Simply; what supplies can we give our bodies to do their job the best, specifically related to what we know about head and neck cancers? For instance, we know that head and neck cancers express COX2, we also know that those with metastasis have excess of the same. Hence an inhibitor that prevents our bodies from expressing COX2 in excessive amounts MAY be of some benefit. The jury is out for sure, but I have read hundreds of articles that deal with head and neck cancers at the cellular level, at the biochemical level, at the mitochondria level, at the protein activators and receptor levels. None of these alone provides definitive answer to how do we prevent this from recurring. But there are clues if you sift through it all. Thousands of researchers around the world weekly publish on the minutia of all this, I fall asleep at night trying to read what I can, and absorb what it all means to me. From these many, many small scientific studies, pieces of an answer reside. Pieces of bad news also reside there as well. Recent studies in Norway regarding the ploidy of cells (diploid, tetraploid, and aneuploid), MAY dictate which lesions transform to malignancy and which do not, they also shed light on which people will have recurrences and which will not, even more they MAY describe which patients will die and which will not. These studies are very preliminary, but as a questioner, I read everything I can. From that I come to simple deductions, such as the COX2 inhibition idea which has been tossed around by many. I weight the down side, and then, particularly in things where there is little to lose; I add them to my life if they make sense. If in 6 months a different perspective is adopted by the many researchers I follow, my regime will change as well. But the short of it is, that we are biological machines, that have all these microscopic level chemistries and interactions going on, each promoting or preventing another event at the cellular level. The aim of chemoprevention is to promote the good events and limit the bad ones. As to reading more about it, I cannot direct you to a specific link, as no one has gone far enough to make hard conclusions. But hundreds of articles each have shown a small piece, and from those I have started what I do. There are a few more things which I intend to add in the next few months as I correspond with various researchers, and eliminate any that pose downsides. Is what I am doing going to prevent my recurrence? I do not know. But as a science based person, I wish to apply what I can learn in the HOPE that these things will influence, some small reaction in my body that will keep me kicking. I have had some emails from people that think I am ill advised, and that perhaps a greater plan will chose my fate regardless of my actions or inactions. Those that eventually read of my demise will be able to say these were useless paths. I hope that they are wrong. New discoveries, though very small, are made every day of the week. We never thought we would map the human genome, but it has come to pass, as will the understanding of the cascade of cellular events that causes malignancy and what we can do to block the cascade. Perhaps it will happen in my lifetime, likely not. But that does not preclude a person who looks at a partially finished puzzle or equation from doing a little precision guessing, and figuring out at least part of what the answer is. You do not have to wait till the last piece is in the puzzle to see what the final image will be. There are many pieces already put together, and from these, those that dabble in the science of chemoprevention, extrapolate plans and test them out. Each time getting more data and coming closer to an answer. I'm just getting in on the game early. But at best it is a precision guess.
