Functional Medicine & Cancer

FWSI is providing a science-based approach combining conventional training with expertise in functional and integrative health care to people affected by cancer.

The principles of functional medicine can be successfully applied to helping people affected by cancer. Functional medicine therapies can be used to support and strengthen the overall health of cancer patients. Therapies may enhance general immune function, aid in reducing symptoms such as pain, nausea, and anxiety, help with detoxification, and more.

Directing and integrating complementary cancer care is not easy. Even if various people have been given the same cancer diagnosis, the biology of each person is unique and their cancer represents an individual disease that will respond differently to therapies. For example, certain supplements are clearly contraindicated. Some are acceptable at certain times and not others. The route and time of delivery are also very important, as well as the coordination with standard therapy. We provide this type of care.

It is no secret that cancer care needs improvements and innovation. If conventional cancer treatments worked, the New England Journal of Medicine would not have called the war on cancer “a dismal failure” in May 1997 and there would be no need to look for alternatives elsewhere. 

FWSI recommends that people affected by cancer keep in mind the following points when evaluating and using complementary cancer care.

• No treatment, either conventional or alternative, can offer a guaranteed cure for cancer, even if it has been tested on large populations of patients in scientific studies.
  
  
• To date, most “alternative” treatments have not been adequately tested to make any definitive claims. Instituting research and funding of non-toxic and non-patentable cancer treatments will take years at least. Unfortunately, many people do not have these years to wait for definitive claims.

Integrative Cancer Protocol Objectives

FWSI believes a cancer protocol must be comprehensive and focus on the following components.

• Cytotoxic (kills cancer cells directly)
• Apoptotic  (causes cancer cell suicide)
• Viricidal (kills viruses preying on cancer patients)
• Immune System
• Detoxification
• Dietary Counseling and Lifestyle Coaching

One goal of biochemical support programs is to indirectly help cancer cells to commit “suicide” (also known as apoptosis).

This process must be done by avoiding damage to healthy tissues and concurrently trying to strengthen the body as much as possible.

 

 

 

FWSI Steps & Recommendations

• Construct a Logical And Methodical Plan For Assessing Treatment Options

FWSI reviews what has been recommended and done so far. There is no magic silver bullet. Quick and rapid decisions are usually unnecessary. We encourage second and third opinions. We search all treatment options and identify an individualized integrated approach that must include immune modulation and immune system care besides cancer killing therapies.

• Encourage You to Identify A Patient Advocate To Help Evaluate Treatment Choices

Patients and patient families sometimes cannot evaluate the facts of treatment modalities from all directions with emotional detachment. Non-family member advocates and patient advocate professionals should be considered.

• Encourage Standard Oncology Assessment And Treatment Recommendations

FWSI encourages oncology assessment and cooperation with oncologists. We believe in thoroughly evaluating the risks and benefits of conventional treatments, including the impact of chemotherapy on quality of life and the immune system. People affected by cancer may wish to request information about 1, 3, and 5-year survival rates. Some cancers are very responsive to chemotherapy, including Hodgkins lymphomas, childhood leukemias, hormone blocking in prostate cancer, CML, and others.

• Engage in Sequential Exploration Of Biological Markers

Cancers have signature substances in the blood, or markers, that can be useful to follow treatment results and for long-term surveillance. These are not always present, and not always accurate, yet can be very helpful to plot individual treatment response. FWSI believes in checking these markers in all our patients.

• Review All Radiographic Studies Possible And Collect Reports

FWSI reviews CT scans, PET scans, MRIs, bone scans, liver scans, brain scans, and others. Many of these tests are included in standard cancer care. Patients can be surgical candidates as a result of absence of metastatic spread.

• Analyze the Role of PET SCAN in your Particular Situation

FWSI frequently uses this very important test in cancer patients. CT scans are not precise enough to detect all tumors. Furthermore, they cannot tell whether a tumor is dead or alive. PET/CT establishes a baseline of a patient’s tumor activity and anatomy. This test helps judge the success of therapy at follow up. PET/CT uses radioactive labeled glucose injected called FDG. Cancer feeds voraciously on sugar (hypermetabolic tissue uptake of glucose), and therefore sucks in the sugar, which allows the cancer to be imaged.

Cancer Statistics & YOU

We understand that people affected by cancer often give a lot of power to cancer statistics. FWSI would like to emphasize that statistics can certainly help show trends, but they can never predict the fate of a single individual.

Since 100 percent of patients with cancer do not die, we approach the individual patient with the question, “Why couldn’t you be one of the ones who make it?”

Our Approach

FWSI believes that if cancer is thought of as a “bad weed,” then there should be as much attention paid to gardening and changing the soil (the patient’s patho-physiology and overall internal terrain) as there is to “weed-whacking” (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation).

How do we garden and help people change their soil?

FWSI evaluates each individual and develops a strategy through collecting information about various targets and health related components, including some of the following.

• Cancer Serum Markers
• Immune Cell Types
• Unfavorable Hormonal Species
• Environmental Toxicities
• Diet
• Mind-Body Techniques

As with all of our patients, we treat people, not diseases. FWSI has this foremost in mind when working with cancer patients. We know that the way a person’s cancer reacts to its environment, such as with foods and pharmaceuticals, differs from one to another even if the cancer has the same name. We work as detectives following clues and collecting scientific information. We analyze this data to understand your body and develop a customized health care strategy.

Our approach works to complement and enhance mainstream therapies. In conventional cancer treatment, the severe toxicity of the therapy kills the cancer cells directly. Unfortunately, especially in elderly people, the sum toxicity to all body tissues can be devastating as widely discussed in the medical literature and media. In our experience, rebuilding the patient’s biochemical performance brings about better health and sometimes synergistic effects with the standard treatments that can become less toxic and more effective.

Description of Protocol Components

Protocols are very elaborate and individualized as much as possible for the type of cancer and the particular patient.

• Intravenous Therapies
  
  
• Oral Therapies
• Increasing Natural Killer (NK) cell activity to help destroy wandering cancer cells
• Decreasing VEGF, a factor in the blood that supports the formation of new blood vessels and cancer growth
• Decreasing COX2 activity with natural COX2 inhibitors to block the formation of new blood vessels and cancer growth
• Improving essential fatty acid composition to help silence cancer genes
• Optimizing Methylation processes to help silence cancer genes
• Opposing opiate receptor activity in cancer growth with low dose Naltrexone

Specifics of the intravenous and oral protocols adapted to each single patient’s own situation are provided by the doctor, and may enhance the efficacy of standard and experimental cancer therapies as well as decrease their toxicity.

• Dietary Changes

We cannot stress enough our belief that cancer treatment success is linked to the appropriate diet. At FWSI, we evaluate you as an individual and provide clear, science-based instructions on eating to improve your health and weaken your cancer. Mandatory reading is The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, PhD.

• Mind-Body

Nourishing the spirit and the psyche are important parts of the functional medicine approach. Spiritual practice, prayer, introspection, and creative expression are some of the paths to experience a greater sense of connection and a favorably changing biology. As Candace Pert, PhD from the National Institutes of Health demonstrated in her landmark book Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, the mind-body connection is no longer a theory, but evidence-based science.

Common Treatment Events

Patients may feel worse before feeling better.

• Herxheimer-like reactions that feature feeling unwell when the cancer and or other pathogens (nasties) are dying.
• Effects from pain medication, anti-inflammatories, and/or narcotics.
• Possible gastro-intestinal disturbances due to oral protocol components. The oral part of this protocol brings about marked changes in physiology. Negotiating these changes needs close cooperation with the treating teams.

FWSI suggests patients look for “the turn.” It heralds the response that you and the doctor are working towards.

Unsatisfactory clinical improvement requires a mid-course correction as follows.

Mid-Course Corrections

• Reassess biological markers
• Reevaluate strategic issues
• Another consult with patients to discuss additional treatment options

Fourth Week Consult

• Assess overall state of health and disease
• Arrange for appointments to repeat markers, blood tests, and PET scans
• Assess oral supplement status
• If appropriate, surgical consult to discuss potential excision of lesion

Subsequent Follow-ups

• Depending upon improvements, reduce intravenous protocol, and continue aggressive oral protocol
• Continually assess the effectiveness of the oral protocol component
• IV access remains active

Three Possible Outcomes and Options

FWSI will walk the path with you step by step as you negotiate your outcomes and reassess options at crossroads.

A –Absence of all tumor activity
A surgical consult may be appropriate to eradicate all dead tumor that is left and surgically reachable.
B –Partial tumor eradication
An additional 30-day integrative aggressive protocol may be necessary.
C –Tumor progression
New strategy sessions with all treatment teams may be appropriate for new ways to attack the cancer.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We cannot recommend strongly enough that each patient is best served by developing good relationships with their oncologists, cancer surgeons, and primary physicians. At FWSI, we are medical doctors, but not oncologists. We work with oncologists and have expertise in the application of a range of supportive complementary/alternative therapies that may benefit cancer patients. The value of the functional medicine approach is to allow integration of modalities taking only one side—that of the patient.

 

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