For the past quarter-century, International Bio-Care Hospital and Medical Center has been facing the ever-present question of whether to embark on so-called alternative or integrative therapies or follow mainstream, conventional or "orthodox" therapies.In conventional oncology the concept of making the body less toxic, improving diet and nutrition and regulating the immune system while treating the malignancy is still widely regarded as an unimportant aspect of medical care. The belief that medication alone can and should reverse disease and cure a patient without any consideration of the body's own defense and recovery systems still dominates the medical mentality.In standard oncology, there is no treatment which is not deleterious to the immune system or the overall "host defense" of the patient. In our concept the foundation of any form of therapy should be the restoration of the biological capacities of the host with specific emphasis on the immune system. Supported by the recovery of the patient's own defense mechanisms medical intervention in the form of specific therapies can then take place.
Such an approach in due time hopefully will lead the patient to a better quality of life and improved longevity. This is the concept of Integrative Medicine. We emphatically believe that medical intervention should be comprehensive and successive; one part is not more important that the other and some therapies should be implemented only after certain goals have been reached. For example, to give chemotherapy to a patient who recently underwent surgery will only worsen his appetite, strength and wellbeing, reducing defense systems and the chances of successful outcome.In standard radiotherapy programs, statistics show that the higher the dose of radiation, the higher the tumoral response. However, the same statistics prove that higher doses mean less survival. This means that we must strike a balance between how aggressively we attack the tumor and how much support we give the body -or at least how much assault our biological systems can endure.By lengthening and enhancing tumor control through human immune/defense systems while remaining completely free of side effects over long periods of use, this is the most nature-similar way of controlling malignant growths.It has been learned that DCs -elongated appendages in certain cells - can actually pick up normal cells and migrate with them to lymph nodes where they can be exposed to a high concentration of immune system cells. DCs can stimulate a response in which the immune system increases the activity of T-cells which help fight cancer and viruses.The procedure involves drawing from the patient blood containing mature and immature DCs and tumor cells. A biochemist induces the maturation and activation of DCs in the presence of proteins derived from the patient's tumor.At this point a weapon has been created which administered to the patient, will act as a cellular vaccine - a "smart bomb" - which will actively seek out, entrap and expose to the immune system tumor cells developed at every stage of malignancy. The vaccine, being non-toxic, sterile and customized from the patient's own blood, is thus a safe and effective form of therapy.International research and knowledge exchanges provide information and resources from around the world and access to new modalities, products and experiences that enrich and widen the expectation of good results in the hard battle against cancer.Our anticancer program -of "slow drip" infusions, direct injections, oral and sublingual nutrients, specialized diet and detoxification- normally takes three weeks, a period we call "the crisis phase".The three-week segment is designed to interfere with at least one full cycle of malignant-cell replication - a process which hopefully will remove the patient from the "crisis" stage.After the initial three-week intensive-therapy phase, the patient is provided with a program of protocols and dietary changes to be followed at home. The arguments between "alternative" and "orthodox" medicine should vanish with the understanding that metabolic illnesses are part of a multifactorial and complex scenario.Real medicine is Unitarian - it addresses the health and well being of whole individuals. There are no such things as different medicines or even medical specialties; these are man-made concepts which help to understand how the body works in health and disease. In reality any attempt to treat only a part of a patient will encounter a far less than desired outcome.Every effort to integrate the differing avenues of medicine, "alternative" or "conventional", old and new, East or West, homeopathic or allopathic, etc., with the wellbeing and respect for our patients, needs in mind can only lead to better, more substantial and longer-lasting results.
No comments:
Post a Comment