Battling Cancer with Complementary Therapies and Treatments - AARP Bulletin The doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York had no choice but to remove the patient’s gallbladder and part of her liver, both riddled with cancer. They started her on chemotherapy in the hope of eradicating any renegade cancer cells left behind. Then they offered her something radical: a course in meditation. “At least once a day I find a quiet time to meditate,” says the 66-year-old woman from Astoria, N.Y., who asked that her name not be used because her mother hasn’t been told she has cancer. “I don’t know how I would have survived without it.” When her thoughts stray into the dark woods of her deepest fears—that the cancer will roar back, that she’ll die, leaving her husband, her children, her beloved grandchildren—she uses meditation to calm her mind and loosen the knot of dread in the pit of her stomach. “I know it’s made life much more bearable,” she says.
Fringe approaches go mainstream
For years, cancer patients desperate to survive have chased after unproven treatments—from herbal remedies, dietary supplements, and acupuncture to mushrooms. Many never whisper a word to their doctors for fear of ridicule. Today that’s changing. A growing number of the country’s leading cancer centers now offer a range of unconventional therapies once spurned by mainstream physicians—part of a new approach to cancer care called integrative oncology. The sea change began in 1991 with the creation of a federal office of alternative medicine at the National Institutes of Health. That office has now been elevated, becoming the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Its mandate: to investigate approaches that lie outside mainstream medicine for treatment of cancer and other diseases. Although no magic bullets to cure cancer have been found among Chinese herbs or techniques to harness energies in the body, a variety of approaches have been shown to help patients with the disease. Relief from symptoms
“These aren’t alternative therapies,” says Barrie R. Cassileth, chief of integrative medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. “They don’t replace the very powerful weapons mainstream medicine has developed to fight cancer. But they can help relieve the unwanted side effects of treatment and improve quality of life. And that’s very important. In our department, we don’t treat the tumor. We treat the patient.” Some of the benefits of complementary approaches have surprised even proponents. Acupuncture, for instance, which uses needles painlessly inserted into key points in the body, has been shown to relieve nausea caused by chemotherapy. For patients with head and neck cancers whose salivary glands are destroyed by radiation treatments, acupuncture can restore some salivary function. “That’s a huge benefit to people with the disease,” says Cassileth. Self-hypnosis, meanwhile, has been found to ease the severe hot flashes that women with breast cancer sometimes experience. Support groups improve the quality of life for cancer patients, and some studies suggest that they may even increase survival time. Both massage and meditation ease stress, of course, but some experts believe that may, in turn, help the body concentrate its energy on fighting cancer. But most integrative medicine specialists are cautious about claiming too much for the therapies they offer. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to manage symptoms that are not being effectively managed by conventional treatments,” says Lorenzo Cohen, M.D., director of the integrative medicine program at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Sorting through therapies
Not all unconventional therapies work, and some may be downright dangerous. “We worry—especially about the things cancer patients put in their mouths, such as herbal and dietary supplements,” says Cassileth. Some, including St. John’s wort, which is used to ease depression, interfere with the liver’s ability to metabolize medications. Others, such as ginkgo, are anticoagulants that can lead to uncontrolled bleeding in patients undergoing surgery. That’s why one key role integrative programs play is warning patients away from things that might harm them—no easy task given the proliferation of unsubstantiated claims on the Internet and the ready availability of many supplements. “We spend half of our time working against quackery,” says Cassileth. “It’s really a bad situation. What patients see on the Internet is extremely seductive.” To counter the wave of unsubstantiated claims, both M.D. Anderson and Memorial Sloan-Kettering maintain websites that offer the latest research findings on hundreds of purported cancer therapies. Search for evidence
For most therapies, definitive evidence is hard to come by. Researchers are keenly interested in curcumin, for example, a botanical that has been used for a long time in Ayurvedic medicine, a healing system of India. “We know it’s extremely safe even at high doses. What we don’t know yet is whether it’s effective,” says Cohen. Researchers at M.D. Anderson are currently studying its use for multiple myelomas and rectal cancer. Researchers are also interested in medicinal mushrooms from traditional Chinese medicine. Widely used in China for centuries, they appear to be safe, and laboratory evidence suggests that they may act against cancer cells. But proof that they fight the disease in patients will take time—something many cancer patients don’t have. “My approach is, if something is safe and there’s a chance that it may help, why not encourage patients who are interested to give it a try?” says Donald Abrams, M.D., who directs research at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Healing power
Indeed, doing something, anything, may have healing powers of its own. “Cancer patients feel helpless. Their bodies are turning on them,” says psychiatrist David Spiegel, M.D., who directs the Stanford University Center for Integrative Medicine. “To the extent that we can give them a sense of power, of control, we can improve their quality of life and, I think, perhaps even affect the course of the disease.” Reducing levels of stress hormones in the body, some experts believe, may also reduce inflammation and promote healing. “We’re more and more aware that inflammation is damaging in many ways,” says Abrams. “By decreasing it, we think we may be able to boost the body’s fight against cancer. I don’t think stress is a major cause of cancer. But I think stress hormones may make cancer more aggressive. So anything we can do to reduce stress may help.” Therapies offer hope
One of Abrams’ patients, a 76-year-old retired associate professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, has metastatic kidney cancer. Along with a strict diet that eliminates meat, dairy products, and refined sugars, he goes in once a week for reiki therapy, which proponents claim can focus healing energies within the body. “I say to myself, unless these are going to hurt me, I don’t see what I have to lose,” says the doctor, who asked that his name not be used. “I’m sitting here waiting with this metastatic cancer. It makes me feel better to be doing something. Do I hope it will help slow the disease? Of course I do.” And hope, integrative oncologists say, may be potent medicine. “The concept of hope and a fighting spirit, how powerful can that be in fighting cancer? We don’t know,” says Gary Elkins, director of the Mind Body Medicine Research Laboratory at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “But we do know that there’s a very strong placebo effect in medicine. If a patient believes something will work, it often does. Researchers try to rule out the placebo effect in studies of drugs. But if you’re in the business of caring for patients, if something works, we should use it.” Meanwhile, researchers still hope to find new and effective treatments among the range of unconventional approaches being tested. “Traditional healing systems like Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine have been used for centuries,” says Abrams. “I can’t help but think they have insights to offer us today.” Peter Jaret is a freelance writer in Petaluma, Calif. Cancel You are leaving AARP.org and going to the website of our trusted provider. The provider’s terms, conditions and policies apply. Please return to AARP.org to learn more about other benefits. Your email address is now confirmed. You'll start receiving the latest news, benefits, events, and programs related to AARP's mission to empower people to choose how they live as they age. You can also by updating your account at anytime. You will be asked to register or log in. Cancel Offer Details Disclosures
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