Good morning

What integrative therapy have you used? Or preventative measures have you taken after your cancer treatment?
To both promote health and hopefully prevent cancer from returning? Did you take any supplements or herbal remedies? Start eating more antioxidants, etc?

There are many well meaning people with lots of suggestions for my husband. But really, are there things out there that really do help? That he should be doing after his surgery. Someone suggested chaga tea. What are your thoughts on it?

We feel very lucky that hubby only has to have the tumor removed on the side of his tongue. Dana Faber will watch his lymph nodes but have seen no involvement. He had a biopsy 3 years ago. That had to be repeated within a week to take a much larger amount. It was pre cancerous and they got clear margins. This time he wasn’t as lucky except that it was caught very early. He will be in a lot of pain from the surgery. And will be eating soft foods for awhile. But they don’t feel there will be a long term effect on his speech.

Hi Bonita!

Not much really, but probably the biggest positive thing I did was to discover my own cancer all except for one, around 7, which I immediately brought to my oncologist and or surgeons attention. Once, and I don’t reccoment it, is that I wanted to bypass all the delay, and scheduled my own fine needle aspiration biopsy with my pathologists. That cancer was positive, so I had to go to my doctors to tell them. I guess they were puzzled cause I had like 10 doctors some not associated with each other, so no questions were asked.

The other is to have scheduled follow-up visits, where they’ll do palpable exams, scopes and scans like a PET, CT, MRI...I must have had about 35 scans, mostly PET scans. I had so many doctors to follow-up with that it took maybe one or two a week. It still does, but down to a lesser amount being a few doctors moved, but it’s still a lot.

I try to follow all their directives. Mostjy these days being i’m 10 years, but just cleared, it’s side effects from treatment such as neuropathy, dry mouth to a lesser degree, etc.

I haven’t really found any preventive strategies except to get enough sleep, try to eat right and see my doctors. I haven’t really found any secret potions. There is some talk, and guess trials, with Japanese teas, some type Japanese mushroom, but nothing sound.

There was trials with a drug, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor i was gonna do with my oncologist until they said it didn’t work. I forget the name off hand, but it was with a doctor in Atlanta, Emory University, who’s has in his backgrounds chemoprevention work. It’s something like Dr. Mung Doon Sheen. I killed it on the spelling though.

https://winshipcancer.emory.edu/bios/faculty/shin-dong-moon.html

Dr Shin Dong Moon

I took advantage of not mentioning not smoking, even alcohol for that matter, as they now say, it’s a negative impact on health too, besides a certain amount that may cause cancer, they say even alcohol in mouth wash as I believe Colgate was in a lawsuit in Australia, in addition, poor mouth care and hygene.

To add, you may find more under the term “Chemoprevention.” This is a medical term used, which is about helping prevent recurrences, such as with smoking, etc. and getting the body back to working order before treatment.

Good luck

OCF is strictly a science based nonprofit organization. Only tried and true methods are what is suggested to our members or allowed to remain on our online public forum. Theres a million and one things out that people will tell you about but in reality the item is almost always not beneficial in any way. Sometimes the suggested item is harmful and can hurt or even kill people. When people are told of a cancer diagnosis, too many claims come from everyone having a great "Aunt Mary" who's neighbor's daughter, mailman, etc did this or that and it worked for them. Usually its a different kind of cancer that is not treated at all like OC. These words of wisdom are very seldom giving the listener complete and correct info. Stories get mixed along with bogus cures and 3rd world country's "special" clinics. Too many scams are out there to try making profit from sick people. Thats absolutely disgusting to me!!! On OCF, we prefer to completely avoid these type of discussions. Unless something has been FDA approved and scientifically proven its best to not bring it up on our site. There are many, many websites devoted to "natural" and/or "secret" cancer curing things. Unless the website is monitored and carries the seal from Health on the Net, take their advice with a grain of salt!!! Here in the US, its not uncommon to see cancer curing products being advertised, even coming up on reputable websites. This is one of the reasons OCF does not accept advertising. OCF does NOT want to be associated with any of the sites who are promoting fake cures. Some FDA pending approval items are worded to make it appear as if they are approved and work after passing thru all government required regulations. This is discussed more in the OCF rules which every member agrees to (TWICE!) when becoming a member of our organization. On the bottom left of any page click on the small white "Forum Rules" to read more about our anti-scam policies.

As far as things to "prevent" recurrences go, if there was something like that available we all would know about it. If you want to check certain things to make sure they work or do what is promised Quackwatch.org is a great place to start. Check out an old post and its links that give you more in depth articles about consumers being advised to use caution with online websites making false claims.

Thread with links to FDA warning the public to use caution with online cancer claims/scams

Here is an article posted from The Oral Cancer Foundation in regards to ChemoPrevention:

https://oralcancerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/chemoprevention.pdf

Thank you Paul. So I guess being aware of your body and it’s changes as well as following Drs order is very important.

Yup I understand there are quacks and that is why I asked. To be honest I was curious to see if anyone had ever pursued anything with the Dana Faber Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies and Healthy Living. Dana Faber also had a link to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centers Integrative therapy information and a number of other links. I didn’t mean to break any rules. Sorry.

Bonita,

Defiantly! I just saw my nephrologist today who I’ve been seeing since I had septic shock from chemo in 2009. Yesterday was my oncologist visit whom I’ve seen the same amount of of time. Without my doctors I doubted I would be writing now. They keep me on track too!

I know of a doctor, Head of Oncology for Head and Neck Cancer, Dr Robert Haddad, at Dana Farber, who I never met. He worked with some of my doctors I believe, so I read his book, abstracts, and follow some of his work.