Complementary Medicine’s Impact On Cancer

Tim Newman composed an article that was fact-checked by Jasmin Collier on the impact that complementary medicine has on cancer survival. There is an increased interest in using complementary therapies that were explored by a team of scientists. They looked at both how it impacted adherence to treatment and the survival rate.

There has been an incredible spike over recent decades in the popularity of alternative and complementary medicine. You will see more widely used now in the United States than ever before.

The use of herbs, vitamins, and minerals, traditional Chinese medicine, special diets, naturopathy, and homeopathy are now used to battle many types of illnesses. Some complementary medicine seems to improve the lives of individuals with cancer by increasing the level of hope and improving self-rated life satisfaction, but little is still known about how they impact survival rates. My belief is that by building the immune system of the body, it will have a greater impact on fighting cancer naturally without the use of chemo, which kills the natural immune system.

JAMA Oncology published a new study that may shed some light on this subject. To clarify, complementary medicine is used alongside conventional treatment, whereas alternative medicine is used instead of medical interventions. You will find a great deal of overlap between these two categories and should be considered entities along a continuum, rather than being distinct entities.

The researchers of this study focused on complementary medicine as they wanted to understand how the use of cancer influenced adherence to medical treatments, and how it impacted the survival rates. This team was from the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Ct. They took data from the National Cancer Database with participants who had breast, lung, prostate or colorectal cancer not yet metastasized. About 258 patients that used complementary medicine were compared with 1,032 who did not. They were matched for age and their cancer stage.

The term conventional cancer treatment was surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy or hormone therapy. They concluded that those receiving complementary medicine were more likely to refuse additional conventional cancer treatment and had a higher risk of death. This was associated with a twofold greater risk of death compared with patients who had no complementary medicine use.

They have published more recent information concluding that the use of alternative medicine will decrease the risk of death when also adhering to conventional medical treatment. Wouldn’t building the immune system up with alternative methods of medicine gives the patient a much better chance at fighting cancer, or chemo, when in a healthier state? We all have to remember that chemo is a poison we are putting into our bodies and should be a last resort.

Dr Fredda Branyon