Mistletoe - for kissing under or treating cancer?
Why not both?
Another post was shared in my comments, thanks Ranger71, and it is lengthy but really adds to my recent point about “integrative medicine” being kind of a con game trying to get people to continue to accept standard methods of ‘health care’ instead of fully turning to alternative methods exclusively. Mistletoe is a very potent an ancient remedy that helps cancer patients very successfully - but is it used in standard medical care? No. The Substack linked a little later includes more detail about use of mistletoe for cancer treatment by Dr. Thomas Cowen. My post, this one, focuses more on the other book highlighted in the Substack by Lies are Unbekoming. (Substack)
The problem with “integrating” a harmful “treatment” into your medical “care”, is that it may be preventing the alternative treatments from helping the initial problem because now the body has the harm caused by the “standard treatment” to try to heal before the initial problem can be addressed by the overworked body systems.
The post has a lengthy excerpt from a book written by, Dr. Kelly Turner, a person who choose to work with counseling cancer patients as a social worker. The author was very dismayed as she gradually learned how many ‘Radical Remission’ cancer survivors there are - but medical cancer researchers are not allowed to talk about them or study the cases more in depth or the alternative healer’s methods. The social worker decided to interview survivors and healers for her graduate dissertation. She found that the survivors did have ideas about what they had done differently which may have helped - she collected over 70 factors the survivors mentioned on an individual basis. She also has established a website for survivors to share their own stories - so more success stories can be heard even if the medical industry isn’t sharing them. See: (radicalremission.com).
The groundbreaking finding - or more usable discovery - was that nine of the factors were mentioned by almost all of the cancer remission success stories in some variation. Is the author trying to sell you that doing the nine changes will guarantee cancer remission? No - she is suggesting that more research is warranted though - and why hasn’t it been done if the medical industry truly wants to ‘end cancer’?
The Substack - Lies really are unbecoming for the alleged ‘health care industry’ - alleged that they care about health…more than profit margins.
An excerpt from the book Radical Remission by Dr. Kelly Turner with the list of nine factors that almost all the cancer survivors mentioned all nine as being critical in their own opinion for why their cancer went into remission. They may also have mentioned stuff like shark fin cartilage but no overall pattern was seen for specific ‘remedies’.
Radically changing your diet
Taking control of your health
Following your intuition
Using herbs and supplements
Releasing suppressed emotions
Increasing positive emotions
Embracing social support
Deepening your spiritual connection
Having strong reasons for living
From the book ‘Radical Remission’ by Dr. Kelly Turner, (radicalremission.com/the-books)
The theme of the nine factors seem to be resolving emotional stressors or changing general attitudes about positivity and social connection AND making major dietary changes that include a focus on more herbs and targeted supplements.
“Taking control of your health” is about embracing autonomy and giving up a victim mindset, or blame on externals. Externals count but what you do about them counts more - playing the victim or blame game leaves you in a state of accepting the negatives instead of seeking ways to change them.
“Following your intuition” is a subtle skill that authoritarian parents, schooling, and governments suppress, discourage or even punish. Restoring your ability to tune in and listen to what your taste buds and other senses are trying to tell you is possible with practice. Mindfulness strategies can help to retrain us to have a better inner focus and trust enough to follow the subtle feelings instead of ignoring them.
“Releasing suppressed emotions” and “Increasing positive emotions” has been an older finding regarding chronic illness - heart disease seemed to be associated with working too much and with an aggressive attitude more than a laidback approach to business. People who have to bottle up their moods to fit in with demanding bosses or family also seemed more at risk for cancer. Suppressing outer expressions of resentment, frustration, or anger may be more pleasant for others but may still be harming the person’s own health. Emotional or physical stress causes inflammatory changes within the body which can lead to cancer or neurodegenerative or other degenerative conditions like cardiovascular disease.
“Radically changing your diet” and “Using herbs and supplements” is likely a need for all cancer patients because - what they had been doing was what led to cancer and therefore, what they had been doing, was not health promoting and needed to be changed. How exactly to change it though is more challenging to figure out for the individual with unknown gene differences. Anything disrupting methylation cycles will be a factor in what was causal for cancerous gene changes to have occurred. Plant polyphenols and terpenes and other phytonutrients can be key to success as they can modulate the activity of gene expression and help turn off overactive genes and turn on more expression of underactive genes — sometimes correcting an underlying gene allele. Other gene alleles may require a specific nutrient to be used in higher doses than normal diet can provide, or for a dietary nutrient to be limited, in order to promote balanced methylation cycles.
Here is an overview guide on Methylation - a guide from a set that I purchased - you’re welcome! (Dropbox) Eventually I plan to add some additional notes to it regarding gene alleles and more on lifestyle factors that can disrupt methylation cycles - such as salicylate excess.
Salicylates that are not in excess (daily use of baby aspirin for heart disease as an example) can help prevent cancer though (Fernandez and Lindén, 2017) and increasing use of herbs and spices tend to add a significant amount of salicylates to the diet.
“Having strong reasons for living”, “Increasing social support,” and “Deepening your spiritual connection,” all help give us a sense of purpose and connection that seems essential to health for most people. Humans are social creatures rather than solitary by nature. Having a goal to work towards, or simply having a plant or goldfish to care about and keep alive, can help people have a reason to get up each day and have something to look forward too, even if it is a simple as seeing if your plant grew a new leaf yet.
A lot of research has shown that having a sense of purpose (Kim, et al., 2020) and having more social connections can provide significant health benefits and should be more of a priority for public health. (Holt-Lunstad, Robles, Sbarra, 2017)
Research has also shown that prayer, or being prayed for, can help with healing - even when the person doesn’t know that people are praying for their speedy return to health. The articles by Andrade, Radhakrishnan, 2009 and Sloan and Ramakrishnan, 2006 both suggest prayer may be helpful but there are too many unknown variables to feasibly make a randomized clinical trial about it. Which seems like a valid point. But do we have to know why something works in order to appreciate that it can work sometimes? Faith is a leap of faith that may be difficult for skeptics to take.
Quotations are from the book ‘Radical Remission’ by Dr. Kelly Turner, (radicalremission.com/the-books)
Cancer survivor’s strategies - the big take home point is synergy - combined strategies supporting our physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs. Dr. Kelly Turner found that almost all the cancer radical remission survivors had incorporated all nine changes in their lives - not just prayer, or just diet, or just a sense of purpose or social connection. The success stories - the survivors sharing a success story mentioned almost all nine changes - for each of the successful cases.
That would also suggest, theoretically, that people with cancer who had tried only one or two of the changes didn’t make it to that finish line of being a radical remission success story. Sadly. I’m sure there are many people with cancer who are devoted to loved ones, or to a work/sense of purpose goal, or who tried various dietary and supplement strategies - and yet it wasn’t enough to overcome standard medical care or enough to reverse the internal methylation cycle and cytoplasm dysfunction.
A study design that started with a huge number of younger people without cancer, and tracked them over time might be able to test the theory that it is a combination of the nine strategies that helps prevent cancer from becoming a problem in the first place, or helps treat it if it did show up over the decade/s long study. A control group could just be monitored similarly to the experimental group who also receive some instruction and practice courses maybe regarding the nine strategies that seem to help reverse cancer.
This is really important, so I’m going to repeat it, but regroup it for ease of use:
Diet: Radically changing your diet; Using herbs and supplements.
Autonomy and trust in oneself - giving up victim or blame mindsets: Taking control of your health; Following your intuition.
Digging deeper into your own buried/painful/uncomfortable feelings: Releasing suppressed emotions. This may require therapy, or journaling or talking into a recorder, art, music, or other nonverbal ways to access deeper feelings - which are wordless and therefore can be confusing and may be rationalized as something other than resentment or anger or emotional pain.
Actively substituting positive self talk and shelving worry, guilt or shame: Increasing positive emotions.
Stop isolating socially: Embracing social support. Modern life tends to be isolating or overcrowded and impersonal. Seek out your own tribe or community where people know your name, like Norm in the bar on the TV show Cheers. Norm may have drank too much alcohol but he had friendly people in his daily life.
Turn outward and embrace nature and the interconnection of life, in whatever way that suits: Deepening your spiritual connection.
Sense of purpose: Having strong reasons for living. It can help you get out of bed and going in the morning when you have something interesting to do. It may even be the first thing on your mind when you wake up and has you feeling excited to get up and get going on the project - up and active. Depression, boredom, apathy, listlessness, staying in bed, staying in pajamas, etcetera, tends to add up to less activity and less zest for life and may physically be increasing inflammation by being harmful for our mitochondria and gut microbiome species. They seem to need us to keep moving in order to stay supportive of overall health instead of taking over and growing into an imbalanced infection.
Italicized phrases are from the book ‘Radical Remission’ by Dr. Kelly Turner, (radicalremission.com/the-books)
It is very encouraging and wonderful, though, that Dr. Turner took the time to listen and record the methods used by cancer survivors, and analyze the data to see the larger pattern within the minutia of varied methods that made up the over 70 things cancer survivors thought had helped them. Maybe mistletoe was on that longer list of remedies that helped some of the survivors.
How to make a Kissing Ball - a traditional holiday decoration hung above a doorway typically - ready for an unsuspecting guest to be kissed when the arrive. Greenery or mistletoe were considered good luck or a blessing for those passing under the decoration. (thespruce.com)
“Holiday kissing balls originated in the Middle Ages and were hung over doorways to symbolize love, blessings, and good fortune for those who walked under them. A kissing ball is often confused with traditional mistletoe, which is typically just a sprig or two of the plant hung over doorways and associated more with protection, romance, and fertility. But sprigs of mistletoe can also be used to make a kissing ball, which is why it is sometimes called a mistletoe kissing ball.” (thespruce.com)
Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health care guidance.
Reference List
(Andrade, Radhakrishnan, 2009) Andrade C, Radhakrishnan R. Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials. Indian J Psychiatry. 2009 Oct-Dec;51(4):247-53. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.58288. PMID: 20048448; PMCID: PMC2802370. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802370/
(Fernandez and Lindén, 2017) Fernandez, H.R., Lindén, S.K. The aspirin metabolite salicylate inhibits lysine acetyltransferases and MUC1 induced epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Sci Rep 7, 5626 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06149-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06149-4
(Holt-Lunstad, Robles, Sbarra, 2017) Holt-Lunstad J, Robles TF, Sbarra DA. Advancing social connection as a public health priority in the United States. Am Psychol. 2017 Sep;72(6):517-530. doi: 10.1037/amp0000103. PMID: 28880099; PMCID: PMC5598785. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5598785/
(Kim, et al., 2020) Kim ES, Shiba K, Boehm JK, Kubzansky LD. Sense of purpose in life and five health behaviors in older adults. Prev Med. 2020 Oct;139:106172. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106172. Epub 2020 Jun 25. PMID: 32593729; PMCID: PMC7494628. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7494628/
(Sloan and Ramakrishnan, 2006) Sloan RP, Ramakrishnan R. Science, medicine, and intercessory prayer. Perspect Biol Med. 2006 Autumn;49(4):504-14. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2006.0064. PMID: 17146135; PMCID: PMC3275584. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3275584/
This is a tough subject for me. I had a good friend that "did everything right" when she had cancer. Healthy diet, exercise, mindset, meditation... Then somehow a doctor was able to convince her to try a "new and improved" and "natural" chemo treatment. I believe that treatment killed her. She seemed to be invincible...
"prayer may be helpful but there are too many unknown variables to feasibly make a randomized clinical trial about it. Which seems like a valid point. But do we have to know why something works in order to appreciate that it can work sometimes? Faith is a leap of faith that may be difficult for skeptics to take"
As one who knows a bit about skepsis - https://cheapthoughts.substack.com/p/what-exactly-is-skepticism - I can report that faith and skepsis are NOT mutually exclusive. In fact, a true skeptic should respond to the challenge of the "leap of faith" by LEAPING - if only to see what happens. Personal experience is the gold standard for all inquiry. As for my own personal experience of faith? I have no need for it, since I have personal experience of the Transcendent.