Treatment for cancer (1)

Cancer – current clinic

Without an ideal no-harm therapy for cancer, doctors in conventional medicine must use highly toxic chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgical therapy  treatments. Doctors would not choose to have such therapy for themselves, should they find alternative means that are not so harmful to the body.

In conventional medicine, the highest hope for the treatment of cancer is a Five-year survival rate, rather than a cure rate. The survival rate for cancer might be higher when diagnosed in the early and middle stages. In the later stage of cancer, it is the patient’s fate - to live or die (Fig. 1.)

 Fig. 1. With so many conventional “sophisticated” therapies, the survival rate – a major measure of treatment effect has not witnessed a significant increase from 1971 to 1998 for most cancers.

Cancer – Traditional Chinese Medicine

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), cancer is regarded as the result of blood stagnation and Qi deficiency in the body. Blood belongs to the Yin but the Qi belongs to Yang in the body. It is the Yang Qi that pumps the blood, warms and activates the body functions. Pretty much similar to the sun shining on living things on the earth, if there is no enough Yang Qi in the body, the blood flow is affected, which furthermore blocks the Yang Qi flow. This causes the accumulation of toxins in the body, which leads to trouble in health, such as cancer.

Among all reasons for the cancer, the reduced Yang Qi in the body is the most important. The current life style of most people may exhaust the Yang Qi in the body. For example, stress damages the Yang Qi in the upper cavity of the body (where the heart and lung located). The frequent intake of cold beverage, ice cream, oil, fried food damage the middle cavity of the body (where the stomach and spleen are located). Uncontrolled sexual life (physically or emotionally), or frequent pregnancies damage the Yang Qi in the lower cavity of the body (where the liver and kidney are located).

The improper use of antibiotics, hormones or refined vitamins, also damages the Yang Qi in the body. Anything that we are eating or drinking contains both the Qi (the Yang energy potency) and the Mass (the Yin structure).  The industrial refining process losses the Yang Qi in food and beverage and leaves relatively more Yin mass in the product. When we take such refined chemicals (or food), no matter whether they be antibiotics, vitamins or minerals (calcium or potassium), we would take more Yin mass into our body.  We may think that we do not take antibiotics or hormones, but forget that the milk or vegetables we eat every day could contain such refined chemicals, since hormones and antibiotics are needed to allow the cow to produce more milk and keep the domestic animals and farm produce (rice, wheat, vegetables) disease free.

When the body has relatively more Yin, people feel tired and have less physical or emotional energy. They have less ability to handle daily life, have less patience, less ability to focus on emotional works. They have reduced memory, shallow sleep, sweat easily, have cold hands or feet or have irregular bowel movements.

With damaged Yang Qi in the Heart system, the Heart has reduced ability to manage the defense system and clear the cancer cells. In TCM, the Heart system  (note: we talk about the Heart system, not the heart in the conventional medicine) is the “King” in the body which governs all bio-functions.

With damage in the Spleen system, it fails to identify and transport the signal to the Heart that cancer cells exist. The Spleen system is responsible for monitoring any condition in the body and for transporting the signal to the Heart.

With damaged Yang Qi in the Liver system, it fails to transmit the signal from the Heart and fails to launch the cleansing campaign to clear the cancer cells.

For the above reasons, one of the most important treatment principles in the TCM for cancer is to improve the Yang Qi production. With enough Yang Qi, the blood flows smoothly and the functions in the Heart, Spleen, and Liver would be normal. All contribute to solve disorders in the body. Similar to sunshine in nature the Sunshine can melt ice and “sunshine” in the body also helps  to “melt”  cancer.

It has been realized that, every cell in the body should develop fully into a mature cell under normal conditions. The body’s defense system cannot identify it as “abnormal” after it has matured. If, for any reason, some cells fail to develop into maturity, they are called cancer cells. As with any normal cells in this stage, they have ability to differentiate beyond the control of the body’s defense system.

The question is what causes them to stop developing into mature cells?

Current medicine may contribute to damage of the cells due to radiation, toxins from chemical materials… while the TCM believes that it is because the cells have no enough Yang Qi to help them develop. As it has been mentioned above, all bodily functions are governed by the Yang Qi. The cell differentiation needs the Yang Qi too.

Therefore, one of the most important ways for the treatment of cancer is to help the cells resume their development into mature cells.  Not to regard them as the enemy to be “killed” or “cut”.

In practice, this concept works. With proper TCM treatment, cancer type can transform into normal cells. Such cells have reduced differentiation rate, less chance to spread into other part of the body (e.g. less metastasis). In medical research, it has been proven possible for such cell normalization. In conventional medicine, people still do not know how to do it.

What TCM can do in the treatment of cancer

In fact, cancer is not at all new to the TCM. Cancer has been treated with the TCM for thousands of years in China. The only thing missing is a summarized, and statistically treated data, that is familiar and understood by most medical researchers and clinics in the western world. For the past fifty years, there are in deed lots of clinic studies that have been performed in China for the treatment of cancer with TCM. The data is so abundant that we need not list them here.

(1).  For early and middle stage of cancer, the TCM alone is as good as, and even better than  the conventional medicine in the treatment of cancers in these stages, in terms of the 5-year survival rate of cancer patients (Fig. 2).

Herb therapy alone is shown to be effective for lung cancer, with a total effective rate of 89% (Fig. 2).

Herbal therapy alone is effective in the treatment of late stage cancer also. Here, we are not only talking about the survival rate, but the cure.

(2). Combination of conventional medicine and TCM treatment of cancer usually yields a higher than 5-year survival rate (Fig. 3 and 4). In these studies, the TCM therapy has been used before, during or after the conventional chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgical therapy.

There are lots of clinical studies showing the benefits of the combination of TCM therapy and conventional therapies. The TCM therapies tested include herbal therapy, acupuncture, moxibustion, alone or in combination.

Fig. 5. Herbal therapy plus surgery is shown to significantly increase the five-year survival rate of breast cancer.

Similar results can be repeated in various studies with different kind of cancer groups (Fig. 6 ).

Fig. 6.  The combination of  surgery- chemotherapy and herbal therapy is shown to increase the 5-year survival rate of gastric cancer: to 68.4% with the addition of herbal therapy compared to 36% without herbal therapy.

Acupuncture is also effective in the treatment of cancer (Fig. 7), as well as the moxibustion therapy (Fig. 8). 

Fig. 7. Animal studies show that acupuncture alone or  together with chemotherapy may prevent the growth of cancer mass in cancer-bearing rats.

(3). Whenever TCM is applied, patients have higher quality of life.  Patients experience less pain, less chance for bleeding, anemia, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, or infection. Patients are usually more energized with the TCM treatment (Fig. 9 to 12).

Fig. 10. Herb therapy is shown to be effective for severe diarrhea after surgery of esophagus cancer. More than 33% of the cases recovered within two days, and 50% recovered within three days.

 It has been introduced above that one of the most important mechanisms for Chinese herbal therapy in the treatment of cancer is to improve the differentiation of cells in the body.  A normal embryo cell in the body will fully develop into a normal body cell. If, for some reason, the cells stop developing mid way to maturity, it is called “cancer cells”. Since the cancer cells develop similarly to those normal cells, the body’s defense system cannot identify these as abnormal. Therefore, they are allowed to grow freely, increasing in size and compressing the surrounding tissue/organs and releasing metabolic waste material and toxins into the body.

There have been many tests to study how herbs may improve the differentiation of cells.

It has been observed in clinic that Chinese herbal therapy can make the cancer shrink and even, disappear. For the past fifty years, lab researches using in vitro cell culture and in vivo in animals all suggest the possibility that some herbs can reverse the property of the cancer cells to become normal. Researchers have also tried to isolate active compounds that may be responsible for the anti-cancer effects of the whole and original herbs. So far, it has been known that there are at least 64 herbs that show such anti-cancer effects.

Clinic experience and lab studies showed that, these herbs:

1. Inhibit cancer cells growth.

2. Stimulate immune system.

3. Make the cancer cells sensitive to chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

4. Stimulate cancer cells to mature.

5. Correct symptoms of cancer and side effects caused by surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Many active compounds have been identified and even isolated from herbs. There are many compounds in a herb, not only one compound.

Here is an example for such herbs.

Hong Dao Shan

Hong Dao Shan is the dried stem bark or leaf of Taxus chinensis (Pily) Rehd.

The active compound found in the Hong Dao Shan is Taxol, which exhibits a significant antineoplastic effect against P-388 leukemia-bearing mice and B-16 melanoma cells. In clinic, it is used in the late stage breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer.

E Zhu

E Zhu is the dried rhizome of Curcuma zedoaria Rosc., C. aromatica Salisk. Curcumin, curcumenol and curdione are the most active principle of the herb.

The problem with the application of the isolated active compounds in the treatment of cancer is that it works much like conventional chemotherapy: it kills cancer cells but also hurts normal cells to induce side effects.

Theory validity

The following are findings which support the theory that the cancer cell is a kind of normal cell but stops differentiation mid way to maturity:

1. Normal cells can be found in typical cancer tissues.

2. Mouse cancer cells could transform into normal cells (about 19%)in culture.

3. Mouse testis teratoma can transform into normal cells in body. (Pierce 1960) 

4. Children neuroblastoma could automatically transform into benign glioma in vivo or in vitro. This phenomena can be found in several kinds of cancers, such as mouse myeloma into normal cells.

5. High fever due to infection makes cancer disappear (Buch, Coley 1893). Virus infected cancer cells become normal forms at 38 C.

6. Leukemia cells can be transformed into normal cells in culture, after addition of differentiation promoter (13-cRA) (Breitman, 1980, 1983).

7. These experiments have been verified in other cancer cells in culture (Cheson 1986)

8. Acute leukemia has been successfully treated with differentiation promoter ATRA (1987, 1988, China)

It is suspected that there must be a differentiation promoter in the body, that works to help cells fulfill their course to maturity. The promoter has been found in both animal and plant sources.

In animals, it is found in animal hormones, embryo extracts and under developed animal body cells. In plants, it is found in herbs, fruits and vegetables too.

Thyroid hormone:

(1). High incidence of breast cancer is related to low intake of iodine in food, as well as low thyroid hormones in blood. Low intake of iodine – high incidence of breast cancer (US); High intake of iodine – low incidence of breast cancer (Japan);

(2). Feed iodine to rat could prevent the incidence of breast cancer.

(3). Hyperthyroidism patients shows very low incidence of breast cancer.

(4). Recurrent breast cancer patients show lower thyroid hormone level.

(5). Hypothyroidism patients have five time more incidence of breast cancer than other people.

Estrogen:

Another important hormone is estrogen. The reasons for this are:

(1) Estrogen could prevent onset of stomach cancer in mice.

(2) Pregnant women have low chance to get breast cancer.

(3) Nuns have five times higher incidence of breast cancer.

(4) Male have 1.25 times of higher incidence of cancer than female.

Differentiation promoters in plants:

Plant hormones promote the development of roots and leaves and sprouting of the plants. Plant hormones may also, be able to promote the differentiation of animal cells. The hormone includes ABA, cell stimulators and growth hormones. It is found that herbs with the following characteristics may have stronger differentiation ability: the herbs

with hairs on the stem or leaves; with saw tooth, separation in the leaves; with multiple leaves from the same starting position; with more underground fruits (such as potato); with strong re-generation ability; or they grow in a cane or are trailing.

The fruits that may have more cell promoter are hawthorn, watermelon, cucumber, muskmelon, tomato, strawberry.

Good source of the cell promoters in vegetables are kidney beans, onion, lotus root, cauliflower, celery, sweet potato, summer squash, coriander, green bean, soya bean, carrot, rutabaga, Chinese chives, garlic, wild cabbage, peanut.

Good source of the cell promoters in animal foods are various fishes, shrimp, shellfishes, sea cucumber and animal livers.

Significance of the differentiation theory

It opens a completely new direction towards the treatment of cancer. We should help the cancer cells to mature, rather than try to kill them. Be kind to nature, your friends, your body and the cells in your body.

It enables the normalization of cancer cells without damage to normal cells at all.

It makes the cure of some kinds of cancers possible.

It explains the previous observations for the normalization phenomenon of cancer cells, experimentally and clinically.

It helps to find more useful herbs, foods and chemicals for the treatment of cancer.

Problem with the differentiation theory

It should be pointed out that, the differentiation promotion might be one of the mechanisms, not the only mechanism that herbs work for cancer treatment. Nature is more complex could be than we want it to be. That’s why the differentiation promoter therapy only works for some cancers, not for all. Also, with the extra amount of hormones, such as thyroid hormone and estrogen, there could still be cancer occurring in the body, though they are also the promoters.