Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment - Hardcover

Block, Keith

 
9780553801149: Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0553801147 ISBN 13: 9780553801149
Verlag: Bantam, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Dr. Keith Block is at the global vanguard of innovative cancer care. As medical director of the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Evanston, Illinois, he has treated thousands of patients who have lived long, full lives beyond their original prognoses. Now he has distilled almost thirty years of experience into the first book that gives patients a systematic, research-based plan for developing the physical and emotional vitality they need to meet the demands of treatment and recovery.

Based on a profound understanding of how body and mind can work together to defeat disease, this groundbreaking book offers:

• Innovative approaches to conventional treatments, such as “chronotherapy”–chemotherapy timed to patients’ unique circadian rhythms for enhanced effectiveness and reduced toxicity

• Dietary choices that make the biochemical environment hostile to cancer growth and recurrence, and strengthen the immune system’s ability to attack remaining cancer cells

• Precise supplement protocols to tame treatment side effects, relieve disease-related symptoms, and modify processes like inflammation and glycemia that can fuel cancer if left untreated

• A new paradigm for exercise and stress reduction that restores your strength, reduces anxiety and depression, and supports the body’s own ability to heal

• A complete program for remission maintenance–a proactive plan to make sure the cancer never returns

Also included are “quick-start” maps to help you find the information you need right now and many case histories that will support and inspire you. Encouraging, compassionate, and authoritative, Life over Cancer is the guide patients everywhere have been waiting for.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Keith I. Block, M.D. is Director of Integrative Medical Education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine; Medical Director of the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Evanston, Illinois; and founder and Scientific Director of the nonprofit Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Education. He is also editor in chief of the peer-reviewed professional journal Integrative Cancer Therapies and a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Physician Data Query Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Editorial Board.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One


Why Integrative Care Works

Cancer is one of the ultimate challenges any of us can face. I tell my patients that it is like being forced to climb Mount Everest: your trek to recovery requires the same committed focus and fitness of body and mind. Many of my patients tell me this analogy not only captures how overwhelmed their illness makes them feel but also reinforces two key ideas. First, to surmount your illness, just as to climb Everest, you need know-how, planning, and preparedness. Second, all mountains are ascended one step at a time, and all illnesses are conquered one step at a time. Every new health-promoting behavior you adopt is a victory. Every improvement in your symptoms, no matter how small, is an important step toward the summit of health.

The first point: preparedness is a key to successful cancer therapy. If I dropped you onto the summit of Everest, you would be lucky to survive a few hours in the intense cold and low-oxygen atmosphere. In the same way, unprepared cancer patients often lack the reserves to carry them through treatment. Of course, no rational person would ever let himself be plopped beneath the summit of Everest unprepared. You need training, proper equipment, and time to study the routes and learn the terrain before starting your trek. En route, you pace yourself and set up camps along the way to acclimatize yourself to the altitude. If you’re smart, you also enlist an experienced guide, one who helps you navigate the trickiest terrain.

So it is with cancer. Ascending Everest is analogous to the attack phase of cancer therapy—the conventional treatment for debulking, or shrinking, the primary tumor. The better and smarter the preparation, the more likely you are to complete this treatment. Don’t worry if there is only a little time between when you receive your diagnosis and when you begin treatment such as surgery: even a little preparedness can go a long way. With an experienced guide offering strategies complementary to your chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, treatment will be less debilitating and more effective.

If the attack phase is successful in shrinking or eliminating the primary tumor, you’ve achieved either a partial remission or a complete remission. This is like reaching the summit of Everest. What next More often than not, nothing. Current medical thinking views successful completion of the attack phase (“we got it all”) as almost synonymous with a cure. But even with remission after surgery and chemo, some residual undetectable cancer cells likely remain. It has been estimated that approximately half of all cancer patients in remission actually have metastases, malignant cells that have broken off the original tumor, traveled through the bloodstream to far-flung sites in the body, and begun the insidious process of growing into another dangerous tumor. Just because you have achieved remission through elimination of the primary tumor does not mean you are home free. Cancer is not like an infection, where you wipe it out and move on. It is a chronic condition that needs constant vigilance. While conventional cancer treatments often remove much of the disease burden —and it is critical to remove tumor bulk from your body—that is only half the battle. Even when the primary tumor is eliminated, micro- metastases may already have migrated to and seed other parts of the body. These dormant cells can rear up and reestablish themselves.

That’s why for my patients, complete remission does not mean the end of treatment. Instead, it means the start of the containment or growth control phase, when we focus on stopping or slowing further growth of any residual disease (visible tumors) or invisible metastatic cancer cells. Post-treatment is a time to be particularly aggressive.

To continue the Everest metaphor, a successful climb is not only about summiting but also about getting back down. This is where climbers often err because the potential for catastrophe—treacherous ice patches and wrong turns that send you plunging into an abyss—is so great. Similarly, for a cancer patient it is critical to look past the summit of clear scans and remission so that your preparedness carries over into the post-treatment, or remission maintenance, phase.

Unfortunately, this is the most neglected phase of cancer treatment. Conventional cancer treatment does little to prevent cells from regrouping, proliferating and forming new tumors. It also does little to help patients recover from persistent side effects and potentially life-threatening complications of attack-phase treatments. But with the right strategy these effects can be avoided or overcome: we have tools—especially diet, nutritional therapy, and experimental and off- label drug use—that can delay or block the return of cancer.

Now cancer patients part ways with mountain climbers. When mountain climbers return to base camp, their ordeal is over. They have triumphed. Not so with cancer patients who have reached the summit (achieved remission) and descended safely (kept metastatic cells in check). With cancer, you must remain attentive to self-care, taking an active role in your continued health. Rather than waiting passively for the results of your next scan or checkup, you can actively seize control of your future. This will likely entail making changes in what you eat, how you stay fit, and how you balance life’s stressors, but I can just about guarantee that the small investment will yield a huge return: not only will this new way of life decrease your risk of relapse, but it will decrease your risk of diseases other than cancer, too, and make you feel better, stronger, and more empowered every day.

The Beginnings of Life Over Cancer


Cancer entered my life long before I went to medical school. As a teenager, I watched my grandmother, my grandfather, and an uncle all die of cancer. They all suffered great pain toward the end, not just from the disease but from the treatments they endured. It was as if the quality of their lives were irrelevant, as if it no longer mattered how they felt once their doctors had proclaimed that there was nothing more that could be done. Though I had no medical training, I couldn’t believe there was nothing more that could be done —at least to improve their quality of life as they underwent treatment.

I remember sitting at my grandmother’s sickbed, watching helplessly as her cancer progressed and she became increasingly frail and thin. Her body was betraying her, but so were her physicians. Only sixteen, I was undergoing intensive physical training for high school football. I wondered: why weren’t her caregivers encouraging her to exercise Logic told me that keeping her muscles active might help her resist some of the wasting syndrome she suffered.

After my grandmother passed away, I kept thinking about all the things I might have done had I been her doctor. (This was one of the experiences that motivated me to become a doctor.) I was certain she could have lived the remainder of her life, even with her cancer, with far more awareness, dignity, and well-being had she been given a whole other level of care. This experience also made me resolve to be a different kind of doctor, one who did more than run tests and administer standard treatments. I wanted to tend to my patients’ emotional and physical well-being, too.

That resolve only grew stronger. As an intern, I sometimes followed an attending physician as he made his rounds at the hospital. One day I was following a doctor who was notoriously a morning person, beginning his rounds at 6:30 a.m. sharp, regardless of the patients’ sleep schedule. His first stop that chilly dawn was the bedside of a Chicago bus driver in her...

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Verlag
Bantam
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553801147
ISBN 13 
9780553801149
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
608
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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