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Herbs for Health and Healing: Cancer

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Cancer

Although there is still no cure for cancer—pharmaceutical or herbal—medical researchers are busy searching the plant world for an answer to this plague. Medical science already uses compounds derived from the Pacific yew tree to treat ovarian cancer and from mayapple for certain lung and testicular cancers. While these toxic herbs are not suitable for home remedies, there are many herbs that can help you ward off cancer in the first place.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute's Designer Foods program are currently investigating cancer-fighting compounds in foods and herbs. Researchers there and elsewhere are coming up with some interesting findings. Research conducted at the University of Illinois in Chicago, for example, has shown that thyme contains 40 cancer-preventing substances and sweet basil has more than 30. And this research is not limited to the United States.

In a study conducted at the National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad, India, chronic smokers took turmeric daily for a month. Their bodies converted and eliminated three to eight times more carcinogens than smokers who did not eat this spice. Because of this study, researchers are encouraging Indians—whether they smoke or not—to increase their consumption of turmeric. In New Jersey, researchers at Rutgers University speculate that regular use of even small amounts of culinary herbs like thyme, basil and turmeric can reduce your risk of cancer.

Garlic may also protect against some forms of cancer. A survey of 4,000 Italians and Chinese was reported at the First World Congress on the Health Significance of Garlic in Washington, D.C., in 1990. The results of this survey led researchers to conclude that people who eat lots of garlic and its relatives, including onions, leeks, chives and scallions—at least 25 to 50 pounds a year over 20 years—have fewer cases of stomach cancer.

Other studies lend support to the healing powers of garlic. Mei Xing, M.D., of Shandong Medical College, for example, found that the residents of two towns in China had similar lifestyles and diets with one exception—the inhabitants of Gangshan ate about six cloves of raw garlic daily while their neighbors in Qixia ate none. The residents of Gangshan also reported ten times fewer cases of stomach cancer than those who live in Qixia. In the laboratory, both raw and dried garlic have been shown to destroy tumor cells. It takes about three hours for garlic compounds to enter the cell, but once in place they get to work almost immediately.

HERBS FOR TREATING CANCER

If you do get cancer, there are some herbs that can be used to reduce the effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Keith Block, M.D., medical director of the Cancer Care Program at Edgewater Medical Center in Chicago, is researching how herbs can be used in conjunction with standard cancer treatments. He has found that cancer patients undergoing standard treatment have fewer side effects, such as hair loss and nausea, when they take herbs that benefit the immune system (see "Boosting Immunity" in chapter 41).

So far, Siberian ginseng has not been proven to have any direct effect on 17085PG109 cancer cells, but it can increase general resistance and improve side effects resulting from chemotherapy and radiation. In Russia in 1964, a tincture of Siberian ginseng was given to 38 people with similar types of cancer of the mouth an hour before they went through 14 days of radiation therapy. They experienced numerous benefits, including better sleep, an improved appetite and even a renewed interest in life, as well as normalization of blood pressure, pulse and breathing rates. Also, the wounds that resulted from the cancer healed approximately one month before those of the people in a similar group not taking the herbs. The researchers concluded that Siberian ginseng can counter the harmful effects of radiation treatment and increase the rate of healing. Two years later, another Russian experiment showed that Siberian ginseng decreased the toxic effects of chemotherapy used to treat breast cancer.

Laboratory studies in China and thousands of years of experience have paved the way for various herbs to be used in combination with Western drug treatments in Chinese hospitals. The herbs given to people with cancer include astragalus, ligustrum and Siberian ginseng.

In numerous studies on astragulus and ligustrum, these two herbs improved the immune response in most of the people with cancer who took one or the other or both. Researchers even concluded that astragulus contains "one or more extremely potent naturally occurring immune stimulants." At the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, researchers have found that immune cells taken from people with AIDS and cancer became more active in the test tube and that these people felt physically and emotionally strengthened after being treated with astragalus.

Medical doctors in Japan are also more open to using herbs than are their counterparts in North America. After the National Cancer Research Center in Tokyo discovered in the 1980s that shiitake mushrooms could be used to shrink cancerous tumors, Japanese hospitals began giving their patients a shiitake concentrate to increase their immune response. Japanese doctors also used an extract of a mushroom called polporus to improve the expected cancer survival rate by a few years.

One herb that has had a lively history is pau d'arco. This medicinal plant has been used since the time of the Incas and the Aztecs to treat various immune-related problems, including poisonous snakebites. In the 1960s, the Brazilian press published reports that included hundreds of testimonials that declared pau d'arco a cancer cure, and people were soon ripping the bark off trees throughout the country, even climbing into the Botanical Gardens in Campinas to do so. These people were spurred on by the miraculous story of a young girl in Rio de Janeiro who was cured of cancer after an angel visited her and told her about the bark. A newspaper account also told of University of São Paulo botanist Valter Accorsi, Ph.D., who daily dispensed the bark for free to crowds that sometimes numbered 2,000 people! Unfortunately, the sensational stories made most scientists cringe, and the little research that was done at places like the São Paulo Hospital of Clinics was short-lived.

A colleague of Dr. Accorsi, however, was also reporting success using pau d'arco. The award-winning botanist Teodoro Meyer, Ph.D., had been a professor at the Miguel Lillo Institute and Herbarium in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, where he had supplied herbs for study by pharmaceutical companies in the United States. He developed an alcohol-free elixir that he distributed as a treatment for immune-related disorders, including cancer. He observed the effects of this elixir on the people he gave it to, and reported an improvement in their "general state and their spirits." Dr. Meyer died in 1972 after years of frustrated attempts to convince the world of pau d'arco's healing abilities. One of the few clinical studies on pau d'arco, done in 1980 in South America, showed that this herb reduced most of the symptoms, especially the pain, in people who had various types of cancer. The only reported side effect was a few cases of nausea.

When researchers at the National Cancer Institute studied pau d'arco for use as a cancer treatment, they found that it contained only moderate tumor-inhibiting abilities, but did produce a definite immune response. Other research has shown that the herb is sometimes effective in fighting cancer, malaria, viruses and bacterial infections. Herbalists use it to treat such immune-related disorders as asthma, rheumatism, eczema, psoriasis, shingles and yeast infections. Some success has also been reported with diabetes. For more on the history and science of pau d'arco, see Kenneth Jones's book pau d'arco.

For suggestions on dealing with side effects you might experience while undergoing chemotherapy or radiation, such as digestion problems, nausea and headaches, see chapters 27, 37, and 15, respectively.

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