Battling Cancer

Anyone who’s ever gone through cancer treatment can tell you that it’s not easy going through The Big Three — surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Below, Battling Cancer discusses the story of two individuals whose own cancer diagnoses inspired them to seek better treatment plans for themselves and others:

Neil Ruzic

A scientific writer and inventor, Neil Ruzic dedicated his life to asking questions and improving the scientific research climate. When he was diagnosed with mantle-cell lymphoma in 1998, he shunned traditional approaches to curative care in search of more nontoxic approaches. For four years, he visited several comprehensive cancer centers, investigated new cures in research laboratories, and enrolled in clinical trials. He compiled his research in a book entitled, Racing to a Cure: A Cancer Victim Refuses Chemotherapy and Finds Tomorrow’s Cures in Today’s Scientific Laboratories. Before he passed away in 2004, he founded the Ruzic Research Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to funding experimental approaches to lymphoma treatment. More →

Age is a tricky factor when it comes to health. There are so many different processes that are unique to the aging body that an entire field of medicine exists to study them. While a cancer diagnosis is not an age-specific event, however, it seems that many doctors are prescribing treatment plans as if it were.

Too Little, Too Late?  In a 2006 study published in the Journal of Gerontology, primary care physicians were surveyed about what type of cancer screening they would give to a hypothetical 70, 80, or 90 year-old female patient. Interestingly, physicians tended to “over screen” older, frail patients who were within five years of their median life expectancy and “under screen” healthier patients who were over ten years away from their median life expectancy.

More →

According to the American Cancer Society, the chance that breast cancer will be responsible for a woman’s death is about 1 in 33 or 3%. Overall, about 1 in 12 women may contract breast cancer at some age, with the odds higher later in life. But thanks to modern medicine, many breast cancers can be successfully treated with only minor impact. However, the success of that treatment depends critically on early detection, and the earlier the better. One simple way to up the odds of discovery is to perform a regular breast self examination.

* The Goal Is To Detect Changes Which Might Signal Conditions Worth Investigating

More →

Reflexology and Chemotherapy

By Amy Brennan

Reflexology is a gentle non intrusive treatment carried out upon the feet alone, using reflex points that correspond to the body systems.

Reflexology is highly beneficial in alleviating adverse side effects of chemotherapy, by helping the patient to deeply relax, it also helps to reduce the level of anxiety, helping patients cope with the distressing symptoms of pain and nausea, the results reveal that treatments produce a significant and immediate effect on the patients’ perceptions of pain, nausea and relaxation.

There is a myth that because reflexology rids the body of toxins, that the chemotherapy won’t work properly. There is no evidence to support this and there is a wealth of evidence about the positive results patients have felt.

More →