i posted before but i am posting this again....resveratrol in supplement form is not recommended, pls see link below. my friend just came back from a conference and told me something different. i am going to dig deeper and report back.

http://foodforbreastcancer.com/news/resveratrol-en...

I had my gall bladder out over 30 years ago and since then I can always tell when I've had too much fatty foods and my liver has had to work harder to try to keep up.
I have been taking Milk Thistle for about two years, originally because of those  twinges from my liver. My cholesterol levels dropped 60 points in about 3 months (no other changes in diet or supplements at that time, so I attribute it to the milk thistle.) Also after about 6 weeks I began losing 1-2 pounds a week. When I  went off the milk thistle for a couple of months, my weight stayed the same.  When I started taking milk thistle again, the weight loss continued.  (40 pounds in two years)

After 6 weeks on Milk Thistle, my daughter also began losing 1-2 pounds a week(without any other changes to her diet) 

This past summer I added tea made of burdock,  for additional liver detox, and sheep sorrel, to fight the cancer. Burdock and sheep sorrel are two of the main  ingredients of Essaic tea.

Very interesting, Light, thanks for sharing. Coincidentally I was looking at ORAC values (measure of antioxidants) yesterday, and noticed cloves were near the top of the list, followed by a bunch of other spices. http://www.oracvalues.com/sort/orac-value  

Good excuse to have some chai!

4sew, I have seen that too. My rule of thumb is to avoid anything advertised as reducing menopause symptoms.

thank you for that link new2bc. Unfortunately it seems to be broken. I notice it is from about 2002. My query is that is I3C is broken down to DIM in the body and they are now saying DIM is to be avoided in BC then by inference does that mean I3C also ? 

Similar to reservatrol maybe food forms of brassica etc are better than stronger supplements ? 

Very good reservatrol article juneping - looks like aspirin is our friend too. 

Hello to everyone! I have been a member since late 2011 and lurking as i went out rogue a few times and got slaughtered for my pro alternative beliefs, or rather, my facts and experience. I have been upsince 6am reading this entire thread and i must say that it kept me hooked like a paperback romance novel! It is 515 pm and i wanted to post to say thank you all for sharing your research and experiences, i feel that this thread is a safe haven for me to share also. 

I want to start bytelling you all that i am a stage 4 patient with mets to bones and liver. i have seen many metsisters pass on that i had forged friendships with as i had volunteered for an independent fb group for stage 4 advocacy to piece together a rather large quilt (8 1/2 x 8 1/2 ft) . I started this endeavor in Nov 2012 and with the help of our group members, i collected their stories and photos to be placed on 12 in x 12 in squares, it is now March 2014 and i am half way finished. Some of the women were on conventional, some alternative and some who chose nothing-half of the women have since passed on but i wanted to mention this as it is good to be open minded with both treatments as some of these women who were alternative still passed on while others had changed course mid stream from chemo to alternative and vice versa still succumbed, some did live longer than others but to pin point the causation for this would be like looking for a needle in a haystack! Yes, i do believe in the power of placebo and i even sent a dying friend an expensive mushroom tincture while she lay in hospice from liver failure as she went to her grave believing in something but i highly doubt she had the chance to use it because her husband emailed me and thanked me for the pkg for her then announced she had passed 5 days later. Lets blame the cancer, not anything else! cancer is tricky, its elusive-it can train our immune system to work against us! With this being said, let me share with you a little side info into my impromptu calling into the alternative world....the adriamycian, the first dose, almost killed me! i fired my first onc and retreatef to a very intelligent ND who was an old coot-a retired Cardiologist well known at MDA in Houston. He was a godsend! He nursed me back to health over the course of a year! On my first visit, he asked that i bring in every book that i read on alternatives and he debunked most except for Schreibers book, which MDA has initiated a 5 year study of his nutriutional plan in the integrative oncology dept. He told me that soy in asian women are good because they have a biological marker that westerners do not share andsaid their were no conclusive studies on soy/flax helping breast cancer patients other than being a good source of omega 3 and fiber. He retired May 2012, just afteri had my hysterectomy due tocyp2d6 polymorphism of tamoxifen which tore up my uterine within months of taking it. I now had to rely on my oncologist-the 2nd one is well aware that i refuse chemo, he sent me to his wife, a gyno/onc at texas oncology and she performed oopherectomy/hystetectomy. My onc then placed me on arimidex, which i stopped after 2 months because of the severe se's, which after researching the drug company website, it said poor metabolizers of tamoxifen would not respond to arimidex-same enzyme break down pathway, so now what? i had no one to turn to for advice! 2 points that my onc made 1. phytoestrogens cannot augment estrogen receptor cells, the ND said same, 2. after ovaries were removed, onc said my body doesnt produce enough estrogen to be worried, so i said "then why take the arimidex"? So he keeps prescribing it and i get it filled but i dont take it-he and i have an understanding and that is in order to ever get me into a trial, arimidex has to fail so its on the books......i did want to add that what little our bodies do make of estrogen, our fat tissue stores so i am trying to take off mega pounds since hysterectomy but its hard as the bone mets have slowed me down considerably that i was on constant pain meds and ibuprofen 4 x a day which is not good for my liver tumor but recently, since mid feb, and "geewhiz" posts on hyperthermia have inspired me to post, is i too have started a heat therapy program at my local gym in their newly built infrared sauna. it is amazing! so amazing that since i started, i havent taken any pain meds and occassionally take an ibuprofen! i am currently looking into a clinical trial, which i was suppose to be researching today but got so enthralled in this informative thread! i posted a thread on the infrared sauna in the stage 4 forum, not many takers on the subject as i assume they feel if you dont fly to Germany or have some fancy clinic administer the treatment then its not the same and they may be right but all i can say is i have been on opiates non stop since aug 2011 and within days of starting the hot sauna, i have no need for any pain meds-i think thats freakin awesome! Thank you "geewhiz" for bringing the hyperthermia topic up, i friended you as i want to learn more about your experiences with it. I noticed no one has discussed chia seeds? They are a fiber power house and ridding the estrogen is vital so being regular is a must for me as we excrete estrogen in our stool, so go fiber! i also take strontium and vit d, 10k/daily, which these 2 things made a huge impact on my pain levels before the sauna but the sauna was the icing on the cake! my onc bumped me up to 10k vit d because the 5k just wasnt doing it, levels at 23-26 every time we test quarterly.

Welcome vacationbound! Best of luck to you on your alternative treatment journey!

This is such a nice site to find. I don't want any more "treatment" than my daily tamoxifen. I have been on it for 9 months and I always say something quirky when I take it" Love from a tree keep me cancer free"  I know that sounds odd and I have never admitted to saying that before. I was really upset when I started the tamoxifen, i am still conflicted about taking it. I felt better when a friend who knows I love the woods told me it was made from trees, I forget which kind. I also earth part of my daily walk in the woods with my dog, meaning I walk barefoot on the trail. I definetly get some weird looks if people see me barefoot but I don't care. I also take a variety of supplements from my Naturopath and things I read about on my own.  I also eat a salad every single day.  I am not doing any other scans or surveillance. I had ILC which is invisible on mammograms and was hugely underestimated on an MRI, so there is no promise of early detection for me so I choose not to look but instead to live. OOOh that sounds almost poetic.

Hi Ladies, Im a big advocate of alternative medicine... Acupuncture, Naturopathic.....

 Didn't think that on this bc journey I would be on this forum.... So heres my brief story,   I have been on Letrozole (AI) for 5 months.  Just recently had a bad incident of vertigo.  MO says not an SE. Oh really?  Then I reached out to ladies on the forum who have had episodes of vertigo during the course of taking Letrazole.

MO agreed for me to stop for 1 week... well guess what.. no vertigo..... Im very scared to go back on the Letrazole.

Anyone out there that have used the services of Dr George Wong for herbal solutions to aromatase inhibitors??  How many years out are you if you are?   Did you like Dr Wong? 

Thank you Thank you Thank you

Please do not take vertigo lightly, se can come and go but so can symptoms of brain mets, insist on a brain scan to rule this out as you are grade 3

I had vertigo for years and eventually learned that it is extremely sensitive to stress, stress, stress.  Mindfulness meditation, stress management techniques, and gentle head movements (no aggressive nodding in agreement with your friends, no aerobic bending and standing) did the trick for me.  I mention this partly because I am the post-vertigo poster child/missionary, but also because while vertigo is unpleasant, stopping your meds might lead to significantly more unpleasantness.

the reason i mention the vertigo issue is because my sil who has since passed was told she had vertigo for over a year when she had lung cancer, they only did a brain scan when her "vertigo" got worse, they found out too late that her cancer had metastasized to her brain. i haveheard from many metasisters that describe their brain mets symptoms and many were told that they had "vertigo" until further testing confirmed mets to the brain.

after my biker died suddenly, unconnected to his bike), I first lost 15 lbds, got a cough, then vertigo.  I'd been having deafish problems since 83 or so.  veritgo is horrible.  (dizziness is not vertigo),  a year or so ago I began a daily regime of 10 back & forth head movements & 10 up and down movements daily.  recently my hearing has returned perfectly.  for years also I ate no salt.  that too helped.  & charlotte gerson said salt is the cause of cance.  table salt, added salt, salt in  prepared foods not natural sodium.  been eating salt in foods again, not added, makes me thirsty

but dizziness is not vertigo.  vertigo is say 500% more vicious.  it includes drop attacks where with no warning you fall, loosening of the bowels where you have to crawl to the bathroom & can't rise to sit where you need to.  extreme fatigue after an attack, sleep for hrs.  not fun.........

been researching over the counter fungicides.  a member here says prescription "flagyl" can curb bleeding & lymph exudation.  middle of the night here & I just spent 2 hrs dealing with another hemmhorrage.  havnt had nerve yet to ask the pharmacist to get me some, but don't know if I'd use it, but this is getting fairly desperate.  oregano iol might work, gary says not to use it topically, but I think he means not full strength.  but what to dilute it with, & it is a distinctive odor.