Seven Keys to Treating Prostate Cancer
Key Seven: Consider Complementary Therapies
The thrust of our mainstream Western medical approach to cancer treatment has been aggressive attempts to eradicate all malignant cells, oftentimes at the expense of a person's quality of life. In the 18th century, Dr. John Hunter observed, "Surgery is like an armed savage who attempts to get back by force what a civilized man would get by stratagem." Complementary medicine, which can include yoga, acupuncture, meditation, dietary changes, and herbal remedies, may be that civilized stratagem Dr. Hunter was talking about. What complementary medicine can do so well is help to unite the body, mind, and spirit in health, even providing some relief of cancer symptoms with few, if any, side effects.
Complementary treatments offer cancer patients—especially those with advanced forms of the disease—a glimmer of hope, and with that hope, the quality of one's life improves, increasing survival in the process. When used in conjunction with conventional medicine, many prostate cancer experts believe complementary medicine has a positive role to play in the management of the prostate cancer patient.
What is Complementary Medicine?
The term "complementary medicine" covers an enormous spectrum, from non-Western practices such as Ayurveda, to South American and European folk traditions, to homeopathy and chiropractic. Some of these practices— massage, meditation, acupuncture, yoga, and laying on of hands—have existed for centuries.
Here's a brief overview of three of the more popular complementary medicine therapies:
Meditation
Meditation is an age-old practice that helps divorce the mind from life's daily problems, bringing on such potentially beneficial changes as lower blood pressure and reduced heart rate in the process. Accomplished practitioners, it's been shown, can also lower their oxygen consumption and body temperature and for that reason meditation is sometimes recommended to people with heart disease or other medical problems, as well as to anybody who's trying to control emotional stress.
The word "meditation" means many different things to different people. Most commonly it requires sitting or lying quietly in a prescribed position, usually with the eyes closed, so that attention is withdrawn from the outside world and from customary activity, and repeating a word or phrase (called a mantra) such as "Om" aloud or silently.
Meditation is not difficult to perform. Some forms of meditation involve concentrating on breathing in and out, while others repeat a word, sound, phrase, or a simple prayer aloud or silently. As you do so, gently set aside any distracting thoughts that try to push their way in. It's simple to get started: Begin with one breath. Just tune in to the feeling of it as you inhale and concentrate on the sound of your breath leaving your body. That's all. Just feeling the breath, breathing and knowing that you are breathing should keep you focused in the present, taking you away from restless, wandering thoughts, and putting you right in the here and now.
Yoga
The mind-body-spirit discipline of yoga has so much to offer. Yoga, which means "union" or "harmony" in Sanskrit, has its roots in the Hindu culture of India, where evidence of yoga practices dates back 6,000 years. Over the centuries, it developed both as a philosophy— which holds that the mind, body, and spirit are inseparable—and as a system of exercises to improve physical health. These exercises consist of more than 1,000 carefully controlled moves and poses designed to develop balance, flexibility, and increased strength. Equally important are the breathing exercises, intended to focus concentration and relieve stress. By going through a daily system of yoga postures and breathing techniques that calm the mind and boost the spirit, many people find that they're able to relax physically and get in touch with their body and therefore their mind.
Support Groups
Whatever promotes a sense of loneliness and isolation, either from yourself or from other people predisposes you to disease or premature death. Something happens in your body when you're feeling well loved and taken care of, as well as when you give love back in return. On the contrary, social isolation, loneliness, and alienation contribute to ill health and have long been associated with the very high risk of premature death from all causes—and there are hundreds of studies to back this up.
A very interesting study was performed at Johns Hopkins in 1940 to assess how the closeness of 1,100 healthy male medical students to their fathers would lead to enhanced health— and fewer incidences of cancer—later on in life. What the researchers found was that 50 years later those men who went on to develop cancer were more likely to have described a lack of closeness with their fathers early on in life. The researchers also found that those men who developed malignant tumors had suffered more from loneliness years before.
Love, caring, and psychological support play important roles in men with prostate cancer, increasing survival time dramatically for married men. A 1996 study, "Marriage and Mortality in Prostate Cancer," published in The Journal of Urology points to a strong mind/body/prostate link. Researchers from the University of Miami evaluated more than 143,000 men with prostate cancer diagnosed between 1973-90, looking closely not only at the stage of disease at diagnosis and type of treatment they underwent, but also at their length of survival and their marital status.
Their findings: Marriage offered a strong protective effect. The median survival time for separated and widowed men was 38 months; single men died at 49 months; divorced men survived 55 months on average; and married men lived 69 months, nearly twice as long as a widower.
The impact of social support on the progression of some cancers is evident. It may take some time for society—and physicians—to accept the idea that love and relationships can heal, but there is now plenty of research to support it.
This Special Report is not intended to provide advice on personal medical matters or to substitute for consultation with a physician.
© 2007 Medletter Associates, LLC. All rights reserved
