Like so many people, I was very sad to learn about Sen. Kennedy’s brain tumor. As Dr. Raj points out here, the statistics are pretty grim for this type of tumor: Malignant gliomas are very difficult to treat, and those who have them don’t tend to survive very long.

For instance, Dr. Raj points out that even when treated with surgery and/or chemotherapy and radiation, malignant gliomas do not respond very well, and that – with treatment — only “about 1 in 5 people with the most aggressive type of glioma, glioblastoma multiforme, survive for more than two years.”

For this reason, I am continually puzzled as to WHY most conventional doctors completely scoff at, and refuse to even consider, the possibility that an integrative treatment approach — including nutritional supplements — might actually improve glioma patients’ outcomes. They call these approaches “anecdotal.”

I am the widow of long-term survivor of a cancerous glioma. My husband Tim and I both attributed his 15-year survival — approximately 12 years beyond what was predicted by the doctors — to this kind of integrative approach.

Had we listened only Tim’s doctors when he was first diagnosed in 1990, we never would have chosen this more integrative approach, since all they told us about were the standard treatments: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation — the same three treatments offered to Sen. Kennedy 18 years later.

We did follow Tim’s doctors’ advice — but we looked further, as well. I am so glad we did. Tim underwent the three standard treatments. But we also did lots of research on our own and — with the help of a nutritionist, whose area of interest and expertise is nutritional approaches to cancer — came up with a combined approach. It seems to have worked.

Unfortunately, most oncologists and neuro-oncologists remain unaware of the ways in which the two modalities –conventional and alternative — can work well together. Several weeks ago, when Sen. Kennedy was first diagnosed, Boston neuro-oncologist Dr. Andrew Norden was asked in an interview with Boston.com, whether there were any alternative or complementary therapies that might be recommended by Mr. Kennedy’s doctors. His answer: “. . . I am not aware of any alternative therapies that help to treat the tumors, but these treatments (e.g. acupuncture, massage, others) are very useful for management of symptoms such as nausea, fatigue, and headaches that some glioma patients experience.” (The emphasis above is mine.)

The sad truth is that most conventional doctors are still unaware of the many very promising complementary treatments, in addition to the palliative ones that Dr. Norden mentioned. For instance, it’s obvious that Dr. Norden hadn’t read the scholarly article by nutritionist Dr. Jeanne Wallace, which was published in 2002 in the journal, “Integrative Cancer Therapies,” titled “Nutritional and botanical modulation of the inflammatory cascade–eicosanoids, cyclooxygenases, and lipoxygenases–as an adjunct in cancer therapy.” The abstract is online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14664746. (Abstracts with information about many other nutritional therapies can be found online, too.) For those who are more ambitious — which I would hope would include most oncologists — Dr. Wallace’s complete 31-page article (which contains 364 footnotes/citations), may also be found online, at http://nutritional-solutions.net/Articles/ICTarticleinflamJeanne.pdf . The article provides an excellent first step for conventional physicians interested in learning about integrative approaches to the treatment of cancer.

Patients who are open to the integrative treatment of cancer — including patients with aggressive, cancerous brain tumors, like my husband’s and Ted Kennedy’s — may be able to survive much longer than the norm, with a combination of conventional and alternative treatments.

It is therefore unfortunate that more doctors don’t know about these promising “alternative” treatments — especially in cases, such as gliomas, which normally have such poor outcomes.

It’s simply not enough for doctors — and especially those who take care of cancer patients — to say that they are “not aware” of these integrative treatments. I wish they would realize that it’s very important for them to start educating themselves.

I hope my long comment here will help some cancer patients who read it.

Julia Schopick
http://www.HonestMedicine.com