When Cancer Returns

My breast cancer returned after 10 years. That is why I have been neglecting my blog. You might conclude it is because I am struggling physically and emotionally. This is not the case. (I am not claiming things are perfect but my life is very manageable.) 

I haven't been writing because as a person who lives what I advocate and l advocate for alternative, and healthy lifestyle interventions, I was torn mentally; I want to be a responsible person. Am I advocating to others interventions that don't work? I am now completely convinced that alternative interventions and healthy lifestyle are essential to successful healing and maintaining good health. So, I feel free to write again. 

Basically, I have learned that some types of cancer are a chronic disease and my health choices were working up to this point. The unfortunate truth is aging has a negative effect on the immune system, as does living in an increasingly polluted environment, and so do unresolved fears/angers (stress chemicals are released into the body.) I do not like the idea of describing myself as a person with a chronic disease because I view that as giving in, defeatist. Rather, I view myself as a person on a journey toward excellent health.

I had a consultation with an oncologist, he said in effect, after 10 years and cancer returns, this is just bad luck. He stated the seeds of cancer are always with us hiding in places that even chemotherapy can't get to. Some might find this a negative, fatalistic statement. But what it said to me was chemotherapy is not a cure for everything. And the body's immune system is everywhere so I need to put my focus there. I had gotten lax about following through with my healthy lifestyle and lazy about food choices. I need to be mindful and consistent in healthy living choices.

My functional medicine doctor said she found it impressive that after reading my case history I had no cancer reoccurrence for ten years. My personal belief system is to not over invest in the details of my diagnosis. Because I have studied psychology and hypnosis I know the power of the mind. In the end, it is the mind that heals, or the mind that kills. For the scientifically inclined we call it stress reaction. 

The stages of cancer are irrelevant to me. It's more important to know that refined sugar, dairy products, alcohol, and red meat are acidic, inflammatory foods that create a cancer prone environment in the body (blood). While vitamin C, iodine, turmeric, fresh fruit and vegetables, and managing your glucose levels through the day, along with good sleep create an anticancer environment in the body. 

I am very angry to have to deal with cancer again. I recently read a book where the author explained that individuals with chronic pain or chronic diseases feel betrayed by their bodies. I gave this a lot of thought and realized this was true for me. Accepting my anger is essential to the healing process. Most of the time I can move past it but sometimes not so much. It is important not to live in anger because it creates stress and the biochemical conditions of stress feed cancer cells. 

The doctors of 10 years ago treated cancer like an automatic death sentence. I am sure that is part of why I rejected the allopathic standard of care. Now the approach seems to be that cancer is a chronic disease that can be dealt with and lived with. The body's immune system always has had the ability to identify and destroy mutated cancer cells. Why does the body lose that ability? Many researchers think the problem is caused by viruses, or our polluted food and water. For example, sometimes the body can’t recognize virus mutated cells because they have the DNA of the body itself. When it comes to things like mercury (found in fish), the body has no process for eliminating it from the body so it accumulates in the organs.

I first started writing my blog in response to having breast cancer. I wanted to share what I had learned with others so they could make informed choices. I chose to do a mixture of interventions including surgery, as well as, complementary and alternative treatments. I did not do chemotherapy or radiation treatments. 

When I tell people my beliefs about chemotherapy I am always surprised how many get personally offended. I am not criticizing anyone; I'm talking about me. However, anyone who chooses chemotherapy should be honest enough with themselves to accept the fact that you are poisoning every cell in your body and will have future effects that doctors tend not to mention. Even surgery has long term after effects. 

For those who need to know specifically what my interventions are, I see an oncologist for hormone therapy. I work with a D.O. at a health and wellness clinic on stress and receive vitamin C infusions. I take a variety of researched supplements daily. I eat a diet I personalized for myself based on Anthony William's books...lots of fruit, and a potato and bone broth soup every day, also Reishi mushroom coffee. I get 8 hours of sleep, drink lots of water, avoid stress, and visit friends. I get massages, see a chiropractor, and have a body talk session (energy work) with a friend. I also try to swim often and am taking up an exercise program called MELT. I pray a lot, have my name on prayer lists, and have a bottle of sacred water from Lourdes. I feel very good now. I did not realize how bad I felt previous to my recent diagnosis. I just thought it was old age, extreme allergies, or maybe pneumonia. I've been on this healing program three months and I feel really good. Please do not think of me as “battling cancer.” I don’t like that mental approach; to me it implies winners and losers. I prefer to view myself on a life journey to reveal excellent health, Mind/Body and Spirit.

I believe every person must choose a course of action that they believe in because the belief in one’s ability to heal is absolutely essential to the process. Every person is worthy of healing. If you don't know this to the core of your being, then you need to start there. The energy of the Spirit is the energy that empowers healing. Mind, Body and Spirit, it all works together.

Estrogen May Cure Breast Cancer

Barbara Minton, respected health and wellness writer, reports [Researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston] have discovered that, while estrogen may cause breast cancer, for a large group of women with the disease, estrogen is also by far the best treatment for it. Thank you to my good friend for allowing me to share her article with my readers.

Blockbuster News for Women with Breast Cancer – Estrogen May Actually Cure Breast Cancer

by Barbara Minton

(The Best Years in Life) For many years women have been told estrogen causes breast cancer because it encourages breast cell proliferation. In cases where estrogen has lost its balancing hormones, progesterone and testosterone, this statement is considered true. However, a team of researchers headed by a special doctor at the Department of Breast Medical Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has now shown there is more to the story. They have discovered that, while estrogen may cause breast cancer, for a large group of women with the disease, estrogen is also by far the best treatment for it.

For them, estrogen kills breast cancer cells quickly and completely, without terrible side effects. And it ends the need to worry. The group of women able to effectively kill breast cancer cells with estrogen is those having estrogen deprivation, a condition in which the body has for some time failed to produce estrogen. This failure can be the result of completing menopause, or it can be the result of hysterectomy. The single determining factor is the complete loss of estrogen.

To understand the great importance of this discovery, here are some statistics from the Susan G Komen Foundation. Fewer than five percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. are younger than 40. Rates of breast cancer begin to increase after age 40 and are highest in women over age 70. The average age for a diagnosis of breast cancer is 64. This means this news pertains to the majority of women with breast cancer, and to those who may be diagnosed with it in the future. 

The average age for menopause, when hormone deprivation begins, is 51. Once complete estrogen deprivation is established, women can benefit from estrogen treatment to kill breast cancer cells and put an end to their disease. Treatment need be no more complicated than visiting a doctor for a prescription of estrogen in one of the many forms in which it is offered.

Once estrogen deprivation is established, there is no need for surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or hormone blocking drugs such as tamoxifen or arimidex. 

Brainchild of “Father of tamoxifen” may save many women from breast cancer 

In 1978, the FDA approved a triphenyl ethylene-based drug known as tamoxifen. The man behind it was Dr. V. Craig Jordan. Despite his success, the issue of patients becoming resistant to the drug bothered him greatly. Long-term tamoxifen use in humans “seemed like a recipe for disaster,” he said. However, the belief that estrogen blockers were required to thwart the growth of breast cancer persisted in his mind, even though he saw holes in the theory.

Reports dating back to the 1940s had shown that giving breast cancer patients estrogen seemed to stop growth of the disease. In fact, estrogen was routinely used to fight breast cancer in women long before hormone blocking drugs such as tamoxifen came along. Approximately 30% of patients responded favorably to the treatment. 

In the 1990s, a graduate student in Jordan’s laboratory, Doug Wolf, transplanted tamoxifen-resistant tumors from mouse to mouse, and treated them all with estrogen. He found the tumors disappeared. Of that experiment, Jordan said, “Estrogen didn’t stimulate the growth of these tumors anymore. It killed them. They just melted away”. But he and Wolf still didn’t know the underlying mechanism of how that happened.

Jordan set out to determine how the same hormone often responsible for activating breast cancer could also kill it off. He came up with the theory of estrogen deprivation as the key. When women still making their own estrogen take more estrogen, it can fuel the growth of tumors. But when the patient is not producing any estrogen of their own, giving them estrogen causes tumors to quickly shrink away.

In his inaugural article, Jordan evaluated genetic changes to estrogen deprived breast cancer cells during the first week of estrogen therapy. The changes he found were stunning. The endoplasmic reticulum, which is the internal structure of the cell, quickly grew inflamed, triggering the cell’s death. Further, Jordan found that cancer cell death occurred with relatively low doses of estrogen. 

“In bodies that have been starved of estrogen, the hormone comes back as a jet fuel,” he said. That fuel overwhelms the estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells, causing them to invoke a death signal. “The dramatic cell kill I get with estrogen is better than anything I saw with tamoxifen”, he said.

Unfortunately, Dr. Jordan seems to be still attached to tamoxifen, and he wants it to continue to be the first-line treatment. Then when tamoxifen resistance is established, patients can be given estrogen treatment. Since he is a part of the medical establishment, he may have no other choice but to play down his discovery. Standard cancer treatments are very big business. 

Tamoxifen has a long list of side effects that include hot flashes, vaginal dryness, low libido, mood swings, nausea, change in the uterus, increased risk of blood clots, endometrial cancer, depression, dementia, and reduced size and function of the brain. 

Replacement estrogen has none of those symptoms and may work with the other steroid hormones to restore the life force in women who have experienced breast cancer. 

How long does it take to establish estrogen deprivation? That depends on the person and her hormonal terrain. For me it took six months, after stopping synthetic hormone replacement when diagnosed with invasive hormone-positive breast cancer eleven years ago. Now that there is this documentation supporting what I instinctively knew back then, I can write about my experience for the first time. 

Any woman wanting to stop breast cancer with estrogen should be tested to see if she has achieved estrogen deprivation. Once that is established, be sure to use bioidential estrogen, which is estrogen that exactly replicates what a woman makes in her own body. 

And plan on frustration as doctor after doctor refuses to treat you because he has been taught only that estrogen causes cancer. The best route to finding a doctor who will treat you is probably to go to the nearest compounding pharmacy. Tell the pharmacist what you want to do and ask him or her to recommend a doctor. Compounding pharmacies are where bioidentical hormones are made, so the pharmacists know the doctors. Usually doctors who prescribe bioidentical hormones are those specializing in hormone replacement or anti-aging medicine, but some may be gynecologists.

Since my journey began I [Mrs. Minton] have replaced all hormones that were deficient in my body, and I am now truly living the best years in life.

http://ww5.komen.org/BreastCancer/GettingOlder.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223472/

http://erc.endocrinology-journals.org/content/22/1/R1.full

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223455/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27355337

http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/6/5/2028.long