Daily Archives: August 18, 2017

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, August 15, 2017, 4:00 PM

Crystal healing stones are evidently a less effective way of beating a tumor.

Going the route of alternative medicine to treat a form of curable cancer instead of undergoing conventional treatment more than doubles a person's risk of dying, according to a new study from Yale University researchers. One in three Americans has engaged in some kind of alt-therapy with varying results, but when it comes to cancer, the data suggests that herbs and crystals will not save a life.

"We now have evidence to suggest that using alternative medicine in place of proven cancer therapies results in worse survival," lead researcher Skyler Johnson told the Yale News.

The researchers looked at 10 years' worth of records from the National Cancer Database and found that 281 patients within that time who had early-stage breast, lung, prostate or colorectal cancer who decided to take an alternative approach to their treatment. Those patients were then compared to 560 others with the same diagnoses who chose more scientific approaches like chemotherapy, surgery and radiation.

Feeling bad about being down can make things worse, says study

Patients who chose alternative medicine approaches that include things like "herbs, botanicals, homeopathy, special diets or energy crystals which are basically just stones that people believe to have healing powers," Dr. Johnson told New Scientist, were two and a half times more likely than their modern medicine-opting counterparts to die within five years.

To account for disparities that people face in the medical world (such as not being able to afford expensive chemotherapy treatments) the researchers placed biases in favor of the alternative medicine group they were all younger, more affluent and were otherwise healthy.

"These patients should be doing better than the standard therapy group, but they're not," researcher James Yu told MedPage Today. "That's a scary thing to me. These are young patients who could potentially be cured, and they're being sold snake oil by unscrupulous alternative medicine practitioners."

With this data and the urging of oncologists and all of their cancer expertise, the researchers are hopeful that doctors can educate their patients and communicate to them all of the drastic risks of alternative medical approaches.

Puppies more likely to become guide dogs if not coddled by mom

"Because of patient autonomy, they can do whatever they want," Yu said. "We're always advising them (but) we can't make them do anything."

Link:

Alternative medicine for cancer more than doubles death risk - New York Daily News

Conventional medical treatments include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, while any other unproven cancer treatment administered by non-medical personnel would be considered an alternative therapy.

Yale School of Medicine's Dr. Skyler Johnson, lead author of the study, said that based on what he's seen as a practicing doctor, patients are increasingly refusing or delaying conventional cancer treatment in favor of alternative therapies.

As a result of that, their cancer is "advancing: either getting larger or spreading to lymph nodes or spreading to distant sites," Johnson said. "This is concerning, because your chance of cure decreases as the cancer grows and spreads."

A breast cancer patient with stage I cancer, for example, has almost 100% chance of surviving five years, he explained. However, stage IV breast cancer -- in which it has spread to lymph nodes or a distant part of the body -- reduces a patient's chances of surviving five years to 25% or even 20%.

Delaying recommended medical treatment may allow cancer to spread and reach an advanced stage, which decreases a patient's ability to survive, said Johnson, who reported no conflicts of interest, though two of his three co-authors have received research funding from the pharmaceutical companies 21st Century Oncology, Johnson and Johnson, Medtronic and Pfizer.

With no scientific evidence to support a choice in favor of alternative therapy, Johnson and his co-authors at Yale Cancer Center believed it would be worthwhile to examine the issue "so we could have an informed discussion based on the evidence of what the risk might be if patients chose to move forward with alternative therapies," he said.

The researchers began their investigation by gathering information from 840 patients diagnosed between 2004 and 2013 and listed in the National Cancer Database in the US, a joint project of the American Cancer Society and the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons.

They looked at "the most common cancers in the US: breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancer," Johnson said.

He and his co-researchers compared and analyzed survival data on 280 patients who had chosen alternative medicine, as well as data on 560 patients who had received conventional cancer treatment.

Of all the patients choosing alternative therapies, about 44% had breast cancer, nearly one-quarter had prostate cancer, just over 18% had lung cancer, and nearly 12% had colorectal cancer.

Patients who received alternative medicine instead of chemotherapy, surgery and/or radiation had a 2-times greater risk of dying during the 5-year followup period than those who opted for conventional treatment, the team discovered.

Broken down by type, breast cancer patients who chose alternative instead of conventional treatment had a fivefold greater death risk, while colon cancer patients increased their risk fourfold and lung cancer patients twofold. Prostate cancer patients showed no increased risk by choosing alternative medication.

Commenting on the new study, Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, wrote that "There are other studies showing similar results, but unfortunately they are relatively few."

The new study has "limitations," he wrote, including the possibility that the use of conventional medicine is likely to have been undercounted since some patients who choose alternative medicine ultimately "come back to conventional medicine."

"However, if such a bias occurred, it would have tended to make the differences in survival between the alternative medicine group and the conventional treatment group smaller, not larger," Gorski wrote. "If such a bias occurred in this study the harm caused by choosing alternative medicine is likely to be significantly worse than reported.

"There is no good evidence of specific anticancer effects from close to all (if not all) alternative medicines," Gorski noted, adding that many alternative medicine patients aren't receiving effective supportive care, "resulting in inadequate (or nonexistent) relief of cancer-related symptoms and unnecessary suffering."

The reasons for choosing alternative instead of conventional medicine are "pretty broad," Johnson said, adding that "patients are hesitant sometimes to discuss their thoughts with their physicians."

"Anecdotally, there's this belief that alternative therapies are as effective and nontoxic, so in their minds, why not do something just as good but have no side effects associated with that?"

The caveat is that patients will hear success stories about someone who has chosen alternative therapy but won't realize that those people often received some or all of the recommended conventional treatment as well, Johnson said.

Other people may have a "distrust of medical institutions as a whole ... or maybe physicians," he said. "There's a concern that maybe there's a cure that's being hidden. There's a small conspiracy theory to it, as well.

"We identified people who were more likely to choose alternative medicines," Johnson said. "And it's usually people who have a higher income, who are more well-educated, who are healthier and who live in the West and Pacific regions of the US. We have this group of people we know who are doing this; we don't know why.

"You'd assume that someone who is more well-educated, they have an understanding of science and medicine, they'd be less likely to make a choice like this, but that's clearly not true, based on this data," he said.

"There's a path now, when we've achieved the goal -- which is to cure cancer -- where we kind of ramp down the aggressiveness of the treatment," Johnson said. Doctors ask themselves, "Can we still obtain this cure rate and reduce the doses of the medication or reduce the doses of radiation or maybe not do such a huge surgery?"

"That's something that's new," he said, and new therapies are frequently found, such as immunotherapy, that can be less toxic for patients.

"Every therapy offers a certain advantage and benefit, and some people kind of pick things a la carte," Johnson said. "The assumption is that's not the best for survival. That's something we're looking at."

Link:

Choosing alternative cancer therapy doubles risk of death, study says - CNN

As alternative medicine becomesmore and more popular to defend against everything from the common cold to depression, researchers at Yale University looked athow effective these nontraditional routesare when it comes to combating cancer. The study included 281 people with breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancer who tried these alternative options instead of doctor-recommended treatments.

The data was then compared against 560 cancer patients who received conventional treatments. Overall, people who tried the unproven methods were 2.5 times more likely to die. Breast cancer patients were at a five times greater risk of death, while lung cancer patients doubled their chances of not surviving after trying alternative therapies. Those with colorectal cancer were 4.5 times more likely not to beat their cancerwhen forgoing a prescribed treatment.

Dr. Skyler Johnson, oncologist at the Yale School of Medicine and study co-author, wasnt able to identify specific alternative treatments, but sayshis own patients haveused a wide variety of remedies. They could be herbs, botanicals, homeopathy, special diets or energy crystals, which are basically just stones that people believe have healing powers, he told New Scientist.

From the results, it may appear that these atypical treatments work for some patients, however,Johnson says this is likely because some people actually undergo conventional treatments when their conditions worsen,New Scientist explains.

The magazine reports that people who typically pick these nontraditional methods are wealthy and well educated, as medical insurance doesnt extend to experimental options.

Herbs and diets dont sound expensive, but when these things are delivered through providers, they can come with a hefty bill, John Bridgewater, oncologist at University College London Hospital, told the publication. Its a multibillion dollar industry. People pay more out-of-pocket for alternative treatments than they do for standard treatments.

While medical professionals dont recommend using alternative medicine as the primary treatment, some will give the OK when used to counteractthe unpleasant symptoms accompanying cancer. People dealing with anxiety, fatigue, nausea, pain, sleep problems and stress may turn to things like acupuncture as a way of feeling better, reports Mayo Clinic. According to the hospitals website, aromatherapy may provide relief of stress, pain and nausea.

The American Cancer Society explains when these methods are considered complementary and alternative. We call these complementary because they are used along with your medical treatment. You may sometimes hear them when discussing methods that claim to prevent, diagnose, or treat cancer. We call these alternative because they are used instead of proven medical treatments, the organization writes on its site.

However, the organization also points out, The choice to use complementary or alternative methods is yours, offering a list of items cancer patients should consider before choosing their treatment plan, including not giving up proven treatments for those that havebeen disproven.

See the rest here:

Why Alternative Medicines Should Not Be The Main Treatment For Cancer - Medical Daily

Wednesday August 16 2017

Theres no evidence alternative treatments alone cure cancer

"Cancer patients who use alternative medicine more than twice as likely to die," is the stark message from The Independent. Researchers found that people who chose alternative medicine instead of conventional cancer treatments were much less likely to survive for at least five years.

Conventional treatments included surgery, radiotherapy,chemotherapy or hormone treatments. The research only applies to people who choose not to have conventional treatments.

Overall, 78% of people having conventional treatment for cancer survived at least five years, compared to only 55% of people having alternative treatment alone. The difference was biggest for breast cancer, where people who chose alternative therapies were more than five times as likely to die within five years as those who chose conventional treatments.

Because this is an observational study, we don't know if other factors might have affected people's survival chances, as well as treatment choice. However, treatment choice seems the most likely explanation.

There are reports that some people find complementary treatments of benefit during cancer treatments. For example, some people have said thatacupuncture helped them cope better with the side effects of chemotherapy.

But importantly, the emphasis is very much on the "complementary" and not on the "alternative". Ignoring medical advice on the treatment choices that potentially offer the most benefit couldprove fatal.

The study was carried out by researchers from Yale School of Medicine. No funding information was provided. Two of the four researchers had received previous grants from companies involved in conventional cancer treatments, and one received research funding from the organisation 21st Century Oncology.

The study was published in thepeer-reviewed Journal of the National Cancer Institute as a "brief communication", meaning not all the study data was published. Some additional data is published online.

Most of the UK media ran reasonably accurate and balanced stories. Several notably the Mail Online and The Sun speculated on the types of alternative therapy people might have been using.

For example, the Mail said: "Breast cancer patients are 5.68 times more at risk if they opt for homeopathy." However, the researchers did not record the alternative therapies used, so we don't know whether homeopathy was one of them.

The Mail also refers to "herbs, botanicals, diets or energy crystals." While these are sometimes promoted as alternative treatments for cancer, again, we don't know which of them were used by people in this study.

This was an observational case control study. This means researchers identified people with cancer who chose to use alternative therapies (cases) and compared their outcomes with those of people with cancer who chose conventional treatments (controls).

The controls were matched as far as possible with each case based on age, sex, demographics and type of cancer. Observational studies can show trends and links between factors (in this case between type of treatment and length of survival after cancer diagnosis) but cannot prove that one causes the other.

Researchers used data from the US National Cancer Database to identify patients with breast, lung, colorectal or prostate cancer, who opted not to receive conventional cancer therapies, but were recorded as having had "other-unproven cancer treatments administered by non-medical personnel."

These patients were matched with two patients with the same type of cancer, who were similar in other ways, but had opted for conventional treatment. Researchers then looked to see how many people lived for at least five years, comparing those who chose alternative therapies with those who chose conventional cancer treatments.

Researchers only included people who had cancer that had not yet spread from the initial site. This type of cancer is usually treatable by conventional treatments They also excluded people with stage 4 (advanced) cancer, those whose treatment was intended to be palliative rather than curative, and people whose treatment was unknown.

Researchers found 281 people who matched the criteria and who had opted for alternative therapy only. Of these, 280 were matched to 560 people with the same cancer, who chose conventional cancer treatments.

To minimise the effect of confounding factors researchers matched people in the study using these criteria:

In addition, when calculating relative chances of surviving five years, the researchers adjusted their figures to account for the effects of medical and demographic factors.

Researchers found that people choosing alternative therapies were more likely to be younger, female, have fewer other ailments, a higher cancer stage, a higher income and education level.

Taking all types of cancer together:

The type of cancer made a difference, though. This is probably because some cancers can kill quickly without treatment, and treatment is very effective. We can see this in the breast cancer results:

However, for prostate cancer, it made little difference whether people opted for conventional treatment (91.5% lived for at least five years) or alternative treatment (86.2% lived for at least five years).

This is probably because prostate cancer usually grows very slowly in the early stages so few people die.

For the first five to 10 years, there's little difference in those who have conventional treatments and those who have their prostate cancer monitored, with no treatment unless it starts to grow. So, you would not expect to see a difference in a five year study.

The researchers said: "We found that cancer patients who initially chose treatment with alternative medicine without conventional cancer treatment were more likely to die."

They added: "Improved communication between patients and caregivers, and greater scrutiny of use of alternative medicine for initial treatment of cancer is needed."

The results and conclusions of this study are clear: people who choose conventional treatments for cancer (such as surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and hormone treatments) are likely to live longer than those who choose alternative medicine only.

It's rare for people to choose to ignore conventional treatment completely when faced with a cancer diagnosis. More often, people choose to add complementary therapies to their conventional cancer treatment. This study doesn't apply to people combining conventional and complementary therapies.

There are some limitations to the study to be aware of:

People who are diagnosed with cancer and want the best chance of surviving should choose conventional cancer therapies. These give the best chance of helping people with cancer to live longer lives.

Complementary therapies such as acupuncture and tai chi may help some people but they should never take the place of potentially life-saving treatments such as chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

See the original post here:

'Alternative cancer therapies' may increase your risk of death - NHS Choices