Community | June 09, 2009 | 9 comments

Most cancer patients seek natural remedies

source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31088185/

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With much of her lower body consumed by cancer, Leslee Flasch finally faced the truth: The herbal supplements and special diet were not working.

"I want this thing cut out from me. I want it out," she told her family.

But it was too late. Her rectal cancer — potentially curable earlier on — had invaded bones, tissue, muscle, skin. The 53-year-old Florida woman could barely sit, and constantly bled and soiled herself.

"It was terrible," one doctor said. "The pain must have been excruciating."

Flasch had sought a natural cure. Instead, a deadly disease ran its natural course. And the herb peddlers who sold her hope in a bottle?

"Whatever money she had left in life, they got most of it," said a sister, Sharon Flasch. "They prey on the sick public with the belief that this stuff can help them, whether they can or can't."

Some people who try unproven remedies risk only money. But people with cancer can lose their only chance of beating the disease by skipping conventional treatment or by mixing in other therapies. Even harmless-sounding vitamins and "natural" supplements can interfere with cancer medicines or affect hormones that help cancer grow.


Yet they are extremely popular with cancer patients, who crave control over their disease and want to do everything they can to be healthy — emotional needs that make them vulnerable to deceptive claims. Studies estimate that 60 percent of cancer patients try unconventional remedies and about 40 percent take vitamin or dietary supplements, which do not have to be proved safe or effective and are not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
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9 comments // Most cancer patients seek natural remedies

  • twitterbot
  • Tyrannous
  • Elligirl
    • 0
      Elligirl  

    • The article doesn't mention how much the conventional treatments would have cost her in comparison, or how much better they would have served her than the route she chose.

    • 2 years ago
  • dontipo
  • sybaritical
    • 0
      sybaritical  

    • My mother survived Liver and Bowel cancer 6 yeas ago using a combination of eastern and western medicine. At one point she was functioning with less than 15% of her liver intact, but nutritional supplements helped her rejuvenate it by over 20% to an operable condition, in under three weeks.

    • 2 years ago
  • MissAmanda
    • 0
      MissAmanda  

    • I feel like cancer isn't a very natural thing, so the body's ability to fight it "naturally" isn't as strong. Cancer is something that seems to have developed as the human population and lifestyle developed/continues to develop with the environment, food, electronics, pollution, etc changing from what they once were.

      i'm not sure if I would believe in herbs and vitamins to help me if I had cancer. those are things you should take to prevent cancer, stay healthy, eat right, exercise, try to get out into fresh air as much as you can...

    • 2 years ago
  • elalovex3
    • 0
      elalovex3  
    • MissAmanda:

      I completely agree. I think that cancer can be way too strong for even some FDA approved medicines to handle, so taking herbal meds and vitamins may give someone with cancer the false hope. I don't blame those with cancer for trying though, because I know that if I were ever in a situation like that, I would want to try as much as I could to survive.

    • 2 years ago
  • azulagua
    • 0
      azulagua  

    • there are a lot of us out here who will continue to seek alternative care...so tell us what she used to treat herself so we can do it differently.

    • 2 years ago
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