What to Take if You're on Chemotherapy

I routinely measure the immune system function in all of my cancer patients.

And the only ones I have ever measured that had defective immune systems were those who had already started conventional chemotherapy or radiation. There’s no doubt that these toxic therapies result in immune suppression. Even conventional doctors know it’s true.

But is this necessary? Do you have to destroy your immune system to treat cancer?

What if there was a way to preserve your immune function while getting one of these therapies? Recently, scientists studied the effect of two therapies on the final outcome of patients receiving chemotherapy.

For decades, Europeans have been using regular injections of mistletoe extracts to treat cancer. Previous studies have shown that these injections stimulate immune reactivity and might help preserve immune function in patients receiving chemotherapy. So, to do the study, the researchers monitored 95 women with various stages of breast cancer who were about to start chemotherapy.

They divided the women into two groups. One group received one of two classical European mistletoe extracts, Helixor A or Iscador M Spez. The extracts were injected three times per week during the entire 18 weeks of chemotherapy. Then, for the next five years, the researchers monitored the probability of the cancer returning, the immune system (neutrophil count), and the women’s quality of life. Here’s what they discovered.

During chemotherapy, the mistletoe group had less immune suppression than those not getting the injections. They also had less pain and better appetites. However, overall the number of patients in the mistletoe group that had their cancers return was the same as those not getting the mistletoe. In terms of preventing cancer from returning, the mistletoe injections had no effect.

Mistletoe therapies definitely improve immune system function, so why did they not have an overall anti-cancer effect? I can think of two reasons.

First, conventional chemotherapy is so immune suppressive that even known immune-enhancing therapies will only minimally counter it. Second, the mistletoe injections were stopped after the chemotherapy. Perhaps the patients would have had better results if they had continued long-term mistletoe therapy after the chemo. The one obvious lesson from this study is that it’s not enough just to protect the immune system during conventional chemotherapy. Immune- enhancing therapies should be done for at least five years after conventional treatment. But there’s one more point to consider.

Like I said, unless a patient with cancer has already had chemotherapy or radiation, almost all of them turn out to have normal immune function tests. So, here’s the question. How is it possible that a patient can get cancer in the face of an optimally functioning immune system?

Part of what makes most cancers successful has to do with their ability to evade even a healthy immune system. As one review article from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute puts it, “Tumors have developed strategies to successfully evade the host immune system, and various molecular and cellular mechanisms responsible for tumor evasion have been identified.” Cancer cells are almost always completely surrounded by immune cells, but they aren’t able to attack because the cancer cells have various proteins on their cell membranes that prevent the immune cells from working.

Right now, scientists are busy working to find treatments that can deactivate these proteins. They have already successfully done this in mice. Hopefully, they will find a non-toxic way to do it in humans.

It’s vital you take any alternative cancer treatments, such as mistletoe, in conjunction with the ketogenic diet I just laid out and the nutrient regimen I described earlier. Cancer is tough. It takes an army of treatments to fight it effectively. Don’t rely on just one.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD