Can the chemotherapy cure be worse than the disease?

From my last post you would think that the Sunitinib treatment was going ok. That turned out to be misleading. After the pill on the 28th day I expected my 14 days off to be a time of rejuvenation, a time of returning to normal. Instead the side effects of nausea and physical weakness and loss of appetite intensified during that time! That was very disappointing.

I travelled to Yellowknife for my next appointment with a Dr John Walker on Thursday February 15. During the same week Sandra had a colonoscopy procedure so it was quite a week. Walker told me that is was not uncommon for the time off from the Sutent to experience worse side effects!! But do the medical specialists tell you this in advance? No way. No indication at all. However, when I told Walker about how serious the side effects of nausea and no appetite had become he decided to put me on another chemotherapy drug called Pazopanib, which is more expensive (which is why they don't prescribe it at the beginning) but targets the tumours in the same way. It takes a minimum of an extra week to get the new prescription at our pharmacy in Inuvik, and I hope to start it on Monday the 26th.

Well -- here goes my rant. No doctor or nurse ever told me that the nausea medication that is recommended for chemotherapy drugs, referred to as Ondansetron, works by knocking out melatonin, which in my case started to contribute to quite severe depression. Which then snowballed to more nausea, weight loss, and loss of appetite. So today I am going completely off this crazy thing especially because the nausea is not bad today. This morning my weight had fallen to 165lb (which I haven't see since high school) and my blood pressure had fallen to 95/63 which was leaving me quite faint. But with a return of appetite this morning, I have been able to get some strength back.

So there you have it. And oh yes, it is misrepresentation to call Sutent or Pazopanib immunotherapy. Immunotherapy drugs actually train your own immune system to target the cancer. That is not the case with Sutent, which is a targeted chemotherapy. If the Pazopanib stops working to tackle the tumour growth, immunotherapy could be the next avenue of treatment.

But what I hope is that my next CT scan, which won't take place until April now I am told, shows that the tumours have shrunk. Apparently some people have to stay on the chemotherapy drugs like Sutent or Pazopanib for months. I am not sure I can survive that. I am hopeful that the next scan will show improvement and that I can have a rest from drugs to concentrate on the other mind-emotion-spirit modes of healing.

Another nasty side effect of the Sutent was to make me so weak and to make my brain feel toxic and unresponsive so it is very hard to even have a positive healing attitude in the midst of all that. My next oncology appointment is scheduled for March 19 by teleconference. Sandra will have to take time off to be in on the call, because with my deafness I will miss some of the important information.

I want to say to all of you readers that I am humbled and I truly appreciate all the prayers that you have said go up to God on my behalf, both for me and for Sandra too. It is very difficult to go through all this stuff on human strength alone. I continue to desire more joy in my journey, because joy is essential for any lasting spiritual healing. I always go back to the prophet Joel, where in verse 12 of chapter 1 he says that all the fruit trees of the field were withered because joy had withered away from the sons of men. And I am convinced that joy can only come when I am spiritually sound, so that alone keeps me busy. I need to do more sincere praying and meditating to help me along.

Nutrition and the Immune System

In one blog last week, February 07, I mentioned the importance of thymus health, because the thymus produces T cells. The rest of this paragraph is a repeat of what I said at the end of that blog. "T cells are killers for tumour cells. T cells are lymphocytes of a type produced in the thymus that participate actively in the immune response. One problem that arises is that both aging and malnutrition reduce thymus ability to assist immunity. Apparently zinc is required to boost thymus health. Malnutrition with Zinc deficiency causes thymic atrophy apparently. Red meats and seafood contain much more zinc than vegetables." 

Now, although the idea of boosting zinc intake seems to encourage me to each steak and lobster, it is probably not a good idea given the fact that I only have one kidney and animal protein metabolism is known to put a heavy load on the kidneys (http://kimberlysnyder.com/blog/2012/05/12/7-foods-that-are-actually-damaging-your-kidneys/). I should actually be eating more peanut butter - now that is ok with me. So where will I get the required zinc?

I read a lot of labels these days and the Fixodent that I use to secure my dentures so they don't rattle around in my mouth has enough zinc to provide more than my daily requirement if I use it on my dentures once a day (http://www.fixodent.ca/en/questions-and-answers.php). I have been using Fixodent for nearly 20 years. So my thymus should be in great shape in spite of my 75 years of youngness! And the T cells are produced at a good rate then to fight cancer cells. Could that be one reason why the cancer is shrinking in my lungs now that the cancerous left kidney has been removed?

Doctors at the Cross Cancer Institute poo poo the idea of minimizing sugar (glucose, sucrose) as having any affect on killing cancer cells from the point of view that cancer cells like a high sugar environment. They claim that all carbohydrates are metabilised to sugar so minimizing sugar in the diet can have nothing to do with treating cancer. Hey, wait a minute! I thought the whole idea was to strengthen the immune system, with drugs like Sunitinib if necessary, so that our natural immune systems using T cells and so on could kill cancer cells.

I insist that sugar is important. Take a look at http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/sugar_cancer.htm where Dr Patrick Quillin states the following early in his year 2000 nutritional science article: "Of the 4 million cancer patients being treated in America today, hardly any are offered any scientifically guided nutrition therapy beyond being told to "just eat good foods." Most patients I work with arrive with a complete lack of nutritional advice. I believe many cancer patients would have a major improvement in their outcome if they controlled the supply of cancer's preferred fuel, glucose. By slowing the cancer's growth, patients allow their immune systems and medical debulking therapies -- chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to reduce the bulk of the tumor mass -- to catch up to the disease."

So the message there is that minimizing sugar will slow cancer growth through sugar starvation. And here is another question. What effect does eating sugar in large quantity have on the immune system?

Here are two more quotes from Quillin's article: "The quest is not to eliminate sugars or carbohydrates from the diet but rather to control blood glucose within a narrow range to help starve the cancer and bolster immune function;" and:

"In a human study, 10 healthy people were assessed for fasting blood-glucose levels and the phagocytic index of neutrophils, which measures immune-cell ability to envelop and destroy invaders such as cancer. Eating 100 g carbohydrates from glucose, sucrose, honey and orange juice all significantly decreased the capacity of neutrophils to engulf bacteria. Starch did not have this effect." So there you have it. This is not the only available information pointing to the fact that the immune system is weakened by sugar intake.

With reference to https://healthfree.com/nutrition-sugar-immune-system-foods.html "According to Health Services at Columbia University, when you eat 100 grams of sugar, about as much sugar as you find in a 1 liter bottle of soda, your white blood cells are 40 percent less effective at killing germs. This can cripple your immune system for up to 5 hours after eating sugar!" So, is removing sugar from the diet to help in reducing cancer growth and killing cancer cells a myth? I don't think so.

Oh yes, and how about a News Focus article in the January 6 2012 issue of Science entitled "Unravelling the obesity-cancer connection", an interview with author Gary Taubes (don't know if this link will work or not: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/335/6064/28.full). Early in the article is states: A curious thing happens
if you try to wean the tumor cells off insulin, however: They “drop off and they die,” says Stambolic, a cancer researcher
at the University of Toronto in Canada. “They’re addicted to [insulin].” Now it is not rocket science to know that if you increase sugar intake you increase insulin production in the pancreas. I haven't yet done a literature search. This was simply the first article to pop up when I put "sugar feeds cancer" in the Science search engine.

The point is that my Stage 4 cancer tumours had become visibly smaller between December 6 2015 and February 6 2016 using CT scanning. My thesis is that, once the cancer source - the left kidney with its huge tumour was removed, my healthy immune system, combined with minimizing sugar and simple carbs from the diet (except through eating a moderate amount of fresh fruit) caused the cancer to begin shrinking. The next appointment with Dr North April 18 in Yellowknife will tell the tale.

Encouraging healing and recovery from clear cell renal carcinoma cancer

Dear friends and readers. Just to let you know I have done some editing of earlier blogs to mention the 10s of folks that came to visit me in hospital before and after the Dec 6 operation. I have tried to name most of them, but there were others that my hazy memory simply won't pull up. The anesthesia and post op drugs really did a number on my memory. If you were there and your name isn't mentioned, please include that in a blog comment.

The problem I have now is to discern what in my lifestyle and nutrition changes since the operation, and what other factors, may have contributed to the cancer shrinking. Whatever I do has to take into account that I have only one kidney now that is not behaving quite normally and might be susceptible to further stress regarding waste elimination.

First of all, there is the fact that the cancerous left kidney, with a tumour nearly the size of the kidney itself was removed, thus removing the original source of cancer. Maybe that would slow the cancer growth. But what would cause it to recede? That very seldom happens, but it has happened to me! All things are possible, even if some of them are not probable.

Before I get into nutrition and alternative medicine, I want to mention briefly the experience of two good friends. One is my friend Bill in Yellowknife who about 25 years ago or so had a cancerous kidney removed and the cancer never returned and he is fine to this day. Another is my cousin Aleta who lives just south of Ottawa, who had leukemia that was progressing so fast that she was sent home for her last days by her doctors who felt there was nothing they could do. That is about 30 years ago now I think. But Aleta did use nutrition and alternative medicine to completely beat the leukemia. More about that later.

I should also point out in defense of alternative medicine that my life long companion Sandra owes her life to a naturopath in Yellowknife. The medical profession over a period of about 15 years (Ottawa, Sherwood Park, Yellowknife) watched her liver enzymes climb and, finding out that she has consumed no alcohol for the past 29 years, simply said we will have to monitor it. When pushed, our family doctor in Yellowknife admitted that the last patient with these symptoms had died of liver cancer! Finally the suggestion was made to try a naturopath. Sandra then consulted with Dr Nicole Redvers, a very knowledgeable naturopath in Yellowknife, who proceeded on the basis of special blood tests to identify a number of food allergies, especially eggs, milk protein (not lactose), corn, almonds, and spelt. In a very few weeks after minimizing and in some cases eliminating foods containing these substances, all of Sandra's liver enzymes but one returned completely to normal ranges. The one that is still high is not dangerously high and need not be treated. As a result Sandra's physical health has improved tremendously in many ways over he past 1 1/2 years.

We found out from the medical professionals at the Cross Cancer Institute that the treatments provided by newly developed drugs for cancer are based on the premise of boosting the immune system, allowing the body to kill cancer cells in a somewhat similar way as it would a normal infection. For example, had I been prescribed Sunitinib (Sutent) that is exactly how it would have worked, to boost my natural immunity allowing my own body to "interfere with the growth and spread of cancer cells," as an Alberta Health Services handout for Sunitinib points out.

More specifically as a paper by Terme et al mentions: "Sunitinib treatment enhances the functional capacity of tumor infiltrating T cells" (Modulation of Immunity by Antiangiogenic Molecules in Cancer, Clinical and Developmental Immunology, Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 492920, 8 pages (http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/492920)). See Modulation of immunity by antiangiogenic molecules in cancer These T cells are killers for tumour cells. T cells are lymphocytes of a type produced in the thymus that participate actively in the immune response.

One problem that arises is that both aging and malnutrition reduce thymus ability to assist immunity. Apparently zinc is required to boost thymus health. Malnutrition with Zinc deficiency causes thymic atrophy apparently. Red meats and seafood contain much more zinc than vegetables. Aha, bring on the ribs and steak!!

My next blogs will look further at nutritional aspects affecting the immune system.