Being Treated for Cancer? Skip the Antioxidant Supplements

fruit based nutritional supplements

I am interested in feedback about all natural fruit based nutritional beverages.

Is it thought to be detrimental to drink a juice, known to have a very high ORAC score during treatment for lymphoma? other cancers? This juice has the equivalent of 13 servings of high antioxidant rich fruits in the recommended daily serving.

Thank you

Hormone side effects

I was placed on Lupron to shrink the prostrate tumor and stop the cancer cell growth.

I have been on the Lupron for 30 + days. No side effects. The restlessness at night seemed to be only problem. I take SAMe, 5HTP, and melatonim. This seems to work good. I have stopped all sugar intake. I take two green tea capsules (Costco purchase). Two in am and two about 2pm. This takes care of fatigue factor. I know supplements seem to be frowned on by the medical profession - however - I think also that natural is better than synthetic. I will only take the supplements recommended during radiation - which is coming up. I am very happy with my plan of attack oon my cancer. For a baseline we started with a Gleason score of 7 (4+3). PSA 7. and in three days I will get a bone scan as we detect metasisis has started. I hope all that have cancer will just be as positive as you can - as it does effect the immune system if you are not positive.

Disappointment

I am disappointment that this video doesnt have closed captioning or subtitle for the hearing impaired/deaf people. I am from Florida and an native of Portuguese guy. Thanks.

Arimidex

I am 78 and was diagnosed l4 months ago with Stage II breast cancer. I had both breasts removed and went immediately on Arimidex. After l4 months, I am exhausted every afternoon, my skin is not as good, I have a "trigger finger" on each of my ring fingers, my balance is unsteady, hot flashes 2x a day,and I am tottering around like a 900 year old. I know that my oncology team meant the best for me, but i was never told that I had a real chance to do without hormone therapy. When I told my oncologist that I wanted to stop Arimidex, she amazingly agreed with me and pulled up a computer program that shocked me...that at my age and with my cancer type, there is such an astoundingly minor chance of Arimidex helping me I have a master's degree and should have known the moral to this story: ASK YOUR DOCTOR FOR A COMPUTER PROGRAM SHOWING EXACTLY WHAT YOU, SPECIFICALLY, CAN EXPECT IN THE WAY OF HELP FROM THIS DRUG !!

Antioxidants and chemotherapy

We think it important that Dr. Greenlee has studied vitamin use by breast cancer patients. But this article only gives one side of this complicated controversy. There are two fundamental issues that have yet to be addressed: First, many of the studies on antioxidants that have shown a negative outcome were not done on people receiving chemotherapy. In addition, these subjects had documented unhealthy life habits to begin with, i.e., the majority being smokers. This is important since evidence suggests that smokers have disrupted environments, including oxidative stress. Elevated oxidative stress can shift an otherwise health promoting antioxidant into an unhealthy prooxidant and increase rather than decrease the risk of malignancy. Second, most of these studies have been single nutrient – not multi-nutrient – studies. We know that isolated nutrients have an easier and greater potential to convert from an anti-oxidative state to a pro-oxidative state. By providing patients with antioxidants in combination formulation – a network of antioxidants – considerable evidence suggests that there is a lower likelihood of conversion to a pro-oxidative state and thus, a lower likelihood of adverse consequences.

Most importantly, when combining antioxidants with chemotherapy, the existing evidence strongly favors improved treatment tolerance with a reduction in side effects. It also demonstrates no significant interference. In fact a considerable amount of evidence suggests the combination improves treatment efficacy.

See the two links below for summaries of two articles that systematically assessed randomized clinical trials in which antioxidants were given together with chemotherapy. There was no evidence that the antioxidants decreased the effectiveness of chemotherapy. In addition, the antioxidants appeared to reduce chemo side effects, which might help patients receive the full dosages of prescribed chemo. This could very well lead to better tumor shrinkage as well as survival.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17367938?ordinalpos=13&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18623084?ordinalpos=6&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Keith I. Block, M.D.

Medical Director

Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment

Director, Integrative Medical Education

University of Illinois College of Medicine

www.blockmd.com

Propaganda at its worst

I don't know how the people who write these articles can sleep at night. They're worse than murderers.

Chemotherapy kills.

Just to say I agree with Kevin. Chemotherapy drugs really do kill the patient quicker. Life expectancy of breast cancer patients who have no treatment whatsoever is ten years plus. Average life expectancy of breast cancer patients who have chemotherapy is four years. Conventional medicine boasts that it is scientifically based yet there is no scientific evidence that chemotherapy drugs have ever cured cancer.

Katherine Hobson: If you are asserting something like this that seems to be intended to convince cancer patients not to take chemotherapy -- something that has been credited with saving or extending the lives of millions over the years-- you'd better offer proof. Please show your work, as my 5th grade math teacher used to say, and provide evidence of your assertions about life expectancy and chemo.

Another "gem" from U.S. News

I am not sure whether to chuckle or to cry. I chuckle because of the incredible ignorance and lunacy of this article which actually advises against using antioxidants because they supposedly interfere with a treatment that is not only useless but kills a cancer patient quicker - chemotherapy. I want to cry because these are people's lives at stake. What most of the world does not realize that cancer is not only preventable but treatable through natural, inexpensive means, and the reason they do not know that is because the cancer industry uses faux-news outlets such as this one to peddle such nonsense to the public. Beware, lest your nutritious and healthful green tea interferes with your pharmaceutical drugs! Has the world gone crazy? If you follow this misguided advice, expect to end up dead that much quicker. The reason they are advising against this stuff is because these are the very things that treat cancer! They don't want you to take them because, by golly, you just might not need expensive chemotherapy after all! And just what would the American Cancer Society do with itself then? And all the pharmaceutical companies? They would be mentioned only in history books as antiquated quackery from the past that put a shameful blight on the intellectual landscape of American consciousness for a time. Wake up people and do some research on your own. Do not trust what these quacks are peddling as science. They have a lot to lose if you can actually cure yourself of diseases that exist only because you are highly deficient in most nutrients. Antioxidants are VITAL to maintaining health. Be smart - ignore this tripe.

Katherine Hobson: If you believe that oncologists and pharmaceutical companies and the ACS and the media and the government are engaged in a vast conspiracy against the health interests of the American public, and that antioxidant supplements can cure cancer and chemo cannot, then no study is going to convince you otherwise and you should stop reading now.

This article, and the studies, do not say that antioxidants are useless. Many people believe they do indeed play a role in PREVENTING cancer. But like estrogen, which has varying effects on the body depending on when/where it is present, antioxidants are complicated in their actions. What the studies suggest is that antioxidants, by protecting cells, may be protecting cancerous as well as healthy cells during chemo and radiation -- two forms of therapy that are designed to attack cells. There is no clear answer yet, which is why docs are erring on the side of doing no harm by advising against their use during these forms of therapy.

As for green tea, here's an outside story that goes into more detail on its effects when combined with one specific cancer drug.

http://www.ecancermedicalscience.com/news-insider-news.asp?itemId=414

Note that the researchers were surprised, i.e. they went into this thinking green tea might aid the action of the drug but the evidence suggested otherwise. That's the scientific method at work, and it should be applied to all therapies and treatments, whether chemo, radiation, medication, antioxidant supplementation, or anything else.

Why don't they know???

If the medical/pharmaceutical industry was open to the study and use of nutrition we would know the answer to this question of antioxidants. Asking nutritional advise of your doctor is like asking a plumber to fix your TV.

note the assumptions; other thoughts

Note the interesting assumption: if we don't know for sure, then assume it's bad. A more accurate version would be: if we don't know, then ..., well, we don't know >> and you'll have to make up your own mind. Next, notice how these "evidence based researchers" proceed to wing-it in their own way. Telling people NOT to take multivitamins, for instance, is no more evidence based than telling them TO take them, if you don't have the data.

The decision to experiment with nutritional therapies should largely depend on the effectiveness of conventional treatments available. If the usual therapies can cure you, then sure, stay out of the way. BUT if they can't, then unfortunately it's usually up to the patient to look for alternatives.

There is research on nutrition and cancer. But since medical training (and the reimbursement system) often devalues nutrition and lifestyle as potential treatments, this research is typically belittled or ignored.

If you're curious about nutrition and cancer, you might start with http://www.cancerproject.org. I don't know the website well, but its connected to an organization called PCRM, which makes a pretty good effort, in my view, to track nutrition-related cancer research.

NOTE: I have no financial connection to any related products or services. I've just been looking at this research literature because of a family member with cancer.