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Cancer Remedies: Is Hope Real or False?

By Harriet Denz Penhey

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 18Dec2009 Word count: 697 Viewed: 186 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

When a person has cancer that has a very poor prognosis doctors are very wary about the patient having what they call "false hope". They get very angry with individuals and information websites who suggest that the fatal consequence might not have to happen. From their perspective it is cruel to suggest that someone has the power to heal when it is, in the doctor's opinion, patently not true. But is that stance justifiable?

I would have to answer both yes and no. It is justifiable as most people just want to do as they are told and for those who believe in medical cancer remedies it is probably accurate. However it is not justifiable in the sense that even if only one person has beaten the medical odds and recovered when it wasn't expected then there is a physiological pathway for healing to occur.

If there is a biological mechanism for a cancer tumor to regress, to get smaller in size, then there is a mechanism for it to continue to regress, perhaps to extinction. I was reading a medical journal article that discussed how the extended hours of summer sun, and the body's conversion of it to vitamin D could encourage a regression of the size of metastases. And if there are pathways such as this then hope is reasonable.

One of the interesting pieces of research in people with HIV has shown that those who have positive illusions about how long they personally will live and about how much they can control the illness, actually do better than those who do not. This bothers some doctors and researchers as living an illusory life is not generally considered to be indicative of good mental health or good health generally.

Additionally people do not do worse if or when they find their illusions shattered by progressing illness. This also bothers the same doctors and researchers. These behavioral aspects are likely to be very similar to people with cancer.

As a result of these two findings doctors and researchers have to rethink how to manage patients who appear to be quite unrealistic and irrational in their beliefs about their potential longevity and quality of life. Instead of trying to disillusion them and bringing them back to reality, they should encourage their patients' autonomy and positive attitudes, praising them for their work at improving their quality of life and for their survival to this point. They should recognize that positive attitudes are just one aspect of cancer remedy self care.

My own research has found that long term survivors interpreted every symptom as an indicator of improving health, not progressing disease. They preferred not to have the evidence of progression pointed out to them, but instead to focus on those little aspects over which they could control.

This control could be physical, as in taking some exercise to assist lymphatic drainage, or it could be imaginary, as in creatively visualizing the lymph finding a new way to drain after surgery had removed some of the glands. In one case the patient interpreted her badly swollen leg as an indicator, not of metastasized melanoma needing lymph glands removed, but of the cancer being removed and her body now clear of the cancer. She was now visualizing her leg as normal. The leg did return to normal from being over twice the normal size, and her multiple chest metastases regressed fully so that she became clear of cancer for years. Sadly I lost contact with her.

This patient had refused to attend the oncology clinic because the doctor was too negative. The patient's oncologist would sometimes meet up with her husband at his work, ask after her health, and go on his way shaking his head saying, "Impossible, it just doesn't happen."

But it does happen. There are many natural cancer remedies that can be undertaken but I would urge any person who is ill not to put faith in just one herb, pill or potion. Natural healing is much more complicated than that. It is a holistic treatment requiring not just one aspect to be addressed, but the body, mind, social relationships and more. Seek and you shall find.

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