The good news is that many of the 4 million people being treated for cancer in world will survive the disease and go on to live full and productive lives.
While the numbers that survive are far too low (about 44%), many of the more than 1500 daily cancer deaths occur because patients and their families are unaware of the depth of the resources currently available. Unfortunately, some die avowing they would never resort to natural medicine, while others are interested but lack the expertise to implement the program to their best advantage. Regrettably, some turn to alternative care fairly late in the course of the disease process, weakening the probability of recovery.

Mainstream medicine (relying upon surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation) may initially appear successful, but the indications of the disease process are less often addressed. Conventional cancer treatments are not for those individuals who are frail in body or spirit. For the past 30 years, cancer therapies have experienced tremendous setbacks because of an associated toxic response, resulting in significant numbers of treatment-induced deaths rather than disease-induced fatalities. Awareness regarding historic numbers of unsuccessful outcomes has forced patients to look for alternatives to bolster survival odds.

Until most recently, major medical schools granted only a few hours to nutritional education out of the hundreds of academic hours required to complete medical school.. His contribution, entitled Medical Education in the United States and Canada, closed smaller medical schools and forced those that survived to adopt a uniform curriculum that excluded nutritional courses. Thus, some physicians emerged from medical schools, scoffing at the concept of nutrition influencing health or overcoming disease.

Nutritional protocols often used multiple nutrients, a difficult model to apply in clinical trials. Testing a single nutraceutical denied the patient full support of nutritional pharmacology, an injustice when treating a seriously ill patient. In addition, trials are expensive to conduct and early natural healers (by and large) did not represent an affluent subset of society.

But, ever so slowly, the medical scene is being revolutionized. According to the American College for Advancement in Medicine, physicians (in many cases) are showing eagerness to learn more about natural medicine and how to best implement it into their practice.

PREVENTING AND CONTROLLING CANCER

While some individuals will be reading this protocol looking for help managing a malignancy, others will be focusing upon prevention and recurrence. The alphabetical list that follows provides quick guidelines for structuring a program, highlighting major nutrients in the prevention and treatment of cancer.

These recommendations should not be implemented individually in aggressive cancers without careful consultation of the remainder of the material. Cancer patients (and physicians) should be deliberate about reading the entirety of this protocol in order to avoid missing information that could prove to be lifesaving. Note: It is important that the reader also consult the protocols entitled Cancer Treatment: The Critical Factors and Cancer: Should Patients Take Dietary Supplements?

The dosages required for treating cancer (which are considerably larger than those required for prevention) can change the effects that a nutrient has on the body. The risk is multidirectional. Overdosing or underdosing, as well as a lack of patient awareness regarding the full potential of natural pharmaceuticals, hampers recovery.

THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF SCHEDULED BLOOD TESTS

It is important to measure the successes or losses in regard to treatment-associated tumor response. Evaluating tumor markers in the blood or tumor imagery provides a basis for calculating regression of the disease. In addition, tumor markers provide direction for introducing other therapies if failures are evidenced.