60 Pct Of Cancer Patients Attempt Nontraditional Med
“I want this thing cut out from me. I want it out,” she told her family.
But it was too late. Her rectal cancer – potentially curable earlier on – had invaded bones, tissue, muscle, skin. The 53-year-old Florida woman could barely sit, and constantly bled and soiled herself.
“It was terrible,” one doctor said. “The pain must have been excruciating.”
Flasch had sought a natural cure. Instead, a deadly disease ran its natural course. And the herb peddlers who sold her hope in a bottle?
“Whatever money she had left in life, they got most of it,” said a sister, Sharon Flasch. “They prey on the sick public with the belief that this stuff can help them, whether they can or cant.”
Some people who try unproven remedies risk only money. But people with cancer can lose their only chance of beating the disease by skipping conventional treatment or by mixing in other therapies. Even harmless-sounding vitamins and “natural” supplements can interfere with cancer medicines or affect hormones that help cancer grow.
Yet they are extremely popular with cancer patients, who crave control over their disease and want to do everything they can to be healthy – emotional needs that make them vulnerable to clever marketing and deceptive claims. Studies estimate that 60 percent of cancer patients try unconventional remedies and about 40 percent take vitamin or dietary supplements, which do not have to be proved safe or effective and are not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
None has turned out to be a cure, although some show promise for easing symptoms. Touch therapies, mind-body approaches and acupuncture may reduce stress and relieve pain, nausea, dry mouth and possibly hot flashes, and are recommended by many top cancer experts. A recent study found that ginger capsules eased nausea if started days before chemotherapy.
Many hospitals offer aromatherapy, massage, meditation, yoga and acupuncture because patients want them and there is little risk of physical harm. They call this complementary or integrative medicine because it is in addition to – not in place of – conventional treatments.
At the other end of the spectrum are quacks selling fringe therapies and supplements through testimonials, not proof. Laetrile, “detoxifying” coffee enemas, shark cartilage – the miracle cures change but the bogus claims remain the same.
“What I am noticing in the last year or two is a resurgence of these things. Its coming back,” said Barrie Cassileth, integrative medicine chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and a longtime adviser to the American Cancer Society.
The Internet fuels this trend by letting people buy direct and bypass doctors who could help them see through scams and misleading claims of scientific proof. Sadly, some Web sites are run by quacks – a “doctor” title doesnt mean the remedy is safe or effective.
About 7 percent of cancer patients go straight to an alternative approach, sometimes traveling to Mexico, the Bahamas or a “spa” in Europe for treatments not allowed in the United States, Cassileths research found. Most cancers spread slowly, so people can be temporarily fooled into thinking herbs or special diets are keeping it at bay.
“After theyve been there some months theyll realize things are not working. But with cancer, you get one chance. By the time they get back to a reasonable hospital, theyre dead. Nothing can be done for them,” she said.
Ways that supplements and fringe therapies can harm:
-Financially. Pills that seem cheap actually cost a lot if they are worthless or are bought in place of real medicine, fresh fruits and vegetables, or other things known to boost health. They also can hook people into spending more for multi-pill “protocols” that make broad claims like “boosting the immune system.” One Florida man worked his way up to several hundred dollars worth a month for pills whose contents he didnt know, pushed by a California chiropractor.
-Medically. Trying an alternative remedy can delay the time until a patient receives an effective treatment, allowing the cancer to spread. A potentially curable cancer may become untreatable – as Leslee Flasch found out when she belatedly sought the surgery that had been recommended. Having such an advanced cancer without standard medical care must have caused excruciating pain, said one of her physicians, Dr. Lodovico Balducci at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.