Maintaining a Healthy Mind and Body

Yoga is a popular exercise that helps strengthen the muscles and improve flexibility. Yoga originated in India, where it was practiced more for spiritual reasons than physical reasons. As yoga spreads, it is known as an exercise that helps calm the mind and improve general health. Yoga can also help patients with cancers, such as mesothelioma.

Yoga cannot cure diseases but it is extremely helpful for patients suffering pain and discomfort. For cancer patients it is especially important to keep a healthy mind and body to battle the disease. Cancer patients often go through treatment such as chemotherapy, where the patient suffers from weakness of body and distress. Therefore, it is helpful for the patient to practice yoga where it induces relaxation of the muscle and mind. Yoga's meditative poses also help lower blood pressures, reduce stress, improve flexibility, and improve quality of sleep.

The results of practicing yoga vary from person to person. A cancer patient should consult a doctor before beginning to practice yoga. A patient should be in good physical condition and under the supervision of an experienced instructor to practice yoga.

Natural ways to relieve mesothelioma pain

When a person has mesothelioma, often they are hospitalized because of the intense pain and suffering caused by the disease itself. Still other pain (discomfort, nausea, assorted health problems) come as a result of chemotherapy treatments and radiation treatments.

Someone who is in pain because of their cancer (and cancer treatments) can take alternative treatment along with the medical treatment they are already getting--i.e., complementary medicine.

These forms vary because some involve the interaction of your senses with the world as the primary source of wellness,as with meditation and aromatherapy, and some are administered by doctors or other professionals, as with acupuncture andTranscutaneous electrical stimulation.

Acupuncture is the concept of releasing impurities by the insertion of a needle into a acupuncture point. Acupuncture is based off ancient Chinese medicine to increase the flow of Qi (in this case, blood). Modern medicine has determined that acupuncture increases the micro-circulation and the oxygenation of tissues improving their overall function.

On the other hand, there is transcutaneous electrical stimulation that uses the electricity from an object to stimulate the nerves. Typically two electrodes are attached to the patient's bare skin, and electric currents(non-lethal) surge through the body providing relaxation of nerves, which in turn causes the pain to decrease.

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy concept of using the bodies' own immune system to defend and differentiate cancer cells from normal cells. The body already produces BRM's (Biological Response Modifiers) but to increase effectiveness of these BRM's are reproduced in the lab increasing the count so BRM's wont have to work as hard to fight cancerous cells. The results are mixed and BRM's MAY:

-Enhance the immune system to fight cancer cell growth.
-Eliminate, regulate, or suppress body responses that permit cancer growth.
-Make cancer cells more susceptible to destruction by the immune system.
-Alter cancer cell’s growth patterns to behave like normal cells.
-Block or reverse the process that changes a normal cell into a cancer cell.
-Prevent a cancer cell from spreading to other sites.

Tea For Treatment

According to Purdue University researchers, Dorothy Morre and D. James Morre, green tea contains the compound EGCg, an enzyme that can kill cultured cancer cells without harming healthy cells. This discovery offers the first scientific evidence to explain precisely how this compound works within a cell to ward off many  types of cancer, such as mesothelioma.

"Our research shows that green tea leaves are rich in this anti-cancer compound, with concentrations high enough to reduce anti-cancer effects in the body," says Dorothy Morre. Drinking more than four cups of green tea a day could provide enough of the active compound to slow and prevent the growth of cancer cells.

Lycopene in tomatoes fights prostate, lung, and stomach cancer

Tomatoes can do more than liven up a salad or sandwich--they are strong antioxidants.

Good news for African American men at risk of prostate cancer (a cancer for which asbestos exposure is a risk factor): a tomato a day may keep the tumors away.


Cancer Prevention Research published a study ("Antioxidant Effects of Lycopene in African American Men with Prostate Cancer or Benign Prostate Hyperplasia: A Randomized, Controlled Trial") led by Richard van Breemen of the University of Chicago. The research team found that lycopene, the pigment that gives tomatoes their red hue, could help prevent prostate cancer in African American men.

Lycopene is a known antioxidant. Other studies have shown that diets rich in tomatoes (and other sources of lycopene) may lower the risk of certain cancers, especially cancers of the prostate, lung and stomach. 

"We're not setting out to treat cancer, but to prevent it, and we're hoping to do so with lycopene."

--Richard van Breemen

Lycopene gives tomatoes and other fruits/ vegetables their distinctive red color.

According to van Breemen, this study was the first of its kind to focus exclusively on African American men, who are at a higher risk than other American men for prostate cancer. One hundred and five African American men, ranging from the age of 50 to 83, all of whom had abnormalities of the prostate, were recruited from two Chicago veterans' hospitals for the study.

According to the University of Chicago, each day, half of the participants "received two gel capsules containing 30 milligrams of lycopene, while the other half received placebo capsules that contained only soybean oil." The lycopene approximated the amount a person would digest daily by eating foods that use tomato sauce, such as pasta with sauce and pizza, van Breemen said. 

The lycopene in the pills was the amount in pizza or pasta with tomato sauce.

The researchers wanted to see if lycopene would rise in the blood and prostate tissue, and if raised lycopene blood levels could lower markers of oxidative stress. Oxidative stress injures the body's cells, while antioxidants help cells heal from the damage. It is a factor in cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and in the natural aging process.

Compared to the placebo group, the men who took the lycopene showed a significant increase of the antioxidant in their blood, van Breemen said. Though the men in the study were all over the age of fifty, it is never too late to start using preventative and natural medicine. 

Preventative medicine is incredibly important. For any male readers out there, take the doctor's advice and have a bowl of gazpacho, some bruschetta, spaghetti with red sauce, or even a slice of pizza (blot the grease, please). It just may save you trouble up the road.

New Mesothelioma Treatment Can Be Found in the Spice Rack (by Rachel S.)

(Reprinted from another site and another author--thanks to Rachel for giving me permission to reprint this! Check it out at the original site.)

Recent studies suggest that turmeric, the yellow spice derived from the Curcuma longa root (related to ginger, if you want a mental picture), has the ability to fight cancers like mesothelioma. The Toronto Sun reports that "these abilities could be the result of a transformation in the active compound in the spice, curcumin, by bacteria found in the intestinal flora."


Curcumin is a polyphenol. According to Wikipedia, "polyphenols are a structural class of natural, synthetic, and semisynthetic organic chemicals characterized by the presence of large multiples of phenol units. Polyphenols are generally divided into hydrolyzable tannins and phenylpropanoids, such as lignins, flavonoids, and condensed tannins.


"Tannin chemistry originated in the importance of tannic acid to the tanning industry; lignins to the chemistry of soil and plant structure; and flavonoids to the chemistry of plant secondary metabolites for plant defense, and flower color." Curcumin is where turmeric gets its signature yellow color. [I added in images, not from original article. See below!]

Turmeric has been a large part of Ayurveda, or Ayurvedic medicine, in Indian culture for at least 4,000 years. It is used in cooking as an ingredient in curry, and used in Ayurvedic medicine (which the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine describes as a whole medicine system).


Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine practitioners have used turmeric to aid in digestion and liver function, relieve arthritis pain, and help menstruation function regularly. Recent studies say that the spice can also be used to prevent cancers like mesothelioma.


The Toronto Sun reports that Indians, who are the world's "largest consumers of turmeric, are much less frequently diagnosed (up to 20 times less) by many types of cancer (prostate, colon, breast). A collection of nearly 4,000 scientific studies showed that the active compound in turmeric, curcumin, is the compound of vegetable origin with the most powerful cancer-fighting ability against cells from a wide variety of human tumors."


Curcumin is the most powerful anti-inflammatory compound of vegetable origin, which may explain how the powerful little polyphenol slows the progression of cancer cells. Research suggests that if you combine turmeric with black pepper, your intestines will absorb the spices even better, maximizing their antioxidant potential.


So the lesson here, it seems, is that ancient medicine should not be overlooked when it comes to seeking mesothelioma medical breakthroughs, and that it never hurts to spice up your life--with ancient herbs and spices.

(turmeric chicken soup! So it's doubly good for you. :) )

Alternative medicine works for woman with stage IV cancer for over 4 years

(Sarto Schickel and Sun Hee Lee, alternative cancer treatment advocates)

Sun Hee Lee has survived well past the one year given to most cancer patients diagnosed in stage IV. Survived and thrived, in fact--Mrs. Lee will be  participating in a run/ walk to raise money for ovarian cancer this Sunday, Jenice Armstrong reports in the Philadelphia Daily News.

Ms. Lee, of West Philadelphia, "has been defying the odds since being diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer in 2007. By the time doctors discovered the reasons for her nagging cough and swollen abdomen, the cancer had spread to her chest cavity."

The one-year survival rate for most patients diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer is 17 percent. But four years after Ms. Lee's stage IV cancer diagnosis, "she's pushing on, combining elements of the controversial Gerson Therapy, which claims to cure cancer and other ailments, and a macrobiotic diet, which emphasizes whole grains and fresh vegetables to promote good health."

Armstrong points out that what Ms. Lee has been doing with alternative treatment (also known as complementary medicine) "hasn't been proved scientifically, " adding that "the idea that a coffee enema has health benefits that could help someone with cancer sounds like quackery." (The coffee enema was a noted part of mesothelioma patient Steve McQueen's unorthodox treatments.) But Sun Hee Lee and her husband Sarto Schickel believe that the holistic cancer treatments have helped her.

What makes these treatments complementary is that Lee did underwent surgery and chemotherapy "in addition to the unconventional practices she adopted on her own."

In an email to Jenice Armstrong, Mr. Schickel explained his beliefs about Gerson therapy: "While more research is certainly a positive, there is a lot that folks can be doing in addition to their conventional medical treatment in their own homes. This is stuff which is a perfect complement to conventional medicine and is the stuff that my wife did, in addition to conventional medicine, in order to get her remarkable results to date."

We wish Ms. Lee best of luck in the run/walk in Philadelphia this Sunday, and the best to her and her husband in their fight against cancer.