Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds

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Her account cites many examples of people who pursued non-standard therapies and beat cancer. One of the most moving is the case of Shin Terayama, a kidney cancer patient who was released to go home because there was no possibility of remission. He claims to have cured himself through a combination of breath work, a simplified diet, fasting, purified water, and sending love to his cancerous tumors. He was cancer free for over 25 years. In another example, Nancy’s doctor recommended a standard therapy of full mastectomy, radiation and tamoxifen. She chose instead a regime of diet, exercise, herbs, emotional spiritual and energy treatments. She was still cancer-free 18 years later. Kelly Turner: That’s what we’re working on. We’re working on looking for investors. We have certain cast in mind, Hollywood “A” list cast, but you can’t really go to them until you have the money raised. We’re getting all of our pitch stuff ready and our budgets ready to go out to investors. Marianne Woods Cirone, MS, MFA, CYT-500, is the founder and editor of the Integrative Cancer Review. She is a writer, yoga and wellness educator, healthcare consultant and passionate advocate for people affected by cancer.

Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer - Yumpu READ (PDF BOOKS) Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer - Yumpu

If you're like me, you may be surprised that exercise is not on that list. Most health guides lead with diet and exercise, and throughout the book, I kept wondering why exercise was not singled out, especially since it was certainly mentioned in passing, e.g., "Thanks to a combination of yoga, hiking, and walking, [John] now feels like he's in the best shape of his life" (p. 39) and "[Jenny] also continued with the same daily exercise regimen she had created for herself years earlier." (p. 127) It wasn't until the very end of the book (p. 282) that the author revealed that exercise was not included as the 10th key factor because many patients were too weak to exercise when they first turned to alternative therapies, presumably either because of the cancer itself or due to side effects of having tried conventional treatment like chemotherapy. This explanation is fair, but I just wish she had said it up front at the beginning, so I didn't have to spend the entire book wondering why exercise was being glossed over.

Radical Remission was a book I wasn't overly interested in, despite a good friend telling me how great it was. For some reason, the cancer aspect didn't peak my curiosity, even though I am interested in alternative healing methods for cancer patients. Having finally read it, I can say this is an amazing book that is less about cancer, and more about natural healing and ways to "miraculously" heal your body that are not so mysterious after all. When I was researching my book Mind Over Medicine, I stumbled across the Spontaneous Remission Project put together by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which collected over 3500 case studies published in the medical literature about people who experienced spontaneous remissions from seemingly “incurable diseases.” Most of the case studies revolved around people with Stage 4 cancers who either declined conventional treatment or were given treatment deemed by doctors to be inadequate for cure. But the Spontaneous Remission Project also includes case studies of people who had remissions from heart failure, autoimmune diseases, high a gunshot wound to the head, and HIV.

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Marianne Cirone: That’s amazing. That’s a big goal, but I think you’re well on the way and there’s a lot of momentum. In her PhD, she interviewed healers and survivors about their experiences with radical remission: cancer recoveries that beat the odds through natural methods, whether combined with conventional medical treatment or not. By the time she wrote the book she was drawing on over a thousand case studies.

Some of the popular media outlets were trying to present this as a '9 steps to curing cancer' sort of thing, and I said no, you can't do that," she told Medscape Medical News. "This is not a 9-step program for getting well. These are just 9 factors that most of the survivors had in common." Kelly Turner defines radical remission as any cancer remission that is statistically unexpected (p. 6). While such cases are rare, they nevertheless deserve to be studied more. In particular Turner contends we should research the explanations given by patients who have experienced radical remission. Her PhD research, and her 2014 book, do just that. She studied more than a thousand written cases and performed over a hundred interviews. Turner takes pains to clarify she is not against conventional treatment for cancer. And she admits the reason for remission are not yet understood. They had not been previously tabulated or published. In this work she offers the nine most prominent explanations given by her respondents. She calls these nine factors hypotheses that offer clues. What I really want is I want an exhaustive database that, ideally, has every, single radical remission case that ever happened in one place. That’s my goal, because once we have proof in numbers, then the scientific community won’t be able to ignore them anymore. That voice that might be saying, “Let me just try a really intensive diet change, combined with quitting the job I hate for two months, and let me see where that gets me. Let’s see if my numbers improve, or just even stay stable after two months of that, because my gut is saying that what I really need here is to leave the job that’s killing me, and to clean up my diet and start exercising and sleeping well again, because I haven’t done that in five years.”

Key Factors Affecting Radical Remission From Cancer 9 Key Factors Affecting Radical Remission From Cancer

But shouldn’t we consider making these kinds of changes anyway? Why wait until we get cancer? Why not be proactive now? That [instinctual] part of the brain switched on — and because this is how our brains work–the second part of brain, the frontal cortex, which can calculate and analyze, makes to-do lists, etc. – shut down. Simply because you have a societal understanding of what the word “cancer” means in the Western world, which means something to be fearful of. As soon as you hear the words “You have this fearful thing,” you will most likely, unless you’re absolutely not afraid of cancer, have your brain switch into System One, and System Two will shut down. That means you are now operating by instinct. Her writing offers a wonderfully clear, succinct combination of the results of her data analysis with useful cancer research - and lovely, touching, individual stories of miraculous cancer recovery told with loving care and wonder. So we sit -together with both the science and the magic that is our life on this earth. Kelly and I became friends when I was researching Mind Over Medicine, and I shared some of Kelly’s work in my book. But her research has been ongoing, and Kelly’s new book Radical Remission: The Nine Key Factors That Can Make A Real Difference launches today. What Kelly discovered is that the people who experienced radical remissions were not passively sitting by, waiting for a miracle. They were making nine significant changes in their lives, only two of which might be recommended by a forward-thinking physician. Stories of Radical RemissionWell, lo and behold, 18 months later they’re better. Right when their COBRA runs out, they’re better. They get the clean scan. That’s not a made-up story. That was about somebody I just interviewed. These things really happen, Supplements are another area in which there is some experimental support for certain findings relating to cancer. Turner admits there is no definitive proof organic food is better for health.* Some studies do show that ECGC (Epigallocatechin gallate) in green tea kills cancer cells.* Mushroom supplements like turkey tail may increase the amount of natural killer cells in the blood.* There is some support for high doses of C,* turmeric,* and daily probiotics.* Multivitamin intake may reduce cancer risk slightly.* Dr. Turner’s book summarizes the results of her research: interviews with one hundred cancer survivors and analysis of now over one thousand cases of people who experienced a radical remission. The survivors Dr. Turner talked to were those who, because of the type and/or stage of their cancer, were considered by conventional medicine unlikely to heal from it — yet, despite all odds, they had. In addition we do not know why Turner’s respondents’ remissions happened. Of course they could all be due to the adoption of some combination of the nine lifestyle changes. Or they could be due to some other, unknown factors. One factor proven to be effective but not included in Turner’s nine hypotheses is the placebo effect. The placebo effect has been shown to account for up to 40% of positive outcomes in tests. Why do none of Turner’s respondents mention placebo? Because it is human nature to focus on actions taken, not expectations of the patient, and the placebo effect is all about the power of patient expectations. In addition, mentioning the placebo would imply that other interventions taken by respondents are not necessarily effective. (To beat the placebo effect as an explanation, an intervention must be more than 40% effective.)