Cancer and Chemotherapy Support
An exciting development is that more and more people are learning about mistletoe therapy as a supportive treatment for cancer care. This is probably related to news of an ongoing study at Johns Hopkins related to tumor therapy with mistletoe preparations and the education and advocacy of Believe Big. Immuno-therapies for cancer are also becoming an important part of standard oncology practice, especially for some types of lung cancers and melanoma—you have likely seen advertisements for those very new and expensive immune treatments in television commercials or magazine ads. Mistletoe, meanwhile, as an immune supporter and stimulator, has been part of anthroposophic medicine for almost 100 years.
A Fourfold Approach to Healing
There are a lot of different terms for describing therapeutic approaches that think differently from a conventional, Western-medicine approach. For a long time, they were considered to be “alternative” therapies—meaning something completely different and separate from usual medical practice. Then the term “complementary” therapies became popular—suggesting something still different from usual practice, but which could perhaps be used alongside standard treatment and enrich it. In the last few years a newer term, “integrative medicine” has come to the fore with the understanding that we need, more and more, to weave different therapeutic perspectives and healing streams together. This change in language reflects our evolving understanding, and broadening recognition that wisdom comes in many different forms.