Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Sickening refusal of co-payments

I am sickened by our governments management of the NHS.

Our news today covers the suicide of a man who had incurable cancer.

In spite of his GP and oncologist recommending a particular effective drug, our NHS management refused to fund it, or allow him to buy it himself without losing the right to any further NHS treatment.

His decision to commit suicide says it all....

Yet the same government force me to make co-payments for my NHS dental treatment. They bribe smokers in Dundee to quit, yet these folk have already disproportionately loaded the NHS by their smoking, now they suck my taxes for subsidised food.

I attach a few "political posts". I have already written in my blog 3 days earlier, and to the Times newspaper, please do your bit if you agree!

Moorewatch - news of our health service farce is covered in the American site

Times newspaper online

And "Doctors for Reform", a 1000 UK doctor group

Monday, June 23, 2008

Dismantling cancer - free e-book

Upon diagnosis of cancer we initially spent most time getting "right" with God, and praying for a miraculous cure.

None came, but by God's provision or what some might call co-incidence Jan has been supported by 2 Christian friends also going through NHS breast cancer treatment and she has felt upheld by the power of prayer.

An amazing provision was the lead to Professor Jane Plant's work on diet. She sat next to a friend during a university dinner and talked about her survival of breast cancer, not a normal dinner party conversation piece! This was reported to us whilst we were waiting for NHS treatment, we ordered her book the same day.

For further information on diet we need to give thanks to the information shared over the Internet by so many researchers, many of them being university professors.

I am humbled by this free downloadable book "Dismantling Cancer". It is written by Dr Francisco Contreras who runs the Oasis of Hope hospital in Mexico. I have briefly checked his credentials, they seem impeccable. He hosts visits from the US "Cancer Control Society" who seem to be a "watchdog" for alternative treatments. The hospital uses laetrile treatment just as does the "Dove Clinic", a leading UK cancer hospital on which I did "due diligence" on April 23rd. and posted in this blog. The book states that spiritual position is the most important factor in facing cancer, and they run a hospital where prayer in the name of Jesus is a regular daily occurence. Their free downloadable book has much good sense on beating cancer, including the use of humour.

Another breast cancer blogger found the need for faith in something that lives beyond death, her post is here.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Conclusion on diet

Most serious breast cancer authorities reckon diet and exercise play a major role in long term survival. Having studied many specialist diets and authorities we believe that probably at least half the world's vegetables and fruits have some cancer inhibiting effect. Maybe not surprising as we believe in a creator God who made vegetables for all in the world to eat in their season, so we need a broad range.

Jan has not gone overboard, but we have probably doubled our food bill as we eat more fruit smoothies, fresh vegetables and berries. Probably the major change over any other "5 a day" recommendation is that we see no major health benefits claimed by potatoes, french fries, iceberg lettuce or baked beans. But tinned tomatoes certanly offer benefits!

Interesting as I read most Americans mainly eat french fries, lettuce and tinned tomatoes, so they miss many cancer preventing benefits of veg. such as cabbage.

The helpful diets we have looked all come from universities:

  • University of California San Francisco diet sheet - its hard to read but gives full details of how each food affects cancer.
  • The Plant Program, by Professor Jane Plant of London University. We have not gone dairy free, but probably halved our dairy intake.
  • Professor Richard Beliveau's advice, again Professor of cancer research University of Quebec at Montreal. Or by podcast here.
  • Professor Bharat Aggarwal's ideas on curcumin / tumeric spice as used in Indian curry.
Oasis of Hope hospital in Mexico shares these views on the importance of diet. We dismissed our own UK authority The Royal Marsden Hospital's diet advice, as they reckon 2 units of any alcohol per day is OK, contrary to all other serious researchers who claim all alcohol exacerbates cancer with the exception of red wine.

To put this diet in perspective, it need not be onerous. Oily fish and curries are recommended, with almost any vegetables (particularly cruciferous), garlic, olive oil, brown rice, and fruits. Red wine and dark chocolate also feature, followed by green tea. In fact many of our meals have been more tasty than before Jan's cancer.

More strange diets that we considered but did not fully follow include:

  • Gerson diet - dangerous coffee enemas, though the caffeine can certainly cut cancer, and the Oasis of Hope hospital used to house the Gerson clinic, and reported great results.
  • Budwig diet - flaxseed - well known benefits, but too way out for Jan.
  • A carrot juice diet, about 12 carrots a day recommended by a fellow sufferer - carrots are good, but that many?
  • A red grape diet - again red grapes are wonderful, but ONLY grapes?

It is interesting that we found our help came from universities, they still have the helpful attitude of sharing knowledge that is so easily stopped by profit motives of big pharma. University professors gave some authority, rather than newsgroups and fora of fellow sufferers.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Experience with Cavilon - the politics

I need to be careful, as our NHS have recently refused to continue cancer treatment to patients who dare to supplement their inadequate NHS treatment with privately funded treatment. A government mantra - we must all be treated equally.....we cannot spend our "after tax" money to enhance our lives! Even worse, the government use my taxes to bribe Scottish folk to quit smoking!

It isn't as though the NHS treatment was perfect, these posts question whether radiotherapy and chemotherapy do more harm than good against cancers such as Jan's. So we need lateral thinking, and patient involvement in finding new cures be they medical or diet based. An NHS doctor's blog on this issue is here.

Jan is treated in Hertfordshire, one of the worst three counties in the UK for breast cancer survival. So life is not fair anyway. Scottish and English NHS treatments differ, is that fair? Will they insist all patients eat the same food? Can Jan please be enroled on the NHS free dark chocolate trial? One lady we know gets free dark chocolate that would cost me nearly £2 a day, why not us?

In Jan's case we are not funding a drug, just privately funding and trialling Cavilon, a fairly cheap plastic film. In my view we are providing the NHS and country a service, and should not be "condemned". We have openly shared this knowledge with the NHS hospital, they have had free access to the results of this one patient trial as Jan is treated by them. I have provided at no cost to the NHS and advice via this blog to any other cancer sufferer
  • Google research to find the product and details of its use
  • Purchased product at my expense
  • Provided nursing support to apply and manage product
  • Document results here
  • Saved the NHS any cost in providing cream and nursing care for skin damage as none was needed, the Cavilon was effective in Jan's case.
It reduced the burden on the NHS. If the government continue to persecute those who supplement their treatment we risk those people merely doing such things in secret. We could have applied Cavilon in secret, it does not show at all if washed off and re-applied every third day, but the NHS would not have had the opportunity to see a trial of an effective product.

Further details are in earlier posts, please search "Cavilon" in the blog if needed. I have no vested interest or association with 3M, the manufacturers of Cavilon.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Experience with Cavilon - medical

This is technical, only of interest for those wanting to use such protection.

Pleass see my next post on the risks Jan and I face in the UK in daring to use a privately funded barrier film.

Cavilon is a 3M spray on plastic film that forms a very thin breathable protective skin over one's real skin. Developed to protect colostomies from irritation from leakages, we used it very successfully to protect skin from radiotherapy damage. Radiation "drys" the skin, the NHS try to protect skin by moisturising cream. Cavilon works in the opposite way, by slowing the skins "moisture" from escaping. It also acts as a barrier to abrasion damage from skin rubbing on skin, so often caused by the NHS recommendation that one does not wear a bra during treatment.

The idea is complementary to NHS best practice, but it replaces the use of moisturising cream. Moisturising cream is the standard NHS recommendation, known as Sorbolene in the documented trials. Cavilon cannot be used with moisturising cream, as that would stop Cavilon adhering to the skin.

It seems to be almost unheard of amongst Jan's breast cancer specialists, though obviously amongst staff with colostomy experience it is well known. Two specialists told us not to use it, most were ambivalent, one suggested it had been seen before at UCH.

It is available on ebay. Jan refused to use products from such a quack source, so I ordered it from the local pharmacist who got me a bottle within 6 hours. The pharmacist had not heard of Cavilon, and had to look it up in their catalogue. I told her it was for my colostomy! Over 7 weeks we will have used three 28 mil pump spray bottles, each cost about £11.50 retail. It is also known as "No sting barrier film".

We sprayed on a thin film every third day after washing. Jan washed every day, but tried to not wash off the film. Results were good, Jan got mild erythema after 18 days. This consists of two red patches looking like flea bites, and red soreness under the breast where it touches the abdomen, and would normally be protected by a bra. Jan had 15 days whole breast irradiation by "photons" followed by 5 days boost using using electrons. Cavilon is transparent to both.

We had no help from medical staff in how to use it, so we used common sense. I worried about protecting the breast, and gave no thought to how most Xrays (decribed by the NHS as photons) would travel straight through the body and exit, many in the armpit. So we applied no protection to the armpit, which therefore showed greater skin tanning than her breast! I was unaware how high up the neck the radiation would reach, so this was less protected and got the "flea bite" like patches. We let the layers of Cavilon build up over time, so eventually it looked like dirty pealing skin, and could be one reason why one nurse described Jan's breast as looking pink. But this was Cavilon, not a skin reaction.

A benefit for us is that it gave us something to jointly control in Jan's treatment.

In spite of our successful use I hesitate to recommend Cavilon for these reasons:

  • difficult to apply, it needed a second person to spray Jan as her treated arm was extended over her head and her other hand held the breast skin taught during application.
  • it took a long time to dry, even in our summer time. We started by leaving for 5 mins, but found Jan had to lie still for 15 mins, else the film on the breast stuck like superglue to her abdomen as she stood up.
  • it was more difficult to physically see that one had covered the entire breast as the film is almost invisible immediately after application
  • 3M now have a newer product named Cavilon moisturising cream, which seems more geared to breast protection. We had to use what we knew at the time.
  • it is not a cure all, and in the Wollongong University trials only cut adverse skin reactions by 33%

Further details are in earlier posts, please search the blog if neeed.

A scream, why weren't we told?

I want to scream "Why didn't they tell us?" Just 2 weeks after completion of radiotherapy I found this article from a consultant working at a London hospital. He describes simple tricks to save the heart from potential damage from radiotherapy, but they didn't tell us. I found it using Google, but too late.....

I am annoyed that we were not warned.... we were already aware of difficulties in accurate aiming of the radiation as Jan breathed, and had joked should Jan stop breathing during the therapy. So we even asked about breathing, but NO help was offered along these lines. Is it that the NHS just cannot admit that radiotherapy has any associated danger?

He quotes the radiation levels that "leak" to the heart and arteries during radiotherapy for breast cancer. "Even with modern techniques a portion of the myocardium is still irradiated and receives a minimum of 50% of the dose prescribed to the primary target volume. At least part of the myocardium received at least 85–95% of the total radiation dose.

One study showed a significant reduction in cardiac irradiation achieved by simple respiratory manoeuvres during radiotherapy. In this study the volume of myocardium irradiated was measured during normal quiet inspiration and following deep inspiration. Patients who held their breath following deep inspiration removed a significant proportion of myocardium from the treated volume and in 47% the entire myocardium was excluded."

A Danish paper says: "Breath-hold was well accepted by the patients. The median heart volume receiving >50% of the prescription dose was reduced from 8% to 1% by patients using deep breathing and breath hold techniques. The median left anterior descending coronary artery volume that was irradiated by the same dose reduced from 54 to 5%.

And in New York hospitals they can automate irradiation pulses to the breathing!

So the risks of radiotherapy are well known, NHS dosctors in London know how to reduce this risk, but such information is NOT passed on to patients. What about the hippocratic oath?

We used curcumin and diet to enable the body to best repair what we thought was inevitable radiotherapy damage. It seems this risk could have been avoided by this simple technique which seems to simply get the heart out of the irradiated field. That sucks......

XZK red rice extract cuts deaths

Topical news from the Times this week on "Red yeast rice extract XZK". The researchers worry that food supplements are not fully regulated and standardised ... but to me it sounds very much like using Indian curry powder / tumeric, another natural food product. I welcome the news, again of a potential low cost cancer treatment found from traditional oriental medicine just like tumeric. We will stick with tumeric, it has 100 times the number of Google hits as a cancer preventative over XZK.

The serious scientific trial of 5000 Chinese heart patients showed that taking XZK gave a dramatic drop in the number of cancer deaths — 29 cancer deaths in those on placebo, 13 in those on XZK.


Red yeast rice has been used in China for thousands of years as a food preservative, colorant and seasoning and herbal medicine. It is the ingredient that gives Peking duck its red colour.


Dr Capuzzi led the study together with Dr Zonliang Lu, from the Chinese Academy of Medical Science in Beijing.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Treatment complete

Jan finished radiotherapy 13 days ago, and probably hit her lowest point from fatigue yesterday. From now on she should be officially cured, and get better each day. The truth of course is that late effects of radiotherapy are documented up to 20 years later, so we will both always live in slight fear. She also has regular inspection / examination as follow up.

Her skin today was the worst I have seen, probably abrasion caused to weak skin from excessive exercise. I would rate it as mild grade 1 erythema, showing Jan could be described as a moderately radioresistant patient. Not as bad as many shoppers in Sainsbury after a sunny day at the beach! See this table for more detail. We continue with Cavilon for at least another week to continue protection.

Professor Jane Plant's book was possibly our breakthrough....she confirmed my ideas of looking at cancer rates in other countries and then their lifestyle. I looked a Poland, she looked in greater detail at China. We haven't followed all of her ideas, but it has made us convinced that cancer is better controlled by diet than any NHS treatment apart from surgery. This led us to Professor Richard Beliveau's books, and from Richard's ideas on curcumin onto Professor Bharat Aggwhal's work on Indian curry. There is a freely downloadable audio MP3 by Richard Beliveau here, I listened in detail at least three times, it has a wealth of ideas.

We also had two 68 day delays in Jan's treatment that forced me to Google for ideas....I have even been reading patent info on new cancer drugs. I reckon Jan has been in the best 40% of patients with minimal reaction / damage caused by the therapies, rated as grade 1 skin erythema.

The diet ideas are equally effective in preventing prostate cancer, so any husbands out there should have a curry and red wine at my suggestion, followed by strawberries, dark chocolate and green tea!

I will publish a few posts to finalise my thoughts on radiotherapy. I still rate it as a con trick. I found a Lancet report that states "on average after year 2, radiotherapy reduced annual mortality rates from breast cancer by 13·2% but increased those from other causes by 21·2%." Thanks, we seem to merely swap one risk for another which may be even more deadly, most often heart damage caused by the radiotherapy.

Another report in the "Journal of National Cancer Institute" dated 2005 on radiotherapy suggests it does more harm than good after 10 years. I quote:

"Early trials clearly demonstrated that radiotherapy reduced local relapse, with a relative risk reduction that is now known to be about 70%. However, the reduction in relapse rates did not translate to a reduction in mortality. Many theories were suggested to explain this disparity, including a detrimental effect of radiotherapy on immune function. These mortality concerns were crystallized in the first individual patient data overview of cancer trials which showed that radiotherapy had little effect on mortality in the first 10 years of follow-up but was potentially detrimental in the longer term".

WHY DON'T THE NHS WARN OF THIS???? It is published by Oxford University Press, not exactly an unrecognised source!. They offer free podcasts for those who want to keep up to date whilst on the move.

I will document our experience with Cavilon - but in a few days time.