LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Cancer Survival

Can This Simple Test Really Tell Me How Healthy I Am?

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While no single test can give a complete picture of health, some tests are unquestionably a better part of looking at overall health.
Body composition testing using a 4 lead device (as opposed to handheld or stand-on body fat meters) can tell you how well hydrated you are, your body fat, your BMR (calories burned at rest) and how healthy your individual cells are.
Another measure it gives it a value called phase angle.  While those who are not electricians can have a hard time grasping the technical stuff, the simple idea is that phase angle values give us an idea of how likely we are to survive bad stuff that happens to us–cancer, surgery, dialysis, AIDS, etc…
The higher the phase angle, the better.  This particular study adds weight to the use of phase angle to determine how likelihood of survival with cancer.  Specifically:
  • Patients with a phase angle in the lower 5th percentile had ower nutritional and functional status, lower quality of life and increased mortality.
  • The phase angle was also a stronger indicator of 6-month survival than were malnutrition and disease severity.

In other words, the standard indicators of cancer survival were not as good as something as simple as checking phase angle.

Call our office if you’d like to have this test done.  It’s simple, quick and inexpensive ($25).

Brand New Cancer Treatment Drugs; How Good Are They?

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Cancer is one of the scariest things we can and will face in our lifetimes.  It’s a very emotional time and we become susceptible to hopes and infer things unsaid from our doctors.

Some cancers we do exceedingly well with treatment.  Others, not so much so.  And for those that we don’t have effective treatments for the immediate future continues to look bleak.  We just don’t have good options for treating cancers like pancreatic, colon, advanced breast and prostate cancer.  And do not mistake good outcomes promoted by various natural groups for cancers that were actually “pre-” cancerous and not likely to progress to full cancer (which happens commonly with breast and prostate cancers).

For those tougher cancers, this means that we hear hope when hope might not really be given by our cancer doctors.  (A recent study looking at 102 cancer center advertisements found that most ads used emotional appeals / hope instead of information about treatments–only 2% of the ads tried to “quantify” the potential benefits or mentioned risks)  Oncologists are human.  It takes a pretty detached physician to look a cancer patient in the eyes, family also present, and tell them that there really are no good options for treatment.

Maybe this is why it never seems to happen.  I have had patients, friends and family who have been recommended treatment for a cancer with a grim prognosis.  In these situations, it should have been explained that the treatments will likely not do much to improve survival and will likely destroy any quality of life the patient would otherwise have had.

Just to illustrate how true this is, theirs was a review article looking at this very topic and the costs associated with drugs for cancer care.  The results:

  • In the 71 drugs licensed by the FDA for the treatment of solid tumors since 2002, the average survival benefit is 2.1 months.
  • These few weeks usually come at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars and severe adverse effects.

I don’t mean to sound like the doom and gloom bringer, but society needs to take a more reality based approach to cancer treatment.  If society understood just how poorly we still deal with cancer maybe we would start giving prevention the spotlight that it so rightly deserves.  Further, maybe we should offer cancer patients options:  (1) Expensive cancer treatment loaded with side effects that will only marginally prolonged your life or (2) tens of thousands of dollars to live the life of your dreams for the next 2-4 or 6 months.  Take that cruise to the Mediterranean.  Take the 2 week Hawaii vacation and helicopter over the volcanoes.  And bring all your close family members.  Option 2 would save countless thousands of dollars.

As the cancer patient, which memories would you rather leave your loved ones with?

Milk–It Does a Body Good…Except for Prostate Cancer Survival

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This may come as a shocker to those who know me.  I’m no fan of dairy.  Despite the involvement in seemingly every public health recommendation there is, the research on dairy is just not supportive.  Actually, the research is less than supportive.  In same cases it is downright scary.

As I have mentioned before, I would like to understand the mindset of the first human to look at a filled-to-bursting cow’s udder and thought…”I’ve GOT to try some of that!!”  It’s easy to drink out of a carton, but stop for a minute next time and think where it comes from and what it was designed for.

Overall, though, dairy has been linked to ovarian cancer in several studies (these can be read by clicking here) as well as many other chronic diseases (type 1 diabetes, reflux, weight gain in kids).  But cancer seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme.  This might be because dairy is designed to support the rapid growth of cells.  This is great in a newborn, but not such a good idea as we age.

This particular study continues to add to this theme.

Researchers evaluated the data within the Physician’s Health Study on the relationship between prostate cancer and dairy consumption.  Here’s what they found:

  1. The intake of >2.5 servings / day of dairy products was associated with 12% increased risk of prostate cancer.
  2. Skim/low-fat milk intake was associated with an elevated risk of low-grade, early stage, and screen-detected cancers (that’s the good news!).
  3. Whole milk intake was associated with a 49% increased risk of fatal prostate cancer a > 1 serving per day.
  4. Worse, whole milk intake led to a 217% higher risk of progression to death once someone was already diagnosed (Tweet this).

So much for dairy being good for us, huh?

At one point is society going to stop believing the propaganda of the dairy council and stop poisoning our kids and yourself?