Saturday, July 16, 2011

If I Only Could

This morning, I will be continuing my qigong therapy. This involves the block breathing exercises following by traditional Chinese cupping on my back to improve blood circulation. It's too soon to tell of any improvement because today will be my 2nd treatment only. In my case, I will need a lot more treatments.

Yesterday, a friend was talking to me about how important the mind is in healing. She was referring to an article published in a newspaper about the placebo effect. A placebo effect is a cure in the mind. Belief is powerful medicine, even if the treatment itself is a sham. New research shows placebos can also benefit patients who do not have faith in them. A cancer of the lymph nodes patient was dying but was given a new anticancer drug called Krebiozen (which was a placebo) that he felt confident would cure him according to a 1957 report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer.” Within three days later he was cheerfully ambling around the unit, joking with the nurses. His tumors had shrunk by half, and after 10 more days of treatment he was discharged from the hospital. And yet the other patients in the hospital who had received Krebiozen showed no improvement.

Perhaps, this may be why some cancer patients are willing to try new therapies. My mind is not that strong and for me, after reading some new therapy that is adequately supported by studies, my mind may be convinced that the new therapy is going to be a cure. Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated—from the pinch of a shot to a doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones. So, subconsciously I am riding on the new therapy that would strengthen my mind many folds which otherwise would not be able to achieve by itself.

Gerson Therapy News
I received the latest Jul/Aug 2011 Newsletter from Gerson Institute and would like share some details of cancer patients that went to Gerson Clinic in Mexico for treatment.

A total of 516 patients attended the Gerson clinic in Mexico between 2007-2010: 187 males and 329 females. As you can see in the graph above, the most prevalent cancer was breast cancer, with 122 patients. The next most common was 39 with pancreatic cancer, 34 with prostate cancer, 33 with melanoma, 30 with colon cancer, 33 with lung cancer and 14 with liver cancer. It should be noted that the clinic takes many stage III and IV advanced cancer cases.

The following are the results to date: 194 of the 516 patients are deceased. We lost contact with or could not reach 211 of the remaining 322 patients. This leaves 111 people who are active in our Follow-Up Program and are still following the Gerson Therapy. Forty-seven of them report their status as Very Good (improving), 51 report their status as Good (stable) and 13 report their status as Poor (declining).

It is too soon to determine the final health outcomes of patients since we need to follow them for five years and obtain copies of medical records to verify their health status.

SS19/1 Residents' Association Carnival
I would like to invite readers living in Subang Jaya, USJ and nearby areas to come and support the SS19/1 Residents' Association Carnival on Sunday 17th July at Jalan SS19/1 (7am to 12noon). My friend Yeong and his wife Khadijah will be operating a booth selling plants. There are 9 pots of Sabah Snake Grass for sale. All plants are priced at RM5 each. All proceeds of the sale goes to the Mohd. Shafiq fund. Please come out and support generously.

There will be a health march from 7.00 8.00am to 8.30 9.00am. A path lab has also offered discounts for 58 parameters blood screening for RM65 (normal price: RM176). They are also offering an additional of 3 tumors markers test for men and 4 for women for an additional fee of RM55 and RM60 respectively. I will be there and hope to see you too.

5 comments:

  1. Hi.If I can make it,I will come to the carnival.





    Siew Wei Ling

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wish I could come too but I cant.Enjoy the carnival.




    Valkryie Edgely

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi CT

    If your condition were to deteriorate, you can look up for Dr Ang Peng Tiam from Parkway Cancer Centre, Singapore http://www.parkwaycancercentre.com/about/specialists/dr-ang-peng-tiam

    Dr Ang is a good oncologist.

    I guess you would probably be put on chemotherapy (to kill cancer all over the body) and tomotherapy, a less riskier option than radiation.

    Remember, once you are on chemotherapy, do NOT take any more cooling chinese herbs which in effect is a form of chemotherapy which is many times higher than the cooling herbs. If one takes a high quantity of cooling herbs, it can also kill.

    Take mild but potent herbs like chinese barley.

    If you have no time, eat liu wei di huang wan (pronounced in Mandarin) for zi bu shen yin, and jin gui di haung wan for wen bu shen yang. This 2 mixtures is to balance up your ying and yang, more importantly to strengthen your kidney which would result in strengthening your stomach and lungs. Semen ejaculation is not allowed as the yin would be depleted.

    As for your current condition, you'd have to live with the tumours as removing them would be rather tedious now. Your body has already been significantly weakened and you would have to inform Dr Ang to lower the chemo dosage.

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  4. I normally do not respond to such comments but I will make an exception.

    Thank you for your concern and suggestions.

    Do not just pour out your knowledge and recommendations without doing a proper diagnosis of the patient, in particular if the patient is a cancer patient. This is very basic and fundamental requirement in TCM.

    I believe you have no idea about chemotherapy, in particular those used for Renal Cell Carcinoma with lung metastasis. If I had wanted to do chemotherapy, I would have done it long ago and not wait till now. And you have no idea about my "love" for chemotherapy. That's probably because you have not read my past blog postings.

    If I were to go and see an oncologist that you recommended and still have to tell him to lower my chemo dosage, that say so much about the quality of the doctor. I think you are doing Dr. Ang Peng Tiam of Parkway Cancer Centre a disfavor by publicly telling the whole world that a patient has to tell him what to do, suggesting that he may not know his work. I will certainly not put my life under his care.

    In case you don't know, this is what Dr Ang Peng Tiam, medical director of the Parkway Cancer Centre, is Singapore President's Scholar and a leading senior consultant medical oncologist. He is also vice-chairman of the medical sub-committee of the Breast Cancer (Reported in Mind Your Body Supplement, Pg. 22, The Straits Times, Singapore on 29 November 2006):

    - Oncology is not like other medical specialties where doing well is the norm.
    - In oncology, even prolonging a patient's life for three months to a year is considered an achievement.
    - Achieving a cure is like striking a jackpot!
    - Not all cancers can be cured.
    - As doctors, we try our best
    - to cure those who can be cured,
    - to control the disease for those whose lives can be extended, and to comfort those for whom little can be done.

    If you trying to help, then you are certainly doing the wrong way. I would suggest that if want to help a cancer patient, the first thing you must learn is empathy. The second thing is that you must learn to treat is the patient and not the symptoms or cancer.

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  5. To Anonymous - 16 July 10:55pm

    Australian Oncologists Research Paper on effectiveness of chemo
    How is it possible that patients are routinely offered chemotherapy when the benefits to be gained by such an approach are generally so small? In their discussion, the authors address this crucial question and cite the tendency on the part of the medical profession to present the benefits of chemotherapy in statistical terms that, while technically accurate, are seldom clearly understood by patients.

    For example, oncologists frequently express the benefits of chemotherapy in terms of what is called “relative risk” rather than giving a straight assessment of the likely impact on overall survival. Relative risk is a statistical means of expressing the benefit of receiving a medical intervention in a way that, while technically accurate, has the effect of making the intervention look considerably more beneficial than it truly is. If receiving a treatment causes a patient’s risk to drop from 4 percent to 2 percent, this can be expressed as a decrease in relative risk of 50 percent. On face value that sounds good. But another, equally valid way of expressing this is to say that it offers a 2 percent reduction in absolute risk, which is less likely to convince patients to take the treatment.

    It is not only patients who are misled by the overuse of relative risk in reporting the results of medical interventions. Several studies have shown that physicians are also frequently beguiled by this kind of statistical sleight of hand. According to one such study, published in the British Medical Journal, physicians’ views of the effectiveness of drugs, and their decision to prescribe such drugs, was significantly influenced by the way in which clinical trials of these drugs were reported. When results were expressed as a relative risk reduction, physicians believed the drugs were more effective and were strongly more inclined to prescribe than they were when the identical results were expressed as an absolute risk reduction (Bucher 1994).

    Read more here:
    http://www.icnr.com/articles/ischemotherapyeffective.html

    ReplyDelete