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.
What is the Best Diet (for cancer)?
This comes up as an important question when people are trying to heal a tumor. Cancer is an illness that seems to magnify the importance of many of the questions and concerns that people have all of the time. It occasions extra consciousness, for we want to really be aware of what we are doing and the possible consequences. We are forced to reconsider many of the things we have previously done out of habit or convenience, and whether we should continue them or make a change. In terms of diet and cancer it is very clear that we need to choose things that support good vitality and that nourish us, and that we need to avoid things that are burdensome and depleting. Here is a brief list of several of the common themes that emerge in discussions about diet and cancer, with some introductory insights:
The Integrated Care Package
There are currently places in the world where large hospitals, medical clinics and retreat centers are able to offer multi-disciplinary anthroposophic care (Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden), but the current medical model and insurance programs in the U.S. do not make this possible. This is a challenging moral quandary, as participation in insurance plans immediately creates oversight and rigid expectations around the kind of medical care that is being provided. Services must meet the “standard of care,” or practitioners face severe scrutiny, as well as potential punitive limits on medical practice and monetary fines. For these reasons we continue to make the decision that it is better to remain outside of the insurance system, recognizing that it is limiting access but it also allows us to provide a fully individualized, holistic approach to the healing process.
We would like to try to take one step towards healing that conflict.