Ways Integrative Cancer Treatment Programs Can Benefit You

VIDEO: Integrative Cancer Treatment: Dr. Sean Devlin.

You may want to try a few complementary therapies, or to change your diet. You may even want build yourself a full Complementary programme around your Doctor?s prescribed treatment. But where do you start? Try the page entitled “Building an integrated treatment programme -Your first 15 steps”.  It is supported by an easy-to-read book.
Information with no vested interests – information you can trust
Looking at the items on the left of your screen:

Orthodox medicine tends to focus on surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Some, more enlightened oncologists, may even suggest supplements like vitamin D or Astragalus. You may also be encouraged to have acupuncture or recommended to use Ultrasound instead of surgery. You will find everything here from the latest information on over 110 cancer drugs, to advances in radiotherapy!
Occasionally, some Doctors explanations can be a little complicated at times – patients call it Doctorspeak so we have even included a kiddies guide to what it all means. In fact, this whole section tries to make each area of orthodox medicine easy to understand. There are plenty of other charities you can turn to for more detailed – and often more complicated – information.
To help you look for ways you can start to help yourself, we have the UK´s most comprehensive knowledge bank on Complementary and Integrative therapies. We see ourselves as the UK experts in this field.
This section includes complementary therapies, many with clinical trial research evidence, that patients find really helpful – like Tai Chi, meditation, acupuncture, hands on healing, lymphatic drainage; it includes dietary advice and supplements for people on chemotherapy.

Then we include ´Alternative´ Cancer Therapies. Here the truth is that the lines are blurring. Is a diet therapy an ´alternative´ or is it complementary because others use it simultaneously with orthodox medicine? We have just recently tried to separate those complementary therapies known to help in building an Integrative Treatment Programme, from newer and ´alternative´ cancer therapies.
This section includes alternative treatments such as Virotherapy, Dendritic Cell Vaccines, localised Hyperthermia (also called Ablation, HIFU, Ablatherm) which already has clinical trials for prostate and breast cancer; and Photo-Dynamic Therapy which former cancer Tsar Professor Mike Richards was putting NHS focus on.

Then there are ´treatments´ such as brachytherapy for breast cancer, Intravenous Vitamin C, The Gerson Therapy, the Cyberknife,  antineoplastons, which have no such clinical trials to support their use. Frankly some are extremely controversial, some are definitely not worthy of consideration, some are used in Hospitals and clinics in America and Europe today  – and yes, even in the UK.

Patients ask us about all sorts of things they have heard of, like graviola, or zeolite or Metabolic B-17 Therapy. We are quite clear: The fact is that none of these is a cancer cure – but then nor is Herceptin or Tamoxifen. Some things may help some people on their individual cancer. But, be clear, at CANCERactive we do not believe any single cancer treatment is, today, a cancer ´cure´.

But we genuinely do believe that
        * the way forward for people touched by cancer is building a thorough, tailored, integrated programme of therapies around your doctor´s recommendations, to increase your personal odds of survival, and even prevent a cancer returning, and,
        * ´even today, most cancer is curable and, if not curable, can at least be held at bay´ (Henry Friedman, Duke Cancer Center, Carolina)
More Informed, Personal Decisions:

It is not our job to give advice. We provide information – all the information, so you can make more informed choices, better choices, about your own health and well-being. We do our research thoroughly, we have orthodox and complementary experts helping and writing and that is why you will find more on this website than on others. We firmly believe that building an complementary and integrative treatment programme can increase your survival times and even prevent a cancer returning, as the American Cancer Society report stated.
We understand it is controversial but we will not just ´dismiss´ an alternative therapy and ignore it. That is really unhelpful to people touched by cancer who want a balanced view and search the internet which simply reveals extremes often the result of vested interest. We aim to report accurately on what we find, warts and all. You have a right to know.
Recent research showed that people with cancer like to use the web because it empowers them and puts them back in charge of their cancer. This ´treatment´ section aims to do just that. Self empowerment; giving you your options, making more informed personal choices.

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