Non-Mainstream Therapies: Are You Curious? Skeptical? Grateful?

Kathy044

I'm curious about nutrition and holistic approaches.

Selena I read about this on Karen Collins' Smart Bytes blog in late 2013. She did a three part series on broccoli (raw or cooked etc.) which included video interviews with Elizabeth Jeffrey an expert on the subject of cruciferous veggie chemistry. Horseradish or sauerkraut will also work if you don't have raw leaves from a salad.

http://www.karencollinsnutrition.com/. select the Smart Bytes blog from the menu. Searching the blog for 'broccoli 'should bring up the items or check the archives for Nov 2013 and Dec 2013.

I've been meaning to post about this blog forever. Thanks for giving me the nudge.

Kathy

ETA this MSG did not all run together when first submitted. I give up.

granny72

Light and anyone else using nigella sativa

How do you eat it? I bought some but it reminds me of petroleum not that I eat that. What do you do to make it palatable? It is one of the spices recommended in Aggarwal's Healing Spices book.

lightandwind

Momine, Believe me, if all the data kept us all alive and well, then you wouldn't hear a peep out of me. No, I don't think there's been any studies done on a natural kitchen sink approach.

Granny, I put a capfull of Nigella Sativa (black seed oil) in my smoothies. The taste of it it takes a little getting used to. Initially I thought it tasted like insect repellent. Now it doesn't bother me at all, and I miss it when it is not in there.

granny72

thanks light - I have both the seeds and the oil. I have tried to use the seeds in my granola. They ruined it. I will try the oil. There is a book called Radical Remission in which all cases listed have lived for many years. There was no one alternative treatment. It was a variety of things tried - diet, exercise, herbs and supplements, healing, meditation, reiki, prayer etc. One of the most intriguing was something called the Life Vessel which is some sort of frequency treatment. Some tried conventional first and others skipped conventional completely. Why not try everything?

Deblc

Talking about fact vs belief....I am hijacking this thread to say that "the Emperor of All Maladies" is being broadcast as a three-part series on PBS this week. I did not finish reading the book, so am glad to see a documentary on it. I've only watched Part 1 so far,but I found it to be a fascinating and very educational look at the history of cancer/cancer treatments and really clarified for me any misconceptions I had about cancer treatments to date. Parts 2 and 3 will also look at the future of cancer treatment. I highly recommend it.

Back to the thread. My MO is super skeptical of anything other than traditional treatments, she only advocates the usual: exercise (very important), more fruits and veggies, less processed food. I myself am very skeptical of the available "alternative" practitioners in my country, so I rely on the Internet for information, and boy am I confused.

I would like to start taking supplements but there have been so many recent articles saying that many supplements were found not to have the ingredients they should, as they are not tested or regulated ....I wouldn't know what brand to buy, dosages, anything like that. So haven't started taking anything.

I would really like to try a few that I see recommended here, any suggestions as to a reputable brand that I can buy in the US?

Momine

Light, you are trying the same argument again, i.e. because science/conventional has not come up with a cure and a cure that has no side effect, conventional medicine should be rejected. This does not make sense, especially in light of the fact that you yourself had surgery and that surgery is probably 95% responsible for you being here to discuss this whole issue (from what you have posted it sounds like you had an early stage cancer).

I know very well that my chances are poor, in spite of my having done all available treatment. The point is that without that treatment, I probably would not be here to tell you that. Even with all the treatment, I had a very high risk of early recurrence (first 2-3 years after DX). There is no guarantee that it will keep me well and cancer-free forever, but right now I am well and cancer-free and I will take it. When I say that I choose life, I mean that I focus on the 70% chance that I will still be here in another 5 years, not on the 30% risk that I will be dead. The way your argument comes across (which may be different from what you actually mean), because the doctors can't promise me 100% cure or even a 95% cure, I should reject the 70% chance of staying alive and just go with the 50%. Why? I honestly do not understand what sense this is supposed to make. It is like a kid rejecting a piece of cake, because his mom won't give him the whole cake.

Nobody here is claiming that if you just do the treatment you will be fine forever. Outfits like Komen tend to convey the message that if you just get your mammo, all will be well. Many of us are very frustrated with and critical of Komen and its ilk for this and other reasons.

I do not have the studies bookmarked, but I will try to find them for you later. They are basically done by identifying patients who refused adjuvant treatment, then matching them to controls who received adjuvant treatment and looking at outcomes. Here is one of them: http://www.npplweb.com/wjpso/fulltext/2/1

Momine

Granny, I sprinkle the seeds on salads. Nigella is also traditionally sprinkled on hummus. It goes well with beans in general, but I also like it on a salad of tomato, avocado and chicken.

Deblc, I stay away from most supplements as well, both because you can't really know what is in the jar and because almost every time I think I have found some supplement that might be useful, I later find out that it has some fairly important downsides or worse.

I do swear by probiotics though. I took them during chemo and never stopped. They helped greatly against the SEs of chemo (both thrush and stomach issues), but later I found a small study suggesting that they can also help boost the efficacy of the chemo. There are also various studies suggesting that gut health is important in cancer prevention. I take a small D and calcium supplement. I used to take more, but apparently I do not metabolize calcium well, because anything over 300mg a day just ends up in my blood stream. I also take a small (100 mg, chelated) of magnesium. I doubt it does anything against cancer, but it keeps the leg cramps at bay and helps me sleep.

Selena, I also read cereal boxes if nothing else is available. I am fond of my wifi, let's say. It has saved me from having to read cereal boxes.

cp418

lightandwind - your frustration with standard treatments I'm sure is shared by many patients. A cancer dx is the most terrifying words a patient can hear - especially if they have a more advanced status. I've also read "The Emperor of All Maladies", however, last night I only viewed part of it as this part of the book raised my BP. Part 2 covered the Tobacco industry and it was described as the biggest scam in fooling the public of the safety of smoking. Our health and safety to a large extent is controlled by the very powerful companies/industries because they control the money. EPA doesn't stand a chance against them and even less with budget cuts. They are free to pollute our environment and justify it by saying it creates jobs. Besides it has minimal penalty or easier to pay fines.

There has been so much promising cancer research published but goes no where without funding. I'm not saying there is a conspiracy but it is simply about MONEY - huge profits whether it is big pharma, pesticide, chemical and fuel companies, others who pollute our environment alter our food (hormones, antibiotics) and justify saying it creates jobs. It goes on and on...... (see our old posts for BZA petition to Pfizer - Duke University did all the research and tried to convince Pfizer to pursue for treatment of breast cancer. Instead Pfizer used BZA to create Duavee for a bigger osteoporosis patient market and went after the bigger money profits.) You can just imagine where the studies on supplements, nutrition, food rank in this paradigm.

IMO the immunotherapy is and will be the break through we need to fight cancer. It will be very complicated and unique for all the various kinds and subtypes of cancer. Realize all the knowledge of genetics and immunology is recent and discovered within the past 10 years. High speed technology in computers and laboratory instrumentation have accelerated research to faster discovery. Think back how it was before computers!!! Maybe some of us will be lucky enough to still be around to see it.

SelenaWolf

lightandwind...

You keep pointing out that the real issue between alternative
and conventional is the acceptance of someone's choices; that if someone
chooses to pursue alternative treatment then everyone must accept- and respect that person's choice to the treatment that
they want. You feel that a lack of respect is at the heart of the creation of this thread. You, also, keep pointing out that “fact" can have variations
of meaning; that someone's belief can be someone else's “fact", ergo “fact"
becomes relative. That if someone sees
a loved one with cancer, die despite have conventional treatment, then that
person's “fact" becomes “chemotherapy kills". I would argue that you are continuing to merge “fact" and “belief"
with perception. The fact remains that
conventional treatment, statistically, currently provides better outcomes than
no treatment or non-conventional treatment.
If we look at your argument again, what really has changed is not the
proven fact, but the individual's perception and emotional response based on
personal experience. Thefact continues to stand; it's the
perception of that fact that is mutable. The perception, therefore, continues to have nothing to do with fact.

There is no lack of respect in pointing out if information is lacking, subject to statistical-, research- or selection bias, from a noted unreliable source with a known political/philosophical axe to grind, or scientifically unverifiable. Critiquing the data does not mean that you are ridiculing the researcher or not being supportive of an individuals right to choice; you are critiquing his/her method. Period. You're analysing the method to get to the heart of the matter, so that you can determine the facts, so that you can see if the facts really do stand up under scrutiny or if the method has biased them in one direction or another.

We could argue this entire issue until the end of time and
still not find a common ground on BCO between alternative and conventional treatments. A huge, philosophical divide exists between the two. This is unfortunate. But for
those of us who support this thread – those of us who pursued- or are pursuing
conventional treatment, but remain deeply interested in alternative treatment
– belief (i.e.,
perception) is not enough for us to embrace something be it conventional- or be
in non-conventional medicine. This is
not an issue of “respecting other choices" as you keep stating, but one of
which we wish to be able to discuss openly-
and freely our findings on a topic that interests us , whether- or not our
discussion leads us to find merit in it or not.

And, yet, you still are not happy and continue to claim that the very presence of such a thread on the board offends you because you have chosen a different path; that questioning anecdotal claims and desiring scientific evidence is, somehow, "bullying" and ridiculing your choice. You've admitted that you've lobbied the mods a number of times to have threads such as this removed from the board (as well as individual comments on other forums) because the questioning nature of them offends your sense of "choice". And, yet, threads like this one and individual posts doubting the science behind certain alternative treatments remain fully visible on the board. This is because questioning a choice does not automatically imply- or convey a lack of respect of the person of who has selected that choice. It's simply QUESTIONING the information at the heart of it. It's a desire to wade through all the extraneous "noise" to get to the actual evidence, so that you can decide (i.e., choose) whether or not that evidence is strong, weak or non-existent.

[While I realize that you will feel that I'm arguing semantics and splitting hairs, what I'm trying to convey is that questioning something does not automatically imply malicious intent nor should it be interpreted as such.]

So, we deliberately moved away from the alternative threads where the feeling is particularly strong that questioning data and sources is not cool and formed another thread in a different forum. This purpose of this thread – if I may make a blanket statement on behalf of others posting on this thread – is to provide a place where those of us who are interested in alternatives/complementary treatments can swap sources and information, and debate-, question-, and critique the value of that information based on whether- or not there is hard science behind it. We want facts. We are not interested in anecdote, although we may use anecdote as a starting point to research the facts. For us, correlation does not equal causation. Our discussions will have everything to do with getting to the science of the current state of the data: good, bad or indifferent.<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I do agree with you on one point; however, conventional standard-of-care for breast cancer treatment continues to need improving. We can't rest on our laurels quite yet,although we have come a long way from the days not so very long ago when one-in-three women diagnosed with breast cancer, died. Is there room for improvement? Abso-frickin'-lutely. I, personally, would love to see the day when we can throw out chemotherapy and radiation treatment, and prevent breast cancer with a vaccine. I imagine that our descendents will look back on our medical practices much like we, today, look back on medieval medical practices as completely barbaric. But right now, it's all we have and it's proven - thus far - to work for more people than not and, until there is something better in place, I'm going to research, question, debate and critique everything I read in an effort to push forward to that something, be it conventional or alternative.

lightandwind

Thanks cp418 for understanding. Yes, I believe they are on to real progress with the immunotherapy, vaccines, etc. I do believe that pharmaceutical companies, and other powerful people, and entities, running the cancer machine, will use money to push out that real progress as there is evidence that it has occurred for many years.

Momine, the fact is there are some things that you just cannot forsee based on a set of information that is polluted by politics. Some people have cancer in their body that live far longer than many going through successive conventional therapies. It doesn't mean that I reject the information in its entirety. I just factor in many other things that I guess you don't when I make my decisions, like people dying following treatments, often soon after, obviously from complications or unforeseen side effects from the treatment, studies that indicate that chemotherapy can exacerbate cancer progression by making healthy cells emit a protein- WNT16-B, the fact that the agents themselves are carcinogens, and may cause second cancers, many, many women recurring after taking them. Nope, that is a risk I'm just not going to take.

I do obviously feel different about surgery, and am grateful for surgery in my particular case, as I do for the all the advancements in surgeries in general.

After my diagnosis, I sort of expected to recur at some point based on the data. After experiencing what I felt was not a quality life day in and day out, and I saw so many other women on this site and others whose cancer recurred and/or progressed after years and years of AIs, I decided against it. I am so glad that I did and that in itself breathed new life into me. My blood work was all over the place when I was taking the AI, dangerously high calcium levels, liver numbers- haywire. That is fact. It did not make sense to me to support my health with something that was clearly destroying it. I would rather die of natural causes than at the hands of greedy corrupt corporate entities that have proven to be greater killers than cancer itself. No matter what. I won't regret, getting off the AI and rejecting neoadjuntive chemotherapy. My bloodwork including cancer markers are normal and I am congruent with how I believe, and found that there are others who "believe" like me who are alive and well too. So I feel best when I am in company of those who understand and know what I am saying and don't want to argue with me because I "believe" that supporting my health has got to be number one. Health is life. Come what may. For some of us it is a crap shoot, for others it was never a fair fight to begin with, for others, maybe the way we live our lives can make the difference. So that is what my focus is on. We all get to choose where we place our bets, and no matter where we place our bet, there is no guarantee that we will win. When our number is up...the number is up. Until then we all have to make the best decisions that we can for ourselves.

lightandwind

Selena, Wth is this?

"you still are not happy and continue to claim that the very presence of such a thread on the board offends you because you have chosen a different path; that questioning anecdotal claims and desiring scientific evidence is, somehow, "bullying" and ridiculing your choice. You've admitted that you've lobbied the mods a number of times to have threads such as this removed from the board (as well as individual comments on other forums) because the questioning nature of them offends your sense of "choice". And, yet, threads like this one and individual posts doubting the science behind certain alternative treatments remain fully visible on the board."

First of all, I'm happy, never claimed the presence of any thread offended me. That is why I am here. I'm questioning you, you're questioning me. It's all good. I thought we were here to have a critical discussion, hoping to gain some understanding and respect for each other. That is all. Never once lobbied the mods to have any thread removed, nor individual comments on any forum. If I don't like what I read, I ignore it or respond to it. What's your point? I'm not trying to censor anyone, but point out what respect looks like. I'm only offended by the obvious inequality regarding the kind of support, space to express, and be validated that exists for members on the boards. There are only a few unkind women here now, and everyone knows who they are. Personally it would bother me if someone said that I was unsupportive, a bully, unkind, or disrespectful. I would certainly be willing to self reflect. You're obvious open objection to me, harassing me about something that I have never even done, belittling me because I believe and choose what I do, is why I don't feel comfortable hanging around this site. Do you want me to feel uncomfortable here or do consider your comment kind to me?

Deblc

Momine and others taking probitotics : what day to day benefit have you found? Does it help with stomach problems, like acid reflux? Is it supposed to help with cancer prevention and how? Also, is it in tablet form, if so what is the recommended dosage? I only know that you can get it from yogurt. Any info is appreciated, thanks.

lightandwind

Kayb, I agree that perception, influences belief...wholeheartedly.

Selena there is evidence that gives me reason to believe that data gathered in cancer treatment is not "factual" and derived from fradulent sources. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive...

If you equate the data with fact then that is your "belief". That is a difference between us..it's how we believe. Fact is women are still dying from breast cancer.

Momine

Deb, I just take standard probiotic capsules from the drug store. I have taken different brands over the years. I first took them years ago when I had more or less chronic yeast infections. The probiotics cleared it up for good. For the same reason they help against chemo-induced thrush. Basically they keep your intestines humming properly by keeping the bacterial flora in balance. I am not sure how this is supposed to help against cancer, but have seen some stuff here and there suggesting it might be helpful.

WinningSoFar

At the risk of adding another personal anecdote to this discussion, my age and condition at diagnosis contributed to my choice of conventional treatments. I was 64 and had stage IV IBC which was inoperable and had already spread for 5 spots in my spine. I was in declining health and that is an understatement. I could do chemo or I could do nothing or I could do alternative approaches. Those were my choices. My doctor gave me about a year to live. Chemotherapy looked the most promising to me to buy more time. After all there are large scale, multiple, blind clinical trials that show efficacy for many people. Alternatives--not so much. Doing nothing never entered my mind as my personality is that if I have to go down, I'll go down swinging.

So chemo it was. I basically couldn't wait to get started. I didn't care about side effects, because slowly dying over the next year sounded worse. I didn't care about it not being a cure, because if it bought me five years that's five years I wouldn't otherwise have. Luckily, for me, chemo within 3 rounds made my cancer operable. Then radiation completely took care of my five bone mets (completely gone). Then another five rounds of chemo took care of my lymph nodes (all cancer gone). Did I suffer a major side effect (probably from Avastin, which isn't even chemo). Yes, I did.

But I'm here. I'm NED. I'm feeling great and work out with a trainer. I don't hurt, my hair is back, my life is back. The only thing I have left is two funky toenails. Small price to pay.

I don't care that conventional treatment is not a cure. If I live to 80, and die then, I will have lived a full lifespan, even without a cure. Turning my cancer into a chronic disease is a victory for me personally.

gypsyjo

WinningSoFar - Thanks for posting your story. I am so happy that you are doing so well and posting about it. It gives us all hope, no matter what our diagnosis.

BrooksideVT

Momine, that study is fascinating. I'm particularly struck by the indication that the preponderance of women who opted out of recommended therapies had apparently not been treated in teaching hospitals. This makes me wonder whether communication might have been a factor. In my very prominent center, I received layers of information, thankfully beginning with the very basic, then moving right into studies and statistics. Surgery, for me, was a nobrainer--I wanted the tumor out! It was the statistics that "allowed" me to choose lumpectomy plus rads rather than mastectomy or lumpectomy alone, to stick with rads despite my absolute horror of the process, and also to continue (thus far, at least) with my AI. I know the odds of healthily ever after are greatly in my favor. I also know that I may well wind up on the wrong side of those statistics. For me, that wrong-side potential sparks my interest in alternatives. So also does my expectation that anything I do to discourage my breast cancer is likely to discourage future ailments, and lead to better overall health.

I'm skeptical of all unproven therapies, some less so than others, but simultaneously attracted to them. Skeptical or not, I'm very happy to give lots of them a try. Struggling to keep my BMI low, exercising, managing diet to avoid blood glucose spikes, moving ever more firmly toward healthier eating, and the toughest one--stress reduction, all make absolute sense to me. Moreover, as MombieZombie pointed out several posts ago, taking these steps--doing something proactive--gives me (a control freak) a sense of control over something otherwise totally outside my (or traditional medicine's) control.

Momine

Winning, Yay for NED - such a handsome boy

Brookside, both reading various stories here and talking to friends and acquaintances, I am more and more convinced that a lot of cancer docs are absolutely terrible at communicating with patients and that this communication failure ultimately leads to unnecessary deaths, or at least unnecessarily early ones. I have also observed how much stress and anguish it can cause patients when they get incomplete or downright wrong info and/or never have a medical person really take the time to talk them through the process.

SelenaWolf

One thing that has always perplexed me is, why is diet and exercise now considered "alternative" when it has, always, been a part of medicine as a whole? I mean, every doctor I've every had has made a review of my diet and exercise programme part of my yearly physical. Good, balanced nutrition has, always, been a factor of my health care; my activities (what, how much, how often) has, always, been part of the equation, as well; but, now, diet and exercise is seen as "alternative"... why?

ruthbru

Winning, you are winning indeed!!!

The whole staying as healthy as possible component (weight, diet, exercise, stress reduction etc.) is something that everyone is the world should be doing! It reduces recurrence risk for us, it wards off (or delays) about every other health problem one might have, and if (because of bad luck, heredity, whatever) you do have something go wrong, good overall health will give you the reserves to help you withstand your treatments and make a quicker, better, more full recovery. This thought was brought to my mind when I visited with a good friend today. Her whole family has a terrible history of heart disease. Several of her obese sisters died of heart problems in their early 60s. My friend (who is 74, slim, and works out), recently had a stent put in because of a blockage. She figured her healthy life style delayed her problem (caused by heredity) for a decade, has given her a chance to make a complete recovery, and (hopefully) enjoy many more good years.

ruthbru

This is not about cancer, but completely fascinating!

It might sound like a really old wives' tale, but a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon potion for eye infections may hold the key to wiping out the modern-day superbug MRSA, according to new research.

The 10th-century "eyesalve" remedy was discovered at the British Library in a leather-bound volume of Bald's Leechbook, widely considered to be one of the earliest known medical textbooks.

Christina Lee, an expert on Anglo-Saxon society from the School of English at the University of Nottingham, translated the ancient manuscript despite some ambiguities in the text.

"We chose this recipe in Bald's Leechbook because it contains ingredients such as garlic that are currently investigated by other researchers on their potential antibiotic effectiveness," Lee said in a video posted on the university's website.

"And so we looked at a recipe that is fairly straightforward. It's also a recipe where we are told it's the 'best of leechdoms' -- how could you not test that? So we were curious."

Lee enlisted the help of the university's microbiologists to see if the remedy actually worked.

The recipe calls for two species of Allium (garlic and onion or leek), wine and oxgall (bile from a cow's stomach) to be brewed in a brass vessel.

"We recreated the recipe as faithfully as we could. The Bald gives very precise instructions for the ratio of different ingredients and for the way they should be combined before use, so we tried to follow that as closely as possible," said microbiologist Freya Harrison, who led the work in the lab at the School of Life Sciences.

The book included an instruction for the recipe to be left to stand for nine days before being strained through a cloth. Efforts to replicate the recipe exactly included finding wine from a vineyard known to have existed in the ninth century, according to Steve Diggle, an associate professor of sociomicrobiology, who also worked on the project.

The researchers then tested their recipe on cultures of MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a type of staph bacterium that does not respond to commonly used antibiotic treatments.

The scientists weren't holding out much hope that it would work -- but they were astonished by the lab results.

"What we found was very interesting -- we found that Bald's eyesalve is incredibly potent as an anti-Staphylococcal antibiotic in this context," Harrison said.

"We were going from a mature, established population of a few billion cells, all stuck together in this highly protected biofilm coat, to really just a few thousand cells left alive. This is a massive, massive killing ability."

Diggle said the team also asked collaborators in the U.S. to test the recipe using an "in vivo" wound model -- meaning it's in a live organism -- "and basically the big surprise was that it seems to be more effective than conventional antibiotic treatment."

The scientists were worried they wouldn't be able to repeat the feat. But three more batches, made from scratch each time, have yielded the same results, Harrison said, and the salve appears to retain its potency for a long time after being stored in bottles in the refrigerator.

The team says it now has good, replicated data showing that the medicine kills up to 90% of MRSA bacteria in "in vivo" wound biopsies from mice.

Harrison says the researchers are still not completely sure how it works, but they have a few ideas -- namely, that there might be several active components in the mixture that work to attack the bacterial cells on different fronts, making it very hard for them to resist; or that by combining the ingredients and leaving them to steep in alcohol, a new, more potent bacteria-fighting molecule is created in the process.

"I still can't quite believe how well this 1,000-year-old antibiotic actually seems to be working," Harrison said. "When we got the first results we were just utterly dumbfounded. We did not see this coming at all."

She added: "Obviously you can never say with utter certainty that because it works in the lab it's going to work as an antibiotic, but the potential of this to take on to the next stage and say, 'yeah, really does it work as an antibiotic' is just beyond my wildest dreams, to be honest."

Lee, who translated the text from Old English, believes the discovery could change people's views of the medieval period as the "Dark Ages."

"The Middle Ages are often seen as the 'Dark Ages' -- we use the term 'medieval' these days ... as pejorative -- and I just wanted to do something that explains to me how people in the Middle Ages looked at science," she said.

 

whollyhealing

Hi there, I'm brand new here. This is a topic dear to my heart. I am stage III ER-PR-HER2+. I did a bilateral mastectomy and had 25 lymph nodes removed.I finished my chemo and Herceptin regime. I refused radiation. I am currently juicing 4 times a day and try to do coffee enemas at least 4 times a week. I take apricot seeds, do the essiac tea, take multiple vitamins, use frankincense in coconut oil on my skin, take cannabis oil and CBD oil, do infrared saunas twice a week, take Naltraxone and am currently doing IV's of DCA/ALA and alternately with high dose vitamin C, mistletoe and wormwood. I try to exercise 5 times a week and meditate daily. It sounds like a lot but truly it has empowered me to take this into my own hands. Afterall a drug will never cure cancer,your own immune system will. I hope that everyone tries to do radical self care, it really keeps the depression down and fear away. I practice EFT and am currently working on getting certified. I find that it helps with the emotional side of things in such a great way. I would suggest anyone reading this check out Dr. Divi in Vancouver. She runs free webinars and her information has been life changing. Karen

SelenaWolf

ruthbru... based on family history, I have a much higher risk of dying from heart disease or stroke than I do from cancer, even with my personal risk for cancer recurrence factored in. Heart disease gallops gleefully through my family; my father died of a massive MI at 48; two of his brothers and a half-brother, also, died of heart disease before they were 50. My mother has lived with high blood pressure since her first pregnancy and, over the years, she has developed heart disease as a result; two years ago, she suffered a mild stroke from which she has recovered nicely. Her brother, mother, maternal grandmother, three aunts and two great-aunts died of strokes. One of my brothers is showing signs of early heart disease, despite being vegetarian and very active. Conversely, the only two in the family who have had breast cancer is my mother and I.

So my doctor's and I have always been conscious of the importance of lifestyle for overall good health. Will I out-run heart disease? I hope so, but, probably not; my genes may be against me. However - maybe like your friend - my lifestyle will delay it somewhat and help me to maintain the physical strength I will need to combat its effects as I age.

ruthbru

We have lots of heart disease in my family too. I figure I will be really good until I am about 85; and then eat every fatty, rich, salty, sugary, cream-based food I can get my hands on so that I maybe can just drop dead of a heart attack instead of some lingering type of deal. I am BAD!

SelenaWolf

ruthbru... another thing some medieval practitioners did was pack battle wounds with moldy cheese. They did not know why it helped prevent infection, but it did. It wasn't until centuries later that the antibiotic properties of that mold - penicillin - was documented by science.

ruthbru

That's why it's important to investigate the science behind the folk remedies.....some of them really do work!

ruthbru

Here is something I think we can all agree on!

A small study has found that a specific type of stress management after breast cancer surgery offers long-term benefits to women.

The study was published online on March 23, 2015 by the journal Cancer. Read the abstract of “Long-term psychological benefits of cognitive-behavioral stress management for women with breast cancer: 11-year follow-up of a randomized controlled trial.”

In the year 2000, 240 women who recently had surgery to remove stage 0 to stage IIIB breast cancer (early-stage disease) were randomly assigned to one of two stress management classes:

• a 10-week cognitive behavioral stress management class that included learning relaxation techniques and coping skills in a supportive group setting
• a one-day seminar on breast cancer education

In earlier reports, the researchers found that women who participated in the cognitive behavioral stress management class had better quality of life and were less depressed at 1-year and 5-year follow-up compared to women who were in the one-day seminar.

In this study, the researchers wanted to see if the cognitive behavioral stress management class offered benefits 8 to 15 years after the study.

The researchers were able to contact 100 women who had been in the study:

• 51 had been in the cognitive behavioral stress management class
• 49 had been in the one-day seminar

The results showed that women who had been in the cognitive behavioral stress management class continued to have better quality of life and better mood than women who had been in the one-day seminar. These differences were statistically significant, which means they were likely because of the cognitive behavioral stress management class and not just due to chance.

"Women with breast cancer who participated in the study initially used stress management techniques to cope with the challenges of primary treatment to lower distress,” said Jamie Stagl, of Massachusetts General Hospital who was the lead author of the study. ”Because these stress management techniques also give women tools to cope with fears of recurrence and disease progression, the present results indicate that these skills can be used to reduce distress and depressed mood and optimize quality of life across the survivorship period as women get on with their lives."

The researchers found that the breast cancer survivors in the cognitive behavioral stress management group reported their mood and quality of life at the 15-year follow-up were similar to what is reported by women who haven’t been diagnosed with breast cancer. The cognitive behavioral stress management techniques also were helpful for women of various races and ethnic backgrounds.

More and more women are surviving many, many years beyond breast cancer. So the question of how to live the healthiest life possible – both physically and emotionally – is increasingly important.

The current findings highlight the possibility that psychologists and social workers may be able to “inoculate” women with stress management skills early in treatment to help them maintain long-term psychosocial health, Stagl said.

 

DivineMrsM

Yes, proper diet and exercise should be a priority for everyone. When some women turn to diet and exercise regimens after a bc dx, and do not use conventional medicine, I would think that's when it is considered alternative.

Time and again, tho, we hear about women who've been very disciplined living a clean life of eating all the right foods and getting the proper amount of exercise who still wind up with a bc dx. They are shocked because they thought their lifestyle was a guarantee against getting cancer. So diet and exercise is not a 100% preventative measure. I agree, however, that having had a healthy lifestyle prior to a cancer diagnosis may help the body in dealing with the disease and its treatments.

SpecialK

ruthbru - I actually participated in a very similar trial, linked below.  My takeaway was a better understanding of what I could control and what I couldn't, and how to reduce stress with that understanding.  We were taught forms of meditation in a weekly class, and did some journaling and stress assessments, along with blood and saliva sampling for the quantifiable stress hormone testing before, and after, being taught the meditation over six weeks - I found it very valuable.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01177124

 

Deblc

Wish I could participate in a stress workshop