After cancer about alternative therapy

AFTER CANCER: ABOUT ALTERNATIVE THERAPY

 

What Is Alternative Therapy?
Alternative therapy is cancer treatment offered instead of conventional medical therapy, often with the claim that it will give better chance against your cancer, with fewer side effects. Alternative therapy is not the same as investigational or experimental therapy. Examples of alternative therapy include laetrile (the apricot pit medicine), herbal tonics, homeopathy, acupuncture, and metabolic therapy.
Every conventional therapy's effectiveness against cancer has been determined by numerous rigorous, scientifically sound studies. In contrast, no alternative therapy has been shown in a controlled scientific study to be more effective than conventional therapy in curing cancer. All of the well-investigated alter therapies have been shown to be less effective or ineffective curing or controlling cancer.
Testimonials documenting the effectiveness of alternative therapies abound. Although exciting and inspiring, they do not constitute scientific evidence. The US National Institute of Health has established the Office of Alternative Medicine to assess sciententifically the value of alternative therapies. The information studies provide will enable people to make informed decisions about the role of alternative therapy in their cancer treatment.
People with cancer have been using alternative treatment thousands of years. Only in the past thirty years have large numbers of people with cancer been cured or enjoyed long survival and this is due to advances in science and technology. Conventional therapy is far from perfect, but by all rational measures it represents the safest and best treatment for cancer available to you at this time.

Why Would I Consider Alternative Therapy Now, after I Have Completed My Conventional Treatments?
There are many reasons why you may consider alternative therapy:
•You may feel the need to be doing something active to treat your cancer or prevent your cancer from recurring. After completion of conventional treatment, the usual prescription from conventional oncologists is to "wait and see."
•You may feel discouraged with the toll conventional therapy has taken and want to get away from conventional medicine.
•You may feel the need to be followed more closely than conventional therapy recommends, so you see alternative therapy as another setting for closer follow-up.
•After treatment may be the first time you have the energy to look at anything other than the treatment you were getting.
•Well-intentioned friends and family may pressure you to look into alternative therapies.
•A desire for control of your situation may lead you to alternatives.
•You may find the alternative-medicine practitioner more optimistic than your oncologist.
•You may find the setting of alternative medicine more comfortable and soothing than the offices and hospitals of conventional medicine.

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