Tag: Cancer

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Recent Highlights In Health Research

Painted Hills - health research

To enhance my work as a clinician, I spend an average of two hours every day researching and compiling data in the fields of health, nutrition, botanical medicine, dietary supplements, and conventional medicine. This includes evaluating studies on innovative pharmaceutical drug therapies, particularly in the realm of oncology.

From time to time, I’ll be sharing a few of the week’s highlights with you. I hope you will find these interesting, and perhaps the information will be beneficial for you or someone you know.

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Evaluating New Guidelines for PSA Screening

Today’s guest article is written by Mark Bricca, ND, LAc. Mark practices as a clinician at the Mederi Centre for Healing in Ashland, Oregon.

For years, “routine” PSA screening was considered a standard part of prudent, preventive medicine, and surveillance was commonly encouraged by doctors for men beginning in their 50’s. About a year ago, in May of 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) came out with a new recommendation—namely that all men, regardless of their age, should not regularly have PSA screening tests performed unless they are determined to be at increased risk for prostate cancer. What changed, and why the new guidelines? Let’s see if we can understand this whole situation a little better!

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A Model for Integrative Oncology

Magnolia

I believe that we are at a crossroads in oncology and our approach to cancer, where a total paradigm shift in philosophy, strategy, science, and medicine is needed to replace the prevailing “War on Cancer.” This war, declared by Congress in 1971, has yielded little real benefit, despite four decades of effort by conventional medicine and more than $100 billion tax dollars.

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Enjoy Mushrooms For Better Health

I thoroughly enjoy mushrooms—in fact, I actually crave them. It’s likely that this craving can be traced to my Italian culinary heritage—we often add mushrooms to pizza and pasta dishes, but we find them equally delicious in soups, stir-fries, and salads. In addition to the common white button mushroom, we also search for maitake, morel, oyster, portobello, shiitake, and any other unique varieties that appear at our local farmer’s market or natural foods store.

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St. John’s Wort: An Ally Against Cancer

St. John's Wort

With the warm days of summer approaching, I begin to look for the sunny beauty of the humble little flowering plant, St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum). Called St. John’s wort because it blooms around the feast day of John the Baptist (June 24th), the plant grows prolifically in southern Oregon, particularly along roadsides and in meadows. The bright yellow five-petaled flower resembles a halo; when pressed, the flowers release a crimson liquid that symbolized to early Christians the spilled blood of their beloved St. John.

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Can A Ketogenic Diet Cure Cancer?

Ketogenic Diet

I’ve recently received a number of queries from patients and practitioners who are curious about a handful of studies and anecdotal reports that indicate a ketogenic diet may help to curtail cancer growth. For those not familiar with the ketogenic diet, it’s a very low carbohydrate diet that contains moderate amounts of protein and a high percentage of fats.

I prefer to think of foods in their whole, natural forms (for example, almonds, apples, asparagus, blueberries, oatmeal, olives, potatoes, rye, and salmon) instead of in reductionist terms of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Keeping this in mind, the primary purpose of dietary carbohydrates is for fuel—the body converts carbohydrates via the liver into glucose, which is used for everything from powering muscles to brain function. When confronted with a lack of carbohydrates, the body switches to burning fats for energy by converting fats (again via the liver) into ketone bodies.

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