My Sports Nutritionist (who I have been very happy with throughout my treatment) is highly recommending that I get some IV Vitamin based therapy to help with my recovery. In fact he would like for me to do two treatments a week for the next two weeks. Please note that he says this is for recovery purposes only, not to eliminate any future cancers/problems/etc.

I just finished my last rads a week ago today. I was one of the lucky ones as it did not hit me as hard as the vast majority. My gut it is that much of it is due to:

no chemo,
the latest IMRT/IGRT kit at Sylvester,
my physical/mental shape going into it
My diet during the treatment
plus just got lucky?


Has anyone had any experience with IV Vitamin treatments? If so, I would appreciate your advice as well as any positive/negative experiences.

No experience but it does sound plausible that extra vits might help the body recover faster but like any advice given outside your cancer team I would get their OK before beginning.

Hi! I'm all for doing what you can to help recover, but I would firstly find out what kind of vitamins - and how much, then run it by your rads guy. Why? Because you're still only a few weeks out of rads. I asked my RO when I could start on my vitamins again post radiation, and he said a month - 6 weeks as my vitamins are kick a** and have greens, and antioxidants as well. - I doubled that timeline before I started - why? Because its likely there are antioxidants in the IV therapy (there are in my vitamins) ... This interferes with the radiation doing its job. Radiation is cumulative - at this point it's probably still working a bit... Why ruin that effect.?

Eventually it will be fine - as I do believe diet has a lot to do with healing etc... But his might just be a bit too soon depending on what he's planning to give you. Good luck, and I agree - with your reasoning I too had an easier time of it than most. Take care!

Laz

Not sure if anybody here on OCF will have had IV vitamins since it's not a recognized or validated post TX regime.
I'd be surprised if your radiologist was on board with this, but why not ask? My understanding is that anti oxidants in vitamins can interfere with the radiation mop up. If the RO is on board, then no worries, If not, Then you can decide who is better in giving you advice about radiation effects: your RO or a sports nutritionist.
A clever summary I read about the divergent opinions:
[quote]Cancer patients often feel like a child in a wicked divorce custody battle. The oncologist tells the patient "Don't take that nutrition/vitamin therapy. It is nothing more than expensive urine. And it will reduce the effectiveness of my chemo and radiation therapies." The nutritionist tells the same patient "You need this nutrition/vitamin therapy to counteract that poisonous chemo or radiation therapy. [/quote]
Another factor would be to see if your health insurance company will pay for this IV treatment as they did for radiation and other cancer TXs.
I'm skeptical about it myself simply because all the hits from Dr Google show only quack docs and alternative TX scam clinics offering it.

My local cancer team is OK with it as long as it was post rads. The treatment that my Dietician is recommending is Meyer's IV Therapy. The local DO who can perform the IV treatments wants to run the following test at my first visit with him:


CBC
� CMP
� Food sensitivities and gluten intolerance
� Hepatic ABC
� Thyroid profile
� Hormone panel
� Chronic inflammation (cytoquines)
� ANA
� Diabetes Type II
� NK (activity and quantity)
� Heavy metals

My Dietician (the guy that I have been using and really like) likes the thoroughness of the evaluation but says we want repair before we need to start really digging in to other areas. His comments are that to run some of those tests this close to completing radiation therapy really doesn't make sense but would down the road.

Any thoughts on the above?

Laz,

The Meyer's cocktail (magnesium, calcium, vits B5,B6,B12 and C)should help the fatigue normally associated with radiation and other then the Vitamin C/rads issue I can't see why there would be an issue. I say go for it as long as your RO is good with it.

Your DO I think is likely wanting to run up his billables this month on the testing. The CBC, CMP, Thyroid and Hormone panel I can agree with and encourage (not so close to tx however), the others I don't think you'll find much that you wouldn't already know about your body but then again being thorough isn't a bad thing.

Nutrition is an area most of our medical professionals know little about(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/health/16chen.html) nor focus on and after treatment it is very important to build the body back up. I think it's very intelligent to work with a nutritionist after cancer as well as your Dr to get a gauge of where you're at post treatment and devise a plan to get back to where you want to be.

Keep us posted Laz.

Eric

While I agree that most doctors don't know much about nutrition, it breaks my heart to see sharp guys like Eric endorse things like the Meyers Cocktail placebo. Woo woo is still woo woo though. Here's Science Based Medicine's take of Meyers Cocktail
[quote]�Myers� Cocktail,� an intravenous infusion of calcium, magnesium, and several vitamins, has all the characteristics of snake oil. There is no reason to predict that it would benefit anyone not suffering from a frank deficiency of one or more of its ingredients, the combination of which is arbitrary. All are easily absorbed through the GI tract, thus raising the question of why they are given intravenously, which is both more dangerous and more expensive than a pill.

The obvious answers are two: the �placebo effect� is enhanced by the invasive procedure, and it is more lucrative for the quack. The Myers� Cocktail champion, Alan Gaby, a former faculty member at Bastyr University, promotes it as a near panacea:

Conditions that frequently responded included asthma attacks, acute migraines, fatigue (including chronic fatigue syndrome), fibromyalgia, acute muscle spasm, upper respiratory tract infections, chronic sinusitis, and seasonal allergic rhinitis. A small number of patients with congestive heart failure, angina, chronic urticaria, hyperthyroidism, dysmenorrhea, or other conditions were also treated with the Myers� and most showed marked improvement. Many relatively healthy patients chose to receive periodic injections because it enhanced their overall well being for periods of a week to several months.

If Dr. Katz lacks the street savvy to recognize the concoction for what it is, he might consider the results of his own trial of the Myers� Cocktail for patients with fibromyalgia. Although his 2006 abstract tortures the data to suggest efficacy, none was found. Since the treatment is implausible in the first place, this amounts to pretty solid evidence against it. Nevertheless, nearly two years later Dr. Katz still peddles Myers� Cocktail at the IMC, or so we gather from the website. He must have �thought more fluidly about the evidence.�[/quote]

What's next: copper bracelets ?
Charm

Thanks for the frank discusion on the topic. The problem as I see it is as follows:

For the standard medical community 80% works and 20% is questionable (take your pick why: Big Pharma, tradition, legal, etc)

For the homeopathic community 80% is bull**** and 20% actually works.

Unfortunately for both, few if any know which fall into the 20% categories above.

The way I look at it is that it is not going to do any harm (with the exception of $$). I am not substituting the IV treatments for anything that my RO is recommending, just additive to the recovery process.

Also to add to the comment above. When I got to the Dayton Medical Center, I first met with one of the Doctors there (her title was Metabolic Medicine/Alternative Therapies PhD Natural Health Doctorate) who proceeded to give me a "Life Blueprint" test.

What that test was pricking my finger for a small sample of blood which she put on a slide that was magnified onto large LCD display. She then started telling me things about my blood "I can tell that you have stress in your life", "Did you mother ever have a miscarriage". I almost got out of my chair to leave the room. I ended up getting into a debate with her for 10 minutes on what a "Life Blueprint" really is (my comment was that it was the same as reading tarot cards or tea leaves). Fortunately when I met with the DO after meeting with her, he must have talked with her as he listened to me speak about my prognosis and said that a Myers Cocktail would be fine. He did not push the other tests on me which would have been an entertaining conversation to say the least.

One point that I found interesting, was that I was telling him that Sylvester (University of Miami) has the latest IMRT/IGRT kit and how I believe it made a big difference in the side effects of my treatment. He then told me that the cancer center at Aventura has a radiation machine that can track the targeted tumor in real time during each Rad treatment (his comment was so that when you breath or move, the machine automatically adjusts).

I am pretty sure that this is not true as I understand that with IMRT/IGRT, they do a CT scan at the beginning of each rad treatment to lock in the location for that specific rad treatment however it does not compensate for any realtime movements that one would make during the respective session. Am I correct or is he correct?

BTW - The entire visit cost me $430 (AAGGHH!!!)

Thanks - Steve

I have been and always will be an advocate for nutrition and supplements, both vitamin, mineral and herbal. Where I don't believe they are a cure for cancer I do believe that getting optimum levels through diet and supplements is key to the body performing at its peak levels.

I look at what's in the Meyer's cocktail (magnesium, calcium, Vitamin C, B5, B6, B12) and how those vitamins and minerals work in the body, especially during recovery, and see that it will only help in the healing process.

Magnesium, B6 and B12 have been shown to increase energy levels in the body and each have been used in studies to fight the effects of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. B6 and B12, along with Niacin (B3) are also the key ingredients to popular energy drinks along with caffiene for good reason...they work. You find them in huge quantities in those energy shots for a reason however (particularly B12), they do not absorb well through the digestive track. B12's best delivery methods are IV and sublingual.

Magnesium is involved in over 300 biological reactions in the body and is an often overlooked and deficient mineral in a large percentage of Americans. Bodybuilders and top athletes use magnesium to help in muscle recovery (normally with a product called ZMA, Zinc, B6 and Magnesium Aspartate) and help energy production in the body. Calcium and Magnesium work synergistically in the body which is why they should be taken together and there is a long history of Vitamin C and its health benefits.

Our bodies need vitamins and minerals to function, that's why we eat, sadly as a society our diets are now severely lacking in key nutrients our bodies need to function. Every top athlete will tell you the benefits of proper nutrition and supplementing, you want your body to perform like a high performance machine, make sure you are giving it the proper fuel. During recovery your body is hypermetabolic (all of us old timers know this) and is burning through calories and nutrients at a very fast pace, it only makes sense to load up in my opinion, especially on the things that will help energy levels.

If you browse through my earliest posts on OCF, you'll see the struggles I had with Cancer Related Fatigue and it wasn't until I started supplementing that I had success in dealing with it. Even when on a fairly high dose of fentanyl (which slows the central nervous system, depressing the cardio vascular system causing poor circulation AND fatigue!) I had success using 5Hour energy shots to properly function for a few hours a day. After finding the active ingredients (B3,B6,B12 and Caffiene) I began supplementing those in my diet (Kola Nut for Caffiene and then taking flush free Niacin, B6 and Sublingual B12) along with magnesium and a score of other supplements. I attribute my nutrition plan and supplements for being able to keep the pace I set for myself and for the physique I've been able to build despite my eating challenges.

Now I don't believe that vitamins and minerals can cure cancer nor do I believe they are a miracle cure for anything, but they are important which is why I will always advocate their usage no matter what delivery method is used.

I do like copper bracelets though, they complete my wife's Wonder Woman outfit so they have given me a sense of well being among other things...

hahaha!

Eric