The benefits of Naturopathy in Cancer

Cancer is caracterized by the presence of different type of cells inside the human body.

Those cells, having differenciated DNA will have a differentiated form of expression in comparison to other normal cells inside the body. Their expression can be harmful because they can grow faster than normal cells, they can migrate to different body tissues and cause several health problems.

While those cells are rapidly growing in number they start spreading through blood circulation to specific organs.

Our immune system is normally able to recognise those strange cells and eliminate them before it is too late, however in some particular cases the immune system is not able to recognise those strange cells which can lead to  an uncontrolled increased in number of those cells inside the body.

Most types of cancer can have a positive prognosis, however conventional treatments seem not being able, alone, to erradicate or decrease the increase of number of cancers, and they seem not being able to prevent their recurrence.

In UK, for example, the number of new cases of cancer continues to rise and, in 2016, there were 303,135 cancers registered (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers); this is equivalent to 828 new cases being diagnosed each day during 2016.

Breast (15.2%), prostate (13.4%), lung (12.7%) and colorectal (11.5%) cancers continue to account for more than half of the cancer registrations in the UK.

Naturopathy is a holistic therapy based on the use of natural medicine therapies and it includes the use of herbs, vitamins and minerals. Naturopathy uses traditional medicine methods (for example, it uses  herbal treatments) but it doesn't exclude the advances of scientific research, as the use herbal treatments are gaining acceptance by the scientific community.

The use of Naturopathy and naturopathic treatments is growing around the world and one of the reasons for it is that it can be a safe option for cancer patients specially when it is monitorized by qualified practitioners, as scientific research has been proven. In those cases, naturopathic treatments can be used even together with conventional treatments increasing the health prognosis of those patients.

As showed in several studies, natural treatments can be used even in parallel with chemotherapy treatments increasing the survival of cancer patients. The importance of the presence of a naturopathic care provider is that each person and each cancer is different which may require different natural medicine approaches.

It is well known that Chemotherapy has several negative impacts on cancer patient's health and it can even increase the recurrence of other types of cancer over the years. Natural medicine can also have a positive impact on that, helping the patient to have a better quality of life after a Chemotherapy treatment or even preventing the recurrence of other types of cancer.

For example, in 2014, an study presented by the Institute of Biometrics, Medical University Hannover, Germany, was performed to evaluate the benefits of complementary medicine in prostate cancer patients undergoing hormonal therapy.
Those 93 cancer patients were being treated under international guidelines and they were suffering from side-effects caused by the treatments, to reduce the side effects they were given natural treatments. Their symptoms were self-assessed and it was concluded that the complementary treatment helped the prostate cancer patients, reducing the severity of side-effects caused by hormonal therapy.

Another way that Naturopathy can help is providing important tips and advices in terms of Nutrition and lifestyle to the patient. Diet plays a very big role in cancer treatment and small changes can make a big difference. The information available can be very confusing and misleading, the Naturopath can help you to balance your diet and can give you important tips that will guide you and help you to achieve the best health and well-being.

Links:
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics-for-the-uk
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25189917