My Cancer Log: “The Big F.U. To Traditional Medicine”

[Philomath]

That’s how one person described my decision to stop radiation treatment at the halfway point.

However I don’t feel like my decision was made as a personal rebellion against traditional medicine so much as a decision born on data - or lack thereof.

Treatment had been SO mechanical to this point... we detect cancer so let’s cut it out and the sterilize the area. No discussion AT ALL about the root cause. And they don’t care. Go ahead and eat like normal, just get enough protein. Maybe cut back on sugar. That’s it.

So why go against their recommendations? Risk vs Reward

The “reward”, naturally, is being “cured” or cancer free for 5+ years.


The treatment (60 gray of IMRT photon radiation) risks include:

1. A new cancer from the radiation (2-10%)
2. The treatment is ineffective and the cancer returns or metastasizes to another area* (low %)
3. Loss of hearing in one ear
4. Worse tinnitus than I already have
5. Considerable loss of saliva production (permanent) creating dry mouth and dental issues
6. Loss of taste (temporary?)
7. Inability to swallow (temporary) and possible hospitalization with feeding tube
8. Higher risk for heart disease and heart attack (radiation to carotid artery)

60 gray is the standard treatment for most cancer, especially head and neck. A great deal of study and research has been done on the effectiveness of 60 gray on tumors, but not nearly as much on its effectiveness treating the subclinical, or microscopic cancer stem cells.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much data on my type of cancer, mucoepidermoid carcinoma, so most of the data they cite is based on success treating other, more aggressive bead & neck cancers.

The reason I’m stopping now is as follows:

1. There is no data that says 30 gray Isn’t successful at treating sub clinical
2. I believe they removed all the cancer surgically.
3. 30 gray radiation should be sufficient to eliminate (or sterilize the area as they term it)
4. There is no data available that says 30gray isn’t effective
5. There are some studies confirming 30 grey or less IS effective at eliminating sub clinical disease (mostly other cancers though). There’s even an ongoing clinical trial with 30 gray on subclinical disease after brain tumor removal)

The side effect are minimal now, just the sunburn effect. However, I could have much worse if I complete the full treatment - and there’s no guarantee I will be cancer free or disease free after 1-5 years.

The oncologist has been calling me, trying to get me to continue treatment. He acknowledged the lack of data, the possibility of reoccurrence, but he’s confident in his data. I told him his data is incomplete. There are no clinical trials (medicines gold standard) with control groups that had no treatment at all or only had surgery. He acknowledged that, but insists that the accumulated data from hundreds of hospitals is more than sufficient. He also said that 30 gray likely isn’t enough to kill everything and it could make some CSC’s radio sensitive (the resident even told me NOT having any radiation would be better than partial). *And here comes the biggie - if it spreads outside of the neck area, the cancer is technically “incurable”

So here I sit, with my oncologist telling me, “the window of opportunity closing”... debating wether I should continue on or stick with my gut.

Personally, I feel like they cured me with surgery. The cancer, although it spread from tumor to 2 close by lymph nodes, was contained and the 30 gray of radiation sterilized what was left.

Because of Dr. Peat, I feel that cancer isn’t a death sentence, or an end to your quality of life. I believe it’s a metabolic issue, - one that I can treat without standard medicine.

Thanks to Dr. Peat, @haidut and others, I’m reading more papers and studies that make me believe cancer is a chronic inflammation and excess iron issue - likely do to bacterial/viral endotoxins and the inflammatory response. Starving cancer seems like it could help but why not attack the root cause?

 

[burtlancast]

Orthodox medicine has always claimed cancer is a localized disease and should be treated as such.

They use surgery, radiation and chemo that have never been proven in double blind trials to be better than no treatment at all.

The bacterial/virus theory instead claims they are the root cause of cancer, and that dead killed cells increase the virulence of the virus/bacteria/cancer in the long run.

These 2 theories are in direct contradiction with each other.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I believe cancer is typically a result of unsolved emotions. Peat, haidut and others have written plenty about how to cure cancer, Nathan Hatch wrote a book Fu*k Portion Control which was mostly about how he cured his thyroid cancer.

While dietary intervention, aspirin etc are absolutely a good idea, I also suggest looking into Steve Parkhill's Answer Cancer. He cured many a terminal cancer with mere hypnosis.

 

[Philomath]

I believe cancer is typically a result of unsolved emotions. Peat, haidut and others have written plenty about how to cure cancer, Nathan Hatch wrote a book Fu*k Portion Control which was mostly about how he cured his thyroid cancer.

While dietary intervention, aspirin etc are absolutely a good idea, I also suggest looking into Steve Parkhill's Answer Cancer. He cured many a terminal cancer with mere hypnosis.

Thanks for the tip @Hugh Johnson If cancer has a root cause, and let’s say it’s inflammation, I wouldn’t be surprised if emotional stress was a driving factor.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

It'd guess it has to do with the unresolved emotions disturbing the electrical field that orders the body's structures.

 

[Philomath]

It'd guess it has to do with the unresolved emotions disturbing the electrical field that orders the body's structures.

Dr. Peat says, "Energy a structure are interdependent at every level". That would mean the energy flow (Chi?) can be disrupted or blocked by negative emotion, which may in turn, result in a structural issue. Intriguing. I've had plenty of negative emotions prior to the cancer diagnosis - family, job, etc. I'll definitely look into Steve Parkhill

 

[Tarmander]

You have been on these forums for awhile. I remembering having interactions with you back in the day. Have you been on the Peat diet for awhile, and if so, do you think it contributed to your cancer at all?

I am sorry to hear about your struggles with this.

 

[Vinny]

Congrats, Philomath, on your brave decision and good luck!

 

[Blossom]

Wishing you the best @Philomath.

 

[Dolomite]

My aunt had salivary gland cancer. I don’t know much other than that. I don’t even know if they removed anything surgically. She did have radiation treatments and had the dry mouth and no saliva like you described. And when she later developed sinus cancer they said they couldn’t give her anymore radiation. I don’t know what they did for her but she lived another 12 years.

A friend had melanoma on his ear and they radiated it so much it was a painful blackened mess. They finally cut all the mess off and it healed just fine. He said they thought he wouldn’t lose the top of his ear if they used radiation. He later said he wished they would have cut it off first.

I think cancer centers are money makers for hospitals. They prey on people in weakened positions.

My dad refused chemotherapy after the first and only dose for his colon cancer. He also refused surgery because at his age he was sure he would be in a wheel chair or a bed for too long and recovery would be too long.

I am hoping you will heal and be fine, too.

 

[Philomath]

Orthodox medicine has always claimed cancer is a localized disease and should be treated as such.

They use surgery, radiation and chemo that have never been proven in double blind trials to be better than no treatment at all.

The bacterial/virus theory instead claims they are the root cause of cancer, and that dead killed cells increase the virulence of the virus/bacteria/cancer in the long run.

These 2 theories are in direct contradiction with each other.

@burtlancast you are correct - directly opposed. I find they contradict themselves often. For example, whenever I show my oncologist a study or paper regarding the effectiveness of <30 gray of radiation, he’s quick to tell me that the study is invalid, or inappropriate because it wasn’t based on my type of cancer.
However, when they want me to continue my treatment plan (60 gray), they present me with data, metrics & studies for other cancers and not mine. It’s ok to use ancillary studies when it validates their plan and ideas but not when it contradicts them. At least be open to the possibility!

 

[Philomath]

My aunt had salivary gland cancer. I don’t know much other than that. I don’t even know if they removed anything surgically. She did have radiation treatments and had the dry mouth and no saliva like you described. And when she later developed sinus cancer they said they couldn’t give her anymore radiation. I don’t know what they did for her but she lived another 12 years.

A friend had melanoma on his ear and they radiated it so much it was a painful blackened mess. They finally cut all the mess off and it healed just fine. He said they thought he wouldn’t lose the top of his ear if they used radiation. He later said he wished they would have cut it off first.

I think cancer centers are money makers for hospitals. They prey on people in weakened positions.

My dad refused chemotherapy after the first and only dose for his colon cancer. He also refused surgery because at his age he was sure he would be in a wheel chair or a bed for too long and recovery would be too long.

I am hoping you will heal and be fine, too.

@Dolomite - thank you for the encouraging stories. Dr. Peat told me about a couple people he knew who’s cancer and Melanoma went away without treatment. In one case it dissolved tissue on their nose. The tissue / cartilage even healed on its own. I believe those cases were in Mexico where chemoradio therapy probably wasn’t an option.
I told my family that my hospital had three or four IMRT machines - each probably costing 1-2.5 millions dollars each. According to a Canadien study, the cost for head and neck IMRT therapy was 5-15K per person. They aren’t going to advise patients to try baking soda and aspirin when they have kind of investment to pay for.

 

[Philomath]

Wishing you the best @Philomath.

Thank you @Blossom As someone in the field, you can probably understand this - I don’t want to discuss my decision with any friends or family that are doctors or PA’s. I wouldn’t want to put them in a compromising position. One where they feel their thoughts, if similar to mine, might get them in trouble.

 

[Philomath]

Congrats, Philomath, on your brave decision and good luck!

@Vinny - Thank you!

 

[burtlancast]

When it comes to radiation side-effects, the US army offered research contracts to a few individuals in order to find a protection for field soldiers exposed to nuclear blasts: one was Revici, the other was Beljanski.

Revici came up with n-butanol: Beljanski with Gingko.

 

[Philomath]

You have been on these forums for awhile. I remembering having interactions with you back in the day. Have you been on the Peat diet for awhile, and if so, do you think it contributed to your cancer at all?

I am sorry to hear about your struggles with this.

@Tarmander That’s a fair question. I would say no, because other than decreasing my PUFA intake I haven’t really changed much. I probably consumed too much sugar with either impaired mitochondrial function or impaired liver, but that’s about it. Like an idiot, I figured I could improve my physical fitness through supplements only. So I never really exercised much. That is changing too.
The last few weeks I’ve been taking Methylene blue, aspirin, doxycycline, progesterone and Energin and my temps (which were chronically in the 97.7 range) have moved into the low 98’s - good for me. But a couple days ago I added a 1/2 teaspoon of egg shell calcium to my diet and my temps have gone up to 98.6.
I’ve been half in and out of the Peat world - not because I doubt Peat’s work, but because my ADHD like nature prevents me from deciding on, and implementing a long term plan.

 

[Nemo]

That’s how one person described my decision to stop radiation treatment at the halfway point.

However I don’t feel like my decision was made as a personal rebellion against traditional medicine so much as a decision born on data - or lack thereof.

Treatment had been SO mechanical to this point... we detect cancer so let’s cut it out and the sterilize the area. No discussion AT ALL about the root cause. And they don’t care. Go ahead and eat like normal, just get enough protein. Maybe cut back on sugar. That’s it.

So why go against their recommendations? Risk vs Reward

Philomath, I had a different head cancer than you but I opted out of radiation and I'm very glad I did. I had the surgery to remove the tumor, but if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't even do that.

I was diagnosed with an olfactory neuroblastoma. That's a tumor that starts on the olfactory bulb in the brain, near where the brain and sinuses meet. In my case, the tumor had grown almost completely within my sinuses, which was good, because in the other direction is my frontal lobe. I found out I had the tumor when I stopped being able to breathe through my nose and the problem didn't go away.

The way I found Dr. Peat was through a search for physicians and scientists who had cured their own cancers (Dr. Peat had healed a precancerous lesion in his mouth). After reading Dr. Peat, it was clear to me that my cancer was a result of the very low carb diet I had been on for 13 years (at the recommendation of a doctor--never trust doctors!). My health was screwed up in two dozen ways.

The alternative therapies I found that physicians and scientists had used to treat themselves were mostly diet as chemotherapy (lots of broccoli), diet as metabolic therapy (Dr. Peat), and anti-inflammatories as therapy. In particular, there was a cancer researcher (I will try to dig up the link), who had noticed that cancer recurrence after conventional treatment tended to be clustered at roughly the 18 months to 2 years time period and roughly 5 years. He believed the early high recurrence period was due to inflammation from the surgery to remove the tumor. He believed the later recurrence period was related to inflammation from chemo and/or radiation.

So the way he treated his own cancer was he got the tumor surgically removed and then used NSAIDs to prevent inflammation. (He used something other than aspirin, but having read Dr. Peat, I immediately thought aspirin.) He also used chemo, the standard treatment for his cancer after surgery, but at a fraction of the usual dose, and spread out for years instead of months. He kept the chemo dose below the level at which side effects start, so it was a very small dose. Will try to find the link for you for exact details. He never changed his diet but has not had a recurrence so far (if I remember correctly, it's been a few years).

After reading Dr. Peat, the problem I had with using diet as chemo (lots of broccoli) was that most of the diet was foods Dr. Peat had identified as anti-thyroid. It didn't make sense to me to use an anti-metabolic treatment for a metabolic disorder. Also, though people who used these diets tended to outlive their prognosis, sometimes by many years, the cancer always seemed to return in the end. A good example of this approach is in the book Anticancer by David Servan-Schreiber, a physician who used diet to keep a glioblastoma from killing him for 17 years after a recurrence two years after conventional treatment. Another guy who used the same diet lived 5 years with pancreatic cancer after a prognosis of a few months.

I knew from the start that I didn't want conventional treatment because of the side effects. With my cancer, they wanted to use radiation on my sinuses after surgery, and I found a study that showed 75% of patients who had radiation of the sinuses got permanently inflamed sinuses and were never able to breathe through their noses again (or at least as long as the study lasted, which was three years). If I had been able to breathe through my nose, I wouldn't have gotten surgery at all but just used Dr. Peat's diet, aspirin, etc. and kept an eye on things.

Plus, the studies on treatment for my cancer had mixed results. A long-term study at MD Anderson showed patients living twice as long with radiation (17 years) as without (8 years). But other studies showed no difference between the two groups.

So I got the surgery, refused radiation, took (and still take) aspirin, and eat a Peat-style pro-metabolic diet and I feel fantastic. I'm taking Energin for additional B vitamins, eating an ounce of beef liver a day, watermelon everyday for magnesium, an oyster in the morning and another at night, and 3.5 ounces of brown rice a day for manganese. I'm also using a low-dose E supplement for now to deal with the PUFAs of the past and a K2 supplement.

After the surgery, I found a link here at raypeatforum to mycancerstory.rocks. (Thank you to the person who posted this, sorry I've forgotten your name.) The guy at that link looked like a Christmas tree on a PET scan and cured all the cancer in his body within a few months using a safe medication for parasites that you can buy at Petco for $8 a week. He's still cancer-free a couple of years later and he's now got many others reporting success with the same treatment. That is the mystery cure Sloan Kettering and MD Anderson found in the late '80s/early '90s that everyone heard rumors of, but which they failed to report to the public.

That is my fallback. If I had found that before I'd gotten the surgery, I would not have gotten the surgery.

I wanted to share this with you because you've been so generous about posting your cancer story and that has been very helpful to me. Thank you and know we're all with you.

P.S. I don't agree with the cancer stem cell hypothesis so I never worried about that, though my obsessive-compulsive surgeon double-checked my margins when he was supposed to be removing the nasal packing. I got the surgery strictly so I could breathe properly through my nose again, which was necessary for me to get any decent sleep at night.

If I were you, I'd take aspirin, eat a pro-metabolic diet, stay away from PUFAs, and not worry about stopping the radiation.

 

[Nemo]

P.S. I don't agree with the cancer stem cell hypothesis so I never worried about that, though my obsessive-compulsive surgeon double-checked my margins when he was supposed to be removing the nasal packing. I got the surgery strictly so I could breathe properly through my nose again, which was necessary for me to get any decent sleep at night.

If I were you, I'd take aspirin, eat a pro-metabolic diet, stay away from PUFAs, and not worry about stopping the radiation.

Here's one other piece of info I hope will help your confidence in stopping radiation, Philomath. I had two surgeons involved in my surgery -- a neurosurgeon and an ENT. The ENT was trained at MD Anderson. The treatment he initially recommended for me was the one now being used at MD Anderson: chemo to shrink the tumor, followed by surgery to remove anything left. MD Anderson does not use radiation after surgery if you get chemo before the surgery.

I wasn't enthusiastic about chemo, but I never had to make the decision because nobody on the West Coast would agree to help with this treatment and I have too many loved ones to care for at home to be flying to MD Anderson all the time. They all believed the cancer stem cell hypothesis, so they all believed radiation or chemo was essential post-surgery to kill the stem cells.

My ENT prioritized the data that MD Anderson was getting -- they were simply getting better results (though they hadn't published their study yet). I asked him what that meant for the stem cell hypothesis and he shrugged.

He teaches at the medical school in the city near me and was hired specifically to bring these MD Anderson treatments to the mix here. But he's too new to have gotten a team in place using these methods.

 

[tankasnowgod]

The bacterial/virus theory instead claims they are the root cause of cancer, and that dead killed cells increase the virulence of the virus/bacteria/cancer in the long run.

This theory was proven in 1984 with the case of David Vetter, aka "The Bubble Boy." He had no working immune system, and was kept in a completely sterile environment, never having a single cold during that time. Physically and academically, his development was above average, although he did have some mental issues, due to being completely isolated from the world. When a bone marrow transplant meant to start his immune system introduced the Epstein-Barr which caused him to develop lymphoma.

 

[tankasnowgod]

For example, whenever I show my oncologist a study or paper regarding the effectiveness of <30 gray of radiation, he’s quick to tell me that the study is invalid, or inappropriate because it wasn’t based on my type of cancer.
However, when they want me to continue my treatment plan (60 gray), they present me with data, metrics & studies for other cancers and not mine. It’s ok to use ancillary studies when it validates their plan and ideas but not when it contradicts them. At least be open to the possibility!

Dr. Peat told me about a couple people he knew who’s cancer and Melanoma went away without treatment. In one case it dissolved tissue on their nose. The tissue / cartilage even healed on its own. I believe those cases were in Mexico where chemoradio therapy probably wasn’t an option.
I told my family that my hospital had three or four IMRT machines - each probably costing 1-2.5 millions dollars each. According to a Canadien study, the cost for head and neck IMRT therapy was 5-15K per person. They aren’t going to advise patients to try baking soda and aspirin when they have kind of investment to pay for.

One thing I've noticed is that people rarely seem to question Doctor's financial motives in any sort of treatment. I personally think this is silly, as the vast majority of doctors in the US make a multiple six figure income. This is one of the problems I have with third party payers in medicine, be they insurance companies or governments. In any other area of your life, a cost of $10,000 or so would be a pretty major decision, you would likely do quite a bit of research on the topic. But, since someone else is footing most, if not all, of the bill in medicine, people don't seem to give it a second thought. And your body and health is so much more important than any object you can buy.

Doctors get some sort of commission for recommending expensive procedures, even if they don't call it a commission. Also, they protect themselves from lawsuits and such by going along with the system, even though it's an evil system that's hurting and killing people every day. After finding out recently that many doctors aren't taking an oath to their patients anymore, it makes sense that the patient is quite a few rungs down the list of who the doctor is loyal to. I'm glad you are questioning this system and your doctors, it's a very tough thing to do, even when you know you are right.