug© Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this article but only in its entirety