Is a stem cell cure for cancer at hand?
(The second of two articles about the 2014 Annie Appleseed cancer conference in West Palm Beach, Florida)
"Get your will ready. You have two days to live." So said an M.D. dressed in a white coat to 78-year-old cancer patient Louis Masucci from Lake Worth, Florida. Mr. Masucci was losing his battle against non-Hodgkins lymphoma and was going down fast.
Today, four years later, the 82-year-old Mr. Masucci is doing just fine. He'd been two days from death because his immune system was kaput. Fortunately, he got stem cells just in time to revive his immune system. "We flipped his immune system back on," said his stem cell doctor, Dipnarine Maharaj, M.D.
Continued below…
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Dr. Maharaj gave a speech at the annual Annie Appleseed conference about "Stem Cells for Regenerative Medicine in Aging and Cancer." His stem cell clinic is in Boynton Beach, Florida. He does stem cell transplants for cancer patients because the procedure repairs the immune system. He said, "Repair the immune system, and you treat the cancer!"
Where does cancer come from? Dr. Maharaj said cancer comes from cancer stem cells: "Kill those stem cells, and you get rid of the cancer."
Here's another way to look at it. According to Dr. Maharaj, "Cancer is caused by inflammation. Inflammation is controlled by the immune system. If the immune system breaks down, cancer can result. It makes no sense to treat cancer by destroying the immune system." When he said that, I wanted to shout out, "Amen!" Two of the standard treatments for cancer — radiation and chemo — do indeed destroy the immune system.
Should you "bank" your own stem cells?
This doctor says yes!
Dr. Maharaj strongly recommends that people bank their own stem cells. Frozen at minus 159 degrees Celsius, these self-donated cells can be stored indefinitely and used later for treatment of a disease or for rejuvenation. Having seen the miracle of stem cell rejuvenation, Dr. Maharaj practices what he preaches. He has banked his own stem cells, and he's making sure his children bank theirs, too.
He showed a news clip from the local CBS TV news affiliate about "the possible cure for cancer found right here in Palm Beach County." The video shows cancer cells under magnification. The cells explode and disappear as a result of the stem cell treatment. This footage is spectacular and impressive!
Much of the stem cell research in America is on the wrong track because it's focused on embryonic stem cells taken from the bodies of aborted babies. Ethical questions aside, embryonic stem cells haven't produced the hoped-for results for Parkinson's and other diseases, and it appears that embryonic stem cell research is a dead end.
Meanwhile, autologous (self-donated) adult stem cells, usually taken from the bone marrow, are producing breakthrough results for treatment of disease and for rejuvenation.
Integrative clinic in Chicago
racks up impressive track record
The keynote speaker of the Friday morning session was Dr. Keith Block, M.D., who spoke on "Integrative Approaches to Molecular Target Therapy." His integrative clinic in Skokie, Illinois, aims to offer everything needed to get rid of cancer "all under one roof."
Dr. Block's comprehensive program focuses on three areas: (1) diet and lifestyle, (2) the extracellular and intracellular environment (the bioterrain), and (3) innovative interventions, technologies, and strategies.
No one can deny that Dr. Block's clinic has an impressive track record of success in treating patients with difficult cancers, even at late stages. He's the quintessential integrative doctor who seeks the best of both worlds: the best treatments of conventional medicine together with the best treatments of alternative medicine.
Cancer patients typically dread chemotherapy because of the side effects such as nausea and hair loss. But cancer patients who take chemo at Dr. Block's clinic experience few bad effects from it. Incredible as it sounds, one of his patients received chemo while rollerblading on the bike path along Lake Michigan in Chicago. Another patient received chemo while taking a cha cha lesson at the clinic.
Why do patients at most cancer clinics get horribly sick from chemo while Dr. Block's patients make it through the treatment with apparent ease? Conventional cancer treatment centers offer little or no nutritional support, and they blast the patients with heavy doses of chemo that devastate the patient.
Not so at Dr. Block's clinic. He gives his patients chemo based on circadian timing. He calls it chrono-modulated chemotherapy, based on the fact that there's a time of day when the drug is most effective and least toxic. Dr. Block said his clinic is the only one in the country using chrono-modulated chemo.
Why are so many people dying of cancer? Dr. Block said it's not because cancer cells are multiplying too fast but because they're dying too slowly. Another big reason for cancer deaths, he said, is the toxicity of the conventional treatments. That's why his clinic does what's necessary to reduce or eliminate this toxicity.
Dr. Block believes there is no "silver bullet" that will cure cancer. That's why he uses a multi-dimensional approach that addresses all aspects of the patient's health. He believes in using natural compounds such as milk thistle, resveratrol, astragalus, and curcumin.
He uses a nano-formulation of curcumin, and told the audience that extremely large doses are needed — eight grams per day. He demonstrated the effectiveness of his therapeutic approach by telling numerous stories of patients who'd survived and thrived after coming to him with difficult late-stage cancers.
Dr. Block's foil challenges him with a tough question
The next day, Dr. Block's foil, Dr. Michael Schachter, M.D., from New York, respectfully challenged one of Dr. Block's key assumptions: that chemotherapy is necessary at all.
Of conventional treatments, Dr. Schachter declared, "Perhaps the emperor has no clothes." He expressed deep skepticism about "integrative oncology" — the notion that chemo is a key part of a treatment plan that includes natural and holistic therapies. He summarized integrative oncology as a recommendation for conventional treatment plus lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, nutritional supplements).
Then Dr. Schacter posed his big question: "Would the patient be better off with no conventional treatment at all? At the very least, we have to ask the question. Integrative oncologists accept conventional treatment as a given. But (in the case of a successful outcome) how essential was the conventional treatment? Maybe it was essential. Maybe not."
Dr. Schachter continued, "When patients ask, 'Will the alternative treatment interfere with the conventional treatment?', I turn around and ask, 'Why can't we ask the question, will the conventional treatment interfere with the alternative treatment?'"
The debate between physicians like Dr. Schachter who prefer natural medicine and integrative physicians like Dr. Block who use both conventional and natural medicine may not be resolved any time soon. But it's worth noting that many of Dr. Schachter's cancer patients haven't done any conventional treatments at all and are still doing well after 12 or 15 years.
Dr. Schachter doesn't use Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT), a popular therapy among integrative oncologists, because it's inordinately expensive, it's not covered by insurance, and "there's no proof it's more effective than conventional therapy except that the side effects are less."
Dr. Schachter pointed out that oncologists often bully patients and scare them into knuckling under to their treatment recommendations. He pointed out that chemo drugs are obscenely expensive. A few examples: Provenge costs $93,000 for the course of treatment, Zaltrap costs $11,000 per month, Sprycel costs $123,000 per year, Yervoy costs $39,000 per month. He said, "That's why our healthcare system is broken."
If these exorbitantly expensive chemo drugs cured cancer, they might be worth the cost. But they ruin the patient's immune system, make the patient feel miserable, and may delay the patient's death by a few days or weeks, during which the patient has a poor quality of life.
Dr. Schachter warned against the CT scan, which zaps patients with the radiation equivalent of 100 chest X-rays, and the PET scan, which equals the radiation of 500 chest X-rays.
Brilliant Mexican doctor changes lives
with stem cell therapy
One of Mexico's top holistic doctors, Rodrigo Rodriguez, M.D., gave a presentation about "Fighting Cancer Head On with Autologous Regenerative Factors." Self-donated adult stem cell therapy is one such factor. Another is platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
He said, "PRP allows the concentration and migration of white blood cells, stem cells, healing factors, and fundamental growth factors to promote regeneration and healing."
As for adult stem cells (ASC), Dr. Rodriguez said they provide genetically complete cells to replace damaged or discarded cells. He called it "a miracle of life and restoration and renewal. We mix stem cells with platelet rich serum and put it intravenously into the patient's body."
If stem cells replace damaged or discarded cells, you might well wonder how the stem cells know where to go. As Dr. Rodriguez explained, "When you have tissue damage, there's platelet destruction that causes an inflammatory response, and we see the migration of cells through blood vessels. Stem cells sense the problem, leave the blood vessel, and enter the tissue. Stem cells will locate and replace the damaged cells and restore the normal function as the inflammatory condition disappears, and then we're 'back in business'."
No wonder he calls it a "miracle of life."
Dr. Rodriguez loves autologous stem cells because they work. He cited many advantages: no use of embryonic tissues, no risk of spreading a blood-borne disease, no rejection of grafted cells, and there's no need to go through the process of finding a donor who matches the recipient.
You can take advantage of autologous adult stem cell therapy for healing or slowing down aging at Dr. Rodriguez's clinic. But he said there's a simple, cheap way to increase stem cell production in your own body at home: 24-hour fasting. He said a grapefruit juice and water fast raises the population of stem cells your body can put to immediate use!
Dr. Rodriguez said, "Don't take your body for granted. If we got rid of chronic inflammation, there'd be hardly any degenerative diseases. Diet and lifestyle are the culprit. If diabetes continues to climb, by 2050 just about every American will be diabetic."
He described how his clinic administers hyperthermia — one of the most effective natural treatments for cancer. The doctor withdraws some of your blood and heats it up before returning it to your body, continuing this process until your core temperature reaches fever level at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. This fever temperature is maintained for two hours, and then the doctor brings your temperature back down to normal using the same method. Hyperthermia kills or weakens cancer cells without harming healthy cells.
Cancer survivors reveal the alternative treatments
that worked for them
One of the highlights of every Annie Appleseed conference is the patient panel. Cancer survivor Julia Chiapetta moderated the session and introduced the three panelists, the first of which was Ursula Kaiser.
Ursula said she went to the hospital for uncontrolled bleeding and underwent surgery right away. The surgeon told her afterward that he'd taken out an ovary because it "didn't look good." Later he asked her to come to his office, and told her, "You have cancer." The doctor persuaded her to have another surgery, but she wanted nothing to do with chemo or radiation, so she went to Mexico for alternative treatment. She practically swears by frequency healing and has purchased frequency machines from Germany.
In her opinion, "the most important thing is the gut." In Mexico she learned the importance of coffee enemas for detoxification and healing.
His night sweats were much more than just a fever
The next panelist to tell his story was Tom Fisher from Jupiter, Florida. He was into athletics and played basketball at the collegiate level. But his eating habits were bad: He was addicted to sugar, sweets, and dairy.
After a while, he noticed some fatigue that wasn't normal for him, and he started having night sweats where he would drench the bed. He thought that was odd but figured it was just some kind of fever.
When he started to have chest pains he went to a doctor and found that his symptoms were caused by something much worse than a fever. A chest X-ray showed a mass, and he was diagnosed with lymphoma with metastasis to the bone: Stage Four!
Tom went through chemotherapy, which compromised his immune system and gave him "chemo brain" (an impairment of short-term memory). He said, "My memory was shot from chemo."
Tom heard a speaker from the Hippocrates Health Institute, and radically changed his lifestyle and eating plan. He added raw, living foods to his diet, and his energy came back. So did his memory! And he returned to a healthy weight. He's a big fan of sprouts, which he said "have 20 to 30 times the nutrition of vegetables."
He went through the three-week program at the Hippocrates Health Institute, and it changed his life. He was so impressed with it that he now works there as an R.N. He said, "It has been rewarding to work at Hippocrates as a nurse."
He gave the audience members some free advice about the power of affirmations: "Affirmations are free. They create mind-body connections. One affirmation that I particularly like is, "I will be well. I am well. And I deserve to be well."
The next panelist, Melyssa Lawson, could hardly wait to tell her story. She lives just outside of Washington, D.C., with her husband and three sons. She took her first flight ever to attend the conference.
Doctor: "You'll never have another child" –
Patient's reply: "Watch me!"
At the age of 26, Melyssa was diagnosed with thyroid and lymph node cancer. Her doctor immediately scheduled her for surgery, to be followed by radiation and chemo — no ifs, ands, buts, or delays. Everything was rush, rush, rush. She told her doctor in no uncertain terms: We're not going to schedule it at all. I'm just not going to do this. I'm going to do natural things instead." The doctor replied, "Natural things just don't work." That remark made her angry. And it also made her all the more determined to get rid of her cancer using natural methods.
To make matters worse, she got no support for her decision. Her family and friends thought she was crazy to go against "competent medical advice." If she'd chosen conventional treatment, she said she would've gotten all kinds of support from her family and friends: "They would've brought me meals and waited on me hand and foot."
Without any support or encouragement, she said she had to take a hatchet and a weed whacker, so to speak, and make a trail for herself.
She said surviving cancer was "a piece of cake" compared to having to stand up for herself against the advice of conventional doctors without the support of family and friends. She completely revised her eating plan and decided to go on a yeast-free diet with lots of raw food. This caused her tumors to shrink.
Despite the lack of support, she kept her sense of humor and maintained a positive attitude. She added juicing to her eating plan and dreamed of having a high-end juicer.
When her conventional doctor told her, "You will never have another baby," she replied, "Watch me!" She promptly got pregnant with her third baby — the healthiest pregnancy she'd ever had. Finally, Melyssa's conventional doctor affirmed that she was "cancer free." In bewilderment, he said, "I've never seen this before. No tumor markers are detectable. I don't know what to say."
Melyssa noted that cancer patients are often honored with a "chemo party" to celebrate the end of their chemotherapy. She closed her remarks by saying, "I've worked my ass off for five years to become cancer free. When am I going to get my party?" The audience laughed and gave her enthusiastic applause for her magnificent accomplishment!
