CAM - a harsh criticism on Complimentary/Alternative Medicine

[Jackie07]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/18/health/alternative-medicine-offit/index.html?hpt=hp_t3 Be sure to read the readers responses as well.

[tricia keegan]

I so agree!

[sarah]

Great that you posted this. As cancer patients we want very much to believe in a miracle cure and therefore are susceptible to quacks. Steve Jobs had so much money and access to people and yet he died too young. It makes you mad.
As a doctor's daughter, I agree but I believe there is a place for alternative medicine in conjunction with normal protocols. My father was definitely not into over medicating people and strongly against anti-biotics unless you were dying!!! he hated quacks, but he was very open to acupuncture and supplements, etc but in their place.
I know that acupunture has helped pain in many cases and diet and supplements in sensible considerations can help as can exercise but certainly they must never replace normal medical protocols
It makes me sad and angry when people decide to "cure" themselves by alternative methods only.
Check the stats, which works better? I'm here today after a dangerous recurrence because of aggressive medical treatment which non the less had some nasty side effects but I've enjoyed those stolen 10 years enormously and hoping greedily for more.
So please don't believe in snake oil. While there are many herbal and alternatives that may ease this journey don't count on those alone.
And most of all, enjoy life and be happy.
Health and happiness
sarah

[NEDenise]

Sarah,
You expressed my feeling/opinions so clearly...I probably don't even need to post my own!

I too don't see anything wrong with integrative healing and treatment. As long as it doesn't interfere with the other treatments we are receiving...what can it hurt? I've had Reiki masters visit during chemo. It may not have "cured" anything...but it was relaxing, and calmed my spirit. It certainly didn't prevent my medicine from killing cancer cells. So...it may not have helped...but it surely didn't hurt. Win/win as far as I can see.[

On the other hand, someone in my community with HER2 BC has decided - foolishly, IMHO - to forego treatment with Herceptin, or other chemo. She's taking a pass on radiation too. She has stage IIb cancer, and after her lumpectomy (and the discovery of 2 positive nodes) she has decided to treat her cancer with meditation, lots of green tea, and a colon cleansing regimen. After speaking with her at a church function, as she walked away from us, I turned to my husband and we said, almost in unison, "She's gonna die." That is NOT a good use of alternative medicine!

That's the sort of approach I am violently, adamantly opposed to! Using alternative medical treatments INSTEAD of conventional medicine to treat cancer! Really? That's the sort of thing that turns people off to supplementing their treatment with alternative approaches.

I suspect for Dr. Offit...prayer is also "magical thinking". And I wouldn't try to manage my disease with prayer alone! Even God would think that was foolish!!

I know that my fate is ultimately in God's hands...but I can't believe the God who loves me wants me to abandon reason, and not use the medical knowledge available to me, and my medical team. Someone once told me that if you want to imagine how much God loves us...think about how much you love your child...then realize that God loves that child EVEN MORE than you do. I don't know about you other parents...but for me...that's an AMAZING amount of love! A God who loves me like that definitely wants me to make use of all the tools available to me in my fight to kick cancer's a$$!

I also disagree with the doctor in the article when he talks about "false hope". I submit...there's no such thing as false hope...all hope is real. And, without hope...how could any of us...who fight stage IV cancer every single day...or are suffering through chemo side effects...how could we keep going? But hope alone is just gonna get me dead!

Okay...for someone who started off by saying I didn't even really need to post....this is awfully long!! :)

Come on...my posts are always long! Don't act so surprised!

Anyway...interesting topic/video. Thanks for posting it, Jackie.
Here's hoping that using "all the tools available" will get every one of us to NED!!

Denise

['lizbeth]

Interesting . . . I've used both "conventional" medicines and "alternatives". And I'm licensed to provide this "snake oil".

I hear many times about people refusing to use conventional medicine and by following a specific diet, and some unique approaches they reach NED, even some stage IV. And I've seen many, including myself use conventional medicine and I'm NED years later. I would have liked to use alternatives, and I did receive acupuncture every week for a long time.

We are so quick to say that it had to be the standard of care that "cured" us, but was it?

I have experienced many unique recoveries by using meridian and points. I was in the worst pain of my life after an infection in my surgery drain. Agonizing, and the chinese doctor put needles in to try and stop it. The crazy thing was I hurt so badly that I couldn't even describe the exact location of the pain. Upon more questioning the MD moved the needles to my knuckle and the pain was gone in less than 15 minutes. I was amazed, and thrilled that I didn't need to take pain relievers with narly side effects.

My husband had fallen on his elbow, everyone was asking what that egg sized swelling was that persisted for months. I finally made him an appointment to go to the doctor. The day before I did a Jin Shin Acutouch session with him, the next morning the swelling had disappeared. The doctor said she would have drained it with a needle. All I did was lay my hands on his body in certain locations and a specific sequence.

Since then I use Jin Shin often to help him heal different things. I'm working on the 5th depth which affects the blood, and I am curious if he will have different blood counts.

I think when we discount things, to expect it to fit into our conventional medical system we cheat ourselves out of tools for healing.

[AlaskaAngel]

More food for thought:

Like many other early stage HER2 positive bc patients, had I been treated with trastuzumab, like so many other early stage bc patients with small tumors like mine, I would be counted statistically as being someone who remained with no evidence of disease because of the trastuzumab.

Like most other early stage bc patients, had I been treated with 10 years of tamoxifen instead of choosing to cut the dose in half and then stop it entirely after 1 3/4 years, I would be counted statistically as being some one with no evidence of disease because of the extended use of tamoxifen.

There is no way to know for certain whether I benefitted from the standard conventional treatment that I completed (CAFx6, IMRT rads, or the limited tamoxifen).

No officially recognized credit would be clearly designated as having been the cause of my continuing remission through the diet or exercise and weight management I've continued to do.

The last paragraph of the article is this:

"Like conventional therapies, alternative remedies shouldn't be given a free pass. They should be held to the same high standards of safety and efficacy. And where scientific studies don't exist, we should insist that they be performed. Otherwise, we'll continue to be susceptible to the worst kinds of quackery."

I agree with the recommendation made in that paragraph, but I think the emphasis is unfortunately slanted rather than being even-handed. The reason we have "quackery" is because well-designed thorough studies are usually not done to evaluate more natural treatments to demonstrate what works and what does not. If more definitive studies could be done to evaluate natural treatments without being contaminated by the wasted application of standard recommended conventional treatments to those who get no benefit from stardard treatments, those natural treatments that do work would be recognized for their true value and we would know more about which cancers benefit from which treatments -- natural or conventional.

Charlatan claims of efficacy are made for standard treatments too. If those substances were fully evaluated properly, we would understand much more clearly that such therapies as trastuzumab do NOT work "better" when they are "combined with chemotherapy" for early stage bc, because we would have documented evidence to show which early stage bc patients demonstrated no recurrence when being treated with trastuzumab used alone. We would understand much better just when it is the chemotherapy that is given credit that is unproven and it is the addition of the trastuzumab that "works better".

It might also be more obvious which patients' cancers recur because of the addition of conventional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

[ElaineM]

I have used both conventional and complementary/alternative medicine successfully for 14 1/2 years. If done correctly with good medical providers the various types of medicine can support each other very well.