Safe supplements with chemo?

pennylane

Hi,I am finished with chemo and am posing this question for a friend who will be starting chemo this Thursday.  Does any one have any information about supplements which would not compromise the effectiveness of chemo and yet help the patient stay strong.  When I underwent treatment 4-years ago I was told to keep away from anti-oxidants and in general other supplements were a gray area.  Is there any new information...we were especially wondering about the super-mushroom supplements from Japan....Thanks so much if you can help...

JeninMichigan

In my opinion, it is a personal decision.   Many doctors will tell you to wait until after chemo.  I disagree.  I took supplements and antioxidants all during chemo and radiation.    I also took a supplement that had shitake and Miatake (sp?) mushrooms.      I took CoQ10 Enzymes, Flax Oil, a boat load of calcium and vit. D and a host of others.    I was NED (no evidence of disease) after three of my six cycles of chemo and have remained NED now and it has been 13 months since I finished chemo.     So, I don't think they compromised anything.   In fact, I didn't even catch the common cold during chemo and radiation let alone anything else.   

Jennifer

dharmamama

There is a great deal of controversy in the medical field about antioxidant use and chemo. My doc advised me to avoid antioxidants 2 days prior to and 2 days after chemo. This  advice seems to be a  compromise for those of us that want to benefit from the use of antioxidants, while preserving the effectiveness of chemo. Supplements that don't work as antioxidants seem to be safe during the active phase of chemo though. 

I am currently taking the following supplements with my Onc and Acupuncturist's approval:

Milk Thistle (for liver support) 900 mg/day, Alpha Lipoic Acid (helps prevent neuropathy) 300 mg/day, L-Glutamine (protects and rejuvinates cells in the digestive tract) 1000mg/day, Evening Primrose Oil (for her 2 positive cancers only) 1500-3000 mg/day and Corialis mushrooms to increase NK cells.

Milk Thistle and Alpha Lipoic Acid have antioxidative effects, so I do not take them 2 days before or 2 days after chemo.

Hope this helps  

anondenet

This article was based on a study performed by Dr. Keith Black and his colleagues. Keith I. Block, M.D., is the Director of Integrative Medical Education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine; Medical Director of the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Evanston, Illinois; and editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Integrative Cancer Therapies.

Despite lingering beliefs to the contrary, recently examined data strongly indicate that for most cancer patients, using antioxidant supplements during chemotherapy is not only safe, it often enhances its effectiveness.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Education have published a review that may have you rethinking your opinions about this controversial topic.

"There's a lot of confusion surrounding this issue, and the advice coming out of many medical institutions is based on the belief that antioxidants may interfere with the chemotherapeutic effect on cancer tissue," says lead author Keith I. Block, MD. "The question has been, Do antioxidants protect healthy tissue, or do they protect cancer tissues from effects of chemotherapy?"

After examining the literature from 845 studies of the simultaneous use of antioxidants and chemotherapy, the team found that 19 studies met the study design criteria to include in the review - all randomized controlled clinical trials, which yield the most scientifically sound data. A total of 1,554 patients with a wide variety of cancers (most advanced or relapsed cases) were evaluated.

The studies examined the impact on 17 different chemotherapy drugs when they were used in conjunction with one or more of the following antioxidant supplements:

7 Glutathione
7 Melatonin
7 Vitamin A
7 Antioxidant mixture
7 Vitamin C
7 N-acetylcysteine
7 Vitamin E
7 Ellagic acid

What the team found, Block says, was "solid and consistent data showing that antioxidants did not interfere with chemotherapeutic effects - and in fact mitigated cancer treatment toxicity - in most patients." Here are just a few examples of their findings:

7 Thirty-one percent of patients who used vitamin E supplements experienced neurotoxicity during treatment, compared to 86 percent of the control group. Patients had malignant cancers that included lung, head and neck, ovarian, and testicular.

7 Glutathione use during chemotherapy resulted in significantly reduced neurotoxicity - and significantly improved tumor response and survival rates - among patients suffering from cancers that included ovarian, colorectal, and gastric.

7 A number of studies showed that patients who used melatonin supplements had consistently better chemotherapeutic responses, significantly fewer side effects, and significantly higher survival rates overall compared to patients who did not use melatonin. Cancers included in these data include lung, colorectal, and breast.

7 In one study, metastatic breast cancer patients who used vitamin A supplements had more than double the treatment response rates of patients in the control group - and 38 percent experienced complete tumor shrinkage. In another study, 43-month survival rates among post-menopausal women was 78 percent, compared to 19 percent among women who did not take vitamin A supplements.

Shrinking tumors and lengthening lives is of course what cancer treatment is all about, but don't underestimate the importance of reducing side effects. After all, fewer ill effects mean fewer patients forego their prescribed chemotherapy regimens.

When patients get sick from chemotherapy, their regimens often are interrupted - either on their doctors' orders or because they choose to stop following them. In fact, Block says, side effects lead as many as one-third of cancer patients to abandon treatment altogether.

Both common sense and existing research tell us that by reducing dosing and interrupting or diminishing a patient's chemotherapy schedule, the efficacy of the treatment - and therefore the outcome - is diminished.

"The potential for antioxidants to reduce chemotherapy side effects is the larger issue behind our research," Block says. "Fewer side effects mean more patients will complete their prescribed regimens at the full recommended dosages and on schedule. We believe the research suggests that antioxidants can not only diminish toxicity, they can improve outcomes in terms of tumor response, survival rates, and treatment tolerance."

Confused and concerned chemotherapy patients often believe they're taking the conservative route by avoiding antioxidants, says Block, "but science substantially supports an approach that integrates both. If you want to pursue therapies that are evidence- based, the current body of knowledge clearly suggests that most people are better off using antioxidants in conjunction with chemotherapy than not."

This is not to say that there won't be an occasional interaction or adverse effect from the use of supplements; there will be, he says.

"When it comes to combining natural products with conventional therapies, people should not assume that all natural products work well with all conventional treatments in all patients," says Block. "Integrative medicine needs to be individualized, but the average patient can benefit from a chemotherapy-supplement regimen that's tailored to his or her individual needs, and put together with a clear understanding of how the various drugs and supplements might interact."

"There are a lot of variables that we can do something about - and those include our lifestyles and diets, as well as the individualized use of antioxidant supplements," he says. "By precisely combining conventional and complementary therapies like antioxidant supplementation, and tailoring that regimen to the needs of each patient, we can have a substantial effect on mitigating toxicity and patient outcomes."

Source:

Block KI et al., Impact of Antioxidant Supplementation on Chemotherapeutic Efficacy: A Systematic Review of the Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials, Cancer Treatment Reviews (March 14, 2007)

pennylane

Thank you so much Jen, Dharma, and Anom....Your answers are so thorough and thoughtful...This is for a friend at work and we have all been reading here today.  I am so proud to have a support group that includes really solid minds like yours...Jen and Dharma, you are still so new to this.   I pray for your continued successful treatments....Best wishes, P

London-Virginia

It is a tricky call isn't it - I am a life-long eater of organics and right up until very recently used vits and supplements etc.  Given all of that, I felt that for the purposes of chemo,  I could take a contrarian view and actually go for a clean slate approach, other than some intermittent use of some very ordinary multivits/mins, D3 and the occasional acidophilus.  I felt that v. small does ought to be ok.  As you know, this is a hot topic overall.  My Oncs in Britain counsel common sense and caution but leave the choice with me.  I do however think tht there are some matters that concern me, as an er/PR pos HER neg woman.  Hence, an experiment for me in NOT using supplements right now.  I want the chemo to have a good run at it.  I can go right back to supplements later.

I think it is the Sloan Kettering website which has the most fantastic resource  for supplements, complementary items etc, which gives very useful gen on a vast number of items and you can pick up some very useful info there. 

 As a side comment, on a few occasions now, the oncs have advised me against or given me other medecines for SEs (example:  I had terrible constipation but found Dulcolax had me exploding!  NO joke actually.  Doc:  ("ooh no, far to strong, have this Lactulose fluid".  We had a discussion about the strength of over-the-counter medecines and I was quite surprised at how strong some are, when you consider you can just buy these things anywhere.  In addition - and I think this is a good thing -it seems to me that probably vits etc are quite a bit either stronger, or effective than we realise, so quite low doses, (other than when we have blood tests and see a genuine defficiency) are excellent for us.  This seems all to the good to me, and I think that an approach to life of " a little of waht you fancy does you go" may actually turn out to be wisdom!!

 One tip -  I find that chocolate and coffee ice cream on a about day 3 of chemo tx soothes the tummy and lifts the mood; serotonin perhaps!

 Best wishes on your journey

schaefer

Hello my name is Rainer,

I have seen your quiery and would like to give you more info as I have been active in this field of "supplementing" conventional chemotherapy. I am trained as a specialist in the fields of cancer and anaesthetics and I have been an active consultant in UK for many years. I am not interested in "maybe"-treatments. My interest is based on scientific natural remedy treatments in combination with oncological treatments. If you are interested dont hesitate to get more free info from me by sending me a mail to schaeferrainer@yahoo.de.

thenewme

Oh brother. Lemme guess - you know the top secret cancer cure that "big pharma" won't profit from or tell us about?  Spam reported