Cancer Cure News 2017: Alternative Medicine to Double the Risk of Death?
Many research studies to find the cure for cancer have been conducted for many years now. There are even a number of cancer-stricken individuals who have gone the unconventional route to cure their ailments. However, this may backfire on them in the long run.
According to a recent study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, patients who go for alternative therapies or medicines to treat common and curable types of cancer instead of going under the conventional medical treatments are likely to double their risk of death.
The recommended medical treatments include procedures, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. On the other hand, other unproven cancer treatments, which are not administered by professional medical personnel, are considered alternative therapies.
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As per CNN, the study was led by Yale School of Medicine's Dr. Skyler Johnson, who stated that based on what he has observed in his years in medicine, more and more patients choose to delay undergoing the recommended cancer treatments as they want to try alternative treatments first.
However, instead of improving their health, their cancer is "advancing: either getting larger or spreading to lymph nodes or spreading to distant sites," according to Johnson. "This is concerning, because your chance of cure decreases as the cancer grows and spreads," Johnson added.
The research team reportedly identified 281 people with lung, breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer, who went for unproven alternative treatments instead of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy.
While they were not sure what kind of therapies these people took, Johnson said that these may have been "herbs, botanicals, homeopathy, special diets or energy crystals, which are basically just stones that people believe have healing powers."
They also compared these individuals' health outcomes with over 500 others who underwent conventional treatment. These people were said to be similar to the first group in terms of age, race, and ailments.
Unfortunately, Johnson and his team found that patients who took ditched the conventional treatments were more than twice likely to die within five years of diagnosis, except for those with prostate cancer.
According to a report on The Sun, University College London Hospital oncologist John Bridgewater was not surprised by the results at all, saying that while many patients do go for special diets and unconventional treatments, there are no concrete proofs of its positive effects on the patients' health conditions.
The research team from the Yale School of Medicine hope that their findings are enough to convince cancer-stricken patients to go under the recommended medical treatments and procedures, rather than getting their hopes up on alternative therapies.
