> Health and Disease > Cancer > alternative medicine for cancer

When I was asked to write an article about my experience with cancer, I felt uncomfortable with how people may react.

We are each unique individuals who respond in unique ways. So, the objective of this article is to tell you what I did and give you encouragement, should you or a loved one be faced with the life threatening disease that is cancer.

Diagnosed with cancer nearly 20 years ago, I was offered the conventional medical treatments like chemotherapy and possibly surgery. While I was reflecting on these, I remembered how my father used to shop in health food stores as early as the mid-sixties. He’d buy vitamin E, lecithin, linden bark and whole wheat bread. This was unusual in the late sixties.

I decided to visit a health food store–the kind with old wood floors, the constant and varying scent of herbal teas, bulk bins just about everywhere and an old peanut mill in the far left hand corner.

At the time, I had completed a bachelor’s degree in science and was working on my master’s degree. Despite my comments, criticisms and my sense of scientific superiority, the young clerk at the health food store was very attentive. When I finally admitted I had cancer she gently but firmly suggested that I might need to change my lifestyle dramatically. She placed a book in my hands--a book about the cancer cure used in the clinic of a medical doctor in Scandinavia. The doctor’s name was Christina Nolfi (I may have the spelling wrong after 20 years!). Dr Nolfi had studied with the German healer, Rudolph Breuss.

Food for Thought

I devoured Nolfi’s book in one sitting. She suggested that a very restrictive diet–a diet made up exclusively of non-cooked vegetable-based foods and vegetable juices–could give the body the chance to cure itself. It made so much sense that it hurt.

After Nolfi’s book I read How to Get Well by Paavo Airola, a naturopath.

It took me a week to digest Airola’s book. I decided to follow its recommendations and start a vegetable juice fast–something Nolfi and her mentor Breuss had been recommending all along.

Airola suggested the use of vitamin and mineral supplements along with fasting and dietary change. Since I was studying biochemistry, I decided to contact Dr Linus Pauling--a two-time Nobel Prize laureate and a great promoter of vitamin C. To my surprise, Dr Pauling returned my call and sent me a box full of scientific studies showing the role of vitamins and minerals in preventing cancer. The doses were above the recommended daily allowance, and these studies suggested that vitamin and mineral supplements help the body in fighting cancer cells.

The bottom line is that I changed my diet radically to a vegan diet. I added amounts of vitamins and minerals that some would have considered toxic at the time (times do change!). I went through phases of juice fasting–at least one week out of four–to help my body fight the cancer cells on its own terms. I also took fresh vegetable juices daily. I decided that cancer could be cured and that I was in control–not the cancer.

The Battle Won

A year and a half after my initial diagnosis, the cancer was no longer detectable and my energy level was higher than it had ever been.

Almost 20 years later I am still in excellent health, the father of four small children and someone who has devoted much of his time to lecturing, researching and teaching in the field of natural health and nutrition.

In treating cancer, try to get the collaboration of an oncologist (the cancer specialist) and a holistic physician (naturopathic doctor or holistic MD). It’s not easy to get an oncologist to cooperate with biological medicine. Many will try to discourage the use of natural approaches to cancer and simply use the information given by an extremely restrictive corporate medical structure.

The protocol I now recommend for cancer patients–whether they decide to undergo conventional cancer therapy or not–is based on my personal experience with the disease and over 15 years of clinical experience:

1. Follow a vegan diet (no animal products or byproducts).


2. Avoid all artificial additives (artificial colors, sweeteners, flavoring agents or stabilizers).


3. Avoid refined and processed foods.


4. Exercise daily.


5. Consume one to two tablespoons (15-30 mL) of cold-pressed organic flax seed oil daily.


6. Consume freshly extracted vegetable juice at least once daily, ideally two to three times.


7. Garlic should be consumed daily. Odorless garlic such as aged garlic extract is highly recommended.


8. Detoxify with herbs and dietary changes if you are strong enough.


9. Certain vitamins and mineral supplements can be used to help the body in its healing process:
   
• Vitamin C 1,000 milligrams or more according to need


• Vitamin E (ideally with mixed tocopherols) 400 international units or more daily. Care should be taken if suffering from hypertension or on blood thinning medication.


• Beta-carotene (with other carotenoids if possible though not necessary if one or two glasses of carrot juice and/or green food supplements are used daily); 25,000 IU two or three times daily.


• Selenium 200 micrograms daily.


• Zinc 25--50 mg daily.
10. The daily use of a green food or superfood blend.


11. Alkyl glycerol supplement is very useful if using chemotherapy or radiation therapy.


12. Drink high quality water; either spring, filtered (reverse osmosis) or distilled.

Daniel Crisafi has a doctorate in biochemistry and is a master herbalist residing in Quebec.

Source: alive #212, June 2000