Cancer The Development Of Emerging Cancer Care Physically, Emotionally, And Spiritually

The Emerging Model Of Cancer Care

Healing requires a willingness to change physically, emotionally, and spiritually. On the morning of December 31, 2005, I received a telephone call from Gretchen, a woman caught in the grip of uncontrolled panic. It was her husband, Robert. The previous afternoon, he received word that his head and neck cancer had spread.

• Despite state-of-the-art treatments at one of the world’s leading cancer centers, treatment had failed. Now the doctors were insisting the only answer was removal of his right jawbone, a risky and difficult surgery that would likely result in permanent facial deformity and impaired speech. Even with the surgery, the outcome was uncertain at best.
• The news was devastating to Robert. He openly spoke about committing suicide after hearing the news. Gretchen needed answers on how to help her husband now.

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• Robert and I talked several times that day. He was a brilliant and articulate man with dual doctorate degrees who taught German at a prestigious private college in New Jersey. During his career, Robert was the recipient of numerous awards.
• His professional path seemed destined for even greater things. He was aware he was about to be nominated Dean of Students and Vice President of Academic Affairs, roles that gave him a very powerful voice in the school’s administration.
• It was a goal he yearned for since his early days as an assistant professor in upstate New York. And now, his grim cancer diagnosis seemed to be blocking him from achieving that very goal.
• Robert needed to talk, and I was there to listen. He shared about the difficulty of accepting the diagnosis of a malignant parotid gland. First, Robert felt the biopsy was botched. Following the pathology evaluation, the medical team recommended surgery, to be followed by radiation.
• But when Robert understood that a key facial nerve runs right through the parotid gland, he balked. It was common for this nerve to be damaged, even severed, during this complicated surgical procedure.

It left many patients with impaired speech, the inability to control facial muscles, and even the loss of function of one’s eyelid.

• Robert openly railed against his surgeon’s recommendations. He simply would not allow surgery. But he was open to a course of radiation therapy. And thus his cancer treatment began.
• Throughout his life, Robert had limited interest in diet or exercise. However, after this initial diagnosis, he learned everything he could about cancer and nutrition. He became a vegan and lost nearly thirty pounds, which helped lower his high blood pressure.
• And for the first time in his life, he began to exercise a thirty-minute daily walk, rain or shine. As Robert put it, “For the first time in my life I began telling my body to be well.” During my first conversation with Robert after Gretchen’s worried phone call, I praised him for the changes he made to help bring his body to a place of greater wellness.
• Still, he was dismissive of my compliments and encouragements on his new diet and exercise regimen. As we ended the first call, Robert remained despondent.
• Near the end of a second call that December day, I brought up the issue of Robert’s emotions after hearing the news. Robert was angry with his diagnosis, with his doctors, and with his own body. Raising his voice, he called one of his oncologists “an idiot” and “intellectually dishonest” because she recommended chemotherapy even though these treatments have little proven success.
• But Robert was angry not just about his cancer diagnosis and prognosis, he was also angry about life. His tone of voice was critical and confrontational, and his statements were sprinkled with profanities. I felt as if my every word was being challenged.
• Earlier in the day, Gretchen shared that they reached me through the phone numbers in one of my books. I asked Robert to read the chapter entitled “Choose Your Emotional Style.” My suggestion was not well received and he abruptly ended the call.

Within an hour, Gretchen was back on the phone. Robert wanted to talk. This time he started with the question,

• “Why do you believe there is a God?” His inquiry started a fascinating discussion.
• Before his diagnosis, Robert had no time for or interest in spirituality. “I haven’t had anything positive to say about religion for over forty years,” he mused. But then he shared that one night, just as he was drifting off to sleep, he clearly heard a voice that said, Follow me.
• Robert continued almost reverently, “There is no mistaking that the voice was very real and very close. The tone of the voice was gentle and loving. And as I thought about the encounter later, all I could think of was, ‘Follow whom?’ and ‘Who is this?”
• Since that time, Robert could not get the voice off his mind. After thinking about the command for several weeks, he stopped at a church that he often passed on his daily walk.
• Upon entering he lit one of the votive candles in the rack near the back of the sanctuary. Then he knelt in a pew and was quiet. Looking at the main altar, Robert observed a beautiful golden piece of art depicting Jesus hanging on a cross.
• Of course, Robert had seen this image many times before. Previously he either ignored or scoffed at it. Now, in a quiet and reverent tone of voice, Robert shared how he stared, transfixed at the crucifix for what may have been thirty minutes or more. Finally, he spoke out loud: “Was that you saying ‘Follow me’?”
• “I left that church more hopeful than I had been in months,” Robert shared. “And to this day I continue to explore what truth there may be in a spiritual quest.”
• Later, I pondered Robert’s experience. It was similar to those I have seen and heard in literally thousands of cancer survivors. The quest is not necessarily a religious transformation.
• Clearly, for Robert, it was not, as he still struggles with the idea of a Divine Force. Rather, the difference can be understood as being based in hope. More specifically, in a conscious decision to replace despair and helplessness with hope and trust that all will be well no matter what the outcome. Hope is a subject we will have a great deal to say about throughout this book.
• My sense is that I left Robert more settled that day. The anger and hostility were gone from his voice. He was obviously calmer and seemed more at peace. And he was understanding more about how his diet and exercise routines could significantly contribute to his recovery.
• Robert did not attempt to end his life that New Year’s Eve.
• I like to think I had some part in that. He eventually went ahead with the recommended surgery, refused chemotherapy, and within two years was declared cancer-free, much to the surprise of his medical oncologist.
• About two years ago, I met Robert and Gretchen for the first time. While Robert does not have impaired speech, he does have a noticeable facial deformity.

“But he grew this nice beard,” said a smiling Gretchen as she playfully tugged at his thick gray Santa-style growth. “Nobody knows.”

• Robert and I keep in touch. “I still don’t know about God,” he says, “but I have come to a point in my life of knowing a deep peace. And I am becoming increasingly thankful for the smallest of graces the sight of a sunrise, the fragrance of a flower, and the touch of my wife’s hand.
• I’ve been able to see things more clearly and hardly ever get angry at the small stuff.” In a holiday card, he said that, symbolically, he believes that the reason his cancer was found in his neck was so that his words would be softer and he could become more compassionate.
• I kept Robert’s holiday card. It’s a perfect thumbnail of the integrated cancer care journey. Medicine? Yes, in careful, less toxic, least-invasive doses. Excellent nutrition? Of course. Robert opted to go the vegan route. Exercise? Daily. Emotional intelligence? Robert is becoming increasingly skilled at releasing hostility. Spirituality? He is more peaceful, grateful, and hopeful than at any time in his life.

The Tumor Model

Robert’s embrace of a holistic integrated cancer care program offers a powerful alternative to the current orthodox cancer treatment paradigm so widely practiced by oncologists and accepted, without serious questioning, by cancer patients. The fact is that current conventional Western cancer treatment is exclusively focused on the disease-the-tumor model.

• Following a myriad of tests, a diagnosis is made. Once diagnosed, the tumor or the blood-based cancer is attacked with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Medical expertise is required to prescribe and administer these treatments, and thus a different specialist is present to implement each treatment modality. The entire process is focused on the tumor and precious little about the person.
• One person whom the Cancer Recovery Foundation helped evaluate the spectrum of treatment options was a medical doctor, and a family practitioner named Ruth. She was two years into treatment for a stage II infiltrating ductal carcinoma—an early-stage breast cancer.

Things were not going well. Her experience started with the way she was treated as a person.

• Prior to her initial surgery, she was told she needed a CT scan to determine if the tumor had attached to the chest wall.
• Ruth knew CT scans were not routinely used in a stage II breast cancer diagnosis, but the surgeon was insistent, saying he needed to know whether or not the tumor could be removed with a mastectomy. Ruth’s discomfort with the test was summarily dismissed, and reluctantly, she agreed.
• The test did not go well. CT scans, also called CAT scans or computerized tomography scans, require a dye, a contrast solution, to be injected into your arm through an intravenous line prior to the test. I recall Ruth’s anger as she shared her experiences with me.
• “The technician who tried to insert the IV didn’t know what the hell he was doing. First, he couldn’t find a vein. Then he dropped the entire IV kit on the floor. Instead of throwing it away and requesting a sterile one, he picked it up and was about to use this germ-laden apparatus on me. I yelled at him, ‘Stop it!’ And I walked out the door.”
• “He didn’t know who I was,” continued Ruth. “He cared only about the procedure and nothing about me, his patient. I sat in that god-awful gown in that cold exam room and was afforded no human comfort, no respect, and no acknowledgment that I was a living and breathing human being, let alone a medical professional.
• It was all about the cancer. At that moment, I had this sinking feeling. I realized the system in which I was trained, and in which I practiced, would eventually fail me.”

Unfortunately, Ruth’s experience is far from unusual. The tumor model of cancer treatment is often coldly and cruelly dispassionate to the patient a secondary thought to the disease. In Cancer Recovery Foundation’s work, cancer patients most often turn to us after the system has in some way failed them.

Some patients are concerned about the tests used to arrive at their diagnosis. Others feel as if they are being rushed, even forced, into treatments without understanding their options. Many cancer patients reach out to us only after traditional medical treatments have failed and they are told the frightening words, “Your cancer is back.” It is often at these points of systemic failure that our phone rings.

The Shift

Since the focus of the tumor-based model is solely on the tumor, little if any effort is expended in exploring the benefits of healthful diet, regular exercise, immune-enhancing treatments, social and emotional support, spirituality, or other methods to enhance a patient’s well-being.

• And as so often happens, a focus solely on the tumor leaves the thinking patient disempowered and unable to contribute to their own healing. In fact, empowering cancer patients and their support team may be one of the most important aspects of our work.
• If the Cancer Recovery Foundation can equip you, along with tens of thousands of additional cancer patients, to fully understand and practice integrated cancer care, we will have changed the singular treatment mindset in cancer.

Let’s be clear:

• Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation can play an important role in cancer treatment. But with most cancers, especially early-stage cancer, the benefits conventional treatment may provide must be carefully weighed against the risks.
• Conventional treatments do not address the underlying factors that predispose one to, or prevent, cancer development. Conventional cancer treatments merely treat symptoms.
• The tumor model of cancer considers the tumor the entire problem and ignores factors like tobacco use and obesity that directly affect the development of lung, breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers. The orthodox approach says, in essence, “See, there’s the tumor. That’s the problem. That’s what we will attack.”
• Converse to this narrowly defined approach, the emerging model of cancer treatment recognizes the tumor as a physical indication of a greater underlying imbalance. The new model of cancer care recognizes the growing evidence that shows that supporting and creating high levels of well-being with nutrition and exercise is at least as important as conventional cancer treatment.
• In addition to the nutrition and exercise emphasis, the broader aspects of emotional, social, and spiritual support from this model of treatment can be critically important to optimal health-so critical as to create a level of well-being that transcends disease.
• The multipronged approach of integrated cancer care and treatment recognizes the importance of the person as a whole, rather than just the cancer. It is a critical distinction. Please grasp the importance of this truth in your own journey: your cancer is not just about the tumor.

Science is beginning to discover what ancient healers from a variety of cultures and disciplines have known and practiced for centuries-that our mind body and spirit are inseparable.

• Together they create a “life force” that nurtures health, healing, and the optimal functioning of our immune system. This means that health is much more than healthcare and that cancer care is much more than cancer treatment.
• Understanding and acknowledging that our body mind and spirit are inseparable, the emerging paradigm of cancer care provides optimal support for the whole person. These disciplines can be naturally and safely integrated with conventional cancer treatments if the patient desires.
• Supporting overall health and well-being supports immune function, which facilitates the healing process, improves our quality of life, and enhances recovery. In short, the wise integration of body, mind, and spirit helps create health and encourages healing.
• The study of the relationship between the mind, body, and immune system is called psychoneuroimmunology. Scientists are discovering that when we feel empowered, our immune system is empowered.
• Fear can have a substantial negative impact on immune function, whereas regaining a sense of control and positive engagement in our own health and healing helps support immune function. The principles of empowerment, self-engagement, and personal choice are at the heart of the emerging model of cancer care.
• More than any other dynamic, the emerging model understands that the mind, body, spirit, and immune system are one. Moving away from the single-dimension tumor model of cancer, we are progressing toward multiple ways of supporting mind, body, spirit, and immune function including exercise, nutrition, stress reduction, and spirituality.
• As our professor friend Robert found, all are interrelated, contributing to the benefit provided by the others in a synergistic way. By engaging in the many ways we can support mind, body, and spirit, we clearly optimize our body’s healing potential. Today, we can say with certainty that a cancer recovery program without integration of body, mind, and spirit is an incomplete program at best.
• Thousands of cases of recovery from “incurable” life-threatening diseases, including advanced cancers, have been scientifically documented. I am one of those documented cases. There is no question you also possess that potential.
• While research on this phenomenon is still in its infancy, a growing cadre of physicians, practitioners, and allied healthcare professionals are coming forward to serve cancer patients in optimally engaging in their own health and healing.

With growing scientific interest in this field, researchers have begun to study patients who have recovered from seemingly impossible circumstances in hopes of beginning to understand how we all can better facilitate our body’s remarkable healing abilities.

I am asking you to act now to design and implement your own integrated cancer recovery program. In fact, if you are dealing with a diagnosis of cancer, there has never been a better time or more important time to fully embrace this program.

The Question Of Cause

In our work, we have found a marked propensity for patients to ask, “What caused my cancer?” It is an understandable question. In my own case, I had to look no further than cigarettes to find an immediate answer. But as I researched further, the cause of my lung cancer was more than just smoking.

At the time of my diagnosis, I was overwhelmed by the pressures of a new baby, a cross-country move, a new job, a fast-food diet, and a feeling that I was inadequate as a husband, father, and professional. Now, twenty-nine years later, it is clear this combination of factors, not just the tobacco, was the cause of my lung cancer.

• There is no one cause for all cancers. If you or a loved one are dealing with cancer and wrestling with the cause question, examine your personal terrain- physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. You will likely find many factors contribute to your cancer development.
• These include diet, exercise, toxin exposure, vitamin D levels, hormones, certain medical tests, and even some medical treatments, as well as factors that can’t necessarily be controlled, like gender, age, genetics, race, and emotional makeup.
• These factors, interacting together, impact cancer development. For each person, the combination will be different. The emerging model of care recognizes this complexity.
• On the cellular level, cancer is an expression of genes that have mutated, resulting in cells that have gone awry. However bad inherited genes are not the cause of 90 to 95 percent of cancers. An unlucky draw from the genetic pool explains just 5 to 10 percent of the causal factors.
• Genes gone badly are more often the outcome of many other factors. Your genes turn “off” and “on” in relation to the environmental factors in which those genes live. The good news is that even if we do have a gene that potentially predisposes us to cancer, lifestyle factors can and will impact the degree to which that gene is expressed.
• Dr. Dean Ornish, one of the world’s most esteemed pioneers and integrated healthcare revolutionaries stated, “People should realize that genes may be our predisposition, but they are not our fate. The fact is massive positive changes in genetic activity are generated through lifestyle choices. Our choices are as powerful as our strongest drugs and occur rapidly in most individuals.”
• How powerful? Among the researchers who study lifestyle’s impact on health, there is a consensus that 50 to 75 percent of cancers are totally and completely preventable. Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosis among women and prostate cancer is the most common for men.
• Excellent and compelling scientific evidence exists today that shows eight out of ten breast cancers could be prevented before a diagnosis was even made. Science demonstrating similar promising results for prostate cancer is emerging, proving that cancer does not have to be as black and white as once thought.

These developments are startling revelations of the idea of prevention in its effectiveness in warding off cancer. Prevention is accomplished by minimizing or eliminating factors that predispose one to cancer development.

• As we’ll discuss in greater depth later in this book, reducing the consumption of sugar and animal fats, avoiding inactivity, eliminating the use of tobacco, moderating the consumption of alcohol, and adding nutritional supplements that reduce genetic expression are all excellent preventative measures.
• If you have been recently diagnosed, you may be asking, “So how does this help me? I already have cancer.” The good news is that many of these same steps can also contribute to your getting well and staying well. If many cancers can be prevented through lifestyle measures, common sense tells us that these same healthful self-care measures will also be of value in both the recovery process and in reducing the risk of recurrence. Happily, there is a significant and growing body of research that supports the huge role that self-care plays in cancer treatment.
• Think back for a moment to Robert, our professor friend. He made shifts in his diet, his exercise, and his emotional disposition, and he even had a spiritual encounter that left him a changed man. These self-care factors, combined with his medical treatment, have resulted in a positive outcome. It is a pattern we have observed literally thousands of times in our work at the Cancer Recovery Foundation.
• There exists significant resistance to these “natural healing” ideas in much of the conventional orthodox oncology community. Even though Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, said over 2,500 years ago, “Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine thy food,” many Western-trained oncologists have little tolerance for such ideas.
• Both my surgeon and radiation oncologist told me to eat whatever I wanted when I was undergoing radiation therapy. They were more concerned that I ate anything, sugars and fats included, in order to maintain weight than the quality of what I was putting in my body. If there were ever a time to stop drinking soda and eating candy and give up French fries, cancer is it. We will cover much more in the way of specific dietary suggestions in a later section of this book.
• Like most of us, doctors are busy people. Most do their very best to keep apprised of everything that is going on in their field.
• The good ones constantly read new scientific studies published in professional journals, attend conferences, and see pharmaceutical representatives several times a year. But as a result of their own immersion in the field, there is a pervasive assumption that “If it were true, I would know about it.

” Nutrition and the more natural self-care approaches are often dismissed, despite the mounting body of evidence that points to their significance.

• Nutrition, exercise, social support, and mind/body and spiritual matters are barely, if ever, on the curriculum in medical school. Following a talk I gave at the world-famous M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, a medical oncologist pulled me aside and said, “My patients don’t want to change what they eat. And they sure don’t want to exercise. They want their treatment and then they want to forget about cancer.”
• My response is that patients should do all possible to help prevent and control cancer in ways that do not harm the body. Others have lamented that there are no “double-blind studies” to prove that these facets of emerging healthcare to diet, exercise, and thought—are not harmful to the patient.
• This is demonstrative of the medical cultural bias that dismisses natural self-help approaches in favor of pharmaceutical solutions. The demand for “hard science” stands in the way of common sense.
• Of course, it is important to note that people who exercise regularly and eat healthfully can still develop cancer. Clearly, cancer is not a single-cause disease. And for each person the combination of causative factors is different.

However, we can all learn to take better care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. A diagnosis of cancer is the signal to do so, providing an opportunity to fully love and care for oneself. That truth stands as the premier attribute of the emerging model of cancer care.

Beyond The Cause Your Response

After nearly thirty years of guiding cancer patients, this much I know for certain: the patients who do well actively participate in creating health and enhancing their well-being. When we engage in our own process of recovery, we regain a sense of autonomy, a feeling of control that we can impact our own health and life, and a sense of being in charge.

• Numerous studies have shown that patients who become actively involved in designing their recovery plan are more likely to follow through with their treatments, less likely to have complications, and more likely to have favorable outcomes than those who simply take a passive role.
• I do realize that becoming an active patient has its own challenges. Being told that you have cancer is a very frightening experience. Due to the technical nature of conventional cancer treatments, those decisions tend to be driven by specialists.
• At this point, patients often become passive bystanders in their own care. Overwhelmed by procedures, treatments, and side effects that they may not understand, they often acquiesce without understanding their options.

There are also haunting questions in the minds of most cancer patients about their pre-diagnosis role.

• I often hear statements like, “Why me? What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? Am I to blame for my cancer?” These questions are a natural response to a life-threatening diagnosis.
• While natural, they can generate thoughts and feelings of worry, despair, self-blame, and even resentment toward others. Misunderstanding one’s role very often adds further stress to an already challenging situation.
• As a consequence, cancer patients are often left feeling isolated, frightened, and depressed, a state that inhibits both immune function and healing. In this context, patients may be left feeling unable to contribute in a meaningful way to their recovery and, as a result, feel a sense of loss of control over their health.
• In Cancer Recovery Foundation’s work, we help patients reframe their experience away from possible blame, self-recrimination, or disempowering fear. Instead, we assist them in gaining a broader understanding of cancer and the healing process, help them develop self-compassion, and support them in creating a practical action plan.
• In this way, patients develop a sense of regaining control and being in charge of their lives and health. That sense of control is a central element that helps in one’s healing.
• Whether you are active or passive, you have a major influence on your healing, positive or negative. Respected psychiatrist and cancer researcher Dr. David Spiegel wrote, “Medicine has focused so much on attacking the tumor that it has tended to ignore the body coping with the tumor, and the social and psychological variables that influence the somatic response to tumor invasion.
• Biologic treatments that produce only marginal increases in survival are widely employed despite considerable risks and side effects. Many psychosocial practices such as support groups, mind/body practices, and simple relaxation that are clearly helpful and carry with them very little in the way of risks, side effects, or expense, are far less widely employed.”
• When we engage in creating our own health and healing within a broader holistic context, we become active and inspired participants in optimally supporting our mind, body, spirit, and immune system.
• Reclaiming a sense of being in charge of our own life and health is a vitally important foundation of the healing process. By doing so, our immune system is enhanced and we begin to actively work toward creating our own foundations for healing and recovery.
• Personal autonomy, personal choice, and the right to choose one’s own treatments are important foundations of integrated cancer care.

All of the complementary medical therapies we will discuss in this book are designed to support health and build immune function. And they are meant to do so in the least toxic and most minimally invasive manner.

• Yet for many cancer patients, nutrition and exercise seem to lack the same scientific basis accorded surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. And it’s true. For some of these complementary therapies, there is substantial scientific evidence that supports their use. For others, less research exists.
• I recognize that scientific evidence is a very helpful guide to choosing treatments. Evidence-informed care is valuable. But as Einstein said, “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted, counts.
• ” Trusting your own wisdom is also an exceedingly helpful guide to choosing treatments. My goal in this book is to guide you to merge science with your inner wisdom to make choices that are optimal for you.
• The shift to the new model in health honors both the contribution and the limitations of orthodox cancer care. Let’s be clear. By removing or killing tumor cells, conventional cancer treatments can play a valuable role in reducing the tumor load with which the body has to deal.
• However, since many conventional cancer treatments also have negative effects on healthy cells, these same treatments are often associated with significant side effects that can substantially reduce both immune function and quality of life. Even worse, the long-term negative health consequences of these treatments often mean compromised health for the rest of one’s life.
• More natural therapies function in an entirely different way. The goal of these therapies is to support the immune system and health and thus facilitate the body’s own healing abilities.
• They work together with the body to promote healing. Through this synergistic action, complementary therapies can support the body’s health and improve quality of life. Side effects from complementary treatment therapies are far less common.
• Not one of the nearly 10,000 people who have participated in our cancer recovery program has ever developed a serious side effect from any of the complementary cancer therapies we have suggested.
• Hippocrates is also credited with instructing his students, “Above all, do no harm,” and “Honor the healing power of Nature.” These principles guide the recommendations you will read in this book.
• The vast majority of participants in our program employ both conventional protocols and integrated modalities in combination. We help participants understand and choose those therapies that are right for them.
• This results in a truly individualized integrated cancer care program. By providing information, choices, and options, personal autonomy is enhanced and healing is better facilitated.

Remember, you have the central role. Your response to a cancer diagnosis is critical. The shift to the new model of care recognizes the growing evidence that supporting and creating high levels of well-being with nutrition, exercise, stress management, and emotional awareness is as important as any conventional cancer treatment.

And the broader aspects of social and spiritual support can be critically important to optimal health so as to create a level of well-being that simply transcends disease, even a diagnosis of life-threatening cancer.

The new model of care is grounded in igniting your natural ability to get well and stay well. Your role is to engage the whole you by creating health and well-being physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. Cancer is not entirely about the tumor or the treatment. It’s about you. And if you will respond, that is very good news indeed.