My other half is well into alternative medicine and would like me to go for Functional Medicine. So I found this clinic just 20 miles away from us (the only one in the UK that does oncothermia) and have enquired about treatment offered.
The clinic is called Quantum (quantumclinic.co.uk).
Has anyone any experience of this kind of functional medicine or tried oncothermia in addition to your SOC?
Any comments or thoughts are welcome, thanks,
Ben
With respect to your other half, here’s what wikipedia (if you’re inclined to believe wikipedia) says about Functional Medicine:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun...
They allude to pseudoscience. Here’s what one of our members has to say about that:
healthunlocked.com/advanced...
Independent of websites, there is the scientific method and straight-up critical thinking (I know this leans towards SOC, but this is just my 2c around how I would assess things):
— do the claims have a plausible mechanism? is that mechanism consistent with established medicine/science? are there no internal contradictions?
— have the treatments and approaches been published in peer-reviewed journals? if not…why not? any claim should withstand scrutiny, and frankly should invite it to gain credibility… are the claims repeatable by independent researchers?
One part of your question was, has anyone tried Functional Medicine? Well, back when I used a naturopath/holistic integrative medicine person for my PCP, it wasn’t called that. But this person is no longer part of my trusted circle, to be as polite as I can be about it. You might want to see my details about one experience I had, in this thread (search for lokibear):
healthunlocked.com/advanced...
Best of luck to you, Benkaymel , by all means please consider that this is all FWIW. I always endorse healthy skepticism for everything, in particular anything you hear me say…😎.
Benkaymel BTW in my comment, “With respect to…” is intended to mean “With all due respect”, and not “In terms of”. Wanted to make sure b/c the latter sounds … disrespectful, and that’s not what I meant.
Thanks for your perspective, loki. I too am sceptical and am fully aware that most guys on these PCa forums are very much in favour of mainstream medicine proven by RCTs and I totally understand the reason for that. Tall_Allen has a lot of knowledge and experience, so I respect his recommendations.
I guess I'm slightly more open minded to the idea that there could be alternative approaches that may help me as a terminally ill cancer patient, but I'm certainly maintaining my drugs prescribed by my NHS CO.
I doubt I'll go to the Functional Medicine clinic, but the oncothermia interested me because I've heard others state that extreme heat (above 106 F) causes cancer cells to die. I don't know if that's true or not.
short term exposure to moderately high, but not damaging heat, such as 106 F via hot baths or sauna can trigger hormesis responses (beneficial stressors) that are beneficial to health. Pretty good data with elderly Norwegian sauna users, for example. Not sure if Heat Shock Proteins play a mechanistic role or just what. Ask for research references to support their claims and proceed sensibly. Short term cold exposures are also beneficial. The Swedish are onto something.
Thanks, I am starting to have regular hot baths (don't have easy access to a sauna, unfortunately) so hopefully it will help.
I think that’s smart to maintain the NHS drugs while at least exploring alternatives. A lot of guys do that on our forum - regardless, even when I take OTC sleep supplements (e.g.), I do a lot of research and titrate new supplements very slowly to be sure of things.
As for extreme heat (which, strictly speaking, 106 F is not), I’ve not researched it, but my knee-jerk is that if it had legs, we’d be hearing a lot more about it. It would require a very sophisticated delivery mechanism, it seems to me.
Thinking out loud here, wondering how could we do this: From a physics perspective, you can’t really “package” heat per se — heat is a transfer of energy from a source to a sink. It’s not the energy itself, it’s a process that relies on differences in temperature (i.e. the average motion of atomic particles). So to initiate a heat process within the body, we would need
(1) a way to package something capable of generating high-temperature relative to body temp, which can…
(2) ideally target cancer cells only, but …
(3) remain at body temperature until we can somehow trigger a (chemical?) process that…
(4) results in a higher temperature (e.g. 106 F) than the surrounding cells, and finally…
(5) involves a (chemical?) reaction that has the correct “duration of effect” —> it lasts long enough to kill cancer but not so long that it continues generating heat that damages surrounding tissue.
Items #1 and #4 don’t seem all that difficult. Item #3 might be a bit tricky. Item #2 can use a ligand much like we already do with Lu-177 and other theranostics.
Item #5 is important (and, again, I’d think tricky) because, even if we deliver such a package precisely to a tumor cell, the generated heat can regardless be conducted thru surrounding tissue and organs, even thru the blood. This, I’d think, is undesirable…so the mechanism has to be really precise. How do we know what the correct duration of effect is? Wouldn’t it vary depending the size and genotype of tumor, the surrounding biological environment, and a dozen other things? Sounds very tricky.
Now, this is just my knee-jerk off-the-top-of-head stuff. Perhaps Quantum has come up with a brilliant means to do everything need to address all of my “requirements”. But, it seems to me that we’ve already done something very similar with theranostics; the difference is that it’s not “heat” per se, it’s gamma radiation from alpha or beta emitters. So, using radioactivity vs a chemical reaction. And since it’s so effective, and since the problems with the duration of the activity, range of the effect and thus the heat conduction issue are to a large extent solved, I’d imagine that a radioactivity-based treatment would be considered superior to heat-based, and it’d be difficult to get funding for trials.
Now, if you’ve ever seen our protagonist Mal, on the sci-fi classics Firefly and Serendipity, here’s what we might hear:
Me: “ … these problems are largely solved with theranostics…”
Mal: “You’ll find some disagreement on that point.”
I couldn’t find a video with that exact quote, which is one of my faves. But there is at least this:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=kVyCo...
I found the HU thread on heat treatment (which btw, I'm also sceptical of):
healthunlocked.com/advanced...
However, oncothermia is actually quite established and widespread. Here is a link to the website which includes details of the process of applying the heat:
oncotherm.com/oncothermia-c...
Yeah, that HU thread is … wow. No comment, beyond the obvious: I’m pretty sure that if hot showers got rid of mets, then nobody would have any mets. Negative magnetic fields, indeed.
Thank you for the OncoTherm link, but I typically don’t rely on dot-com’s, so I only spent a few minutes researching it. I did read the “Basic Principles of the Method” writeup, and it honestly sounds like techno-word-salad. There’s only one section that I’d call out:
(it is) not used as a sole therapy. Usually it is combined with chemotherapy, radiotherapy or other therapies and their combination.
No doubt. I’m sure it works much better when combined with SOC 🤔
Ben, while I’m not shy about expressing my opinions, I honestly don’t have the standing, background or inclination to discourage anyone from trying stuff. I do think all of us are looking for something resembling hope, but I’m afraid there is no lack of “cures” to exploit that for profit.
I don’t know if Quantum and OncoTherm are legit or not; I can only speak for me that I’ll stick with clinical trials and SOC…plus a sulforaphane supplement and more than my share of dark chocolate 😎
Hi Ben,
Been away from the forum for a bit with my f/u in Cleveland this week, and my pre-winter projects. I thought this article might me appropriate:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
What we do know is that cancer cells die at a temperature about 105 degrees. I have never used it or thought about hyperthermia since I had SBRT to my oligometastatic lesions.... Way more positive proof using SBRT on tumors. I do not think it would hurt anything by doing it and might help...
I do enjoy the sauna at the Y when I am there, but that is about aches from my aging body... There are ongoing clinical trials on hyperthermia.. Your path...Your choice...
Don Pescado
NP, I agree. What do we all have to loose! If mainstream and alternative came together we would probably all be much healthier!
I agree. Some will say that they have all the science and listen to them. I advise researching SOC and alternatives and choose your own path... Good luck on your journey...
Fish
Thanks for the article, Don. I'm hoping to get RT to some of my mets but in the meantime, will have regular hot baths.
I’m with your wife… go for it Ben! We have an infra red sauna that my husband uses 3 or 4 times per week. We also have a wonderful functional doctor that gives jim high dose vitamin C infusions.
Thanks Miomarito, your husbands Bio looks quite similar to my history in some areas (although I think he's stronger than me!). It's so difficult knowing what to do for the best. Most people on these forums are anti alternative medicines calling it pseudoscience practised by quacks. I just want to do the best for my cancer.
The “Fight Prostate Cancer” group on health unlocked is more in line with alternative options
BTW did you try the hyperthermia treatment?
Thanks KocoPr, I didn't do the hyperthermia treatment as it only applies to localised PCa in the prostate and I am high volume metastatic. I have engaged with the functional medicine doctor though and have started a number of supplements as recommended. I'm also about to try mistletoe therapy.
I wish you luck! I also have done alternative therapy before and during SOC. Obviously the before as alternative alone may have slowed my cancer down but hard to say. One thing though it did kill my cancer, but SOC isn’t stopping it either.
I believe in a complementary approach.
Benk, there are sites out there that follow a more holistic, individualized protocol for cancer. I am on both, taking the most, and the best I can from each site. Why have a closed mind when it comes to cancer. My hope is to to have an entire team of knowledgeable people behind my husband, expert guidance, so to say. I foget who it was on this site, but he said, I throw a lot of spaghetti against the wall and hope some of it sticks. …you’re not alone Benk❤️
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