Do alternative treatments for cancer really work?A series of highly intense therapies were being used to treat him for Hodgkin’s disease that had progressed to stage 2 which included German enzymes, Mexican naturopathy, Chinese herbs and the American antineoplastins. These therapies were complemented by innumerable vitamins, focused meditation, acupuncture to deal with severe pain and extreme diet modification.

Why alternative medicine studies

A comment on my site that moaned how alternative medicine is highly disorganized in this country struck me this well. The writer was suggesting that studies in alternative medicine are not only able to improve quality of health but can also save health care a lot of money as well. I tend to think that there is need to focus more on complementary & alternative medicine research, which focuses more on solving the confusion that exists between CAM and conventional medicine. A big difference exists between the kind of medicine that the board certified, alternative practitioners and classically trained physicians practice. This difference is none other than research and data.

When a DO or MD treating a patient with cancer and the patients want to know the basic science as well as the clinical studies supporting the therapy recommended, the published data is always available readily. The standard oncology treatment usually takes between 10 and 20 years of intensive research ranging from test tube all the way to animal studies and finally supervised multi phase human trials. Patients are only offered the treatment works it has been approved and approved to work.

By its definition, alternative medicine simply means that is alternative to the normal scientific analysis. Anyone can essentially come up with his or her idea and without the necessary research steps being followed, provide the treatments to the patients. If I, for example, decide that lemon juice enhanced with sunshine is capable of killing cancer cells since it is acidic, something that cancer really hates, I can, and then start selling it in form of a pill starting from tomorrow. This is something very common in most of the CAM therapies available today.

About the CAM treatments

CAM treatments enjoy a long respect that spans over the historical times such as the Ayurvedic medicine from India, Chinese traditional medicine and the American homeopathy. There are millions of people who adhere to these treatments and have used them to cure people. Individual patients who have used these treatments are always very vocal about them. Nearly all CAM therapies tend to have either limited or completely no published research that can explain the science behind these therapies or provide they are better than placebo. It is only research that can prove that some of these alternative treatments actually have value.