Last year I attended a conference offered by the Healthy Medicine Academy called Advanced Cancer Strategies. It was a conference for doctors, given by doctors who are studying new approaches to treating cancer. It’s where I learned that an ablation might be a good strategy to treat my lung tumor that was diagnosed as metastatic breast cancer. (I had this done successfully in November, 2012.)
One of the speakers was Dwight McKee, MD. Dwight McKee is a Board Certified Medical Oncologist, and Hematologist, and is also Board Certified in Nutrition, and Integrative and Holistic Medicine. He created some of the treatment protocols I followed in my 23 years of living with cancer, and I have great respect for his work. His talk at that conference was a great analysis of why we haven’t been able to find a cure for cancer with the current medical model, and how that is changing. I have wanted to share that talk with you and finally have a way to do that.
Healthy Medicine Academy just introduced a new journal called Cancer Strategies Journal. The inaugural issue came out in January and includes that talk as an article by Dr. McKee.
He says that “Integrative oncology” is an oxymoron. Oncology is the study of tumors and ways to attack them. We also need to consider the person who has the malignancy and the terrain that is the microenvironment within which tumor cells are living. He says “Integrative cancer medicine” is what science is discovering to be the most effective way to treat cancer.
One of the basic ways to alter the terrain of the microenvironment in which the tumor is growing is through nutrition. Healing Journeys has been offering The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen workshops. This year is the first opportunity to experience this popular workshop in South Carolina. Because of the funding provided by the local community in South Carolina, the workshop in Greer on April 13th is being offered for an incredibly low price. I can guarantee it will be a fun, informative, inspiring, and empowering day, and you will love the food. Healthy and delicious really can go together.
If you can’t attend the workshop, the DVDs of this workshop offered last year with Jeanne Wallace and Rebecca Katz are available for purchase in our webstore.
In Dwight’s article, he says, “The microenvironment is finally beginning to be a focus of laboratory researchers and we are at the dawn of that era. There is a huge amount happening in the interplay between the tumor and its microenvironment, and the interaction of that tumor and its microenvironment’s interaction with the body of the person who has that tumor. We are now learning from basic research that stress can powerfully facilitate the process of metastasis in animal models.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
Leave a comment.
In the Spirit of Healing,
Jan Adrian, MSW
Founder and Executive Director
Wow, I actually read through the whole article! I found much resonance with my experiences with metastatic melanoma almost 20 years ago. I am an outlier and it was important to me to know of someone who survived the terrible odds I was given. Glad Dr. McKee picks up on this and the whole reality of diagnosis = psychological emergency.
I agree we are better served to think in terms of creating health and stamina rather than fighting cancer. I did not want the ‘fight’ approach so sat at my dining room table and asked for an image that would work for me. A soap bubble came. Then I saw strings of bubbles rising from my head and shoulders. Inside each bubble was a cancer cell. When the bubble popped as bubbles will do, the cancer cell was gone. So softly, in beauty, the cancer was leaving and I had no carnage left inside to clean up. This seemed a feminine response and it worked for me.
Later my immune system was keyed to ocean breakers – strong, continuous and constant. “Wave after wave of t-cells able to wash away the melanoma.” I used that after surgery to remove all the lymph nodes in my left axilla. When I realized that the breaking water of a wave was indeed bubbles, I knew we had something that would work.
In this way I intuitively did what McKee suggests: Reduce the tumor burden and the immune system will do the rest to rid the body of cancer.
Jan, As you know since 1997 I have probably been the biggest believer in the power of nutrition against cancer. Now that I have celebrated my 15th year of survival after my dx & sx for my stage IV brain tumor (Oct1997)
and prognosis of 1 yr to live. No one will ever be able to convince me it wasn’t a huge “part”
of why I am still here. The microenvironment is of the utmost importance. Thanks for all the great updates in Healing Journeys Newsletters.
wishing you continued blessings, Cheryl
Jan, I have never said “Thank You” for all the work you do to keep us informed, so. “THANK YOU” XOXO gl