By Charmian Christie

In 2001, Marta Thomas of Homewood, Illinois, was given one year to live. Despite undergoing a mastectomy and chemotherapy three years previously, the cancer had spread to her bones and liver. “I was angry,” Marta says. “They didn’t want to investigate further. They just said I was to start chemo again on Saturday because the doctor was going away over the weekend.” Instead of returning to the hospital for treatment, Marta turned to the Internet and found a clinic that practiced integrative medicine. Thanks to properly applied conventional medicine and a range of holistic approaches, Marta is “still going strong” five years later.

Conventional medicine, which typically focuses on the disease, leaves many women with breast and reproductive cancers feeling half-treated. Jeremy Geffen, MD, board certified oncologist, and founder of Geffen Visions International in Boulder, Colorado, says these cancers carry an added emotional and psychological component that conventional treatments fail to address. In frustration, many women turn to alternative and complementary medicine to replace aggressive treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. But rejecting conventional medicine flat out is not the answer either. Integrative medicine provides the best of both worlds by combining the holistic approach of ancient healing with the latest in science.

Reality check
Kevin Block, MD, cofounder and medical/scientific director of the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Evanston, Illinois, says it’s unwise to delay conventional treatment in hopes of a kinder, gentler cure. “Conventional strategies can be brutal,” he admits, but they are the most affective means we have to fight cancer. “In 26 years I haven’t seen [alternative] cures. I’ve seen patients miss the window when the disease was easily curable.” Surgery is often necessary in the early stages of breast and reproductive cancers because, “if you leave a tumor, it can break through and become more aggressive.”

Treating cancer with medications that make your hair fall out, leave you exhausted, or burn your skin seems counter-intuitive, but chemotherapy and radiation play an important role in fighting cancer. Even naturopath Dan Labriola, ND, medical director for Naturopathic Services at the Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle, Washington, agrees that cancer initially requires conventional medical treatments.

But how does it work? “Cancer cells are the most vulnerable and stupidest cells in your body,” Labriola says. “They just reproduce, reproduce, reproduce.” Chemo, which damages the DNA of both normal and cancerous cells, uses cancer cells’ out-of-control reproduction against them. When a dividing cell realizes it’s damaged, it goes into apoptosis (programmed cell death) and commits suicide. Since cancer cells are always dividing they die, but normal cells, which reproduce less frequently, have time to repair the damage and survive. Labriola says chemo is “a poison to which the tumor cells are significantly more vulnerable than the normal cells. The same applies for radiation.”

Reclaiming the body
With “poison” as an active ingredient, some conventional cancer treatments seem worse than the disease. Not only do they produce side effects like nausea, fatigue, skin irritation, and a mental fog known as “chemo brain,” the toxins tax an already strained body. Building your strength before, during, and after treatment is crucial. While diet plays a critical role, (see “Anti-Reproductive Cancer Diet” opposite), food alone doesn’t provide enough nutrients to counteract the effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Here integrative medicine comfortably draws from alternative or