Bad and Potentially Dangerous Advice

I received an email this morning, advertising a book on healing breast cancer the natural way. This immediately brushed me up the wrong way. How can a writer, a female doctor no less, give such bad and potentially extremely dangerous advice?

It’s good and well to go the natural way for a cold, an upset stomach or even a mild burn, but where it comes to cancer, one shouldn’t just trust anyone. I don’t care if the female writer is a doctor or not, in my opinion, she’s playing with the lives of her female readers.

Where it comes to breast cancer I can well imagine that women would prefer natural treatment versus radiation, chemotherapy, and medication. After all, radiation is said to be dangerous, chemotherapy destroys your immune system, makes you feel like crap and makes you go bald, while the medication is a bunch of chemicals. But those treatments have proven positive results. Can the same be said from the doctor’s natural ways?

In her biography, the doctor states that she was a chiropractor for 30 years and upon her retirement, she decided to concentrate on preventing breast cancer with early detection. She states that women should eat the right foods, reduce toxic exposure, balance their energy, heal emotional wounds, eat therapeutic plants, and other such crap. Is she kidding?

The safest and most effective way for early detection of breast cancer is and always has been a mammogram. Sure, it’s a little uncomfortable, but surely your life is worth a few seconds of discomfort.

By relying on the doctor’s advice to balance your energy and heal emotional wounds, you might end up with stage four breast cancer when it’s too late to do anything about it.

I speak from personal experience.

Ever since the age of 35, I went for an annual mammogram. I went through the process without a care in the world. My results were always negative. Until they weren’t.

When I was told that a lump had been found, the sky fell on my head. I was so stunned that I stopped in the middle of a busy sidewalk. How could this be? I live a fairly healthy lifestyle, there is no history of breast cancer in my family, so why me?

I had a four day wait for the biopsy and a ten-day wait to find out whether the lump was benign or malignant. When the doctor told me that the lump was indeed malignant, that I had breast cancer, he offered me three choices: radiation only (to save the breast), surgery followed by radiation, or natural treatment. He would give me some time to decide.

I didn’t need time to decide, I decided right there and then that I wanted surgery followed by radiation. The surgery would remove the lump and the radiation would burn away any remaining microscopic cells. I placed no value on my breast, in fact, I told the doctor to cut away more than necessary or even take off the whole breast if needed.

I was diagnosed on June 3, had surgery on July 19, started radiation on September 12 and finished radiation on October 3.

For the past three years, my annual mammogram has been clean. Because my lump was small (early detection) and non-aggressive, I didn’t need chemo. I was given the option of daily medication, which I turned down because two of the side effects of the pills were increased risk for blood clots and possibly ovarian cancer.

I have reasonable peace of mind. Every year when I go for my mammogram, there is the fear that another lump will be found, and in daily life that fear occasionally pops up.

I never regretted my decision to have surgery and radiation. It wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences, but it was effective. Can the same be said from the advice the doctor gives in her book? That book has the potential of being read by hundreds if not thousands of women. Women who might follow her advice and as such put themselves in danger. Who might even die because they trusted a chiropractor who decided that she knows better than oncologists who have studied the treatment of cancer for years.

What’s interesting is, 5,4, and 3-star reviews are published, but 2 and 1-star reviews have been deleted. In my opinion, her book should be banned.