Needed: Collective Indignation?
RoseyR
Member Posts: 471 Member
In response to Claudia's post on a really bad book--and her request for a list of the BEST books we've read--I refer us to Dr. Russell Blaylock's outrage, in his book Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients, about the typical "nutrition" doled out to cancer patients.
Claudia, you might enjoy his diatribes about the "cookies, candies and sodas" often offered adjacent to chemo suites--not to mention the sweet packaged drinks cancer patients are exhorted to consume to "keep their weight up." (As if fat corpses are the goal!)
It's a wonder I even survived my hysterectomy when I recall four days of JELLO, canned corn, white toast with jelly, sweet canned fruit juices--a litany of horrors at the very time that stray cancer cells released during surgery are swimming around looking for food to help them form new colonies.
Likewise, a resident at my prestigious treatment center recently informed me that "we have a few patients with your kind of tumor who are doing really well." "What do you mean by really well? Do you mean surviving more than five years?" "Oh, yes, far longer than five years," he said cryptically.
When I asked him if they had tried to assess what these patients might be doing that had so prolonged their survival ("Have you asked what they are eating or how they are exercising?"), he smiled condescendingly:: "Those things have nothing to do with it."
I left a bit outraged that here were a few patients surviving well beyond the usual "prognosis" for an aggressive uterine cancer and yet nothing had been done to try to determine any variables that might account for their protracted survival--which could be communicated to others with the same diagnosis.
Ladies, these and similar outrages persuade me
to start to writE about this entire experience, which, for nearly a year now--despite some fine nursing here and there--has revealed deep SYSTEMIC flaws in the entire treatment system. Nor do I have the hubris to assume that my experiences are in any way unique; it's precisely because they are typical of what many must unnecessariy endure that I'd like to write about them.
For any who would like a taste of Dr. Blaylock's outraged incredulity--or revelations from alternative oncologists about how even the delivery of anesthesia can affect the likelihood of metastasis down the line, and hence, our prognosis--I'm pastng in below my response to Claudia's rquest for a review of the best books I've read so far.
So Claudia, any "hournal" of what I'm eating and how I'm supplementing may have to be subsumed in the chapters of a book that, on behalf of ALL of us, I am how angry enough to start writing.
Cheers,
Rosey
BEST BOOKS READ TO DATE:
Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients
Author Dr. Russell Blaylock,for decades a neurosurgeon, eventually left practice to devote time to his growing interest in the nutritional dimensions of cancer. His book offers very detailed explanations of what supplements may protect us during chemo and radiation and even improve the efficacy of those treatments. His discussions of certain supplements such as glutamine are so nuanced that they might initially confuse us--but illustrate his ability to see "the yes and no without which there is no true intelligence." In short, he refuses to oversimplify, showing both the benefits and occasional hazards of certain supplements. My heart sinks at his stringent position on dairy foods (as i hate to give up cheese entirely!) but he explains the rationales for his positions. Unlike James Quillen's book on nutrition and cancer, which is provocative--and worth reading--but often quirky, overly anecdotal, and unevenly footnoted, most of Blaylock's positions are footnoted, lending it, for me, more academic substance.
Life Over Cancer
Author Dr. Keith Block is highly respected as founder of the Block Clinic for Integrative Medicine. His book is clearly organized, addressing the nutritional, physical and emotional dimensions of cancer. Particularly valuable is his advice on how to recognize and improve our individual 'terrain"--the comprehensive body chemisty, including blood glucose levels, inflammation levels, iron stores, and so on, that affect the prognosis of cancer.
(He also shows what tests to ask for to measure each condition.) A chapter I found truly eye-opening was "Blood Thickness and Cancer." (Apparently we cancer patients tend to exhibit thicker, more viscous blood than non-cancer patients, encouraging cancer as well as metastasis, but what we eat and how we supplement can, according to Block, definitely change it!
Explaining the connection between platelet counts and blood viscosity, Block illuminates why my platelets had recently been so low, causing postponements of treatment. (It was not merely that chemo had depressed my platelet counts, which it had. It was also, I now realize, that I had been following a strict anti-cancer diet for eight months that--unbeknownst to me--was thinning my blood. Green tea, fish oil, vitamin E (and even, to a lesser extent, curcumin) are ALL blood thinners, platelet reducers. So in order to have chemo again, I needed to reduce these supplements temporarily. (I have reduced them all except for curcumin--which, while we're on Taxol, is a MUST according to MD Anderson's Aggarwal.
Block's bookd is a must-read for cancer patients!
How to Prevent and Treat Cancer
Author Michael Murray is not an M.D. but an N.D. yet has played an instrumental role in heading the nutritional programs for CTCA (Cancer Treatment Centers of America). He prescribes a clear plan of supplementation during chemo and radiation (in a bit more organized way than Blaylock's book) as well as a plan for post-treatment, and he offers the best discussions of immune-boosting mushroom products I've come across, evaluating the relative merits of AHCC, Maitake D and MD Fraction, Polyerga, PSK and PSP.
Knock-Out!
Often passing this book with disdain (as its author, Suzanne Somers, I'd long dismissed as a mere Hollywood hussy!), I finally skimmed it in a used-book store and was amazed at how well researched it was. A series of interviews with a dozen or so prominent doctors who are treating cancer--with notable success--in unorthodox ways, I found the interviews riveting. The doctors interviewed are practicing differing alternative approaches to cancer--from gene therapy to enzyme therapy--but even if one emerges untempted to seek out their treatments, one gains, in the course of each interview, fascinating insights into some mechanisms of cancer; the interview with Dr. Gonzalez alone makes the book worth reading. And optimism is the result of this reading, persuading us that IF conventional treatments are failing us, there ARE other approaches worth pursuing that are more than mere eccentricities.
Anti-Cancer
Although author David S. Schreiber, a psychiatrist and researcher, recently died, he DID orchestrate long remissions from an aggressive brain tumor via a combination of traditional treatment and research on which foods--around the world--best fortify us against cancer. Very readable, concrete, and upbeat, with colorful food charts illustrating what foods and spices are "good," "OK," and disastrous for cancer patients.
----------------------------
Will be eager to hear about the books that have most impressed others!
Best,
Rosey
edit | reply | Report as Offensive
Claudia, you might enjoy his diatribes about the "cookies, candies and sodas" often offered adjacent to chemo suites--not to mention the sweet packaged drinks cancer patients are exhorted to consume to "keep their weight up." (As if fat corpses are the goal!)
It's a wonder I even survived my hysterectomy when I recall four days of JELLO, canned corn, white toast with jelly, sweet canned fruit juices--a litany of horrors at the very time that stray cancer cells released during surgery are swimming around looking for food to help them form new colonies.
Likewise, a resident at my prestigious treatment center recently informed me that "we have a few patients with your kind of tumor who are doing really well." "What do you mean by really well? Do you mean surviving more than five years?" "Oh, yes, far longer than five years," he said cryptically.
When I asked him if they had tried to assess what these patients might be doing that had so prolonged their survival ("Have you asked what they are eating or how they are exercising?"), he smiled condescendingly:: "Those things have nothing to do with it."
I left a bit outraged that here were a few patients surviving well beyond the usual "prognosis" for an aggressive uterine cancer and yet nothing had been done to try to determine any variables that might account for their protracted survival--which could be communicated to others with the same diagnosis.
Ladies, these and similar outrages persuade me
to start to writE about this entire experience, which, for nearly a year now--despite some fine nursing here and there--has revealed deep SYSTEMIC flaws in the entire treatment system. Nor do I have the hubris to assume that my experiences are in any way unique; it's precisely because they are typical of what many must unnecessariy endure that I'd like to write about them.
For any who would like a taste of Dr. Blaylock's outraged incredulity--or revelations from alternative oncologists about how even the delivery of anesthesia can affect the likelihood of metastasis down the line, and hence, our prognosis--I'm pastng in below my response to Claudia's rquest for a review of the best books I've read so far.
So Claudia, any "hournal" of what I'm eating and how I'm supplementing may have to be subsumed in the chapters of a book that, on behalf of ALL of us, I am how angry enough to start writing.
Cheers,
Rosey
BEST BOOKS READ TO DATE:
Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients
Author Dr. Russell Blaylock,for decades a neurosurgeon, eventually left practice to devote time to his growing interest in the nutritional dimensions of cancer. His book offers very detailed explanations of what supplements may protect us during chemo and radiation and even improve the efficacy of those treatments. His discussions of certain supplements such as glutamine are so nuanced that they might initially confuse us--but illustrate his ability to see "the yes and no without which there is no true intelligence." In short, he refuses to oversimplify, showing both the benefits and occasional hazards of certain supplements. My heart sinks at his stringent position on dairy foods (as i hate to give up cheese entirely!) but he explains the rationales for his positions. Unlike James Quillen's book on nutrition and cancer, which is provocative--and worth reading--but often quirky, overly anecdotal, and unevenly footnoted, most of Blaylock's positions are footnoted, lending it, for me, more academic substance.
Life Over Cancer
Author Dr. Keith Block is highly respected as founder of the Block Clinic for Integrative Medicine. His book is clearly organized, addressing the nutritional, physical and emotional dimensions of cancer. Particularly valuable is his advice on how to recognize and improve our individual 'terrain"--the comprehensive body chemisty, including blood glucose levels, inflammation levels, iron stores, and so on, that affect the prognosis of cancer.
(He also shows what tests to ask for to measure each condition.) A chapter I found truly eye-opening was "Blood Thickness and Cancer." (Apparently we cancer patients tend to exhibit thicker, more viscous blood than non-cancer patients, encouraging cancer as well as metastasis, but what we eat and how we supplement can, according to Block, definitely change it!
Explaining the connection between platelet counts and blood viscosity, Block illuminates why my platelets had recently been so low, causing postponements of treatment. (It was not merely that chemo had depressed my platelet counts, which it had. It was also, I now realize, that I had been following a strict anti-cancer diet for eight months that--unbeknownst to me--was thinning my blood. Green tea, fish oil, vitamin E (and even, to a lesser extent, curcumin) are ALL blood thinners, platelet reducers. So in order to have chemo again, I needed to reduce these supplements temporarily. (I have reduced them all except for curcumin--which, while we're on Taxol, is a MUST according to MD Anderson's Aggarwal.
Block's bookd is a must-read for cancer patients!
How to Prevent and Treat Cancer
Author Michael Murray is not an M.D. but an N.D. yet has played an instrumental role in heading the nutritional programs for CTCA (Cancer Treatment Centers of America). He prescribes a clear plan of supplementation during chemo and radiation (in a bit more organized way than Blaylock's book) as well as a plan for post-treatment, and he offers the best discussions of immune-boosting mushroom products I've come across, evaluating the relative merits of AHCC, Maitake D and MD Fraction, Polyerga, PSK and PSP.
Knock-Out!
Often passing this book with disdain (as its author, Suzanne Somers, I'd long dismissed as a mere Hollywood hussy!), I finally skimmed it in a used-book store and was amazed at how well researched it was. A series of interviews with a dozen or so prominent doctors who are treating cancer--with notable success--in unorthodox ways, I found the interviews riveting. The doctors interviewed are practicing differing alternative approaches to cancer--from gene therapy to enzyme therapy--but even if one emerges untempted to seek out their treatments, one gains, in the course of each interview, fascinating insights into some mechanisms of cancer; the interview with Dr. Gonzalez alone makes the book worth reading. And optimism is the result of this reading, persuading us that IF conventional treatments are failing us, there ARE other approaches worth pursuing that are more than mere eccentricities.
Anti-Cancer
Although author David S. Schreiber, a psychiatrist and researcher, recently died, he DID orchestrate long remissions from an aggressive brain tumor via a combination of traditional treatment and research on which foods--around the world--best fortify us against cancer. Very readable, concrete, and upbeat, with colorful food charts illustrating what foods and spices are "good," "OK," and disastrous for cancer patients.
----------------------------
Will be eager to hear about the books that have most impressed others!
Best,
Rosey
edit | reply | Report as Offensive
0
Comments
-
what it points out
Rosey, I think that what your experience with that resident (as well as all of the conflicting theories, ideas, treatments, and protocols) points out is that — no one really has any idea of what does or does not work definitively. All this money, all the research, and nothing is much different than it was 25 years ago (maybe longer). It is just mostly a guessing game. Yes, some things have been shown to work, but not many, and we should have come further for all the time and money that has been spent on cancer. Very discouraging.0 -
My darling, Rosey
Being a genuine hippie from the sixties, any time anyone says "collective" I'm in.
Real books about real women are absolutely what's needed.
And let us not forget a few thousand well placed emails and letters to doctors, universities, research centers, and let's also not forget the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, as well as Michelle Obama, I keep on meaning to write to her.
the good news is a local store had notebooks for 15 cents and I bought a slew. Time to begin the journaling.
Pharmaceutical companies will have an absolute fit if they think the masses are rebelling against their stupid drugs, not that some of them don't work as they should, but please, uterine cancer deaths are on the rise according to the Mayo Clinics book. That's not right.
My daughter wants me to take what I know on the road. She may just want to get rid of me for a bit but I don't think that's it as I seldom bother her with all this.
And Rosey, especiallly for you, there is a book I can't recommend highly enough. it's not so much about how to take care of cancer, but rather how we got into this mess in the first place..
The book is: The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis. It's around $5 on amazon in papaerback. It was what I really wanted for Christmans last year. It will give you a bit of a heads up on how those high up fellas and guys just wander around the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Another thing that really opened my eyes to the depth of the soup we are in is a dvd called:
Healing from the Inside Out.
Then if you can handle it, there's another dvd by Dr. MacDougal of Santa Rosa and he talks very frankly of not only the things one needs to do to survive disease, but what the doctors won't tell you and some of the games they play. This of course does not apply to all or even most doctors, but just the fact that there is a problem is what's relevant here.
If you really want the scoop, read a fascinating book called Cure Unknown, about the Lyme Disease epidemic and how the doctors and cdc and pharmaceutical companies managed to limit the way a person could be diagnosed with Lyme Disease. It costs thousands of dollars yearly to treat Lyme once it is determined you have it, so mostly, you are told you don't have it. If you think you do my recommendaiton is to have your test done by your vet, as the insurance companies don't have to pay for antibiotics given to your dog so you will get a true test with accurate results. Ever think about how many dogs have Lyme?????? and their owners don't.
you too will be throwing things and staying awake at night once you realize how truly horrid it all is.
Best wishes,
I'm sending you my email address. mention cancer board in the subject if you decide to write me.0 -
Thanks, and ...california_artist said:My darling, Rosey
Being a genuine hippie from the sixties, any time anyone says "collective" I'm in.
Real books about real women are absolutely what's needed.
And let us not forget a few thousand well placed emails and letters to doctors, universities, research centers, and let's also not forget the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, as well as Michelle Obama, I keep on meaning to write to her.
the good news is a local store had notebooks for 15 cents and I bought a slew. Time to begin the journaling.
Pharmaceutical companies will have an absolute fit if they think the masses are rebelling against their stupid drugs, not that some of them don't work as they should, but please, uterine cancer deaths are on the rise according to the Mayo Clinics book. That's not right.
My daughter wants me to take what I know on the road. She may just want to get rid of me for a bit but I don't think that's it as I seldom bother her with all this.
And Rosey, especiallly for you, there is a book I can't recommend highly enough. it's not so much about how to take care of cancer, but rather how we got into this mess in the first place..
The book is: The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis. It's around $5 on amazon in papaerback. It was what I really wanted for Christmans last year. It will give you a bit of a heads up on how those high up fellas and guys just wander around the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Another thing that really opened my eyes to the depth of the soup we are in is a dvd called:
Healing from the Inside Out.
Then if you can handle it, there's another dvd by Dr. MacDougal of Santa Rosa and he talks very frankly of not only the things one needs to do to survive disease, but what the doctors won't tell you and some of the games they play. This of course does not apply to all or even most doctors, but just the fact that there is a problem is what's relevant here.
If you really want the scoop, read a fascinating book called Cure Unknown, about the Lyme Disease epidemic and how the doctors and cdc and pharmaceutical companies managed to limit the way a person could be diagnosed with Lyme Disease. It costs thousands of dollars yearly to treat Lyme once it is determined you have it, so mostly, you are told you don't have it. If you think you do my recommendaiton is to have your test done by your vet, as the insurance companies don't have to pay for antibiotics given to your dog so you will get a true test with accurate results. Ever think about how many dogs have Lyme?????? and their owners don't.
you too will be throwing things and staying awake at night once you realize how truly horrid it all is.
Best wishes,
I'm sending you my email address. mention cancer board in the subject if you decide to write me.
Love your new photo, by the way. ( I don't even know HOW to send one, alas.)
Claudia, you generously say you're sending me your email address; of course I'll maintain its privacy if you like and send you mine in return. But forgive my technological obtuseness: where do I find it?
Warmly,
Rosey0 -
Rosey
for the email part
Go towards the top left side of the page and you'll find CSN EMAil
Click on that
You'll get to an area where you can send someone a private message.
If someone has sent you one, you will see a message when you log on that says you have a new private message or something very much like that.
To put in a photo
Directly under the black line at the top of the page you will see
Click here to create or update your member "About Me" page
click on the click here and follow the directions for edit and add a photo. Can't be larger than 150 pixels in any direction.
Have fun.
At some point in time you did some of this just to get a log in name. I forget things all the time. Know how it goes.0
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