A Formula for Healing Cancer: The Latest Research in Mind-Body Medicine

This book was written for anyone who has cancer, who has had cancer, or who cares for someone with cancer. It offers some profound insights into how and why your cancer may have begun and what steps you can take right now to begin to create real healing in your life. There are remarkable concepts, therapies and processes here that have achieved success in reversing even late-stage terminal cancer cases. This is a rare opportunity to explore in one place research from some of the world's leading experts on the healing power of the mind and the emotions--and the newly emerging science of "Psychoneuroimmunology."

This book is being offered free of charge because I want to make this vital information available to as many people as possible--no matter what their financial circumstances. If you find benefit in what you read here, please consider making a donation to our chosen non-profit cancer information, counseling and referral agency, The Center for Advancement in Cancer Education. (see Chapter 8 below for more information about this group and their excellent Executive Director, Dr. Susan Silberstein).

Conventional Treatments: What's Wrong With This Picture?

The ideal cancer treatment is prevention. The ideal path to prevention is harmony and balance in body, mind, emotions and spirit.

We are losing the war against cancer! One out of every two men and one out of three women will develop cancer in their lifetimes. Not so very long ago those numbers were one in three men and one in four women. So although some cancer cure rates are somewhat improved, there has been an exponential growth in the incidence of cancer in modern times. And we are spending vastly larger sums that we ever dreamed possible on providing healthcare in today’s world. There is obviously something very wrong with this picture.

Modern medicine has some wonderful attributes, one of which is its ability to diagnose disease via some fairly amazing high-tech and expensive equipment and testing methods. It is after the diagnosis however that the record doesn’t look so great, because of the failure of most conventional methods to produce long-term cures in cancer patients. Let’s take a look at why this might be so and contrast it with the philosophy of cancer treatment at the best international complementary and alternative (CAM) cancer clinics.

"Medicine is now a high risk industry, like aviation. But, the chance of dying in an aviation accident is one in 2 million, while the risk of dying from a medical accident is one in 200!"

--Dr. Leape of the Harvard Medical School of Public Health

Conventional cancer treatments—surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy-- aim all of their big guns directly and exclusively at the tumor, attempting to destroy it at all costs. And sometimes, because of treatment complications, those costs can even include the life of the patient-- the very thing that was supposed to be the goal in the first place. A compromised quality of life is another cost with conventional treatments, with side effects ranging from complete debilitation for months or even years, to transitory but significant discomfort.

There are generally few attempts made by conventional oncologists to incorporate critical detoxification measures into treatment protocols, as the highly toxic tumor load that is broken down by treatments must be eliminated by an already weakened body. Nutritional counseling or the critically important mental-emotional healing are frequently not valued or addressed as well. And consideration of energetic blockages in the body is still considered quackery by many.

For many cancers, the long term remission or cure rates using conventional treatments alone is frightening, with some studies actually showing no difference in long term survival rates between treated and non-treated patients---and this after our healthcare system has sometimes spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these treatments. So why are we continuing to demand that patients receive these standard protocols without even consideration of integrating relatively inexpensive, non-toxic CAM treatment methods?

What makes CAM cancer protocols so different?

CAM cancer treatment protocols have built their success on the philosophy and understanding that the tumor is actually only a symptom of an underlying imbalance or chronic condition in the body/mind which has probably been present for several years. When the tumor is removed or destroyed, the bodily conditions and imbalances that produced the cancer continue to be present and eventually create illness, probably cancer, again—hence a relapse months or years later. As well, the toxicity of conventional treatments can have devastating effects on the immune system and general health and wellbeing of the patient.

CAM protocols are directed toward finding the “root cause” of the illness. Once this cause is identified and addressed, the physical body can come naturally into harmony or balance. When the body is balanced and harmonious on all levels—body, mind, emotions and spirit-- it is strong and vital and the immune system can identify and destroy abnormal cells. For most of us who believe we are "cancer-free," our immune systems do this every single day with errant cells--and we remain healthy.

The human body was designed to be a marvelous self-healing, self-cleansing organism when it balanced and strong. This is our nature!

Some CAM treatments incorporate conventional treatments into their protocols, utilizing the best of both worlds so to speak. Whole body hyperthermia is one example of this. This is a process that is just beginning to be used in a much less intense form here in the U.S., but which is employed as a potent and powerful modality (sometimes to body temperatures ranging up to 106 degrees) outside this country, primarily in Europe and Mexico. Many times it is combined with very low dose chemotherapy, which is rendered significantly more powerful and effective against the cancer due to the enhanced effect with hyperthermia—yet with far fewer side effects. Cancer cells are more sensitive to changes in temperatures and tumors are known to break down or be critically weakened and the immune system enhanced in the presence of elevated body temperature. This is why, in a normal immune response, our bodies create fever in the presence of an infection.

After studying the policies, activities, and assets of the major U.S. cancer institutions, the investigative reporters Robert Houston and Gary Null concluded that these institutions had become self-perpetuating organizations whose survival depended on the state of no cure. "A solution to cancer would mean the termination of research programs, the obsolescence of skills, the end of dreams of personal glory, triumph over cancer would dry up ontributions to self-perpetuating charities....It would mortally threaten the present clinical establishments by rendering obsolete the expensive surgical, radiological and chemotherapeutic reatments in which so much money, training and equipment is invested....The new therapy must be disbelieved, denied, discouraged and disallowed at all costs, regardless of actual testing results, and preferably without any testing at all." - Robert Houston and Gary Null

Here's a very interesting perspective from Dr. Norm Shealy, founder of the American Holistic Medical Assocation:

CHEMOTHERAPY FLUNKS! by C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Eva Segelov, Medical Oncologist at St. Vincent's Clinical School, Sydney, Australia (Aust Prescr 2006:29:2-3) suggested that "-the benefits of chemotherapy have been oversold." A literature review of 5 year survival for major cancers after cytotoxic chemotherapy revealed that the survival rate was increased a mere 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the U.S.!! The study did not look at quality of life. However, I have long quoted another study which stated that chemotherapy increased life an average of 4 months. Of course chemotherapy tortures most patients for 6+ months!! Personally, death is not a big threat to me but torture is! There is NO circumstance under which I would have chemotherapy. I recognize that there is a significant cure rate for Hodgkin's, some childhood leukemias and choriocarcinoma. Surgery and in some cases radiation are worth considering. And if you choose to have chemotherapy, I would strongly encourage all the safe alternatives to support you while undergoing therapy....

Want to read some very interesting quotes and statistics about the long term success of chemotherapy? Here's a chart published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Dec 2004:  http://www.oasisadvancedwellness.com/learning/chemotherapy-effectiveness.html.  The following was taken from the Oasis Wellness Center's website and was properly disclaimed at the bottom of their page:

"Two to 4% of cancers respond to chemotherapy….The bottom line is for a few kinds of cancer chemo is a life extending procedure---Hodgkin's disease, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL), Testicular cancer, and Choriocarcinoma."----Ralph Moss, Ph.D. 1995 Author of Questioning Chemotherapy.

"NCI now actually anticipates further increases, and not decreases, in cancer mortality rates, from 171/100,000 in 1984 to 175/100,000 by the year 2000!"--Samuel Epstein.

"A study of over 10,000 patients shows clearly that chemo’s supposedly strong track record with Hodgkin’s disease (lymphoma) is actually a lie. Patients who underwent chemo were 14 times more likely to develop leukemia and 6 times more likely to develop cancers of the bones, joints, and soft tissues than those patients who did not undergo chemotherapy (NCI Journal 87:10)."—John Diamond

Children who are successfully treated for Hodgkin's disease are 18 times more likely later to develop secondary malignant tumours. Girls face a 35 per cent chance of developing breast cancer by the time they are 40----which is 75 times greater than the average. The risk of leukemia increased markedly four years after the ending of successful treatment, and reached a plateau after 14 years, but the risk of developing solid tumours remained high and approached 30 per cent at 30 years (New Eng J Med, March 21, 1996)

"Success of most chemotherapy is appalling…There is no scientific evidence for its ability to extend in any appreciable way the lives of patients suffering from the most common organic cancer…chemotherapy for malignancies too advanced for surgery which accounts for 80% of all cancers is a scientific wasteland."---Dr Ulrich Abel. 1990

The New England Journal of Medicine Reports— War on Cancer Is a Failure: Despite $30 billion spent on research and treatments since 1970, cancer remains "undefeated," with a death rate not lower but 6% higher in 1997 than 1970, stated John C. Bailar III, M.D., Ph.D., and Heather L. Gornik, M.H.S., both of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Chicago in Illinois. "The war against cancer is far from over," stated Dr. Bailar. "The effect of new treatments for cancer on mortality has been largely disappointing."

"My studies have proved conclusively that untreated cancer victims live up to four times longer than treated individuals. If one has cancer and opts to do nothing at all, he will live longer and feel better than if he undergoes radiation, chemotherapy or surgery, other than when used in immediate life-threatening situations."---Prof Jones. (1956 Transactions of the N.Y. Academy of Medical Sciences, vol 6. There is a fifty page article by Hardin Jones of National Cancer Institute of Bethesda, Maryland. He surveyed global cancer of all types and compared the untreated and the treated, to conclude that the untreated outlives the treated, both in terms of quality and in terms of quantity. Secondly he said, "Cancer does not cure". Third he said "There is a physiological mechanism which finishes off an individual".)

"With some cancers, notably liver, lung, pancreas, bone and advanced breast, our 5 year survival from traditional therapy alone is virtually the same as it was 30 years ago."---P Quillin, Ph.D.

"1.7% increase in terms of success rate a year, its nothing. By the time we get to the 24 century we might have effective treatments, Star Trek will be long gone by that time." Ralph Moss.

"….chemotherapy’s success record is dismal. It can achieve remissions in about 7% of all human cancers; for an additional 15% of cases, survival can be "prolonged" beyond the point at which death would be expected without treatment. This type of survival is not the same as a cure or even restored quality of life."—John Diamond, M.D.

"Keep in mind that the 5 year mark is still used as the official guideline for "cure" by mainstream oncologists. Statistically, the 5 year cure makes chemotherapy look good for certain kinds of cancer, but when you follow cancer patients beyond 5 years, the reality often shifts in a dramatic way."—Diamond.

Studies show that women taking tamoxifen after surviving breast cancer then have a high propensity to develop endometrial cancer. The NCI and Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drug, aggressively lobbied State of California regulators to keep them from adding tamoxifen to their list of carcinogens. Zeneca is one of the sponsors of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

"Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy…Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade. Yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumours…Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemo than without it."—Alan Levin, M.D.

According to the Cancer Statistics for 1995, published by the ACS in their small journal (2), the 5-year survival rate has improved from 50%-56% for whites and 39%-40% for blacks from 1974/1976 - 1983/1990. However, the data is taken from FIVE of the states with the lowest death rates AND the smallest populations! NONE of the 10 states with the highest death rates AND comprising 34% of the Total U.S. Cancer Deaths, were included in the data! Also, in prior years, the Composite (Ave.) 5-year survival rate for ALL Cancers Combined was computed and published. This Ave. 5-year survival crept upward to 50%, in the early nineties. It now stands around 51-52%, due primarily to the improvement of 11% survival for Colon and 13% increased survival for Prostate. It gets worse. The ACS boasts of "statistically significant" results when Uterine Ca survival drops from 89%/60%-85%/55% (W/B)?? Also, Pancreas Ca is 3-3 (W) and Laryngeal Ca survival drops from 59%-53% (B) while Cervical Ca drops from 63%-56% (B). Liver Ca improves from 4%-7%. I wonder how many Pancreatic and Hepatic Ca patients cheered these dramatic results? Ovarian Ca = 36%/40% - 42%/38% (W/B) and Breast Ca = 75%/63% - 82%/66% (W/B). In 16 years the Breast Ca rate improved 3-7%, while Uterine Ca decreased 4-5%. Aren't these marvelous results that the Cancer Establishment should boast about??----RD Hodgell, M.D.

"The five year cancer survival statistics of the American Cancer Society are very misleading. They now count things that are not cancer, and, because we are able to diagnose at an earlier stage of the disease, patients falsely appear to live longer. Our whole cancer research in the past 20 years has been a failure. More people over 30 are dying from cancer than ever before…More women with mild or benign diseases are being included in statistics and reported as being "cured". When government officials point to survival figures and say they are winning the war against cancer they are using those survival rates improperly."---Dr J. Bailer, New England Journal of Medicine (Dr Bailer’s answer to questions put by Neal Barnard MD of the Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine and published in PCRM Update, sept/oct 1990.

"I look upon cancer in the same way that I look upon heart disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, or even obesity, for that matter, in that by dramatically strengthening the body's immune system through diet, nutritional supplements, and exercise, the body can rid itself of the cancer, just as it does in other degenerative diseases. Consequently, I wouldn't have chemotherapy and radiation because I'm not interested in therapies that cripple the immune system, and, in my opinion, virtually ensure failure for the majority of cancer patients."---Dr Julian Whitaker, M.D.

"Finding a cure for cancer is absolutely contraindicated by the profits of the cancer industry’s chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery cash trough."—Dr Diamond, M.D.

"We have a multi-billion dollar industry that is killing people, right and left, just for financial gain. Their idea of research is to see whether two doses of this poison is better than three doses of that poison."—Glen Warner, M.D. oncologist.

John Robbins:

"If you can shrink the tumour 50% or more for 28 days you have got the FDA's definition of an active drug. That is called a response rate, so you have a response..(but) when you look to see if there is any life prolongation from taking this treatment what you find is all kinds of hocus pocus and song and dance about the disease free survival, and this and that. In the end there is no proof that chemotherapy in the vast majority of cases actually extends life, and this is the GREAT LIE about chemotherapy, that somehow there is a correlation between shrinking a tumour and extending the life of the patient."---Ralph Moss

"The majority of publications equate the effect of chemotherapy with (tumour) response, irrespective of survival. Many oncologists take it for granted that response to therapy prolongs survival, an opinion which is based on a fallacy and which is not supported by clinical studies. To date there is no clear evidence that the treated patients, as a whole, benefit from chemotherapy as to their quality of life."---Abel.1990.

"For the majority of the cancers we examined, the actual improvements (in survival) have been small or have been overestimated by the published rates...It is difficult to find that there has been much progress...(For breast cancer), there is a slight improvement...(which) is considerably less than reported."---General Accounting Office

"As a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incromprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good."---Alan Nixon, Ph.D., Past President, American Chemical Society.

"He said, "I'm giving cancer patients over here at this major cancer clinic drugs that are killing them, and I can't stop it because they say the protocol's what's important." And I say, "But the patient's not doing well." They say, "The protocol's what's important, not the patient." And he said, "You can't believe what goes on in the name of medicine and science in this country." --Gary Null

From The Politics of Cancer---Samuel Epstein

That in spite of over $20 billion expenditures since the "War against Cancer" was launched by President Nixon in 1971, there has been little if any significant improvement in treatment and survival rates for most common cancers, in spite of contrary misleading hype by the cancer establishment---the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and American Cancer Society (ACS).

That the cancer establishment remains myopically fixated on damage control _diagnosis and treatment _ and basic genetic research, with, not always benign, indifference to cancer prevention. Meanwhile, the incidence of cancer, including nonsmoking cancers, has escalated to epidemic proportions with lifetime cancer risks now approaching 50%.

That the NCI has a long track record of budgetary shell games in efforts to mislead Congress and the public with its claim that it allocates substantial resources to cancer prevention. Over the last year, the NCI has made a series of widely divergent claims, ranging from $480 million to $1 billion, for its prevention budget while realistic estimates are well under $100 million.

That the NCI allocates less than 1% of its budget to research on occupational cancer _ the most avoidable of all cancers _ which accounts for well over 10% of all adult cancer deaths, besides being a major cause of childhood cancer.

That cancer establishment policies, particularly those of the ACS, are strongly influenced by pervasive conflicts of interest with the cancer drug and other industries. As admitted by former NCI director Samuel Broder, the NCI has become "what amounts to a governmental pharmaceutical company."

That the MD Anderson Comprehensive Cancer Center was sued in August, 1998 for making unsubstantiated claims that it cures "well over 50% of people with cancer."

That the NCI, with enthusiastic support from the ACS _ the tail that wags the NCI dog _ has effectively blocked funding for research and clinical trials on promising non-toxic alternative cancer drugs for decades, in favor of highly toxic and largely ineffective patented drugs developed by the multibillion dollar global cancer drug industry. Additionally, the cancer establishment has systematically harassed the proponents of non-toxic alternative cancer drugs.

That, as reported in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the ACS is "more interested in accumulating wealth than saving lives." Furthermore, it is the only known "charity" that makes contributions to political parties.

That the NCI and ACS have embarked on unethical trials with two hormonal drugs, tamoxifen and Evista, in ill-conceived attempts to prevent breast cancer in healthy women while suppressing evidence that these drugs are known to cause liver and ovarian cancer, respectively, and in spite of the short-term lethal complications of tamoxifen. The establishment also proposes further chemoprevention trials this fall on tamoxifen, and also Evista, in spite of two published long-term European studies on the ineffectiveness of tamoxifen. This represents medical malpractice verging on the criminal.

That the ACS and NCI have failed to provide Congress and regulatory agencies with available scientific information on a wide range of unwitting exposures to avoidable carcinogens in air, water, the workplace, and consumer products suchfood, cosmetics and toiletries, and household products. As a result, corrective legislative and regulatory action have not been taken.

That the cancer establishment has also failed to provide the public, particularly African American and underprivileged ethnic groups with their disproportionately higher cancer incidence rates, with information on avoidable carcinogenic exposures, thus depriving them of their right-to-know and effectively preventing them from taking action to protect themselves _ a flagrant denial of environmental justice.

A Formula for Healing Cancer (or Any Other Disease)

The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine’s medical teams visited and evaluated over 100 international cancer clinics in 28 countries during its first five years. What emerged from these visits was the recognition of a common pattern of treatment which was found at the most highly regarded and successful of these facilities. This treatment pattern included various modalities which, although they were individualized and different for each patient, generally encompassed five common areas or components of the complete treatment protocol.

The new paradigm of (w)holistic medicine means treating the “whole” person, not just the physical body. It assumes the value of self-healing, demands a partnership between doctor/practitioner and patient and recognizes the need to examine all aspects of an individual’s life.

The body’s innate wisdom and ability to heal itself surpasses that of the most advanced medical technology, ancient herbal formula or latest scientific breakthrough. To support these intrinsic healing abilities, consider the following five components of a holistic and comprehensive cancer treatment program. They speak to the understanding that the body is a self-cleansing, self-healing organism when it is given the proper tools to work with. These five components (tools) must be considered, whether in a comprehensive general wellness or disease prevention program or in a treatment protocol for advanced cancer--or any other illness for that matter. Being in a state of optimal health and wellness involves harmony on all of these levels. If one is out of balance, less than optimal health and healing will ultimately result.

Individuals should assemble a healthcare team in whom they have confidence and trust to offer guidance about the most appropriate personal choices in the following categories:

1. The psycho-spiritual aspects of emotional wellness and balance, a positive mental attitude and an understanding of life purpose

I believe that this is the most important component and the critical foundation of a comprehensive plan for healing cancer--or any other illness. That is the reason I've chosen to focus on the mental-emotional causes for disease within this website. Ironically, it is the area least likely to be addressed in most cancer treatment--whether alternative,complementary or conventional.

Balance and strength in this area underlie the drive and determination to take on all the rest that needs to be embraced in order to heal. Identifying and releasing deep-seated and many times unconscious negative emotions and thought patterns, and maintaining an attitude of hope and positive belief, can make the all-important difference between healing and dying! Dr. Douglas Brodie’s description of “The Cancer Personality,” based on his 30 years of treating cancer patients holistically, makes for compelling reading to illustrate this point. (currently available in the e-book chapter on this website about Dr. Brodie).

2. Detoxification of body, mind, emotions and environment

Because we live in an increasingly toxic and stressful world, elimination and detoxification systems of the body must be strengthened and effective methods for reducing emotional and mental stress must be embraced. A highly toxic body cannot absorb the healthiest food and highest quality supplements because its systems don’t function optimally and absorption is compromised. As treatments successfully break down tumors in the body, it is absolutely critical that the body be able to quickly and efficiently eliminate the toxic by-products from this process. Most successful CAM (complementary & alternative medicine) clinics consider detoxification the number one priority for creating an effective treatment protocol. Serious auto-intoxication from tumor breakdown can paradoxically cause extremely serious problems or even death in an already weakened body. Cancer patients are generally fairly toxic, and the number of cancers with a contributing factor of environmental toxicity is a growing concern.

3. Nutrition, healthy diet and proper supplementation

In the alternative world, it is typically accepted that an alkaline-based organic diet is optimal for the healing of cancer. There is a plethora of choices for supplementation. Most cancer patients do not die directly from their tumors; they die of malnutrition, toxemia, and/or opportunistic infections. There are many advantages for introducing nutritional support for the diagnosed cancer patient. They include: avoidance of malnutrition, minimizing the side effects of toxic therapies, protecting healthy tissue, stimulating immune response, balancing hormones, modulating tumor growth factors, promoting healthy cell proliferation, increasing longevity and improving quality of life.

4. Appropriate body alignment and removal of energetic blockages in the nervous system and vital forces of the body for proper energy flow

Therapies can include chiropractic, acupuncture and acupressure, massage therapies and bodywork, energy therapies such as reiki and healing touch, sound, color and frequency therapies, homeopathy, electro-magnetic therapies, vibrational medicine and many others.

5. An optimally functioning immune system

The immune system can be strengthened and supported by utilizing innovative and relatively inexpensive natural methods and supplements. Some conventional treatments take an immunological approach and there are various natural products now available commercially for this purpose. There have also been years of documented results in strengthening immune response utilizing guided imagery and visualization by such highly regarded experts as Bernie Siegel, MD, O. Carl Simonton, MD and Jeanne Achterberg, PhD.

To summarize:

As long as these components of physiological homeostasis and mental/emotional balance are recognized and addressed, the human organism can begin to heal—this is our nature. These components can also be incorporated into an integrative treatment approach, as complementary therapies to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. This should be accomplished under the care of a trained healthcare professional. Education and communication about these essential components of a healthy lifestyle underlie the future of disease treatment and prevention as well.

There is a pyramid that can illustrate this formula for healing as shown below. The interesting thing is that when the first four components are addressed and balanced, the immune system at the very pinnacle will naturally return to optimal functioning and begin to destroy abnormal cancer cells, as it was designed to do—almost without additional outside intervention. There are many products and therapies that can help this process along more quickly however when the condition warrants immediate action.

When the first four levels are in balance, the immune system functions optimally.

The Foundation of It All: Mental-Emotional Healing and Balance

“Every cell in your body is eavesdropping on your thoughts”

Deepak Chopra

 

"For those who make a commitment to take on the challenging emotional and mental healing required, the life that emerges, in addition to being cancer-free and healthier, can be miraculously free and joyful. "

I’ll never forget the first time that a long-term cancer survivor told me that her diagnosis of cancer was, in retrospect, one of the best things that had ever happened to her. Needless to say, I was intrigued and began to question her to find out what this statement was about. After the third time I heard the same sentiment expressed by a cancer survivor, I began to see a pattern and common message emerging: Cancer is a wake-up call to identify, heal and transform what is out of balance in our lives. Survivors understand that the resulting changes and life-in-balance that emerges can be vastly improved on what existed before. When there is nothing left to lose, the courage to address negative emotions and subconscious patterns of self-sabotage becomes easier to access.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to carry on for so long with unexpressed anger, resentments, unresolved grief over losses and other negative emotions and mental attitudes, that it takes the body’s development of cancer to jolt us into the awareness that we must make changes and deal with these issues. Finding out that you have cancer puts the need to “get right” with your life directly in your face. For those who make a commitment to take on the challenging emotional and mental healing required, the life that emerges, in addition to being cancer-free and healthier, can be miraculously free and joyful.

Emotional release work is probably the most dreaded, denied and avoided part of any healing protocol. Our egos will convince us that we’re ok, that we’ve either dealt with this area of our lives, or that any problems that exist are due to someone else’s actions or attitudes.

One of the most powerful types of emotional release work is forgiveness. If you're thinking that maybe the other person really doesn't deserve your forgiveness--well, perhaps you're right. But forgiveness isn't for the other person--it's for you! When you sincerely forgive, you're no longer burdened with the energy-draining (and immune weakening) effects of anger or resentment. And those obsessive thoughts about revenge no longer invade and deplete your peace of mind and hope for the future.

There's an ancient Chinese proverb that suggests that he who picks up a hot coal to fling at his enemy in anger is the one who ultimately gets burned. Think about that. Forgiveness is the way for you to ultimately be in control--rather than having your angry feelings and simmering resentments running your life. For a profound and important chapter about this aspect of healing, be sure to read Greg Anderson's story on this website.

Because of the stories I heard from the hundreds of cancer patients and cancer survivors in my years at NFAM, as well as personal research and experiences, I have come to understand that mental, emotional and spiritual healing must be the foundation and keystone of any successful healing protocol. Without this vital work, the rest of the treatments undertaken, no matter how advanced, innovative and effective, are built on a foundation of ‘quicksand’ and although successful in the short term, will probably not produce a long term cure.

And remember--many respected healers believe that once a patient makes the decision to embrace his or her healing journey and the commitment to discover and address whatever thoughts and emotions might block that path, the healing process begins in that moment. There is an energy field of divine support and grace created through intention and allowing that is a powerful and very real part of any treatments chosen. All it takes is the choice--and the decision-- to begin. Choose now. It's never too late.

An Exceptional Cancer Survivor: Greg Anderson

Cancer Recovery Foundation of America
P.O. Box 238
Hershey, PA 17033
Phone: (800) 238-6479 or (717) 545-7600
Fax: (717) 545 7602
E-mail: info@cancerrecovery.org
http://www.cancerrecovery.org

Greg was one of the first exceptional cancer survivors asked to become a member of the Education Advisory Committee at NFAM. He had much to teach other cancer patients.

Greg's extraordinary and powerful personal story concerns the ability of forgiveness and emotional release to reverse the course of terminal lung cancer. His story of healing was the most compelling I’ve ever heard and it changed my understanding of how people heal. Greg considers his release of anger and extremely difficult but sincere act of forgiveness toward a former business associate to be the pivotal turning point in his illness. Greg had only a couple weeks to live when this occurred and he has now made a full recovery from his “incurable” late-stage cancer. Following his dramatic encounter and act of forgiveness with his former associate and nemesis, he spent several hours alone crying in his car, overcome with emotional relief and incapable of driving. Again and again he repeated the phrase, “I’m free. I’m free. I’m free.” And so he was. From that day forward, Greg’s physical condition began to improve. His heart, mind and spirit had already been healed.

It Really Can Happen in a Moment!

Back in 1984, Greg had only a few weeks to live when he made the decision to finally heal his relationships with everyone in his life, including his former “enemy.” He then made a full recovery from his “incurable” late-stage metastatic lung cancer. Within a year, he made the decision to help others heal their cancer based on what he had learned through his own difficult journey. In 1985, he founded the nonprofit Cancer Recovery Foundation of America.

Greg's Story: (in his own words)

"The Law of Forgiveness is a tough taskmaster. It forces us to examine our motives. It requires us to look deep within. The work of forgiveness demands that we give up the need to always be right. That is a big request.

The Law of Forgiveness can be misunderstood. It is not asking us to betray our deepest beliefs or disregard our principles. We need not compromise our personal integrity by failing to stand up for what we hold to be true. The law does not imply that we are to live our lives trying to please everyone at the risk of being untrue to ourselves. However, the law does ask us to become keenly aware of how often we engage in verbal and emotional combat that has less to do with higher principles and personal integrity than it does with our perceptions of being right.

The Law of Forgiveness demands that I come to a very important realization: in these matters, it is not my spirit that demands to be right, it is my frail ego.

Realize that this law and its demands are as true of marriages as of business transactions. Forgiveness is for the workplace and for parenting, for young and old, for black and white. Forgiveness applies to everything, to everyone, all the time. This is what is meant by life being lived most abundantly as an adventure in forgiveness.

Nothing contaminates the life of wellness more than resentment, remorse, and recrimination. These states of heart and mind do more to stand in the way of our wellness than virtually any other dynamic.

If the daily practice of the Law of Forgiveness is the only way out, what does this law look like in action? I know from vivid personal experience. I can trace the absolute turning point in my own illness directly to the work of forgiveness. Weak, emaciated, lying at home in constant pain, I was going downhill rapidly by all physical measurements. Doctors, family, even my own mind - all believed I was about to die of cancer.

Yet something kept driving me. I would place phone calls to organizations all over the country, seeking others who had gone through a similar situation and lived. I wanted to learn from their experience. I kept hearing people talk about forgiveness. "You need to forgive," said a woman in Boise, Idaho. A man from Tennessee put it plainly: "The difference is forgiveness." My first reaction was "I probably don't have many issues of forgiveness to deal with. Forgiveness isn't my problem.”

I was wrong. Forgiveness was my issue. My critical attitude was first. Why did I look at a situation and always pick out what was wrong? I'd do it constantly. People were my favorite target. I would make a quick study of someone and actively seek out his Achilles' heel. "What's wrong with him?" I'd think. It was all an effort to put someone else down in order to build myself up. Distorted thinking, bereft of charity and compassion.

The worst example was my behavior at work. When a new controller was brought in, and I suddenly had to seek approval for all our division's expense budgets through this new 'intruder, I saw the whole setup as a huge threat to my position. So, without really making a conscious decision, I began to attack. I became critical of the controller's plans. I tried to undermine his work. I threw stones at his policies. I became critical of him personally.

My criticism led to condemnation. I set myself up as judge and jury. If I was superior, then I was right. In fact, I always had to be right. Therefore, the new controller was, by definition, wrong. I condemned him and then went about proving it to others. As I look back, I see that it was only three months between the time the new controller came on board and the onset of my cancer diagnosis. I believe there was a link between my toxic behavior and the onset of my illness.

What I didn't count on was a counter attack. The new controller fought back, pointing out my failures to institute more effective financial controls. He was equally skilled at finding a person's weak point. And the battle between the two of us became a company-wide problem that began to drag everyone down.

I am saddened and mortified about how it came to a head. We were in a meeting with three other division heads and the CEO. My adversary the controller passed around a budget update. Trying to be flippant, I took my copy of the document, threw it across the table, and proclaimed, "These numbers are a crock of -----." The report hit the CEO's coffee cup, the contents of which spilled into his lap.He jumped up, glared at me, pointed a finger and said, "Get the hell out of here." I went back to my office, then headed to my car. I began to see how absolutely ludicrous my behavior had been.

That kind of behavior consumes vast amounts of emotional energy. It produces a negative and contrary spirit that is toxic to us and to others. I had my entire sense of worth invested in always being right. I suppose it was an issue of perception. I was so concerned with what other people thought of me that I never considered I might be wrong. I needed everyone to know that I was right and to acknowledge it.

But the story takes an even more bizarre twist. Within thirty days of my diagnosis of lung cancer, my adversary the controller was diagnosed with cancer. Now, I have had medical authorities tell me that he probably had been carrying the cancer for years and it had just then been discovered, as had mine. But my intuition tells me that our toxic battle contributed to the onset of both illnesses.

I underwent surgery that removed a lung. But surgery was impossible for my nemesis the controller. The disease had already spread. As the weeks passed, both of us grew progressively worse.

Four months later, a second surgery confirmed that the cancer had spread from my lung through the lymph system. The following day the surgeon made a statement that is indelibly etched in my mind. "Greg," he said, "the tiger is out of the cage. Your cancer has come roaring back. I'd give you about thirty days to live."

It was that moment that I began my journey in search of wellness. Lying in bed, at home, I continued to deteriorate physically. But I made those phone calls in search of survivors and I kept hearing 'forgive.'

One morning I awoke and I realized that I did have a monumental task of forgiveness ahead of me. I felt a deep conviction that this was the thing for me to do. From my sickbed I began the solitary work of forgiveness. I believe that this was the precise turning point in my illness.

The Law of Forgiveness carries with it the idea of process. That is, there are actions and conscious decisions that are integral to the forgiveness phenomenon. Any number of legitimate ways to proceed exist, but they each share this idea of helping us release resentment, express negative feelings, and let go of past wrongs, both real and imagined. Once the idea of process has been grasped, it only needs to be applied with consistency and sincerity to bring immediate results.

The essence of the various processes is quite simple: become aware of the person toward whom we feel hostility, express active release from that hostility, and picture good things happening to him or her.

In the privacy of my bedroom, I made a sign on a sheet of paper. It reads:
NAME
RELEASE
AFFIRM

With that sign propped at my bedside, I started a list of the people in my life. I put my wife first. I closed my eyes, relaxed, and created a clear picture of her in my mind. Then, from my heart, I imagined myself saying to her, "I forgive you. I totally and completely forgive you for every perceived wrong you have done - and for anything you have left undone." And I would pause, allowing ample time to remember and release specific instances. I wouldn't dwell on the specifics. I would just recall them and release them, recognizing that it was I, not my wife, who was really being let off the hook.

I would end the work with each person by picturing something good happening to him or her. I knew that my wife wanted and needed to receive continual reassurance of my love for her. I pictured her receiving that. I knew that another person with whom I'd had a falling-out wanted a new sports car. I imagined him happily driving down the freeway in his red Porsche. The point is, part of the process I used was to actively see something good happening to the person I was forgiving.

This was not always a smooth experience. It became fascinating for me to watch my own resistance. It was relatively easy to express forgiveness and mean it. To actively release the hurt was more challenging, but repeating the release three or four times typically helped me make the emotional and spiritual shift that was required. Many times I would say, "God, you take this. I cannot handle it anymore."

The third element of the process was the real test for me. It was difficult to envision good things happening to many of the people I wanted and needed to forgive. But I was sincerely committed to the process. I did not have an expectation of ease. I would see this through.

I discovered I was intensely angry with my father. He never was able to express his love. In fact, his approach to child raising was to emotionally put down and never, not once, build up. I found it very difficult to totally release my perceptions of being wronged. And I found it next to impossible to imagine, with sincerity, something good happening to him. I spent nearly two days just on the work of forgiving my father. Tough stuff.

The work on forgiving my father taught me an important lesson. His actions resulted from huge hurts of his own. They had nothing to do with me. The inability to express love was a direct reflection of his own upbringing. I shifted my perspective from blaming him for all that was missing to understanding how I may also have contributed to the situation. I was rebellious. I did not obey. I was sarcastic. Perhaps the only way to reach me was through put-downs.

Down the list I went. Name people; forgive and release them; affirm them. Many times I went back to names, especially those where the memories created feelings of unease. And I offered my forgiveness with deep sincerity. This insight extended to other relationships. As I would forgive and release, I still might not approve of the way a person handled a particular situation. But after completing the process of forgiveness, I could generally understand the situation better and begin to see my own part in it.

Sometimes forgiveness requires work above and beyond the call of duty. This was the case with the controller. I had spent hours forgiving and releasing and trying to imagine great things happening to him. About noon of the fourth straight day of forgiveness, I came out of the bedroom for lunch. It was then I realized that my work with him needed to take on a more personal touch. I needed to visit him and express my apologies.

This was not easy. I made a call to the office and found that he was at home, and not doing well. I phoned and his wife answered. Her voice immediately telegraphed surprise and shock to be talking to me; she knew full well the battle that raged between her husband and me. I said, "I want to come out and visit, this afternoon. When would be a good time?" She said she'd have to check. "I'll hang on," I replied. The time was set.

When was the last time your heart felt like it would pound right out of your chest? My emotions went on overdrive. On the way to his house, I wanted to turn back. My steps in making the short walk between the curb and his front door were some of the most difficult I have ever taken. The whole time, my heart was in my throat. But I pressed on. I felt that my life hinged on this sincere effort of forgiveness.

What do you say to someone whom you have previously considered an enemy? How do you communicate your changed feelings? Are words ever adequate to make up for the emotional havoc one has caused? I was greeted and led into the bedroom, where my adversary was propped up in his bed with pillows. And with my heart pounding, adrenaline rushing, voice shaking, I barely managed to stutter out a few words to this effect:

"I have come to say I am sorry." A long pause to gather some composure. My voice still breaking, I continued: "I deeply regret the hurt I have caused you." Another pause. I remember my right hand and arm were shaking, out of my control. I tried to steady them with my left hand. In a whisper I finished: "I want you to know I wish you only the best."

Those words were imperfect, to be sure. They were delivered in a voice that was gripped with fear. But they came from my heart, sincere in every aspect. They must have been effective. Because my adversary struggled to sit up, swung his feet over the edge of the bed, and motioned me to come and sit by his side.

Greg," he said, "I am the one who needs to say I'm sorry. I'm old enough to be your father. Yet I treated you like the outcast son. Please forgive me." His wife was crying. She knelt on the floor and the three of us embraced. We all cried. Finally, it was my old adversary who found the strength to mutter a prayer: "Dear God, forgive us all."

We said brief good-byes and I left. As I started the car back toward home, I took a deep breath and said out loud, "Whew!" A weight was being lifted. I could feel it, sense it, was part of it: the clouds that had been tormenting me were beginning to part. The day seemed brighter. Was it the sun, or was it this catharsis that had just taken place?

My posture changed. I went from being hunched over to sitting erect in the seat. I held my head more upright. The tension in my shoulders lessened dramatically. The wrinkles on my forehead melted away. I relaxed. The pain was gone. The quivering hand was steady. A smile came across my face.

I'm frre!" I whispered. "I'm free," I repeated, this time louder. In a crescendo I exclaimed, "I'm free! I'm free! I'm free!" I shouted it: "I'm free!" Tears gushed down my cheeks in torrents. My vision became blurred. I quickly pulled off onto a side street, parked the car, and wept, out of control, for a long, long time. I remember the eyes of a lad who came to the window. I wonder how long he had been watching me. "Hey, mister," he said, "you need help?" No, no. I'm fine." And I made my way home.

RELEASE. SET FREE. I look back to my week of the sincere work of forgiveness and realize this was the absolute turning point in my physical healing. From that point in time, I began to gain back lost weight, manage pain more readily, and hold more positive thoughts about my future.

Do I believe there was a link between this deeply spiritual work and my physical improvement? Absolutely. I believe that practicing the Law of Forgiveness changes us bio-chemically. And in the process, the body is released toward its optimum wellness potential. I know that my doctor and scientist friends get very uncomfortable when I share these beliefs. But it seems we can all agree on this: life quality soars when we sincerely practice the Law of Forgiveness. And this just may be an important determinant in releasing the body's self-healing potential.

Life can indeed be lived most abundantly as an adventure in forgiveness. Forgive. Set yourself free."

Reprinted with permission from “The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness: Feel, Think, and Live Better Than You Ever Thought Possible” (HarperCollins/HarperSanFransisco). Copyright © 1995 by Greg Anderson.

The Cancer Recovery Foundation of America

http://www.cancerrecovery.org

In 1985, during the year following his recovery from lung cancer, Greg Anderson founded what would later become The Cancer Recovery Foundation of America (CRFA), to help other cancer patients learn from what he had experienced. CRFA produces a variety of educational resources. It continues to reach out to cancer patients anywhere in the world, and has expanded with branches now in Canada, Europe and England. Greg has appeared on over 1,100 radio and television programs teaching his holistic recovery philosophy and techniques. There are seminars available—call for a schedule.

Any cancer patient can call CRFA at 800-238-6479 and request help. Part of the packet of information that will be sent is a brochure written by Greg, summarizing the self-described changes among 600 of the 15,000 “terminal” cancer survivors in the CRFA database. It is called “Cancer: A Message to Change,” and it asks the reader to consider: ”What message to change is cancer asking of me?”

Greg’s quest with this research was to find out if there were common characteristics of survivorship that could help others. What he found at the most basic level, underlying all of the research, was the fact that cancer survivors change—both their lives and themselves. “They create a state of body, mind and spirit where they are well and they live from that state. Survivors heal the whole person…The changes come first; survivorship follows.” These survivors were essentially asked the question: “What did you do to get well again?” Research results include summaries relating to six areas: physical, mental, social, emotional, vocational and spiritual.

The following statistics seem especially relevant and important to consider:

“One of the most common perceptions among survivors was a new and greater level of emotional awareness. 7 in 10 survivors cited emotional and psychological factors as playing a ‘major’ role in how and when they became sick. 8 in 10 felt the same factors played a ‘major’ role in how their immune system functioned.”

“5 in 10 survivors cited releasing the past as a ‘major’ factor in survivorship. This was not forgive and forget; more accurately it was forgive and learn. Survivors gave no tacit approval to abhorrent behavior from others or themselves. Rather, the focus was on detachment from hostility that freed personal energy for healing.”

Greg summarizes the research study with the following observation:

“Personal change is pervasive among long-term cancer survivors….By approaching cancer as a message to examine change, on as many levels of being as possible, patients make it much more likely that their healing capacities will be fully mobilized. As a bonus, quality of life improves, making it infinitely more worth living for whatever time one is given.”

Extraordinary Books for Cancer Patients - Or Anyone Who Just Wants a Better Quality of Life

A Modern-Day Parable: “The Cancer Conqueror”

Greg Anderson is the author of several extraordinary books. One of his most popular, now translated into 19 languages, is “The Cancer Conqueror,” the story of one individual’s search for help and healing. It begins almost like a fairy tale: “There was once a man who had just received a diagnosis of cancer….” The truths it contains are profound and universal.

Surviving cancer is a process... and with good strategies and good physical care, whether conventional, integrative or alternative, people do it all the time. This book is a roadmap of much of that process. Some highlights are offered here, but you can choose to learn more by ordering the book and reading it ALL (highly recommended)! It is available, along with Greg’s other fine books, from CRFA.

Some selected highlights from “The Cancer Conqueror:”

“The Cancer Conqueror encourages us to acknowledge that attitudes, beliefs and thoughts go together to create a mental and emotional outlook toward life, an emotional lifestyle. Those emotions, either positive or negative, translate to the physical…..emotions can play a central role in cancer’s outset and course…Not only changed emotional states, but CHARGED emotional states. Fear. Anger. Guilt. All commonly the result of mismanaged stress. Actually the issue isn’t stress, but how we manage stress.

In response to the idea that our negative attitudes and emotions contribute to our disease: The question is asked: “Does this mean I gave myself cancer?” And the answer: “Now here is the hopeful part: If you believe that you may have contributed to your illness, then you must also believe that you have the power to contribute to your recovery. The psychological and spiritual components can work either for us or against us. The choice is ours.”

“…..Let me leave you with one of the Cancer Conqueror’s favorite stories about his beliefs. One of his heroes is Christopher Columbus. At that point in history everyone believed the world was flat. But Columbus decided to challenge that belief. He took a chance, and the world has never been the same since! He was a real conqueror! Our beliefs about cancer are like that. You are a modern-day Columbus about to start a journey. Some people will tell you there is no hope, that the world is flat. Don’t believe it! Instead, take a chance. Start the journey. Become a cancer conqueror!”

And--become a Frog-Kisser! In continuing the “fairy-tale” feel found at times in the book, an old story with a message is adapted for cancer patients. We all remember the princess who encounters a frog who has had a spell cast over him, turning him from a handsome prince into a frog who can only be returned to his natural state with a kiss from a beautiful maiden. He tells the princess his story and asks for a kiss. She doesn’t really feel like kissing a frog that day. It’s even distasteful, why should she do this? Still, she considers: “What if there really was a handsome prince under all that ugly green skin? What if he really was telling the truth? Just because I’ve never encountered this before doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. It might actually be exciting to be involved, a whole new adventure….” What did she have to lose? So of course she took the chance, trusted her positive instincts and she and her handsome prince live happily ever after.

The Cancer Conqueror suggests that our job is to become frog-kissers! Frog kissing is about love. “If I could give you just one piece of advice on how to conquer cancer, it would be to love, to be a frog kisser. Nonjudgmental, unconditional love conquers cancer! And my advice would be to love yourself first—to kiss the frog in the mirror…. Healing has at its roots the ability to both give and receive nonjudgmental, unconditional love.”

The Twenty-Two Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness

In addition to the very powerful Law of Forgiveness that was illustrated by Greg’s personal story of healing given previously, there are many other profound truths to be found in this book. It is filled with inspiring stories of people whose lives have been enriched by adopting the practices and beliefs that Greg outlines.

One of the most surprising is the Law of Stress Hardiness; it is worth considering because we all have stress to deal with in our lives, sometimes huge amounts of it. Greg suggests that stress is not only to be expected but actually preferred: “...we can and should develop a positive, workable approach to stress management...Think of it. The perfect no-stress environment is the grave... The problem isn't stress, it's toxic stress….When we change our perception we gain control. The stress becomes a challenge, not a threat. When we commit to action, to actually doing something rather than feeling trapped by events, the stress in our life becomes manageable.”

Sometimes we can all use reminders for how we should be living—to keep our ideals foremost in our hearts and minds. Here are Greg’s suggestions for resolving toxic stress and developing high self-esteem in the process:

The Research of Candace Pert, PhD

Candace Pert

Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind: Mind-Body Medicine Becomes the Science of Psychoneuroimmunolgy (PNI)

Professor, Department of Physiology & Biophysics
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Washington DC

Author of Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine
Visit www.candacepert.com for more information about Dr.Pert's groundbreaking research.

 

“Candace has taken a giant step toward shattering some cherished beliefs held sacred by Western scientists for more than two centuries. Her pioneering research has demonstrated how our internal chemicals, the neuropeptides and their receptors, are the actual biological underpinnings of our awareness, manifesting themselves as our emotions, beliefs and expectations, and profoundly influencing how we respond to and experience our world.

~Deepak Chopra MD, from the Foreword of Molecules of Emotion

The Chicken or the Egg: The Body or the Mind. Which Comes First?
Dr. Pert’s Answer: The “Bodymind”

Dr. Candace Pert rocketed to fame in the scientific world in the early 70’s when, as a fledgling neuropharmacologist, she took on the daunting task of finding the opiate receptor for her doctoral dissertation at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. For the next decade and a half she headed a laboratory at the National Institutes of Health which published over 200 scientific articles explaining the discovery of numerous "neuropeptides." The ground-breaking work that Pert did with the opiate receptor was later nominated for a Lasker Award, also known as the “American Nobel Prize,” awarded annually for outstanding medical research.

Pert’s discovery of the opiate receptor started a revolution that would later create profound shifts within nearly every field of modern medicine. It would ultimately unite immunology, endocrinology, neurophysiology, psychology and biology into a cohesive theory about how our thoughts and emotions are capable of creating wellness or disease in our bodies. It would explain and validate what Eastern healing traditions, shamans, energy healers and most alternative practitioners have understood for eons.

Eastern philosophy would state that consciousness precedes reality. Western thought espouses the opposite view and has taught for hundreds of years that consciousness, thoughts and emotions are products of the physical brain and have little to do with the body or our health. How many times has the statement, “It’s all in your head” been given when no logical answer makes sense, thus suggesting that whatever complaint is being reported by the patient is not real. Pert would say it’s all in your “bodymind” and it’s all important. She maintains that theories of psychosomatic illness must shift, as we uncover ever more scientific research validating that consciousness is a body-mind phenomenon.

The New Science of Psychoneuroimmunology: Everything is Psychosomatic

As a ground-breaking neuroscientist, Pert’s research helped to create the foundation for an entirely new interdisciplinary branch of science called “Psychoneuroimmunology” or PNI. PNI unites the three classically separated sciences of neuroscience, immunology and endocrinology and their associated glands and organs into a multidirectional communication network, linked by information carrying molecules called (neuro)peptides. Pert provided PNI with a clear scientific language to use, that of peptides and their receptors, also known as “information substances,” thereby helping to legitimize the field. Pert notes that her preferred term was “Psychoimmunoneuroendocrinology” recognizing the inclusion of the endocrine system, but the simpler name of PNI became the accepted term in scientific circles. The more popular name for PNI, soon became “mind-body medicine.”

“Thus, we might refer to the whole system as a psychosomatic information network, linking ‘psyche,’ which comprises all that is of an ostensibly nonmaterial nature, such as mind, emotion and soul, to ‘soma,’ which is the material world of molecules, cells and organs. Mind and body, psyche and soma.”

Dr. Pert’s research provides scientific evidence that a biochemical basis for awareness and consciousness exists, that the mind and body are indeed one and that our emotions and feelings are the bridge that links the two. She explains, "The chemicals that are running our body and our brain are the same chemicals that are involved in emotion. And that says to me that we’d better pay more attention to emotions with respect to health."

Using Pert’s research as a foundation, we now have a new scientific understanding of the power of our minds and our feelings to directly and profoundly affect our health and well-being. This new science explains that we are one system; the brain is integrated into the body at a molecular level and therefore neither can be treated separately without the other being directly affected. According to Pert, our bodies are in fact our subconscious minds:

“In the end I find I can't separate brain from body. Consciousness isn't just in the head. Nor is it a question of the power of the mind over the body...because they’re flip sides of the same thing. Mind doesn’t dominate body, it becomes body.”

How Did Modern Medicine Get It So Wrong?

Indigenous cultures worldwide have long been known to honor the mind/body/environment connection. Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, systems of medicine 3000-6000 years old, still correlate organs and illness with specific mental/emotional states and seek to return the patient to mind/body/spirit balance so that healing occurs organically. And Aristotle suggested there was a connection between mood and health when he wrote, “Soul and body, I suggest, react sympathetically upon each other.” So how did Western Medicine come to embrace exactly the opposite view?

Blame it on Rene Descartes, a 17th century French philosopher (“I think, therefore I am”) and what we’ve come to refer to as the “Cartesian Split.” Descartes needed human bodies for dissection studies and he made a deal with the Pope of his era. He wouldn’t have anything to do with the soul, the mind or the emotions, which remained under the Church’s jurisdiction. And modern medicine would take the physical body as its domain, thus dividing the human being into two separate parts that were not to overlap. Descartes declared, "Anything to do with the soul, mind or emotions, I leave to the clergy. I will only claim the realm of the body."

According to this paradigm, to understand a human being, all one had to do was take the body apart and study the various physical components (also referred to as “reductionism”). Sir Isaac Newton, the “Father of Modern Science,” also maintained through his “Newtonian Construct” that only physical matter was real and that it was all that really mattered. And so the foundation was laid for the several hundred years of relating health and the curing of disease exclusively to the realm of treating the physical body. This theory is changing slowly, and even today, most modern doctors will ask about physical symptoms and then prescribe drugs or surgery. Using the mind to understand the body is still usually labeled "unscientific" and mind affecting body "psychosomatic” and therefore somehow not relevant.

How Our Emotions and Thoughts Become Our Physical Body
Peptides and Receptors: The Molecules of Emotion

What exactly is a molecule of emotion? The first component is the one Pert discovered thirty some years ago that launched her scientific career—the complex molecule known as the receptor, and more specifically—the opiate receptor. She developed a method to measure it and therefore, in a backwards sort of way, prove its existence. This discovery would explain the mechanism by which such opiates as heroin or morphine create their powerful effect on the body, the mind and the emotions. Coincidentally, Pert had a personal experience that had birthed a growing fascination about how these substances caused such a powerful effect on the body, mind and emotions simultaneously.

After a bad fall while horseback riding, she found herself in the hospital, being given a morphine derivative to relieve the pain of a compressed lumbar vertebra. She marveled at the combination of both pain killing effect and the mental and emotional changes induced by the drug. Pert noted the euphoria and blissful altered state she experienced every time she received an injection. She so liked the opiate's "wonderful feeling of being deeply nourished and satisfied" that she considered continuing on the drug for her pain when she was released from the hospital. Although she eventually decided against that option, her intense physical and emotional experience intrigued her and she wondered about this overlap of physical and emotional effects from a single drug. In this fascination she no doubt had a great deal of company. Many have wondered how such drugs as heroin, marijuana, Librium and cocaine are able to create such intense emotional shifts. This hospital experience would later trigger an interest in proving the existence of the opiate receptor as Pert’s doctoral focus.

Receptors sit on the surface of cells and number in the hundreds of thousands on the average cell; specialized cells such as neurons might have millions of receptors surrounding them. These receptors act as tiny scanners and sensors which wait patiently until the exact chemical key comes along that will fit into them, much like a regular key is made to only fit into one specific lock. These chemical keys are called ligands and the most common of these is known as a (neuro)peptide, accounting for nearly 95% of known ligands. Pert describes what happens next as “quite amazing.” The peptide delivers its chemical message to the receptor, which then transmits this message deep within the cell, triggering a chain of biochemical reactions which can create huge changes within the cell—of either a positive or negative nature.

Pert calls the peptides the second component of the molecules of emotion. She offers an analogy:

“If the cell is the engine that drives all life, then the receptors are the buttons on the control panel of that engine, and a specific peptide is the finger that pushes that button and gets things started.”

Pert then asked the logical question: If we all have the opiate receptor present on the cells within our bodies, then must it not follow that our bodies have the ability to make our own endogenous version of morphine? Why else would these receptors already be present on our cells? Within three years she was proved correct when the natural opiate substance manufactured within the body was discovered and eventually became known as an “endorphin,” a shortened version of “endogenous morphine.” The implications in this discovery are profound and suggest that we may in fact have a “natural pharmacopeia” potential already present within us. Perhaps someday we will all be capable of manufacturing our own natural biochemicals at will-- in effect orchestrating our own healing. According to Pert, this concept is not as far fetched as it sounds and perhaps not so far off either.

Implications for Disease and Healing: The Power of Unhealed Feelings

Emotions are real—they exist in time and space and are located throughout our minds and bodies. If we accept the concept that peptides and their receptors are the actual biochemicals of emotion, then their presence in the body’s nervous system and nerve cells shows us that the body can be thought of as the unconscious or subconscious mind. Pert explains further:

“As investigations continue, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the role of peptides is not limited to eliciting simple and singular actions from individual cells and organs systems. Rather, peptides serve to weave the body’s organs and systems into a single web that reacts to both internal and external environmental changes with complex, subtly orchestrated responses. Peptides are the sheet music containing the notes, phrases and rhythms that allow the orchestra—your body—to play as an integrated entity. And the music that results is the tone or feeling that you experience subjectively as your emotions.”

Can the kinds and numbers of emotion-linked peptides at receptor sites on our cells influence whether we will stay well or get sick? Pert suggests yes and offers the example of viral illness: "Viruses use these same receptors to enter into a cell, and depending on how much of the . . . natural peptide for that receptor is around, the virus will have an easier or harder time getting into the cell. So our emotional state will affect whether we'll get sick from the same loading dose of a virus." This would also explain why some people get much sicker than others from an identical exposure to a virus. Pert considers.... might an elevated mood of happiness, positive expectation or hope offer some protection against a virus? She answers by telling us that she’s never gotten a cold while skiing—a sport she obviously loves.

What does this suggest about the process of developing cancer and an individual’s potential for healing? And further, what is the relationship between the mind, the emotions and a cancer patient’s state of health? Pert suggests there is a profound and direct connection:

“We are all aware of the bias built into the Western idea that the mind is totally in the head, a function of the brain. But your body is not there just to carry around your head. I believe the research findings….indicate that we need to start thinking about how the mind manifests itself in various parts of the body and, beyond that, how we can bring that process into consciousness…the neuropeptides and their receptors are the substrates of the emotions, and they are in constant communication with the immune system, the mechanism through which health and disease are created.”

“Think of (stress-related disease) in terms of an information overload, a situation in which the mind-body network is so taxed by unprocessed sensory input in the form of suppressed trauma or undigested emotions that it has become bogged down and cannot flow freely, sometimes even working against itself, at cross-purposes.”

Your Brain is Not in Charge

In a July 2004 interview with New Dimensions Radio (www.newdimensions.org), Pert and her husband and research partner, immunologist Michael Ruff, discussed the highly complex psychosomatic communication networks of information molecules we are all made of. They explain that we are not “brain centric” at all and that a state of mind is in actuality a state of consciousness in the body as well. The origins of illness really are within us.

Science and medicine have long been convinced that thoughts and emotions originate in the brain. In an interesting twist, Pert and Ruff disagree and suggest that “thoughts and emotions bubble up from the body to the brain, where we can process and verbalize them according to our expectations, beliefs and other filters—some get through and others don’t.” And then, Pert says, the frontal cortex of the brain creates stories and assigns meaning around those thoughts and emotions that do get through.

Our Immune Systems Can Learn and Respond

Pert tell us that neuroscience has now proved that immune cells can be conditioned to respond to stimuli, much like Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. Psychologist Robert Ader, at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, gave laboratory rats an immune-suppressing drug flavored with sweet-tasting saccharin. Eventually the rats became so conditioned to the effects that giving them only the saccharin and no drug at all caused their immune systems to become depressed—at the unconscious and autonomic level. Pert comments:

“We know that the immune system, like the central nervous system, has memory and the capacity to learn. Thus, it could be said that intelligence is located not only in the brain but in cells that are distributed throughout the body, and that the traditional separation of mental processes, including emotions, from the body is no longer valid.”

Later, in pivotal studies at the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, scientist Howard Hall proved that the immune system could also be conditioned consciously using self-regulatory practices such as self-hypnosis, biofeedback, guided imagery, relaxation and autogenic training. Using several control groups, Hall demonstrated that with conscious preparation, through using one of the types of practices noted above, individuals could consciously control the stickiness of their white blood cells, as measured by both blood and saliva tests. Pert then asks the obvious question: “If the immune system can be altered by conscious intervention, what does this mean for the treatment of major diseases such as cancer?”

Can suppressing anger or other emotions contribute to the development of cancer—a theory proposed by Dr. Lydia Temoshok in her chapter on this website? Since expressing emotions contributes to a free flowing network of peptides and cellular communication in the body, Dr. Pert says yes--absolutely. "My research has shown me that when emotions are expressed....all systems are united and made whole. When emotions are repressed, denied, not allowed to be whatever they may be, our network pathways get blocked, stopping the flow of the vital feel-good unifying chemicals that run both our biology and our behavior."

A general theory of cancer suggests that we all have errant or mutated cancer cells created in our bodies every day, yet only some individuals will go on to develop the disease. Normally our immune systems destroy these errant cells, yet in individuals whose immune systems are severely compromised, this mechanism fails. If the immune system is influenced by the “molecules of emotion” and the peptide/receptor system in the body, then what happens if the free flow of peptides is interrupted on a continual basis by the repressed emotions of a lifetime?

Pert says it’s not too hard to figure out what might happen in such a case:

“Let me begin to answer by saying that I believe all emotions are healthy, because emotions are what unite the mind and the body. Anger, fear, sadness, the so-called negative emotions, are as healthy as peace, courage and joy. To repress these emotions and not let them flow freely is to set up a dis-integrity in the system, causing it to act at cross-purposes rather than as a unified whole. The stress this creates, which takes the form of blockages and insufficient flow of peptide signals to maintain function at the cellular level, is what sets up the weakened conditions that can lead to disease."

"All honest emotions are positive emotions. Health is not just a matter of thinking 'happy thoughts.' Sometimes the biggest impetus to healing can come from jump-starting the immune system with a burst of long-repressed anger. How and where it’s expressed is up to you—in a room by yourself, in a group therapy situation where the group dynamic can often facilitate the expression of long-buried feelings, or in a spontaneous exchange with a family member or friend. The key is to express it (appropriately) and then let it go, so that it doesn’t fester, or build, or escalate out of control.”

How to Use This Information to Heal: Dr. Candace Pert’s Eight Part Program

Pert suggests a program of eight ways to use the information in her ground-breaking book to stay healthy, or to heal if a disease state is already present. Not in the list below is the foundational concept for all that follows: acknowledge and claim all your feelings because they are the entrance point into the bodymind’s communication network.

  1. Become conscious. Educate yourself about these processes and become aware of how your bodymind operates to maintain wellness.
  2. Learn to access the Psychosomatic Network in order to enter the bodymind’s conversation and redirect it when necessary. Use an awareness of the past experiences and conditioning that are stored in the receptors on your cells, to release them at an emotional level. Help for this process can include psychotherapy, personal growth seminars, guided visualization, meditation, hypnotherapy, prayer etc.
  3. Explore your dreams. Dreams are one of the bodymind’s methods of exchanging information for growth and healing. “Capturing that dream and re-experiencing the emotions can be very healing, as you either integrate the information for growth or decide to take actions toward forgiveness and letting go…Your dreams relate not just to your mind, but to your body as well. Dreams can be your own early-warning system, letting you know if a medical condition is developing and helping to bring your attention to the problem area. The body may be discussing this condition with the mind, and you can get in on the conversation by consciously recalling the dream…once you make the decision to pay attention to your dreams, they will start to speak to you, and you will understand them with ever-greater fluency over time, with practice."
  4. Get in touch with your body. “Your body is your subconscious mind and you can’t heal it by talk alone.” We can access our minds and our emotions through the physical body. Use bodywork or movement therapy to heal stuck emotions. Take a walk, run, have a massage or spinal adjustment, get a few hugs and see how you feel. Using touch, massage, physical manipulation of various types can release stored or blocked emotions by clearing internal pathways. Many healers or practitioners of eastern healing systems can see blocked energy in the body and are trained to release it at a physical level. All injuries and traumas are stored in the tissues of the body. Pert concludes, “…almost every other culture but ours recognizes the role played by some kind of emotional catharsis or energy release in healing.”
  5. Reduce stress. In Pert’s opinion, the most effective way to reduce stress is to learn to meditate and practice it regularly.
  6. Exercise. Modern lifestyles encourage a sedentary lifestyle. The body was made for moving. Pert suggests trying yoga.
  7. Eat wisely. “Eating, because of its survival value, has been widely interpreted by evolution to be a highly emotional event.” Our gastro-intestinal tracts are densely lined with peptides and receptors which busily process information rife with emotional content. Here is also where our “gut feelings” happen. Pert also tells us that she considers sugar to be an addictive substance.
  8. Avoid substance abuse. These addictive substances bind to our receptors, blocking the natural flow of our own peptides. For example, alcohol binds to what is known as the GABA receptor. Using alcohol to excess floods our GABA receptors, eventually causing them to decrease in sensitivity and/or number, making recovery more difficult over time. This same kind of action applies to marijuana, tobacco, cocaine and even sugar.

If we can learn to communicate with our bodyminds, we can tap into our body’s own language to better understand and facilitate healing. Pert has come to believe that emotions are the key to coordinating all the parts of us into a harmonious and healthy whole.

New Paradigm Medicine: Healthcare of the Future

In November 2002, Dr. Pert and her research partner, Dr. Michael Ruff, were honored for their scientific contributions by The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine at an awards ceremony in Washington DC. They were asked to submit a summary of their views about the future of healthcare and excerpts are taken from this summary below. Pert calls this view “New Paradigm Medicine.”

“We have coined the phrase ‘New Paradigm Medicine’ to reflect the fact that it uses the established scientific method and will require quantum physics to understand the scientific underpinnings. The terms alternative, integrative and complementary are political, not scientific terms. We believe that New Paradigm Medicine will be fully scientifically validated one day. ….We are not a collection of separate organs or systems, but an information network in which our cells are constantly moving from one location to another as they are being formed or replaced, regulated by the molecules of emotion. …

Thus cancer, in particular, will be appreciated as a disease of the mind as well as the body and treated at centers…where body, mind and spirit are considered. One day, cancer will be cured by interventions that release emotions in a controlled fashion such as guided imagery, art therapy, animal therapy, massage and bodywork, neurolinguistic programming, energy psychology, chiropractic and last but not least music therapy. These will be used in combination—“cocktails”---scientifically optimized and validated protocols by skilled practitioners, and will actually cure or prolong high quality life in many cancers. Whatever the the pain, it’s actually the brain where it is perceived. Sophisticated biofeedback methods instead of drugs or surgery will be used to treat it more successfully, along the methods above—and more.

Nutrition will be taken extremely seriously. The fact that most of today’s crops are grown for appearance and are seriously depleted of essential nutrients will be appreciated, and supplements and superfoods will be used, based upon controlled scientific clinical data.”

The Spiritual Connection

Pert was one of the scientific experts interviewed in the highly acclaimed Bill Moyers PBS series, “Healing and the Mind.” At one point, she asked Moyers, "Can we account for all human phenomena in terms of chemicals? I personally think we're going to have to bring in that extra-energy realm, the realm of spirit and soul that Descartes kicked out of Western scientific thought."

She describes this spiritual viewpoint in her book as well:

“Yes, we all have a biochemical psychosomatic network run by intelligence, an intelligence that has no bounds and that is not owned by any individual but shared among all of us in a bigger network, the macrocosm to our microcosm, the ‘big psychosomatic network in the sky.’ And in this greater network of all humanity, all life, we are each of us an individual nodal point, each an access point into a larger intelligence. It is this shared connection that gives us our most profound sense of spirituality, making us feel connected, whole. As above, so below.”

Words of Wisdom: Aim for Emotional Wholeness

Pert concludes her book with the following simple recommendations, gleaned from all the scientific data she has included in describing the tenets of Psychoneuroimmunology and their implications for healing:

“Aim for emotional wholeness. When you’re upset or feeling sick, try to get to the bottom of your feelings. Figure out what’s really eating you. Always tell the truth to yourself. Find appropriate, satisfying ways to express your emotions. And if such a prescription seems too challenging, seek professional help to feel better."

"I believe the alternative or complementary therapies are a form of professional help much less likely to do harm and more likely to do good than conventional approaches. They work by shifting our natural balance of internal chemicals around, so we can feel as good as possible. They are often particularly helpful for alleviation of the many chronic maladies that currently have no good medical solutions…. …"

"Last but definitely not least, health is much more than the absence of illness. Live in an unselfish way that promotes a state of spiritual bliss that truly helps to prevent illness. Wellness is trusting in the ability and desire of your bodymind to heal and improve itself, if given half a chance. Take responsibility for your own health—and illness.”

What the Bleep Do We Know?

If you would like to know more about the science behind how our thoughts and emotions create our reality, including our state of health, then you should consider seeing the film, What the Bleep Do We Know. This a ground-breaking, user-friendly documentary/movie that uses entertaining visual effects and story-telling to demonstrate the tenets of quantum physics and mind-body science as the force behind the creation of our daily lives. Interviews with award winning physicists and other researchers and scientists such as Candace Pert, are woven provocatively throughout the movie. See www.whatthebleep.com for more info. Available on Amazon.
Candace Pert, PhD is the author of Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine and Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind, a 2 cassette tape set. Dr. Pert and her research partner, Dr. Michael Ruff, have published over 250 scientific articles on peptides and their receptors and the role of these neuropeptides in the immune system. They hold a number of patents for modified peptides in the treatment of psoriasis, Alzheimer’s Disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, stroke and head trauma. One of these, peptide T, is currently in Phase II trials in the U.S. for the treatment of AIDS and neuroAIDS.

Cancer As A Turning Point: The Contributions of Lawrence LeShan, PhD

Lawrence LeShan, PhD

Lawrence LeShan, PhD
“The Father of Mind-Body Therapy”
www.cancerasaturningpoint.org
E-mail to Dr. LeShan's associate, Ruth Bolletino: rbolletino@aol.com
Phone: (212) 496-9136

In Chinese, there is no word for crisis; the word that comes closest
consists of two symbols. One for danger; the other for opportunity.

 

"Getting cancer can become the beginning of living. The search for one's own being, the discovery of the life one needs to live, can be one of the strongest weapons against disease." Lawrence LeShan

Dr. Lawrence LeShan’s therapeutic methods have achieved extraordinary results with advanced cancer patients—irrespective of whatever physical healing choices they made. Over the past thirty years that he has been practicing his unique form of psychotherapy, approximately half of his cancer patients with poor prognoses have experienced long term remission and many are still alive. That is a powerful statement you may want to read again! Nearly all dramatically improved their emotional state and quality of life. Every cancer patient who wants to maximize his or her odds for survival should at least consider how LeShan’s approach might be incorporated into the conventional, complementary or alternative physical healing path they have chosen.

Dr. Lawrence LeShan has worked with cancer patients for over fifty years now and is referred to as “the father of mind-body therapy” by many in the field. He has been a research and clinical psychologist and is the author of more than a dozen books, including three excellent choices for cancer patients: Cancer As A Turning Point: A Handbook for Cancer Patients, Their Families and Health Professionals, You Can Fight For Your Life: Emotional Factors in the Treatment of Cancer, and How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-Discovery.”

Cancer as a Turning Point uses patient stories to show how to mobilize the cancer patient's self-healing abilities and to use them to augment whatever physical healing program the patient has chosen. The book comes out of a thirty-five year research project involving several thousand people with cancer. It is designed to teach cancer patients and their families, friends, physicians, clergymen, and psychotherapists how to use psychological change to help heal and strengthen the patient's compromised immune system.

In the beginning of his career, when he first began working with cancer patients, LeShan utilized the classic psychotherapeutic approach he was trained in, where the model was to uncover what was wrong with the patient and then determine what could be done about it. Was there something dark and hidden within the patient’s psyche? Could it be brought to light and either cured or compensated for?

This traditional analytic approach can have very positive effects with many types of mental, emotional and behavioral issues, but LeShan maintains that it did not prove helpful in mobilizing the immune system—something cancer patients must immediately accomplish if they are to survive. During the time he used this classical approach, almost none of his cancer patients survived their diagnosis longer that what had been predicted.

LeShan then began to shift his treatment method and his questions. He began to ask “What’s right with this person? What ways of being with themselves, with others and with the world will lead them to the greatest enthusiasm and satisfaction in their lives? What would provide a solid reason for being, the kind of meaning and purpose that makes us glad to get out of bed in the morning and glad to go to bed at night—the kind of life that makes us look forward zestfully to each day and to the future.

And having determined that together, he reasoned that he and his patient could begin to move toward embracing that way of being and creating that life. In effect, the definition of psychotherapy has been changed from removing the patient’s pain and reducing symptoms—to helping each patient find their own special “music” that will lead them to the “song” they came to sing in this lifetime. LeShan found that this process could be exhilarating for some and downright terrifying for others, but always beneficial in the end.

He describes the process in the following way:

"Let us suppose we say in effect to a patient that your Fairy Godmother will come in that door in a few minutes. She will make you an offer. In six months your inner and outer life can be exactly what you would like it to be so that you would use yourself most completely and have the maximum enjoyment and zest possible. You can change your feelings and your circumstances. There are no limitations on age, sex, education, and so forth. We shall assume that you choose good physical health as a basis and take it from there. There are only two catches. You must tell her in the next five minutes, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. She won't be back after granting your proposal……” You will have just described your heart’s deepest desire and where and how you would love to live."

“Therapy that is useful for mobilizing cancer patients' immune systems aims at discovering the answer to this question and understanding what has blocked its perception and/or its being lived out as a life-style. And then helping patients move toward it. Very often patients will respond with "I don't know" when asked how they would change their life. The goal then becomes having them accept that this is the most important question at this stage of their life. Mere acceptance of the question and a commitment to finding out the answer frequently have a positive effect on patients' immune systems. I have seen patients who began to respond better and more effectively to their medical protocol when they made and emotionally accepted the commitment.”

Releasing emotional blockages and pathologies is important when it is considered as part of the reason that an individual’s special “song” is not expressed, and as the cause of the patient’s loss of connection to enthusiasm and joy. Yet when people with cancer have been presented with this concept, LeShan has observed that there is generally strong resistance, and it usually falls into one or more of the following three types:

LeShan goes on: “In more than twenty-five years of using this approach, I have seen these reactions many, many times. Yet I have never seen a single person who, finding his or her own song and style, still felt the same. With all the people with whom I have worked, their own song was one that was acceptable to them and others, was possible to play fully in this culture (and to make a living at when this was necessary), and increased their human relationships and made them more fulfilling. In addition, in every case the song was socially positive and acceptable. I have never seen an exception to this.”

Something Within Us Yearns for Wider Vistas and Broader Skies

LeShan coaches patients to take control over their own life, to search for a lifestyle that truly suits them and expresses who they are—and then to begin to move toward creating that lifestyle. For most, this will entail a complete transformation of how they view themselves, no longer being motivated by what they “should” do, versus what they would enjoy doing. LeShan asks his patients to dig down and ask themselves: “What would truly fulfill me—what style of being, relating, creating would bring me to a life of zest and enthusiasm?” Time and again, he found that the answer to this question was the very thing that would most profoundly mobilize their immune system against cancer.

“Over and over again, I have seen one of two things happen when the total environment of the person with cancer is mobilized for life and his or her inner ecology is thereby changed in a positive way. For some, the patient's life is prolonged, not in an arbitrary way, but in order that there may be more experience of the self, self-recognition and the recognition—and often fulfillment—of dreams. And then there were the genuine miracles—not magic, but dedicated devotion and hard work which made the cancer a turning point in the person's life rather than a sign of its ending. The more we learn about human biology and psychology, the more we learn about how to change and improve the quality and ambiance of life both internal and external, the more this second result may become commonplace. And when it is time to die, we need to understand what our life was about, to know and accept who we have become.”

A Tale of Two Patients: How Psychological Change Can Mobilize a Compromised Immune System

The term “hopeless” should be banished from the cancer patient’s vocabulary.
There is ALWAYS hope!

Two of LeShan’s patient stories illustrate much of what has been related so far. Ethel had metastasized breast cancer and had been told by her doctors that she had approximately two months to live. She sought therapy to deal with her fear and to find out how to live until she died. It wasn’t difficult to uncover her secret dreams. Ethel had always wanted to travel, particularly on the ocean, and she had always felt she belonged at sea, jokingly saying that in a previous life, she must have been a sailor.

Her best memories from her life were the ten years she had worked in an exclusive clothing store—she had loved being a saleswoman there. Even then, she had pored over travel brochures and dreamed of cruises. She became a wife, then a mother and she put away her dreams for what she believed was the reality she was supposed to be living. Now that Ethel was a cancer patient, she was asked, “Why not travel now?” Her husband was dead, her children grown and independent. She replied that now she was sick and shouldn’t leave her excellent medical care. It didn’t take much convincing to get her to reconsider that rather bleak option. And so Ethel took all her life savings and booked a first class cabin on a long cruise—and off she went, with great excitement and anticipation.

Four months later she stormed into the doctor’s office and shouted, “Here, I’ve spent all my money. I’m broke—and I’m still alive!” She and the doctor began to laugh, as he pointed out the obvious alternative. He was later able to use his connections to get Ethel a job selling in a boutique on an ocean liner, creating a lifestyle which she absolutely loved. The cancer had shown no signs of increasing and slowly shrunk to about half its original size over the years. Ethel had no further medical treatments, but simply went forward, joyfully living a lifestyle that she found completely fulfilling and exciting. She sent the doctor a Christmas card every year—no matter where in the world she was.

Carol was another of Dr. LeShan's patients, a highly successful executive and VP in a large corporation. Her family was proud of her, her colleagues were envious. The only thing wrong was that Carol hated her life and everything about it. She despised the cutthroat tactics of people who succeeded in her world, she disliked the ruthless ambition of her colleagues, and she was afraid she might become like them at some point. In her late thirties, she developed six malignant melanomas on her back, and she was told her prognosis was extremely poor. Carol left the doctor’s office and immediately called LeShan to make an appointment, already committed to do whatever it took to heal.

She soon recognized how her negativity toward her lifestyle was hurting her. LeShan kept returning the focus from the negative to what she liked most in life. Was there any time she had deeply enjoyed her work, had felt at home, fulfilled and happy? When had she felt “the good tired” rather than the “yuck tired” at the end of the day? “When and where had she had those periods in which you suddenly look up, three hours have gone by, you missed lunch and never noticed?” He kept Carol coming back to these questions.

Soon she began to remember an experience during college when she had worked at a center for retraining physically handicapped adults who had been injured in accidents and were being re-taught living skills. She had been deeply involved in her work at the center and had loved it. Now she considered whether this type of work in special education would fulfill her in the present. But to choose this, she would have to leave her upscale lifestyle and go back to school—how could she even begin to consider this?

Carol began with the “What’s the first thing to do?” exercise, then took a couple evening courses and found that she loved them. To the absolute horror of her family and friends, she soon quit her job, sold her penthouse and became a full time graduate student, eventually becoming the special education teacher and counselor she wanted to be.

Soon after this, Carol began to taper off her therapy appointments until finally they stopped altogether. Ten years later, LeShan met her “bounding jauntily down the street.” They greeted each other with a big hug, talked for a minute, and then both hurried off for appointments. After a couple steps, Carol turned around and asked, “Do you know why I’ve stopped staying in touch with you?” He shook his head. She answered, “It’s because I’ve been much too busy living my life to have any time for such nonsense as cancer, psychotherapy, or you!” LeShan’s concluding comment really says it all: “For a psychotherapist, this was a combination of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Nobel Prize. There could not have been a finer reason.”

They encountered each other one more time, seven years later and this time had coffee. Carol was still growing and now felt it was time for a new adventure in her life. She was beginning to use her administrative and managerial skills again as the executive director of a large charitable foundation--and continuing to experience her life as “full, rich and meaningful.”

Regarding Carol’s physical condition, her melanomas had gradually quit growing and after the first six months of therapy, they began to shrink. This continued until they disappeared and they never reappeared. Carol was still cancer-free over twenty years later, when LeShan’s book was written.

29 Exercises for Creating Your Ideal Life: What Actions Can You Take Now to Shape Your Life So It More Closely Resembles Your Dreams?

Can a cancer patient take on this life-altering work alone, without a therapist or counselor guiding the way? Yes, certainly Greg Anderson (see Greg's chapter on this website) was able to do this. In fact, LeShan comments that although patients working alone may not be able to go as deep, nor explore and gain insight to the same degree, yet “great progress can be made, lifestyles can be changed greatly and definite positive effects can be made on the immune system.” A true commitment to make these changes must be present, even if it forces us to walk through every one of our worst doubts and fears. “Sometimes it can be done alone. Sometimes it takes the help of a psychotherapist.”

The final chapter of the book is a Workbook, with 29 exercises designed to help individuals explore who they are and what their ideal life would look like. Most of us don’t have any idea where or how to begin this process. And these exercises are great for anyone who wants a more fulfilling life—not just cancer patients who need to stimulate their immune systems. “The immune system is feeble-minded,” LeShan says. And so it follows that if we feel we are unique and worthwhile enough to take care of ourselves, then our immune system will believe us and go to work to do exactly that. If we create extra years of good health and a fulfilling joyful life living our dreams, then we will have healed not only our bodies, but our hearts and spirits as well.

Cancer as a Turning Point is every bit as relevant and on the cutting edge of our medical knowledge as it was when first published in 1989. We highly recommend it for every cancer patient and for those who work with them in any capacity.

And now, consider with us for just a moment what kind of a world this would be if every one of us had the courage to create these profound changes and embrace a fulfilling joyful life right now—without waiting for a wake-up call like cancer to force us to look at what is so deeply out of balance in our lives. If we all sang our exquisite “songs” together, what kind of perfect harmony would be created around us? What wouldn’t we have any time for anymore? How about illness for starters?

Note: There are two additional sections of the book worth pointing out. LeShan includes an excellent chapter on meditation and a chapter with great advice about how to find the right therapist to work with.

Dr. LeShan and his associates offer five-day residential workshops, intensive “marathon” psychotherapy and individual therapy sessions, as well as trainings in these methods for healthcare professionals. Consult his website or call his office for details about all of this.

Susan Silberstein, PhD An Award-Winning Cancer Counselor

Susan Silberstein, PhD

Over 25,000 Patients in 30 Years

The Center for Advancement in Cancer Education
300 E. Lancaster Ave, Suite 100, Wynnewood, PA 19096
Phone 610-642-4810
Email: caceinfo@comcast.net
www.beatcancer.org

“It is more important to know what kind of patient has a disease than to know what disease the patient has.”

Sir William Osler, the Father of Modern Medicine

Personal Tragedy Leads to a Lifetime’s Work

Susan Silberstein, PhD founded The Center for Advancement in Cancer Education in 1977, following her young husband's death at age 31 from a rare form of spinal cord cancer. She did so out of her burning desire to make a difference so others would not have to experience the pain, confusion and frustration she went through in trying to find options for him. She did so “not because I had any score to settle with the cancer establishment or with his doctors, who were all terribly sincere…It was because I was already intellectually persuaded there had to be other approaches.” She continues to serve as the Center's Executive Director. Susan was also a member of the Education Advisory Committee at The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine in Washington, DC.

In addition to counseling over 25,000 cancer patients (over 10,000 of these were breast cancer patients) at the Center without ever charging a fee (they operate on a donation basis) , Susan lectures extensively around the country on cancer prevention as well as alternative and complementary therapies. She teaches and serves as a consultant for medical and nursing schools and has participated in numerous national and international symposia. She has created and coordinated hundreds of conferences on mind-body, immunological and nutritional topics for oncology patients, as well as 20 conferences and numerous “in services” on these topics for health professionals. Susan is the Editor of Immune Perspectives magazine and the creator and narrator of the excellent video, Breast Cancer: The Diet Connection. Over the years, she has also trained numerous healthcare professionals as volunteer cancer counselors at the Center. She has just written a recipe/nutrition book, Hungry for Health, for people with an illness.

During the course of her counseling work with many thousands of cancer patients, Susan has learned much. She told us, “I may not know everything about cancer treatments, but I do know cancer patients! “ Indeed, she probably knows cancer patients better than anyone else doing this work! In a one-on-one setting, Susan and her volunteer staff help clients recognize life issues and other impediments to healing, as well as offering individualized recommendations for treatments, facilities, physicians and/or other practitioners. She continues to personally handle the most challenging cases herself.

During an interview for the book: “Remarkable Recovery: What Extraordinary Healings Tell Us About Getting Well and Staying Well,” Susan described the process she employs with clients. She looks carefully at each patient’s physical, financial and geographic limitations. She and her volunteers analyze physiological status and nutritional habits, attitudes and beliefs, mental and emotional status, goals and social support systems.

“We look at their mental or emotional readiness for a certain treatment approach. We never tell patients what they should or shouldn’t do. We ask them what their doctors have told them, what the doctors are offering them, how they feel about the doctor, what they feel comfortable doing in the conventional or unconventional medical world. Then we start offering them resources. You can’t believe how intimately involved I can get with a patient at the end of an hour. I know stuff about them that they swore they never told anybody. It’s not because I’m a brilliant psychologist. I think it’s because I’ve learned so much from what the other thousands of patients have taught me.”

The Importance of Mind-Body Medicine or Psychoneuroimmunology

Susan described the available science and research on the mind-body aspects of cancer and the field of Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI refers to the field of science relating to how thoughts and emotions directly affect the immune system) as voluminous. When clients are open to hearing about this topic, Susan generally recommends that they start by reading “Cancer as a Turning Point” by psychotherapist Lawrence LeShan, PhD, who has worked with cancer patients for fifty years. Over the past thirty years, approximately half of Dr. LeShan’s cancer patients with poor prognosis have gone into remission and are still alive—an amazing statistic! (Note: there is a chapter on this website on the work of Dr. LeShan).

Susan can quote references from numerous books, studies, authors: “PNI is a field that is over a quarter of a century old—it’s been around as long as I’ve been involved in this field. There is research now from everywhere in the world about the emotional patterns that influence the etiology and the outcome of cancer. I could literally spend the next several hours just telling you the names of researchers and some of the things they’ve done. I don’t even know where to start. This is huge!”

She likes to discuss the topic of spontaneous remission because it gets clients excited about the possibilities for them. It helps if they know that there are literally thousands of cancer patients who have gotten better primarily because of an emotional change. Caryle Hirshberg’s book “Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography” contains 1574 cases. A 1966 book by Everson and Cole on spontaneous remission contained information about 1900 validated cases through 1960 alone!

Susan described some quick scenarios she recalled from these works, such as a uterine cancer patient with 2 weeks to live who hated her husband but felt helpless to leave her marriage. He suddenly died and she got well. Also a testicular cancer patient who had sexuality problems relating to his mother. As soon as he worked through these enough to get married, his cancer disappeared.

How does Susan broach this very delicate subject of emotional causes that may contribute to the development of a client’s cancer? Very carefully. “I try never to pin something on people. Finger pointing can be very disturbing for people and there’s a lot of that out there. There is not any one ‘family’ of factors that cause cancer. It is a combination of factors: the mental/emotional, the genetic, the physical and the environmental. When you get several aspects together, that’s potentially deadly.”

Susan went on to explain how she brings up the mental and emotional aspects when she sees that they likely apply with a client: “For example, when I see a strong correlation with a probable emotional pattern I will say, ‘You know, a large number of my _______(fill in the type of cancer) clients seem to have similar types of stress in their lives. I wonder if this is an area you would like to look at? Is there anything in your situation that you would interpret as stressful?’ If they give me the go ahead, I’ll go as deep as they will follow. Once I get my foot in the door, I let experience tell me how hard I can push.” She added rather proudly that when appropriate, she has been a contributing factor to the end of quite a few destructive relationships, the moving of clients to entirely new and supportive living situations and locations, complete changes of careers and the instigation of many other life-affirming choices—positively influencing the course of their diseases.

In describing her counseling role with clients, Susan said that it was basically, “Elucidating the areas that are fertile for change, seeing which they choose to address and then coaching them to find the most economical ways to do so. Economical in terms of their financial, logistical and geographical limitations.” She only gets one or two hours with a client, but by listening closely, inevitably it only takes a short time to find out who they are, how they think and to get them to begin to open up. Those who are most willing to talk about their personal issues, about what’s missing in their lives, about why they think they got sick, will most likely do best with their illness. Susan went on, “They all come in with an agenda…which therapy is the best to treat my cancer? I say-- We have many therapies, who are you? Then we can begin to find the answers together.”

When she began counseling patients twenty-seven years ago, Susan thought that poor diet and nutritional factors were the most likely cause of cancer and that changing these was the most important action a patient could take. She has now come around nearly 180 degrees in her thinking and if possible, she will take the patient down a path that is based on what’s going on in their heads first. She noted that she finds it is much more important to talk to patients about what is eating them, rather than what they are actually eating. “If patients are willing to address both issues, then they have a strong formula for success,” she noted.

Susan related the story of one of the first patients she counseled who showed her where her theories might need to shift. A man with spinal cancer came to her and related a medical prognosis that would leave him a quadriplegic within 6 months. He decided to go on a cruise, where he met a “guru” who told him to begin meditating and that “the cancer began in your mind so that’s where you’ll have to go to get rid of it.” He began to practice meditation several times a day. When he returned home, he did some heavy psychological work, got a divorce, quit his job, and his cancer went into remission. Susan remembers being confused with this, since she knew he hadn’t changed his diet at all. It was an “aha” experience for her as well.

Who Gets Cancer—and Why?

Dealing with the mental and emotional factors surrounding the development of cancer is not just about studying coping styles and factors. It goes to the very essence of who these patients are. Susan states, “Why people get cancer is the most fascinating and pregnant field for the prevention of cancer that we have today.”

Susan has written about the “Psychological Aspects of Persons with Malignant Process” with John W. Rhinehart, MD. As with other individuals in this report, she has noticed a common pattern of traumatic loss within the 6-18 months immediately prior to the cancer’s manifestation. You will also notice many similarities with Douglas Brodie’s characteristics of the “cancer personality.”

“Researchers are beginning to recognize that emotional stress plays an enormous role in susceptibility to malignancy. The following characteristics of the “cancering person” are often manifest throughout lifelong patterns—with the exception of the first item. These constitute what might be called “the cancer personality.” Susan’s observations about these characteristics are summarized below:

When questioned about whether she had observed similar patterns between certain types of emotional stress and where cancer manifested, Susan said, “After talking to hundreds if not thousands of patients with a particular form of cancer, I’ve informally observed this—yes—I’ve seen some powerful connections between emotional patterns and where they the cancer showed up.”

Susan’s comments and some corresponding cases are summarized below; they are ideas you may want to consider for your type of cancer. Her astute and thought-provoking observations could make up an entire book on their own. Remember, these situations are much more complex than the short descriptions we are able to include in this report. There are generally many synergistic factors that influence the development or remission of cancer.

Susan also shared some stories about long-term exceptional cancer survivors she remembers who turned their cancers completely around by making some very basic changes in their stress levels, emotional states and life situations.

Betty was diagnosed in 1985 as a breast cancer patient. She was a victim of incest and had been abandoned by her entire family of alcoholics. She joined a 12 step program along with A Course in Miracles and did “a lot of personal work.” She is fully recovered.

Neal was diagnosed in 1999 with metastatic prostate cancer. He had a violent and abusive wife. After a lot of counseling and leaving his marriage, he is fully recovered. Of note is the fact that Neal refused all conventional treatment.

Catherine was diagnosed with inoperable kidney cancer in 1985, with 3 months to live. She was made to feel inadequate and unworthy her entire life by her parents. She did “heavy psychotherapy” and is fully recovered.

Harry was diagnosed in 1985 with metastatic colon cancer. He had long repressed anger at his father and later at his wife. He did personal therapy and A Course in Miracles and is fully recovered.

Doug, diagnosed in 1993 with malignant melanoma, metastasized to his lungs. He had carried strong resentment toward his parents his entire life. They tried to force him into the family business while he wanted to be a musician. Doug did psychotherapy, quit his job, went into the music field and is fully recovered.

Warren, an MD with colon cancer, metastases to lungs. He was a hospital president who was extremely angry, even furious about the challenges presented by the healthcare industry and how he was forced to interface between the industry, his staff, his board and his administration. When Susan asked Warren “Who are you and what are you doing when you feel totally alive,” he described a 40 acre property with gardens he owned in Wisconsin. He only visited once a year or so, but loved it. Although this was a highly unusual situation, five minutes into their very first conversation, Susan felt comfortable enough to suggest that Warren consider quitting his job and moving to Wisconsin. He went! He is now fully recovered and living a very different and happier life.

Emily was diagnosed in 1987 with breast cancer. She had a very controlling abusive husband. When Susan asked her “What would it take for you to walk away,” Emily responded “I think about it all the time, but I can’t do anything about it. I have nowhere to go and I need his insurance.” Susan observed that this type of situation is usually the kiss of death for cancer patients. Emily said, “When I get better, I’ll leave.” And Susan responded, “No, you don’t get it. That’s how you get well!” Emily eventually left her marriage and stayed with friends for awhile. She bartered at a co-op, eventually working there, slowly building a new life, living in a trailer, then an apartment, eventually buying a house. She is fully recovered.

Rebecca has been recovered from lymphoma for 20 years. She did some “heavy duty psychotherapy” and eventually was able to forgive her mother for abandoning her. Her last memory of her mother was being under the hospital bed, looking up from under while her mother was dying, and seeing the bars on the sides of her mother’s bed as prison bars. It was an image that stayed with her all her life when she thought of her mother. When she was finally able to forgive her mother for leaving, while standing at her grave, Rebecca's cancer immediately went into remission.

Susan observed that for many cancer survivors, the only change in their lives has been a dramatic emotional breakthrough. She has seen many cases of these “spontaneous remissions” over her 29 years of this work, but also many “hard work miracles.”

Who Survives Cancer—and Why?

Like Dr. Douglas Brodie, Susan has observed certain personality traits common to the overwhelming majority of exceptional cancer survivors. Those patients who are willing to be open and dialogue about their issues allow support people to be of most help. “And those patients who manage to achieve a balance between cognition, emotions and behavior are the most likely to outlive their prognosis with quality longevity.” She has outlined the following traits common to survivors:

If patients really don’t want to be here anymore, Susan attempts to clarify that with them as well. Sometimes they’re ready and just need a way to get out of their body. “Some patients just want to let go and be with a loved one who has passed…..we help them to die spiritually at peace because they have gotten in touch with where their spirit really is. Because sometimes it has already crossed over long before the body goes---and that’s ok.” Again, she observed that cancer is a socially accepted form of suicide.

Responsibility vs. Response Ability

Susan described the very delicate balance she constantly works with in showing clients they may have contributed to the development of their cancer, without creating guilt and additional stress for them. In this, she described two ways to spell and describe the word ‘responsibility.’

“There is the traditional way. If you tell patients they have a responsibility for creating their illness and their wellness, it implies some blame and leads to guilt. If you spell it the second way—Response Ability –you create an awareness that leads to power. This second way can lead to opportunities for the awareness of the many theories, research results, clinical observations relating to the emotions and behaviors that might control or reverse their illness….This process is patient-driven, there is nothing by protocol. We try to present a smorgasboard of options and give clients permission to choose. It is never about guilt and blame; it is always about empowerment! Some clients are ready to embrace certain aspects immediately and some later. It’s up to them.”

Susan finished her interview with a story about a cancer patient and her partner who had driven to Philadelphia from New England for a consultation. Susan quickly surmised there were problems in the relationship as they couldn’t agree on anything and the tension in the air was thick. She asked if this happened often and they agreed it was a regular pattern with them. Susan went on to tell them she was more than a little worried about each of them. Certainly this was an immediate problem for the cancer patient. Susan explained that based on extensive PNI clinical research on the direct relationship between chronic stress and depressed immune function, that with this much stress, it really wouldn’t matter which treatment they chose. There would not be a strong enough immune response. And all the stress couldn’t be good for the woman’s partner either.

Susan proposed that the couple spend the six-hour trip home talking about their relationship in terms of what was in both their best interests. Perhaps they should consider a hiatus in the relationship or couples counseling to remove the very stressful environment they were living in. The woman called Susan the very next day and told her, “Thank you, thank you, thank you! We realized we really weren’t happy living together. He moved out this morning and I feel free!” She got better.

Pioneering Excellence in Healthcare

Dr. Susan Silberstein is considered a pioneer and leader in the field of holistic health and was honored as such by The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine on November 16, 2002 at its “Celebrating Excellence” award ceremony in Washington DC. Her closing remarks were the following prayer: “May the Almighty deliver us from the stubbornness of mind that clings to preconceived ideas. And may He grant us the humility and courage to examine without prejudice new sources of information. Amen.” Amen!

Susan’s philosophy can be summed up in her statement: “Miracles happen beyond the mainstream of medicine!” And she has seen and played a part in many of them.

NOTE: The Center for Advancement in Cancer Education is available for phone or in-person consultations at 610-642-4810. A very reasonable donation for membership is requested.

Unraveling the “Type C” Connection: Is There a Cancer Personality?

Lydia Temoshok, PhD

Implications for Prevention & Recovery

 

The Contributions of Lydia Temoshok, PhD
Director of The Behavioral Medicine Program, Biotechnology Institute
University of Maryland Medical School
Co-Author, The Type C Connection: The Mind-Body Link to Cancer and Your Health

 

“I’ve described the experience of cancer as a crossroads in your life, when you’re confronted with both danger—and opportunity…..What changes you make turn this experience from what (at first) may seem like a prison sentence into an opportunity for healing and a better life.”

Lydia Temoshok, PhD

Can our emotions and behavior affect our risk of getting cancer and our recovery from this disease?

This is the question Dr. Temoshok was asked to consider back in 1979, when she agreed to begin an intriguing and controversial research study with melanoma patients. Richard Sagebiel, MD, head of the Melanoma Clinic at the University of California San Francisco, had begun to notice “a strange pattern of stress and coping” common to most of his patients. He had begun to think this might be a significant factor in the connection between cancer and behavior and contacted Temoshok to discuss the potentials for a formal research study.

Temoshok had already been studying the effects of stress on health while on staff at The University of California School of Medicine. She is a psychologist nationally recognized in the fields of behavioral medicine, psychosocial oncology and HIV/AIDS research. Temoshok now began to spend time at the Melanoma Clinic, interviewing patients and conducting a preliminary investigation. What she found was so exciting and ripe with potential for changing the development and treatment outcome of this dreaded disease, that she made the decision to devote all her time to the study of the psychology of cancer patients.

What Temoshok found in interviewing these 150 patients was a striking and amazingly similar pattern of behaviors. These melanoma patients were overwhelmingly nice. Yes, they were excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, uncomplaining and unassertive. They went far out of their way and changed their schedules to make time to talk with her—so as not to disappoint her. They seemed extremely worried about their disease progression--but not for themselves. They worried about the effect it was having on their families: “I’m fine, but I’m really worried about my husband. He takes things so hard…”

Describing the Type C Behavior Pattern

In effect, they were in a form of denial and using it as a coping strategy. Temoshok began to suspect that there was much more than simple denial at work and she soon began to recognize a common pattern. These patients were “pleasers” who had spent their entire lives trying to be accepted by others—spouses, parents, siblings, coworkers, friends etc. In fact, their very identities seemed to be derived from how they were perceived by others in their lives. Temoshok describes this as “Out of touch with their primary needs and emotions, they look to others for signals on how to think, feel and act.” She named this set of behavior traits and coping methods the “Type C” phenomenon and she developed her theories from psychological, social and biological perspectives.

“….What they shared was a manner of handling life stress. The melanoma patients coped by keeping their feelings under wraps. They never expressed anger, and rarely did they acknowledge fear and sadness. They maintained a façade of pleasantness even under the most painful or aggravating circumstances. They strived excessively to please people they cared about, to please authority figures, even to please strangers.”

Temoshok devised a series of scientific studies to explore Type C behavior patterns and found a strong correlation with the development and progression of cancer—though by no means was this a case of cause and effect. There are many risk factors for developing cancer, however Temoshok did uncover a profound relationship between repressed emotions and the depression of the immune system—our first line of defense against cancer.

“Type C behavior is an extreme version of coping methods many of us employ—we appease others, deny our true feelings and conform to social standards. But my study of the melanoma patients led me to convincing evidence that our physical health is compromised when we chronically repress our needs and feelings to accommodate others. I was able to find evidence that this coping style weakens our immune defenses and leaves us more vulnerable to cancer progression.”

The landmark book “Type A Behavior and Your Heart” had already identified the Type A behavior pattern and its connection to the development of heart disease. Those exhibiting Type A behavior patterns are almost pathologically impatient, highly charged and competitive, filled with anger and hostility which they express freely, and are consistently focused on their own needs. Now for the first time its polar opposite, the Type C behavior pattern, was identified and correlated with immune dysfunction and the development and progression of cancer. Temoshok points out that most healthy people lie somewhere in the middle between these two polarities of Type A and Type C. This healthy middle ground is sometimes identified as the Type B pattern.

It is not whether we have stress in our lives—for surely we all have many highly stressful factors in our lives. Rather it is how we cope with these stressful circumstances that is a determining factor in the state of our health. Temoshok summarizes this concept: “Stress per se is not a critical factor in illness—it’s the strength or weakness of one’s coping mechanism.”

After extensive psychological testing and interviews, Temoshok identified strong Type C patterns in at least three quarters of the 150 melanoma patients she studied. Type C was not who these people were (their personalities)—it was the behavior pattern they used to cope with outer stress and inner distress. She found that these patients exhibited most or all of the following behaviors:

She also observed and scientifically verified the following facts:

Avoiding Self-Blame and Guilt

Clearly wanting to avoid creating a situation where cancer patients blame themselves for bringing on their cancers, Temoshok spends an entire chapter in her book explaining how using a “compassionate self awareness of Type C behavior” can help patients rise above self-blame or victim behavior. Those with Type C behavior patterns are notoriously prone to guilt and self-blame already. Knowledge is power however, and using this information to shift self-destructive behavior patterns can make the all important difference in surviving for some people. Most of us use coping mechanisms we developed in childhood to survive life’s inevitable traumas. Recognizing where these patterns no longer serve us and are in fact hurting us is the first step to a transformed life on many levels.

“I also learned that people did not bring cancer on themselves. Their Type C behavior began unwittingly and persisted without conscious volition. No one can be blamed for mind-body factors in cancer, because no one intentionally develops the cancer-prone behavior pattern. Furthermore, without knowledge of the Type C/cancer link, how could someone realize that his behavior might impact his cancer defense system on a molecular level?”

“I realized early in my research that Type C behavior had been each person’s best attempt to cope with the pains, stresses, humiliations and unmet needs of early childhood. Later in life, this coping method had liabilities—both mental and physical—that the person could become aware of and change, in order to lead a healthier and more meaningful existence. Type C behavior is associated not only with cancer but with many other diseases caused by immune dysfunction.” Temoshok has subsequently worked extensively with these theories as they relate to HIV/AIDS patients.

Repression of Anger is Common with Cancer Patients

Of note is Temoshok’s identification of the repression of the emotion of anger as a primary psychological defense mechanism with cancer patients. She is careful to explain the difference between repression (unconscious and unaware) and suppression (knowledge of the anger, but choosing not to express it), which is generally not as destructive to the immune system. Is there a healthy expression of anger? Temoshok quotes author and spiritual teacher Stephen Levine in describing healthy anger as having “the quality of an unwillingness to allow things to remain as they are.” Seen in this way, anger can be used as a straightforward and positive force in one’s life—as an agent of constructive internal and external change—and should be expressed appropriately and released.

This type of healthy anger should not be confused with resentment, which can fester beneath the surface for long periods of time and literally eat away at us. She reflects on the importance of forgiveness in the following statement: "We must evaluate the contribution that factors such as forgiveness may have on health -- both across the board and for those already afflicted with serious and chronic life-threatening conditions." Some people will need to take time to process and express old angers and resentments, while some, like Greg Anderson (covered in a chapter in this report) will be able to leap directly into forgiveness and release. Don’t judge yourself if this is a slow and difficult process for you. Just keep moving through it.

How Type C Behavior Patterns Contribute to Cancer

Temoshok devotes part of her book, published in 1993, to a discussion of the mind-body science behind how the mind, emotions and body interact on a physiological level to cause disease. She notes, “The answers are beginning to be understood, in the wake of a veritable scientific revolution in the study of psyche and soma.” Candace Pert (covered in a chapter in this report) would publish her ground-breaking book, Molecules of Emotion, four years later in 1997—demonstrating scientifically and dramatically for the first time the complex neuropeptide system and the actual process whereby our emotions create actual physiological change in our cells and organs. These changes can be health-promoting or health limiting.

“Our entire view of health and illness is undergoing a seismic change. The strongest wave of change is the recognition that mind-body relationships can have a profound effect on our state of health or disease. A new science, Psychoneuroimmunology, is charting a labyrinth of mind-body connections involving brain structures, chemical messengers and immune cells. Researchers in this young field are discovering that how we think and feel alters the strength of our immune system, the body’s network of defense against disease.”

This is empowering information indeed because it means we can understand which behaviors and ingrained patterns we can begin to change to strengthen our immune systems and thereby allow our bodies to organically prevent disease from occurring—or to help heal ourselves when imbalances (diseases) are already present.

You Can Transform Your Type C Behavior and Begin to Heal

Temoshok’s book also outlines theories and processes to shift Type C behavior patterns. She calls it “Type C: Transformation for Recovery.” Here are stories of patients she has worked with and the profound effect that even small shifts of the Type C patterns can have on the course of their disease. The basics of the Type C transformation process includes nine goals tailored specifically for cancer patients:

Finding the right professional help with shifting these patterns is tantamount to survival in many cases. It’s important to discover which type of psychotherapy or other therapeutic approach works best for you. These can include supportive-expressive and psychospiritual counseling, hypnotherapy, meditation, visualization, dreamwork, energy balancing techniques, art and music therapies, biofeedback, many kinds of bodywork, and other excellent tools. One way to describe your therapeutic goal to prospective counselors is that you want to transform any part of your coping style that might create a dysfunction or a weakening of your immune defenses and therefore make you more vulnerable to disease development or progression. There are mind-body techniques available in most alternative or complementary clinics and even some conventional medical centers now.

Temoshok offers the following affirmation for cancer patients to use to reinforce these nine goals. If you’ve recognized yourself in some of the characteristics of the Type C pattern, you may want to write this short narrative out and read it through daily. Remember—small steps and small victories accumulate over time to get you where you want to ultimately be. Celebrate each one.

“My mind and body need as much rest and relaxation as possible. In order to get well, I must pay attention to my needs above all else. This may seem self-centered, but I know that I’m a very giving person—I have been my whole life—and now I need to be indulged a bit. I have to take care of myself so that I have the best chance for recovery. If I try to be courageous at all times and strong for other people, I’ll be falling back into my old pattern. I realize now that it’s depleting to play that role. I’m optimistic about getting well but I can’t simply rid myself of all negative thoughts. I’m going to give myself permission to be sad, grumpy and scared. I find it a great relief to allow these feelings to come out with other people—it was a strain to hide them all the time. I want to be a “good patient,” but I can no longer live up to the label “perfect patient.” I’m going to take as much time as I need to get well. These are gifts I’m giving myself, and they make me feel good about myself and my recovery.”

Dr. Lawrence LeShan, a leading cancer psychotherapist described in another chapter within this report and a recognized pioneer in the field of Psychoneuroimmunology, describes these same concepts in the following quote. He states that each of us must develop "a fierce and tender concern for all parts of ourselves so that no part of our being is left standing outside the door, whimpering: 'Is there nothing for me?’ Too many people feel undervalued and unworthy. How many times have we allowed societal messages or our own negatively-programmed inner voices to override the truth of our being?”

This is the beginning of the Type C Transformation and the shift toward embracing all parts of us, including our “shadows,” and unleashing the healing potential we all carry within us.

NOTE: Dr. Temoshok’s book with co-author Henry Dreher, is currently out of print, however there are used copies available through Amazon.com and other book-sellers. You may want to find a copy and read it as there are many stories included of cancer patients who used these theories and techniques with inspiring and profound results.

Understanding the Cancer Personality and It's Importance in Healing

Douglas Brodie, MD

Douglas Brodie, MD
6110 Plumas Suite B
Reno, NV 89509
Phone 775-829-1009
www.drbrodie.com

Why Dr. Brodie?

There are probably dozens, perhaps hundreds of physicians who now specialize in alternative and integrative treatments for cancer patients, in settings from a small solo office to elaborate and expensive state-of-the-art clinics with residential facilities. Dr. Brodie was chosen for this book for several reasons. By far the most important was his profound understanding, gleaned from a half century of experience, of the importance of addressing the mental/emotional causes that almost always underlie the development of cancer. In this, he is one of a select few.

Over the course of fifty years of treating many thousands of cancer patients, Dr. Brodie observed that there were certain personality traits and stressors that were consistently present in these patients. In fact, much of his website is devoted to offering an extraordinarily insightful look at what he has found to constitute “the cancer personality.” As well, he includes a list of what he has come to believe are the seven most important “success factors” in determining whether there will be a positive outcome for a particular patient, again based on decades of observations. With Dr. Brodie’s permission, all of this crucial information will be included later in this chapter, exactly as he has written it. It is something every cancer patient will want to seriously consider.

Although to act upon these concepts requires us to overcome the desire to avoid painful self-examination and catharsis, it also offers real hope for those with the courage to walk this difficult path. Dr. Brodie calls this the willingness “to expose and address deep-seated emotions and to resolve long-standing conflicts.”

It is the key to true and lasting healing on several levels.

A Pioneer in Alternative Cancer Treatment

One of the original and most highly-regarded pioneers in the field of integrative cancer treatment, Dr. Brodie has fifty plus years of experience and expertise in both allopathic and complementary and alternative treatments. He began focusing exclusively on alternative and integrative medicine in the early 70’s, long before the public knew much about this orientation. His practice almost immediately began to shift toward alternative cancer treatments and desperate cancer patients from other states began to seek him out.

Early on, Dr. Brodie developed several unique procedures for enhancing the immune system in cancer patients and he offered primarily alternative and nutritional methodologies. Although he does incorporate chemotherapy and radiation, it is usually in much smaller amounts than normal and only when this is appropriate. He has found that including these additional alternative methodologies offers significant protection against the toxic side effects of chemotherapy and radiation.

Because of his courageous stance on medical freedom and the right of each patient to choose a personal treatment plan that included an integrative or alternative approach, Dr. Brodie was brought before the California medical board, with three unsuccessful attempts to revoke his medical license. He was subsequently severely criticized by the medical establishment for his non-conventional treatment methods, although to this day he has never had his license revoked. In 1980 he made the decision to practice exclusively in Nevada, which as a result of a less restrictive attitude and more favorable legal climate, has one of the highest number of alternative and integrative cancer clinics in this country.

By 1983, Dr. Brodie was appointed by the Governor of Nevada to serve on the newly formed State Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners. This was only the second such board ever created in the nation and Dr. Brodie continues to be licensed both to practice medical homeopathy and as a conventional medical doctor.

A Conversation With Dr. Brodie

Dr. Brodie had some fascinating things to say when he was interviewed for this article. In response to a request for his comments about how the Brodie Clinic addresses the mental and emotional aspects of disease, his initial observation was that he believes that psychological conflicts, particularly suppressed anger, underlie the development of cancer in most of the cases he has treated over many decades.

He emphasized that “Suppressed anger seems to be by far the most common emotional feature of cancer patients in general.” He added that this anger “has usually been suppressed for so long that patients either can’t bring it out, or don’t even realize that it’s there….but it’s down there somewhere in just about every case. We try to bring these things out and point out that this is really part of the disease and an important part, and one that must be addressed.” Dr. Brodie observed that most patients do recognize this aspect of their cancer, although there are a few who resist this realization completely and remain in denial. He suggested that many males over 60 found the suggestion of a psychological component to their disease to be unacceptable and this age group more than any other refuses psychological support.

The Brodie Clinic's protocol for treating cancer generally includes a three week residential stay in Nevada, with at least one session per week with the clinic’s psychologist, who is very experienced with addressing and resolving these emotional issues. Upon the conclusion of the treatment, every effort is made to find an appropriate therapist to support the patient at home, and this is emphasized as critical for long-term healing and preventing relapse.

Dr. Brodie adds: “And with every visit with me, I’m constantly reinforcing what the psychologist is doing with them (the patients), although I try not to overwhelm them.” In this way, he functions almost as a therapist as well, because he has found this to be such an essential component of long-term healing, every bit as important as the medical treatments he offers.

Brodie went on: “We provide all the physical interventions possible, but we cannot neglect the psychological. It’s a much-neglected aspect of cancer care, even by the best alternative physicians out there, and that needs to change. The emotional aspects of cancer cannot be ignored.”

Physical interventions include various I.V. infusions and other methods to support and enhance the functioning of the immune system. But by far the most exciting physical therapy, according to Dr. Brodie, is IPT or Insulin Potentiation Therapy. Here is how Brodie describes the theory and effect of administration: “We use IPT quite often now. Cancer cells require a relatively large amount of sugar—close to 12 times as much as a normal cell. Therefore they’re extremely sensitive to changes in the blood sugar levels. When blood sugar is reduced through the use of IPT, the cancer cell becomes ‘panicked’ so to speak, and opens its cell membrane up to take in more sugar, only with the sugar can now come substances the cell would normally block, such as chemotherapy. Therefore we can use only a fraction (normally 10%) of a standard dose of chemotherapy and obtain a greatly-enhanced effect that is more specific to the cancer cell and not poisoning every cell of the body in the process. In effect, IPT turns the small dose of chemotherapy into a powerful ‘smart bomb.’

Brodie has been extremely impressed with the results he has obtained using IPT: “It has really improved our success rate tremendously...it's really exciting.” He went on to emphasize however that even with tumor destruction, “The immune system must still be regenerated and the emotional issues addressed, or the cancer will likely recur at some point.”

In a recent conversation, one of Dr. Brodie’s staff also offered an observation about the profound and direct effect on the immune system of stress caused by unresolved negative relationships. A cancer patient at the clinic was being closely monitored and had her immune system measured on Friday at 70% activity. Following a difficult weekend visit from a family member, on Monday this number had dropped to 10%. All of this was scientifically documented at the clinic. How many cancer patients have watched their immune systems falter and their disease progress, and never made this type of connection?

Other Clinic Information

Most other logistical information about the Brodie Clinic is available on their website or with a phone call. The clinic cancer program is offered daily, but is non-residential, and patients use accommodations nearby; a list of options is on the website. Two other physicians work with Dr. Brodie. Diseases other than cancer are treated as well. The standard cancer protocol is three weeks long and the cost is in line with or even less than other similar clinics, approximately $10,000, but this amount can vary. Much will not be covered by insurance and the IPT therapy, since it contains chemotherapy, is an added cost. All this should be discussed with the clinic before plans are made to visit. They offer the option of working with a third party billing service that is experienced in getting non-conventional treatments covered by insurance companies, for a percentage of the payment.

In addition to psychological counseling and IPT, some of the therapies offered at the Clinic include:

Articles Written by Dr. Brodie

“The Cancer Personality: Its Importance in Healing”

”Evidence of a relationship between cancer and personality type has existed for centuries. In dealing with many thousands of cancer patients over the past 28 years, it has been my observation that there are certain personality traits which are rather consistently present in the cancer-susceptible individual. These characteristics are as follows:

  1. Being highly conscientious, dutiful, responsible, caring, hard-working, and usually of above average intelligence.
  2. Exhibiting a strong tendency toward carrying other people's burdens and toward taking on extra obligations, often "worrying for others."
  3. Having a deep-seated need to make others happy, tending to be "people pleasers." Having a great need for approval.
  4. Often having a history of lack of closeness with one or both parents, sometimes, later in life, resulting in lack of closeness with spouse or others who would normally be close.
  5. Harboring long-suppressed toxic emotions, such as anger, resentment and/or hostility. Typically the cancer-susceptible individual internalizes such emotions and has great difficulty expressing them.
  6. Reacting adversely to stress, often becoming unable to cope adequately with such stress. Usually experiencing an especially damaging event about 2 years before the onset of detectable cancer. The patient is unable to cope with this traumatic event or series of events, which comes as a "last straw" on top of years of suppressed reactions to stress.
  7. Showing an inability to resolve deep-seated emotional problems and conflicts, usually arising in childhood, often even being unaware of their presence.

Typical of the cancer-susceptible personality, as noted above, is the long-standing tendency to suppress "toxic emotions," particularly anger.

Usually starting in childhood, this individual has held in his/her hostility and other unacceptable emotions. More often than not, this feature of the affected personality has its origins in feelings of rejection by one or both parents. Whether these feelings or rejection are justified or not, it is the perception of rejection that matters, and this results in a lack of closeness with the "rejecting" parent or parents, followed later in life by a similar lack of closeness with spouses and others with whom close relationships would normally develop. Those at higher risk for cancer tend to develop feelings of loneliness as a result of their having been deprived of affection and acceptance earlier in life, even if this is merely their own perception. These people have a tremendous need for approval and acceptance, developing a very high sensitivity to the needs of others while suppressing their own emotional needs.

These good folks become the "caretakers" of the world, showing great compassion and caring for others, and going out of their way to look after the needs of others. They are very reluctant to accept help from others, fearing that it may jeopardize their role as caretakers or that they might appear to have too much self-concern. Throughout their childhood they have typically been taught "not to be selfish," and they take this to heart as a major lifetime objective. All of this benevolence is highly commendable, of course, in our culture, but must be somehow modified in the case of the cancer patient. A distinction needs to be made here between the "care-giving" and the "care-taking" personality. There is nothing wrong with care-giving, of course, but the problem arises when the susceptible individual derives his/her entire worth, value and identity from his/her role as "caretaker." If this shift cannot be made, the patient is stuck in this role, and the susceptibility to cancer greatly increases.

As noted above, a consistent feature of those who are susceptible to cancer appears to be that they "suffer in silence," and bear their burdens without complaint. Burdens of their own as well as the burdens of others weigh heavily, often subconsciously as well as consciously, upon these people because they, through a lifetime of suppression, internalize their problems, cares and conflicts. The carefree extrovert, on the other hand, seems to be far less vulnerable to cancer than the caring introvert described above.

Most cancer patients have experienced a highly stressful event, usually about 2 years prior to the onset of detectable disease.

How one reacts to stress appears to be a major factor in the development of cancer. Most cancer patients have experienced a highly stressful event, usually about 2 years prior to the onset of detectable disease. This traumatic event is often beyond the patient's control, such as the loss of a loved one, loss of a business, job, home, or some other major disaster. The typical cancer victim has lost the ability to cope with these extreme events, because his/her coping mechanism lies in his/her ability to control the environment. When this control is lost, the patient has no other way to cope.

Major stress causes suppression of the immune system, and does so more overwhelmingly in the cancer-susceptible individual than in others. Thus personal tragedies and excessive levels of stress appear to combine with the underlying personality described above to bring on the immune deficiency which allows cancer to thrive. These observations have given rise to the term psychoneuroimmunology.

In my experience, one of the most difficult and most important hurdles to overcome in cancer patients is how to make major changes in their life-styles. Not only is it necessary to make changes in the physical aspects of their lives such as eating habits, but major changes need to be made in the way they react to stress.

The way they react to stress is due largely to the way they think about life. There can be no lasting changes of behavior without first having a change in thinking and in belief systems. It is often extremely difficult for these patients to make substantial changes in these ingrained patterns of thought. Many find it too difficult or too disagreeable to make such alterations in their settled way of thinking and reacting. Many likewise find it too unpleasant to make changes in the physical aspects of their life-style, even in the face of life-threatening illness.

In my office patients are counseled to address their problems and to make the appropriate adjustments to the best of their ability. A psychologist with extensive experience in dealing with these unique problems is readily available to our patients.

These patients are encouraged to take charge of their own health and to be active participants in their care. They are urged to learn as much as possible about the disease and all of the treatment options, including the various conventional modalities.”

 

“Success Factors in Dealing with Cancer”

”A positive attitude is essential to a successful outcome for all cancer patients. It is absolutely essential that the patient reject the prevailing concept that death from cancer is inevitable, and the belief that conventional medicine offers the only hope for survival.

Success Factors: Certain consistent features or attributes distinguish the successful cancer survivors from those who are less successful. The successful cancer patients, by and large, are those who are:

  1. Willing and able to reverse a stressful life-style, to reduce heavy obligations, burdens and anxieties, and who learn to say "No" to those who would lay burdens upon them.
  2. Aware of the critical importance of spiritual growth and having faith in God or their concept of a Higher Power.
  3. Ready and eager to take charge of their own health care, to study in depth the various alternatives, and to make dietary and other changes in their physical life-style.
  4. Able to reject the idea that the diagnosis of cancer automatically means death and that conventional treatment offers the only hope.
  5. Willing to accept responsibility for the behavioral factors which led to the disease, to submit to self-assessment, and to make the necessary adjustments and corrections to eliminate these factors.
  6. Prepare to abandon destructive and "toxic" emotions such as fear, anger, resentment, guilt and self-pity, replacing these with such positive emotions as hope, love, forgiveness, gentleness, confidence and faith.
  7. Able to overcome inhibitions, particularly learned restraints which may have prevented full sexual gratification, allowing guiltless and total fulfillment.

Conventional medicine has only recently begun to recognize the connection between the mind and the immune system. It is an extremely important aspect of a healthy immune system, healing and freedom from disease.

The surviving cancer patient has a healthy skepticism of the conventional approach to cancer, and questions all of the premises of that approach. He/she is eager to study in depth all treatment modalities without prejudice, then to follow the chosen course or courses with dedication, discipline and common sense.

The cancer survivor is most often one who has accepted and welcomed spiritual growth, one who has developed a close relationship with God or a Higher Power.

The successful cancer patient has confidence and faith in his/her course of action. The long-term cancer survivor is usually the one who is willing to expose and address his/her deep-seated emotional problems and to resolve long-standing conflicts.

The foregoing attributes have been those most frequently associated with victory over cancer. In recent years I have come to the conclusion that these attributes or qualities are virtually indispensable to recovery from cancer. It has further been my experience that if the problems and conflicts discussed at the beginning of this section are not addressed and corrected, the cancer patient will likely not get well.

More often than not, neither conventional nor alternative methods alone penetrate deeply enough into the patient's inward nature, so much of which is kept beneath the surface and so much of which underlies that patient's disease. Counseling, prayer, meditation, reaching the deeper dwelling place of feelings — all must be brought to bear to resolve the patient's inner conflicts. These underlying issues must be addressed simultaneously with physical treatment, whether it be conventional, alternative or a combination of therapies. Otherwise, none of these physical modalities will be effective. We must recognize loving energy as an essential part of healing.”

The Cancer Personality: A Major Factor in Integrative Care

The following text is taken from the abstract of a lecture Dr. Brodie was to give at the Global Holistic Health Summit in Bangalore, India in January 2003. It can serve as a summary of Brodie’s thinking on the importance of addressing the repressed emotional imbalances most of us carry throughout our lives.

“...These cancer susceptible individuals often carry long-suppressed toxic emotions, such as anger, resentment and hostility, usually arising in childhood, which have been internalized to such an extent that such individuals have extreme difficulty in bringing these unacceptable emotions to the surface. As with many conditions, whatever goes on mentally, emotionally and spiritually in these people can have a profound effect on their physical health. The immune system in particular is continually under the influence of these factors. Conventional medicine has only just begun to recognize the connection between the mind, the emotions and the immune system……The foregoing information is incorporated into our holistic and integrative program, utilizing the services of an onsite psychologist with extensive experience in helping cancer patients to resolve their particular conflicts. It has been our consistent observation that those patients who are best able to resolve these issues, along with being willing and able to make other lifestyle changes, are the most successful cancer survivors.“

Dr. Andrew Weil's Integrative Medicine Clinic

Andrew Weil

The University of Arizona College of Medicine
Program in Integrative Medicine & Clinic--Tucson, AZ
Phone 520-626-7599 or 520-626-9355
Email: mclinic@ahsc.arizona.edu
Website: http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/clinic

To find out more about the Program in Integrative Medicine or to find a gradualte of the program, look here: http://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/index.html

 

"Imagine a world in which medicine was oriented toward healing rather than disease, where doctors believed in the natural healing capacity of human beings and emphasized prevention above treatment. In such a world doctors and patients would be partners working toward the same ends."

~Andrew Weil, MD

Some Background: A Plan to Change the Face of Medicine

Probably the most recognized medical doctor teaching about natural healing methods and the mind-body-spirit connection today, Dr. Weil is a Harvard Medical School graduate. Under his leadership, the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona was created as a two-year fellowship in 1997.

Weil is called “the guru of alternative medicine" on one of the covers of his books. On his website (www.drweil.com), which records over two and a half million hits a month, he is called "America's most trusted medical expert." A recent cover of Time Magazine announced that "medicine man Dr. Andrew Weil has made New Age remedies popular." In the accompanying story, Time tells us that "millions of Americans swear by his medical advice.” He is undoubtedly one of the most important and articulate leaders in the field of health and healing and a pioneer in transforming the current medical view toward one more open to whole person healing.

A longtime Arizona resident, Weil had been seeing patients for several decades, using a natural approach and specializing in ethno-botany and the therapeutic use of herbs. When an old classmate from Harvard was brought in to head the University Medical School, Dr. Weil found a sympathetic ear and a discussion was begun to do no less than to “change the face of medicine.” He recognized that changing medical education was at the very heart of healthcare renewal in this country.

Providing Standardized Training in Integrative Medicine From An Accredited Academic Institution

“The practice of medicine has lost touch with the core principle upon which healthcare rests—restoration of the balance of mind, body and spirit.”

The original concept was a residency program in Integrative Medicine, however it was ultimately decided that it would be difficult to establish a residency in a field that didn’t officially exist yet. Therefore a two year fellowship in Integrative Medicine was proposed and adopted in 1997. The first four fellows were accepted into the program and only four have been accepted each subsequent year. These fellows are all board-certified physicians who have already excelled in conventional medicine and are now committed to transforming healthcare by integrating the very best from conventional, complementary and alternative medicine models. Fellows learn from many modalities in integrative medicine and prepare to become leaders and advocates for change when they return to their own communities. This residential fellowship is the only program of its kind in the world and it is hoped it will be used as a model in similar academic settings.

After several years of residential fellowships and the steadily increasing consumer demand for a new generation of physicians trained in both conventional and complementary treatment methods, the natural progression was made to offering an additional “Associate Fellowship.” Utilizing a distance learning module of 1000 hours of instruction over two years, together with three separate residential weeks in Arizona, this online curriculum mirrors that of the residential fellows. There are approximately 120 graduates (including both residential and associate fellows) currently practicing throughout the world, including most U.S. states, Japan, Puerto Rico, Central America, the Virgin Islands and the United Arab Emirates.

Graduating fellows have established new integrative medicine programs at such respected institutions as the University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, Maine Medical Center, Beth Israel Medical Center and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare.

A research component has been incorporated into the Program in Integrative Medicine through the Arizona CAM (Complementary & Alternative Medicine) Research Training Fellowship Program. This program is funded by a five year federal grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and it prepares outstanding scientists for careers in integrative medicine. The research approach here has been changed from a disease-centered orientation to an individualized patient-centered orientation. A primary question posed in these research projects has become: “What factors in the patient, the provider, and the treatment together foster exceptional treatment responses?”

Other medical students and residents can choose to do a one-month rotation in Integrative Medicine as well. In this way they will at least be introduced to most of the concepts and practices within the field.

The Natural Progression to a Teaching Clinic

A state of the art Integrative Medicine Clinic was soon begun, both to train the fellows and to create a visionary model for the doctor’s office of the future. Because of the perceived “legitimacy” of this academically accredited model, growing demand soon significantly outstripped available appointment time and the list of patients waiting to be seen numbered over 1000! This waiting time has now been reduced to 10-12 weeks.

Of note is the fact that no insurance other than Medicare is accepted and most patients are self-pay. Only fifteen or so new patients are seen each week, as the decision was made early on to maintain the high quality of care over increasing the patient numbers. Costs for visits range from $150 to $300.

Since the Integrative Medicine Clinic is housed within the Department of Internal Medicine at the University, a strong sense of credibility is conveyed. And it seems to be working.

An Interview about cancer patients with Randy Horwitz, MD, PhD, Medical Director of the Program in Integrative Medicine

“What key will it take to unlock the power of healing in this patient?”

Dr. Horwitz is a recent graduate of the program and a conventionally trained internist and immunologist. He is also newly certified in clinical hypnosis, and he discussed what he called the “art of integrative medicine” with both candor and enthusiasm. Although many complementary modalities are available, he considers mind/body medicine to be the “cornerstone” of the program because of its importance in healing—this was in fact his special focus as he went through the program.

The art of integrative medicine refers to what Horwitz called the “therapeutic marriage brokering” of intuitively matching patients with the modalities that both appeal to and work best for each individual.

Horwitz emphasized how vital he feels psychotherapy is in helping cancer patients heal on several levels. He indicated that this is almost always included in the treatment plans he creates for these patients. There are instances however, where an energy medicine technique or bodywork such as cranio-sacral therapy may be used initially. He described how appalled he was at the number of cancer patients who are routinely prescribed an anti-depressant by their physicians without any suggestion of concurrent psychotherapeutic support.

Horwitz also discussed the surprising comments of patients who described their cancer as having been a great teacher, or even one of the best things that had ever happened to them, empowering them to use the experience of cancer as a change agent in their lives. This has affected him deeply.

Functioning as Consultants in Integrative Medicine, Not Primary Care Physicians

The Clinic has been structured to function in a consulting fashion only, and not to provide primary care. An initial appointment lasts an hour and a half, a complete history is taken and the patient’s “story” is heard. Horwitz commented that “people love to tell their stories….and people are much more complex than we ever thought. It’s so important to understand who they are so we can tailor their treatments ….” Although the human quality of the bond between doctor and patient may have been lost to technology and time management in mainstream medicine, the Clinic believes that nothing can replace the importance of the therapeutic relationship.

Following a thorough review of medical records and a discussion of each patient at the weekly patient conference session (see the following section about this), a detailed treatment plan, including short and long term recommendations, is created and given to the patient at the follow up visit. Subsequent follow up visits may be scheduled at several month intervals as well.

Approximately 60% of the patients seen at the clinic are from the immediate area. The other 40% travel from other states and Dr. Horwitz has had patients travel from as far away as Alaska.

A Conference About Every Patient With 30 Plus Practitioners Every Week

A highly unusual part of the clinic philosophy is the presentation and discussion of each patient’s case at a weekly conference, attended by thirty plus well-screened healthcare professionals. Attendees generally include Dr. Weil, program instructors and fellows, allopathic doctors, medical students and residents, energy medicine practitioners, osteopaths, nutritionists, botanical medicine practitioners, exercise physiologists, acupuncturists, several psychologists and even a shaman or two. The weekly mix varies. This structure provides not only a powerful teaching environment for the program fellows, but also some unique perspectives and potential treatment options for each patient.

Cancer at the Integrative Medicine Clinic

Cancer is considered in a complementary fashion at the Clinic. Chemotherapy or other conventional treatments are generally assumed to be appropriate and it is never suggested that patients forsake them. Complementary therapies recommended include psychotherapy and mind body medicine, energy work, bodywork, nutrition (an anti-inflammatory diet is generally recommended), and whatever other modalities are deemed best to support an individual patient.

Due to the controversial nature of using high potency anti-oxidant supplements during chemotherapy, the clinic generally does not recommend this. Instead, they suggest the use of whole foods, including 8-10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily (using juicing if necessary). An anti-inflammatory diet includes the elimination of fried foods and trans-fatty acids, the use of fish oil and other omega 3 oils, and the elimination of simple carbohydrates such as sugar and other high-glycemic foods (see an explanation at www.glycemicindex.com to stabilize insulin levels in the body.

Dr. Horwitz also noted that many cancer patients choose not to tell their personal physicians about visiting the Integrative Medicine Clinic, but implement the treatment recommendations on their own. Patients feel their physicians would be unsympathetic or even angry about their decision to supplement their conventional care with alternative treatments. But this has certainly not deterred them from seeking new options and choosing to be treated as a “whole” person at the Integrative Medicine Clinic.

To schedule a new patient appointment at the Integrative Medicine Clinic contact: UNIVERSITY HEALTH CONNECTION at (520) 694-8888 Ext.500 or (800) 524-5928 Ext.500

A Mind-Body Therapist's View of Healing: Andy Bernay-Roman, LMHC, MS, RN, LMT

"Every cell in your body is evesdropping on your thoughts."

Deepak Chopra, MD

An innovative body-centered psychotherapist and former ICU (Intensive Care Unit) nurse, Andy has served since 1990 as the head of the Psychological Support Department at Hippocrates Health Institute. His formal training has included an emphasis on psychoneuroimmunology (the connection between the mind, the emotions and the physical body). Andy teaches classes and facilitates the ongoing support group (the Healing Circle) at Hippocrates, as well as treating individuals, couples and families privately. He was a 1995 nominee for the Norman Cousins award, as well as the Rosalyn Carter Caregiver Award. Andy is the author of “Deep Feeling, Deep Healing: The Heart, Mind and Soul of Getting Well” (available on Andy’s website or Amazon). He is also a licensed massage therapist and licensed mental health counselor in Florida.

Andy summarized much of what he believes about the ability of emotional healing to facilitate physical healing in the following quote from an article he wrote for the Hippocrates newsletter:

“Just as important as what you eat, ‘what’s eating you’ plays a central role in the disease process, and therefore careful attention to your mental health (with a focus on feelings) is paramount to getting well. Feelings play a major role in the hierarchy of what the body can and will heal. Paying attention to feelings, especially those that may reside in repressed form within the tissues of the body, can unleash great forces for healing by normalizing hormone levels, reducing inner pressure, and generally bringing a sense of resolution to the system…..Remember, the body follows what is in the heart and mind in both illness and cure.”

During the Healing Circle, Andy generally works with one or two individuals from the group. He hopes that during this interaction that other guests will be inspired to begin their own personal journey. He teaches the Psychoneuroimmunology class, as well as participating on the Mind-Body Panel for guests. The latter is composed of a bodyworker, two therapists and others. He described the process of healing as akin to getting into a room. There are many ways to get inside, to reach the soul. Sometimes it’s through the doorway of the mind, sometimes the heart and sometimes the body.

Andy remarked that there is a strong emphasis on self-responsibility at Hippocrates. This is definitely a change from conventional medicine, which tends to disempower patients. The people who come to Hippocrates, in general, are a select group who are highly motivated, open and willing to do whatever it takes to heal. This makes his job easier. He says that the mental and emotional work is integral to the healing process; “Even if it’s not directly causative, it gives them much more energy to use in healing…. Disease happens in our humanity, not in a vacuum.”

There are a number of wonderful observations in Andy’s book and we’re going to offer several in the following paragraphs. His book is well worth reading and there are many client stories that illustrate the wisdom he offers.

He discusses deep feelings as “the good, the bad and the ugly:”

“The first rule is to stop denying that the pain exists. Stop pretending and get real. Over and over in newly formed support groups, sessions that start out as chatty and superficial soon travel deeper towards a feeling core, delving into expressions of genuine loss, caring and despair. The same is true of one-on-one therapy. The urge to be whole, to be real, and to feel, like a dormant seed thirsting for water, creates its own momentum, and once initiated, hopefully carries the patient into the realm of health.”

He also describes the mechanism of mind-body healing (and of the disease process) by explaining more about how our thoughts and emotions directly influence health:

“Memory then, does not reside just in the brain……Memory lives throughout the body. In fact, our cells contain a perfect memory of all experiences and store it. Where do these receptor sites reside? In the soft tissues of the body, including the immune system! These information-carrying neuropeptides are the mind-body link, acting as transducers of semantic and emotional information at the cellular level. Our emotions play a role in every biochemical event that transpires within us, even while we sleep.”

“When our emotions trigger a cascade of brain endorphins, the natural pain killers that yield a sense of well-being, the end result is a calm, life-affirming one. When our emotions consistently trigger the release of stress hormones, designed to keep our system alert in times of emergency, the net result is life-negating and sets the stage for disease. Our emotional tone directly influences the sum total of all biochemical processes.”

“Treatment that ignores the central biological role of feelings cannot bring about lasting change. Mere intellectualizing doesn’t cut it when it comes to imprinted repressed pain.”

In his book, Andy shares a story of research on the chemistry of tears. Inducing tears of both joy and sadness in volunteers, researchers analyzed the chemical composition of each and found something remarkable: the chemistry of the tears of sadness differed significantly from the tears of joy. The only variable that could account for the difference was the change in emotions. Emotions change body chemistry. Psychiatrists use the reverse of this formula and give drugs to the physical body to change the emotions, but the direct connection between the two remains.

As an ICU nurse, Andy frequently worked with patients whose life-threatening encounters with illness “shocked them into a natural regression that often facilitated a healing. I concluded that the body WANTS to integrate at the feeling level.” He described the therapeutic process as a safe atmosphere that encourages self-reflection and going within, a journey he calls “the centropic journey:”

“Repressed feelings emerge along the way. I learned during the process that old nonintegrated feelings dominate the feeling landscape because they NEED to be integrated. They continue to color everything in the present and influence every interaction. Repressed pain robs us of our capacity for joy. Repressed sadness and anger transform into depression or some other form of inner isolation.”

He notes that deeper work can take more time and effort than other forms of therapy “because of the defenses against pain that have kept the source of the person’s problem imprinted within.” He describes this process as “The Hero’s Journey:”

“It involves leaving the comfortable realms of the known, crossing over the frontiers of fear and aloneness, descending into the Valley of Death itself if necessary, and ultimately returning to the surface world renewed. The psychotherapy I practice happens under the banner of such transformation and nothing less.”

Andy suggests that those wishing to heal physically take the following steps in order to maintain a “clean” psychological environment:

And why shouldn’t we try to rise above our negative emotions, to focus only on the positive and relegate the negative to the recesses of our consciousness? Andy explains that negative feelings per se don’t damage us, but it is in suppressing them that damage is done.

“Repression infuses an anti-life message into the body…repression causes the body to cut off from certain parts, and waste energy by keeping feelings down. Reclaiming the heart by reconnecting with feelings clears a path through the jungle of human interactions and liberates us from the past. Ongoing self-discovery and self-acceptance in a practical way stands as a banner that lines the road to peace and health, whereas the ‘get rid of it’ approach ends in a tragic dead end.”

As important as clean, healthy food is to the healing process, Andy says that it takes more to create full aliveness and the balance it takes to heal. He described a study of orphanages in the 1940’s where the babies were well fed, but were not held, rocked or given loving personal attention from caregivers. A large number of these babies simply wasted away; food and comfortable surroundings alone could not sustain them.

“Beyond physical malnourishment, love deprivation stands at the root of physical and mental disease. Love deprivation can mean anything from out and out abuse to the less extreme situation of growing up with a particular aspect of the natural self going through life unloved, unsupported or neglected.”

How to Jumpstart Your Healing Process

There is a simplified and easy to understand explanation of Andy’s thirteen principles of mind-body integration given in his book; these principles set the parameters for his type of therapy. They explain just how dysfunctional and limiting patterns get wired into our systems, and also suggest how we can un-wire them. These principles are definitely worth considering within the context of the disease and healing process.

In conclusion, it seems clear that our beliefs, attitudes and feelings are where the new frontier of mind-body medicine and the science of psychoneuroimmunology are focused today.

“If the simple power of suggestion can rid a person of warts or enlarge breasts (proven facts), and the immune system can be tricked by a placebo, then surely a more thorough investigation into the deeper realm of mind and heart will uncover a veritable genie of healing.”

Perhaps now you now understand why we included Andy and his profound material into this cancer report. If you are experiencing an illness, it is vital for you to understand exactly how your thoughts, emotions and feelings can directly influence the outcome.

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter And Miracles

Your Genes Don't Control Your Healing--So What Does?
The Biology of Belief: The Science of How We Create Our Lives & Our Health

The Contributions of Cell Biologist Bruce Lipton, PhD www.BruceLipton.com

Coming Soon...

Our chapter isn't ready yet, but this book is so important you shouldn't wait to get a copy and read it for yourself. Below you'll find a synopsis of what's been written about this amazing scientist and his groundbreaking research.

"We are living in exciting times, for science is in the process of shattering old myths and rewriting a fundamental belief of human civilization. The belief that we are frail biochemical machines controlled by genes is giving way to an understanding that we are powerful creators of our lives and the world in which we live."

Bruce Liption, PhD

A child walks across hot coals. A woman lifts a car to save her trapped child. Congregants of the Free Pentecostal Holiness Church drink toxic doses of strychnine during exultation without harmful effects. We can walk on fire, drink poison and lift a thousand pounds. Yet, we have fallen victim to the myth that we are vulnerable and frail organisms whose limitations are programmed in the genes.

When was the last time that learning about a scientific breakthrough left you feeling invigorated, optimistic, and empowered to take charge of your life? "The Biology of Belief" is a groundbreaking work in the field of New Biology. Author Dr. Bruce Lipton is a former medical school professor and research scientist. His experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which cells receive information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Dr. Lipton's profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a major breakthrough showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thoughts and feelings.

Facing crises in health, home and heart, to survive we must recover the true powers with which we were endowed. The path toward self-empowerment is now offered by leading edge science that is synthesizing a grand convergence of the Body-Mind-Spirit trinity. A renaissance in cellular biology has now described the nature of the communication channels linking the mind and the body. This new science reveals how our thoughts, attitudes and beliefs control our abilities and create the experiences of our lives.

Dr. Lipton explains the amazing discoveries of how childhood programming and our “learned” perceptions control behavior, regulate gene expression and even contribute to the rewriting of our genetic code. Consider for a moment the powerful effect this has on the health of our physical body.

“The Biology of Belief” provides a solid scientific foundation for creative properties attributed to the “Power of Positive Thinking” and “The Laws of Attraction.” More importantly, the awareness Lipton offers reveals why and how we unconsciously sabotage our deepest desires for health, happiness and prosperity. This information will inspire your spirit, engage your mind and challenge your creativity, as you comprehend the enormous potential for applying this science in your life.

"I have learned to think of everything I see as having an energetic template that makes it appear as it does in the physical. When I want to change something in my life, I start with changing my energy. I do that by changing my belief about it and the emotions that I associate with it. It might sound crazy but it works every time. That is what the Law of Attraction is all about."

Bruce Liption, PhD

There's an excellent explanation of the science behind how and why placebos and nocebos (the negative version of a placebo) work. This has a direct correlation to our limiting beliefs about ourselves and their effect on our ability to self-heal--and ways to break free of their grasp. There are some powerful examples offered that will keep you thinking for quite awhile.

Dr. Lipton offers a great deal of detail about how the cycle of stress impacts every aspect of our health. He discusses the power of the subconscious mind and how to reprogram our deeply ingrained patterns so we can live the life we choose.

Biography

BRUCE H. LIPTON, PH.D., the author of “The Biology of Belief”, is a cellular biologist, and former medical school professor. His pioneering research on cloned stem cells at Wisconsin’s and Stanford’s Schools of Medicine presaged the revolutionary field of epigenetics, the new science of how environment and perception control genes. Dr Lipton is a pioneer of a new frontier of science that gives us astonishing evidence on how our thoughts and beliefs control the destiny of our bodies. He examines the dance between mind and matter that creates the phenomenon of life—and the profound implications that this new science has for both the future of our species and our own personal lives. Lipton is an internationally recognized cellular biologist whose breakthrough research on the cell membrane in 1977 made him a pioneer in the new science of "epigenetics" (above or beyond genetics).

Dr. Lipton has a new CD course containing 8 hours of revolutionary biology. It's called "The Wisdom of Your Cells" and it's available from Sounds True at http://store.soundstrue.com/af01076d.html?stwid=WEBNL&yaid=Aemcge

More to come later...

 

Joan Amtoft-Nielsen, MD, PhD, DC

Cancer, Nutrition & Supplementation

An internationally-trained alternative physician offers guidelines and suggestions for supplementation during chemotherapy and radiation.

“First do no harm…Natural forces within us are the true healers. Let your food be your medicine and your medicine your food.”

Hippocrates, Father of Medicine

Biography

Joan Amtoft-Nielsen

Dr. Joan Amtoft-Nielsen is a European-trained physician who has practiced and taught state-of-the-art alternative and integrative medicine at facilities in Germany and Denmark. While in Denmark, Dr. Nielsen held the post of consulting physician to the royal family.

Relocating to the United States in 1985, Dr. Nielsen has been in private practice, specializing in orthomolecular and environmental medicine; she is recognized as a national expert in natural methods of detoxification. She has extensive training in neurophysiology (PhD), chiropractic (DC), naturopathic medicine (ND), pain management, acupuncture, homeopathy, and she has studied botanical medicine with master herbalist James Duke.

Dr. Nielsen was a Medical Advisor for The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine in Washington DC and currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Journal of Longevity, on the Advisory Board of the C.A.R.E.S. Foundation and on the Board of Governors for the South Carolina Naturopathic Physicians Organization. She has served in the past as the Preceptor in Alternative Medicine for medical students at Duke University. In 2002 Dr. Nielsen was honored with the Medical Achievements for Mankind Humanitarian Award at Temple University for her outstanding contributions in the field of alternative medicine. She is fluent in several European languages.

Although retired from active medical practice in 2006, Dr. Nielsen offers wellness consultations by phone. For more information, please send her an email with times you are available for a phone consultation.  She'll be in touch to arrange payment.  Her rate is $150/hour.  Email is joannielsen @ mac.com.

Read why Dr. Nielsen became a doctor and her personal mission statement.

Why Nutrition is an Issue for Cancer Patients

Although not an oncologist, over the past 35 years, Dr. Nielsen has treated numerous cancer patients with malignancies covering the entire spectrum of type, grades and involved organs. In addition to all the treatment protocols, good nutrition and whole foods are essential in overcoming this condition. Even today, hospitalized cancer patients are often eating the wrong foods and receive no dietary advice for their follow-up treatment.

Research over the past several decades has found that significant numbers of people lack adequate levels of various nutrients. This almost immediately focuses attention on cancer and dietary connections. Administration of vitamin C or E with selenium prior to radiation therapies markedly reduces rates of malignant cellular transformation. We know that DNA damage caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS) and certain lipid peroxides produce a large array of altered molecules. Metabolic activity in cellular mitochondria also produces ROS called superoxides: negatively charged oxygen molecules that normally are converted into hydrogen peroxide by the enzyme superoxide desmutase (SOD). Disease is connected to cellular mitochondria. Various lines of research and experience suggest that the health of a cancer patient improves gradually through enhancement of cellular respiration.

The level of intestinal flora is also vital in maintaining the body’s equilibrium, since such flora are barriers to colonization by pathogenic germs and act as a primary component of the human immune system.

Most cancer patients suffer from nutritional deficiencies before diagnosis and even more so during the early conventional treatment of their disease, since chemotherapeutic agents affect levels of such nutrients as glutathione, vitamin B6, vitamin E and beta carotene. Inappropriate foods consumed during the course of disease may linger in the body longer since they are improperly digested, absorbed and excreted. The greater the body’s toxicity, the lower the functioning of the immune system.

So much food is now industrially processed and natural ingredients are often removed. It is also difficult and expensive for patients to have regular access to organic foods. This is why dietary supplements have become essential for most cancer patients.

Some Whole-Person Healing Suggestions for Cancer Patients

It is not possible, within the scope of this short chapter, to address a complete alternative or complementary protocol for fighting cancer nutritionally, and indeed, this should not be a self-help topic, as it requires professional supervision. The following suggestions offer a jumping off point—a place to begin.

Dr. Nielsen recognizes that many patients will consider chemotherapy or radiation therapy at some point during their battle their cancer. In her practice, she often supported patients who made this choice with nutritional guidelines and a customized list of supplements to optimize the effectiveness of the chemotherapy and/or radiation, while keeping the body and immune system as healthy and strong as possible during this process.

Chemotherapy

Many of the drugs used in chemotherapy interfere with cell division, because cancer cells divide faster than most normal tissue cells. When a drug interferes with cell division, the rapidly dividing cells are affected the most. This includes not only cancer cells, but also the epithelial tissues that line the mouth, throat, and intestines. In the mouth, chemotherapy can cause mouth sores, tender or bleeding gums, sore throat, and difficulty swallowing. In the stomach it causes nausea and in the intestines, diarrhea.

The severity of chemotherapeutic side effects is related to the drug used, size of dosage, length of treatment, and your individual response. Not everyone will have side effects. Some people breeze through the whole experience without giving it much thought. For others, chemotherapy becomes a full-time job. Nutritional therapy during chemotherapy allows you to support healthy tissue while enhancing the toxicity to cancerous tissue. Cancer patients who have proper nutritional balance during chemotherapy have a better response and success rate with treatments.

NOTE: The following suggestions for supplementation are generally considered safe, however Dr. Nielsen states an individualized program for each cancer patient is critical. This is definitely not a “one size fits all” protocol and other supplements may be added or some not included in certain cases. You MUST work with your own healthcare professional to determine appropriateness for your particular case.

Suggested Supplement Support for Chemotherapy

Of course the ideal way to obtain optimal nutritional support of the body during chemotherapy is through the use of organic food, including raw choices. This will give you many powerful phytonutrients, including some not even recognized by modern science yet. Not all supplements are prepared properly and there are often unnecessary or even toxic elements included in some formulations. It is therefore imperative to find a trusted brand. Under the advice of your physician or other healthcare professional, consider the use of some of the following supplements each day you are receiving chemotherapy:

Warning: When supplementing any fat-soluble vitamin or oil, you must also take vitamin E supplement to protect against oxidation.

Nutritional Checklist for Chemotherapy

Before Treatment

During Treatment

To Prevent or Slow Cancer’s Growth

To Protect Healthy Cells

To Increase Detoxification of Chemotherapeutic Drugs

Natural Agents for Use with Chemotherapy Side Effects

Constipation
Flaxseed meal
Increased fiber (greater than 30 gm/day) magnesium (400 mg)
Myelosuppression (bone marrow)
Vitamin E (mixed tocopherols) 400-800 IU/day
Ashwaganda
Luekopenia—decrease of leukocytes (white blood cells)
Vitamins C and E, zinc, selenium, astragalus, panax ginseng (1000 mg, tid), siberian ginseng, echinacea, alklglycerols (100 mg 3X/day), ashwaganda, oregon grape root or goldenseal (500 mg 3X/day), glutamine (2-4 mg/day)
Thrombocytopenia—decrease of thrombocytes (white blood cells)
Alkylglycerols (100 mg 3X/day)
Ashwaganda
Anemia
Liquid liver extract, alkylglycerols (100 mg 3X/day), folate (400-800 mcg/day), Vitamin B12 (1000-3000 mcg/day)
Fatigue
Astragulus, Vitamin E (up to 1600IU/day)
Vitamin B12—1000 mcg sublingual or weekly injections
Chamomile tea for relaxation and sleep
Depression
St. John’s Wort (300 mg 0.3% hypericin, three times/day) – cannot take this continually-- must take a break
GABA (amino acid)
IMPORTANT: Do NOT use either of these if you are taking MAO inhibitors (anti-depressants)
Nausea and vomiting
Ginger (2-4 gm/day)
Acupuncture
Ashwaganda
***Maharishi Amrit Kalash: This is a potent Ayurvedic herbal mixture Dr. Nielsen has prescribed with excellent results for the nausea associated with many chemotherapeutic drugs.
Mucositis (inflammation of mucous membranes)
Topical Vitamin E
Homeopathic remedies
Mucosa Compositum
Natrium Homaccord
Bromelain
Indigestion
Digestive bitters, digestive enzymes, pancreatin, bromelain, glutamine, Slippery elm
Diarrhea
Carob powder (2 T. twice daily), lactobacillus, acidophilus
European remedy: dark beer

Nutrition-Related Side Effects of Chemotherapeutic Drugs

Type of Drug: Alkylating Agents

Alkylating agents are used in treatment of chronic leukemias, Hodgkin’s disease, lymphomas, and some cancers of the lung, breast, prostate, and ovary. They work by substituting an alkyl group for a hydrogen atom. They are cell cycle phase nonspecific, which means they do not act on cells during any specific phase of cell division. These drugs work by interfering with DNA replication and RNA transcription.

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, sore mouth and throat, sores on tongue or other areas of the mouth and throat, bladder inflammation.
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems. Take acidophilus, and ginger tea.

Type of Drug: Nitrosoureas

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, sore mouth and throat, sores on tongue or other areas of the mouth and throat, bladder inflammation.
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems. Take acidophilus, ginger tea and reduced glutathione.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics are used to treat a wide variety of malignancies. They are used to kill cancer cells in much the same way they kill bacterial, by preventing cell division. This is done by binding to DNA and interfering with RNA transcription.

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, inflammation of the mucous membranes, sores on the tongue, mouth or throat, gastrointestinal upset.
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems. Take acidophilus, and ginger tea, reduced glutathione.

Type of Drug: Antimetabolites

Antimetabolites may be useful in the treatment of acute and chronic leukemias, choriocarcinoma, and some cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, breast, and ovary. They are substituted for purines or pyrimidines, necessary for normal cell division. Although these drugs fit into the spaces provided, they do not work once they are in.

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, damage to the liver, inflammation of the mucous membranes.
Methotrexate acts as a folate antagonist and may decrease absorption of vitamin B12, fat, and xylose.
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems. Take acidophilus, and ginger tea, reduced glutathione. Avoid alcohol, which may increase the toxic effects of this drug, causing liver damage.

Hormones

Hormones are not toxic to cancer cells, so they are used to prevent further cell division and growth of hormone-dependent tumors. They work by changing the hormonal environment, making it unfriendly for tumor growth.

Nutritional Side Effects
Increased appetite, sodium and fluid retention, gastrointestinal upset, glucose intolerance, potassium wasting, osteoporosis, negative nitrogen balance, loss of appetite, hypercalcemia, vomiting.
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
If you take prednisone for a prolonged period, your doctor may want you to eat a potassium-rich diet. This drug may also decrease the effectiveness of insulin and other diabetic drugs.

Heavy Metals

Heavy metals cause cross-linking of DNA strands, which inhibits DNA synthesis.

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, kidney toxicity, and low serum levels of magnesium, calcium, and zinc.
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems. Take reduced glutathione and N-acetylcystine

Plant (Vinca) Alkaloids

Plant alkaloids are commonly used to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, neuroblastomas, Wilms’ tumor, and cancers of the lung, breast, and testes. They block cell division by not allowing spindle formation.

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, constipation, and stomach cramps.
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems.

Enzymes

Enzymes inhibit protein synthesis by depriving cells of asparagines

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, hypoalbuminemia (low albumin content of the blood), high sugar, inflammation of the pancreas, weight loss, stomach cramps, and uremia (buildup of uremic acid in the blood).
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems. Take acidophilus, and ginger tea

Biologic Response Modifiers

Biological agents such as interferon and interleukin are used in patients with advanced cancer or cancer that has not responded to standard therapy. They destroy tumor cells by modifying the host’s response to the tumor. They are the immune army with weapons specific for cancer.

Nutritional Side Effects
Nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and weight change (up or down).
 
Nutritional Coping Strategies
Drink extra fluids to prevent kidney and bladder problems. Also, drink astragalus tea, reishi (mushroom) tea and ginger tea.

Radiation Therapy

Because of the side effects of radiation therapy, people undergoing this treatment may consider the following suggestions for supplementation, to give the body extra protection and strength.

Radiation therapy is used to treat localized tumors such as cancer of the skin, tongue, larynx, brain, and cervix. Treatment exposes a defined area of tissue to ionizing radiation, damaging DNA of all cells it reaches. The cancerous cells die from the injuries, but most normal cells will be able to repair themselves.

Gamma rays and x-rays are the two forms of photon energy used in external radiotherapy. They both have the same effects on cells and the same side effects. Cancerous cells can also be exposed to radiation using the technique of internal radiotherapy. Here, radioactive implants are placed inside a tumor or body cavity. Internal radiation is often used for cancer of the tongue, uterus, and cervix. Radiation therapy can be used alone or in combination with chemotherapy or surgery.

Nutritional supplementation during radiation therapy keeps the body nourished when side effects diminish appetite. It protects the healthy cells from the effects of the radiation, makes the cancerous cells more vulnerable to the radiation, and speeds the healing of tissues damaged by radiation.

Radiation treatment can cause damage to the lining of the intestines, resulting in an inability to properly absorb protein, carbohydrates, fats, and other nutrients, as well loss of fluids and electrolytes.

Suggested Supplement Support for Radiation

Under the advice of your physician or other healthcare professional, you may consider taking the some of the following supplements each day while you are receiving radiation therapy:

Warning: When supplementing any fat-soluble vitamin or oil, you must also take a vitamin E supplement to protect against oxidation.

Nutritional Checklist for Radiation Therapy

To Be of Service in The Medical Profession

By Joan Amtoft-Nielsen, MD, PhD, DC

I can remember that even as a small child, I always knew I would be a physician. I can still recall the joy one Christmas, when I received a children’s doctor kit. I always knew that I wanted to fix and help people. This idea was strongly reinforced throughout my many years of studies, where we were taught how to help people; to “fix” them so to speak. However, I gradually realized during my years of practicing medicine that fixing people is not what this profession is all about. The question “How can I help?” has become meaningful in recent years, but perhaps there is a deeper question to consider. Perhaps the question should truly be “How can I serve?”

Serving is different from helping, for helping is based on inequality. It is not a relationship between equals. When we help, we use our own strength to assist those of lesser strength or ability. If we are attentive to what is going on when we are helping, we will find that we generally give help to someone who is not as strong or more in need than we are in the moment. This inequality can be sensed by all involved. When we help, we may inadvertently take away from those we help more than we could ever possibly give to them. We may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of self-worth, their integrity and in fact their very wholeness.

But we do not serve with our strengths, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all our experiences to serve. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals. Helping incurs debt; when one helps another, there is a sense of being “owed” in some way. Yet serving, as with healing, is mutual. There is no debt; served and server are equal beneficiaries.

When one helps, one derives a feeling of satisfaction. When one serves, one derives a feeling of gratitude. These are clearly different blessings. Serving is also different from fixing. When one fixes another there is a perception of brokenness and a subsequent call to action. When one fixes, there is not the perception of the wholeness of the other, nor the trust in the integrity of the life within that person. When one serves, one trusts that inherent wholeness and responds to and collaborates with it.

When one individual is fixing another, there exists a necessary distance between the fixer and the one being fixed. Fixing is in fact a form of judgment and all judgment creates a distance, a sense of disconnection and an experience of difference. In fixing, there is an inequality of experience and expertise that can create a moral distance. Ironically, we can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This was Mother Teresa’s basic message: “We serve life, not because it is broken, but because it is holy.”

Healthcare in America is currently in a state of crisis. When we exist within these very challenging times, we must find something to sustain us. The pursuit of scientific and empirical truth alone is simply not sufficient to sustain us. In recent years, the practice of medicine has become far too difficult. The levels of stress, depression, cynicism and burn-out are so high that we must find something stronger than our science to hold onto, something more satisfying to nourish us as individuals and as healers.

I suspect that living well in times of crisis will require us to pursue meaning in much the same way that we have pursued knowledge in the past. We therefore must educate our physicians to pursue meaning, in the same way that we now educate them to pursue knowledge.

Patients with devastating illnesses are experts in living in a state of crisis. I have personally had the opportunity to listen to many of them and it has taught me that in times of distress, meaning is of the utmost importance for healing, and ultimately for living one’s life. Meaning does not change life; meaning changes our experience and perception of life—and our work as well. Doing work with a sense of meaning is very often lacking in the medical profession today.

Surviving the current crisis in healthcare may require each physician to re-examine and re-connect with not only what we came to do, but with why we chose to do it. Finding meaning means that we must cultivate a real relationship with our patients. We are closer to the true meaning of our work when we know our patients’ stories as well as we know their diagnoses. We are closer to the true meaning of our vocation when we know our colleagues’ stories and what they have sacrificed to their professions. Stories inspire and touch, they enliven and strengthen. Stories remind us of who we are, and why we continue to do what we do.

The original intention for the medical profession has not changed since the time of Hippocrates. The strategy used to fulfill this intention has changed radically. The original meaning of this profession was service, and science only the tool used to offer the service. All of us, doctor and patient alike, exist in the service of life itself. Service is not a technique or skill, nor is it a relationship between an “expert” and a patient with a problem to be solved. It is a relationship between two whole human beings.

Science may have distracted us; it may even have covered over the meaning of our work. We may have become alienated from the very life we are attempting to serve. Restoring a sense of service to the practice of medicine will require re-thinking the education of medical professionals. It will require a radical re-tooling of medical thought. At present, the predominant emphasis in medicine is on fixing, manipulating, controlling and gaining mastery over health and life. This is not service. We serve life, not because it is broken. We serve life because we possess a deep inner knowing that life is, by its very nature, holy and whole.

Ryke Geerd Hamer, MD: The New Medicine

The Medicine of the Future? 

"Through the millennia, humanity has more or less consciously known that all diseases ultimately have a psychic origin and it became a "scientific" asset firmly anchored in the inheritance of universal knowledge;  it is only modern medicine that has turned our animated beings into a bag full of chemical formulas.” R.G. Hamer, MD

A Cure for Cancer? Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer’s theories, based on extensive research involving tens of thousands of cancer patients and his own personal experience, deserves inclusion in this report because of the profound implications it has for healing disease in the 21st century.  “The New Medicine” and its basic premise offer real hope and the possibility of a cure for most types of cancer, and other diseases as well.

How It Began: Dr. Hamer’s Personal Story

The NEW MEDICINE understands the body as a unified organism, a unity, with the psyche being the integrator of all functions of behaviour and all areas of conflict, and the brain being the main computer of all behavioural functions, conflict areas and organs, and the sum of the consequences of all these events. R.G. Hamer, MD

In 1978, after 15 years as an internist, oncologist and professor of medicine in Germany and Italy, Dr. Hamer’s son, Dirk Hamer, was shot during a random act of violence.  Dr. Hamer was awakened during the night with this traumatic news. He attended his dying son for 3 months, remaining in a state of shock and disbelief.  Within the year after his son’s death, Dr. Hamer discovered that he had developed testicular cancer and being a scientist who had been healthy his entire life, he began to search for what seemed to be a plausible connection between his illness and the painful shock of his son’s unexpected murder. His wife developed cancer as well.  He asked himself whether it could just be coincidence that all of this had happened. Thus began Hamer’s journey toward the complete rethinking of long-accepted medical theories about how and why disease develops within certain individuals, about how healing really happens and why many times it doesn’t when patients rely on allopathic medical treatments.

The Legacy of a New Medicine

From Dr. Hamer: I believe that the knowledge of the New Medicine is the legacy of my dead son, Dirk. Through his death I myself became ill with cancer. With an honest heart, I have the authority of this legacy to pass on to all those stricken with disease so that they, with the help of the New Medicine, can understand their disease, overcome it and recover their health.

Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer

Even as he was fighting his own battle with cancer, Dr. Hamer continued practicing as the Chief of Internal Medicine at a Gynecology-Oncology clinic at Munich University in Germany.  He now began to look much more deeply into his patients’ stories and test results.  In every case, he found he could trace the development of cancer to a severe emotional shock or loss that generally occurred within a year or two before the diagnosis. He began calling these triggering events the “Dirk Hamer Syndrome” or DHS events in honor of his dead son.

I had the opportunity to study female patients with cancer and to compare my findings to see if their mechanism was the same as mine; if they too had experienced such a terrible shock. I found that all of them, without exception, had experienced the same type of biological conflict as I had. They were able to recollect the shock, the resulting sleeplessness, weight loss, cold hands and the beginning of tumor growth.

Furthermore, the shock must be unexpected; if we are prepared in some manner for the shocking event, we will not become ill says Hamer. Even more remarkably, he discovered that every biological conflict leaves a visible shadow in the brain (confirmed in every case, again without exception, by a brain CT scan) in the exact brain relay corresponding to the organ or body structure manifesting the disease. He found that the nature of the conflict predetermines the organic site for disease and that every disease has two distinct phases: the conflict/active phase and the healing/resolution phase. These are separated by the exact moment when the biological conflict is resolved.  Hamer called this “The Iron Rule of Cancer.”

He soon began to correlate his theories with other diseases as well and not just cancer. The result of his research is the creation of the “Disease Chart,” which accurately describes the biological conflict cause of each disease, the exact location in the brain the focus is found, how the disease manifests in the “conflict active phase” and how it manifests in the “healing phase.”  Should Hamer’s theories continue to receive scientific corroboration, this may indeed constitute the foundation for a New Medicine in the world.

What is a Biological Conflict?

Cancer does not begin in the body; cancer begins in the brain.

According to a practitioner well versed in The New Medicine:  “A biological conflict….. is a very primal response to an event in a person's life that completely catches them off guard. In fact, most people describe this event as feeling as if they were struck by lightning, they develop cold hands and feet, lose their appetite, can't sleep, their mind keeps dwelling on the trauma and they have trouble talking to anyone about it.  These conflicts, in order to qualify as biological in nature must be unanticipated and can involve a separation from a loved one, a territorial loss, a self devaluation, a profound fear, a fight over something that we believe rightfully belongs to us, injuries inflicted through accidents or harsh words, or even a fear for our lives or the life of a loved one. The list goes on. These biological responses are preprogrammed into our brains and are responsible for creating most of the disease states we are familiar with today.”

And how do “spontaneous remissions” happen in nature?  In exactly the same manner as a longer term healing process.  When the patient’s biological conflict situation finally gets resolved—whether naturally as life changes and adaptation occurs, or after significant conscious effort—then the turning point is reached.  In many cases, this healing process is not without its challenges and dangers as well, but the tide has definitely turned in the right direction.

Years of Frustration and Rejection

Of course this theory, although well researched with 20,000 case studies, validated with CT  (computed axial tomography or CAT scan is an image of the soft tissues of the body) scans and containing compelling evidence, was something completely new within standard medical practice.  When Hamer presented his discoveries to his colleagues, they demanded that he deny his findings or leave the university immediately.  He chose the latter course—and continued his research--although the unjust dismissal haunted him for years.  And it was to get even worse.

Hamer next submitted his research to the University in Tubingen in October 1981 as a post-doctoral thesis. His primary intent was to create the opportunity for his results to be tested as soon as possible so they could begin to benefit cancer patients.  In May 1982, the University rejected Hamer’s work without testing even a single case for reproduction—and to this date they continue to refuse.  In the ensuing years, he repeatedly attempted to open a clinic where patients who chose to could utilize his methods, and each time he was legally prevented from doing so.

The criticism (perhaps “persecution” would not be too strong a word here) reached its peak in 1986 when an action was begun to stop Hamer from practicing medicine on the basis that he "failed to deny his findings and failed to convert to the tenets of official medicine." This judgment was handed down after a single hearing. Hamer was subsequently forbidden to talk to patients and he was advised, at age 51, to find a new profession, unrelated to medicine. He was even jailed for 18 months for providing information to patients about his “New Medicine.”  His career as a physician appeared to be over.

Hamer continued his research on a limited basis, being now denied any kind of financial, technical or administrative support.  He finally took the University of Tubingen to court and won and the University was ordered by the court to conduct studies about Hamer’s findings.  To date they have not done so.  Since he believes very strongly that current methods for treating cancer (surgery, chemotherapy and radiation) are barbaric and completely ineffective on any kind of long-term basis as well—he has very few supporters within the conventional medical community.

An Amazing 31,000 Patients Studied by 1997

As incredible as it sounds, Hamer and his supporters describe their series of empirical findings based on 31,000 case studies as all (without exception!) exhibiting this same pattern of disease development.  In other words, not one exception to the theory was uncovered.  In fact, several supportive studies have now been accomplished with European institutions, the latest being the 1998 examination at The University of Trnava, Slovakia. 

Note: There is a great deal of information of a highly technical nature available about Dr. Hamer’s theories and set of five “biological laws,” which is not included within this report.  Many of his ideas are diametrically opposed to conventional medical knowledge, such as his statement that tumors cannot metastasize, so be forewarned.   You will need to proceed with an open mind, however the information is fascinating and thought-provoking.

Some Powerful Insights Into Breast Cancer

For a fascinating discussion specific to breast cancer, use the following link to the New Medicine website: http://www.newmedicine.ca/breast.php. This is certainly well worth exploring and seriously considering if you or someone you love is dealing with breast cancer.  Basically, Hamer proposes that there are two types: breast gland and milk duct (intra-ductal) cancer.  He also states that he has found that all breast cancer results from a separation conflict of some type and that where it manifests will also depend on whether the woman is right or left handed.   This can be summarized as follows:

“We do not develop either intra-ductal or breast gland cancer without reason. The specific nature or feeling behind the conflict will determine precisely what brain location will receive the impact of the conflict-shock (DHS) and whether it will be the duct or the gland affected.

Breast gland cancer has to do with the woman’s nest in the sense that she has a "worry", "quarrel or argument" going on in her nest. The worry could be over a health concern of a loved one, or even being thrown out of the nest by her mother! The overall issue concerned however is really a separation from a loved one. 

Milk duct cancer has quite specifically to do with the conflict of, "my child, mother, or partner has been torn from my breast!" Again it is a separation conflict and the rules of laterality also apply here… To be more precise, a right handed woman will respond with the left breast if she has a mother-child conflict or a daughter-mother conflict and will respond with the right breast if she has a partner conflict. Her partners include her life’s partner as in husband, a friend, her brother, sister, her father, or even her business partner. The opposite breast will be affected in a left handed woman.”

Something to Consider: Hamer makes the following empowering statement for women suffering from this dreaded cancer, offering the possibility, in resolving any emotional/biological conflicts, to create a healing miracle in their lives:  “..….the tissue starts to augment from the time of the onset of the actual conflict, and will stop growing as soon as the conflict has been resolved.”

Hamer’s Theories Brought to the United States

As Dr. Hamer’s theories are finally being investigated and seriously considered in Europe, so too are they beginning to be discussed here in the United States.  A new organization as of June 2004, the Meta-Medicine Academy, based in large part on Hamer’s work, has been created in California to explore the natural laws that govern disease, health and healing:  The “big picture” around how disease and healing truly happen.  This is an education and research organization that will offer seminars and trainings, including a certified “health coach” training program for practitioners wishing to specialize in this approach. 

Meta-Medicine will offer a new model for how our bodies really work.  It intends to create no less than “the transformation of medicine and healing towards an integral understanding of the body/mind/spirit environment.” The following information, taken from the website (www.metamedicine.info), explains its mission further:

The goal of Meta-Medicine is to research and find the causes, process, relationships and meaning of disease and health and to formulate a new foundation of a truly integral health system and medicine.  The Meta-Medicine is engaged in answering the deeper questions of health and disease from an integral and more comprehensive point of view: 

There are introductory seminars scheduled in California, Germany and the United Kingdom.  Consult the website (www.metamedicine.info) for details and to be put on their mailing list if you’re interested.

Shadows on The Brain

In conclusion, the following article and summary of Dr. Hamer’s work, is reprinted with permission from the British newsletter, “What Doctors Don't Tell You” Volume 13 No. 10 January 2003  (www.wddty.co.uk).

The author of the article is Pat Thomas, Contributing Editor.

One of the most recent studies on psychosomatic cancer therapy comes from Germany.  Over the past ten years, medical doctor and cancer surgeon Ryke Geerd Hamer has examined 20,000 cancer patients with all types of cancer.

Dr. Hamer wondered why cancer never seems to systemically spread directly from one organ to the surrounding tissue.  For example, he has never found a cancer of the cervix and cancer of the uterus in the same woman.  He also noticed that all his cancer patients seem to have something in common:  they had all experienced some kind of psycho-emotional conflict prior to the onset of their disease, a conflict that had never been fully resolved.

On the basis of these 20,000 examinations, Dr. Hamer has come up with some revolutionary information.  In all these cases, X-rays taken of the brain by Dr. Hamer have shown a dark shadow somewhere in the brain.  These dark spots are located in exactly the same place in the brain for the same type of cancer.  There was also a 100 percent correlation between the dark spot in the brain, the location of the cancer in the body, and the specific type of unresolved conflict.

These findings have lead Dr. Hamer to suggest that when we are in a stressful conflict that is not resolved, the emotional reflex center in the brain that corresponds to the experienced emotion (for example, anger, frustration or grief) will slowly break down.  Each of these emotion centers is connected to a specific organ.  When a center breaks down it will start sending the wrong information to the organ it controls, resulting in the formation of deformed cells in the tissues - in other words, cancer cells.

Dr. Hamer also suggests that metastases are not the same as cancer spreading.  It is the result of new conflicts that the stress of having cancer, or of having to undergo invasive, painful or nauseating therapies create.

When Dr. Hamer started including psychotherapy as an important part of the healing process, he found that when the associated conflict was resolved, the cancer immediately stopped growing at a cellular level.  The dark spot in the brain also began to disappear, and the diseased tissue came to be replaced by normal tissue.

According to Dr. Hamer, research in Germany, Austria, France, the US and Denmark has confirmed his findings – that emotional conflicts create cancer, and solving the conflicts in question stops the cancer growth.

Ryke Geerd Hamer, MD has written several books, including "CANCER, DISEASE OF THE PSYCHE" and "LEGACY OF A NEW MEDICINE, Volume 1, The Ontogenetic System of Tumors including Cancer, Leukemia, Psychosis and Epilepsy.”

 

Interested? Check Out the New Medicine Website

www.newmedicine.ca

If you’re interested in learning more (and you may need a medical or scientific background to comprehend some of this), a good place to start is the English version of the website for The New Medicine (www.newmedicine.ca).  As well, an English translation of The Summary of the New Medicine (this is Dr. Hamer’s thesis as presented to the University of Tubingen in 1994), updated in 2000, can be ordered here.  This is a comprehensive documentation of his research in summary form.  It is described as “dense with material and case studies as well as examples of CT scans of the brain and the New Medicine interpretation involving the Psyche, Brain and Organ.”

There are lectures and seminars scheduled and listed on the website, to be conducted by a New Medicine teacher and therapist trained and approved by Dr. Hamer. These are reasonably priced and accessible in the U.S. or Canada if you’re interested.