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4 Replies to this Topic
BiancaQLD said
about 1 month ago
I personally didn't give it much thought at the time of diagnosis. Quite frankly I was too overwhelmed by the medicinal forms of treatment and the copious amounts of those, and not to mention the strict 'broccoli-only' diet my father insisted I adopt to get as many anti-oxidents as possible, that anything else would have just been brain overload! But, in saying that, I wasn't exactly at that point where it was necessary to consider alternative approaches. My cancer, although advanced, was likely to respond to the heaviest load of chemo, radiation and steroids and in retrospect I don't think I would have been willing to take the risk in passing up something that was very likely to work, even regardless of knowing how badly by body was affected by the chemo and the short and long term affects. It worked!
During the late stages of my chemo though, I was given a book called 'Crazy, Sexy cancer tips'. A book for young women who are diagnosed with cancer which was written by a lady called Kris Carr, who was diagnosed with a terminal cancer in her late 20's and had no choice but to look into alternative therapies and particularly forcused on eating wholy organic and vegan foods. I think if anything else, the positive approach she adopts is inspiring in itself for young woman who have also just been diagnosed.
NWcontent said
about 1 month ago
Sarah - it's also worth mentioning that there's a difference between alternative and complementary treatments.
alternative = instead of regular treatment
complementary = as well as regular treatment
Some things you can do at the same time as your regular treatment (like eating broccoli :-)
btw. here's that book www.crazysexycancer.com- Thanks Bianca :-) I found a blog on the book's website and liked what this woman said about healthy eating and positive thinking
"I know there has been a lot of controversy about being positive when you are healing from an illness. How do I weigh in on this? Personally, I feel that it is important to have hope and surround oneself with positive people. Still, I don’t think that I could have created good health through positive thinking alone; it also mattered that I chose to change how I ate."
I agree with what she says that positive thinking is not going to make you better on its own but its still good. 
Jamie said
about 22 hours ago
For what it's worth, my attitude towards alternative/complementary/integrative therapies (both for helping with cancer treatment and with the cancer itself) is:
1. For things that are cheap to do and are going to be good for my health anyway - like cutting down on junk food, eating more fresh/unprocessed/additive-free foods, drinking more water and less coffee/soft drinks/alcohol, getting regular exercise in ways that are lots of fun (within the limits of my body in its current condition), finding time to meditate for half an hour each day - do them.
2. For things that are more costly, or require a lot of time or inconvenience, like taking lots of vitamin/herbal/other supplements, going vegetarian/vegan/macrobiotic/organic (or whatever), - find out what the researchers, experts and long-term users of these approaches say about their benefits in relation to your particular situation, and then decide which things are worth trying, given your budget, your available time, and your judgement of the evidence for and against their usefulness to someone in your situation.
3. For things that initially strike you as way too wacky or expensive to even think about - do your own research: see if there's any scientific evidence about their effectiveness against your sort of cancer or in supporting the treatment you're having, talk to people who've gone down these paths and find out what their experience has been, think about their possible negative effects on your overall health and wellbeing, and then weigh all these things up against the fact that you only get one lifetime to play with, before making a decision about just what risks you're prepared to take in the hope of getting better, or at least not making yourself any sicker than you already are...
