Being Smart About Cancer

A cancer diagnosis naturally brings the weighty responsibility of choosing the best possible treatment plan for yourself. One of the biggest challenges faced by most cancer patients at the onset of the journey is that you are not an expert in cancer treatment or recovery. Usually, you don’t even have the background to understand the medical terminology that is used on your lab reports and by your oncologist, who is likely seeing 15-25 patients in a day and isn’t available to answer every question. On top of it all, you are in a most vulnerable and fragile state of mind as you grapple with the implications of the prognosis you’ve been handed. In spite of this, you are the only one who can make these important decisions about your health care. Different people deal with this in different ways ranging from handing all decisions to whomever they see as the expert to questioning everything and forging their own unique route through the unknown territory of alternative cancer care. Most of us lie somewhere in between.

Cancer diagnoses always take place in the conventional medical system. This means that the first set of options you will encounter is what is available to you within that system. Even this will vary depending on the hospital system you have selected. These potentially lifesaving options can be categorized as surgery, radiation, and internal medicine, with the latter being the most diverse category ranging from an immunotherapy treatment that targets your specific tumor-type to medications that affect the operations of every cell in your body. Each particular type of cancer has its own accepted treatment strategy that is considered “standard of care”. Active research continues to evolve these strategies with new pharmaceuticals, dosages, or methodologies that aim to reduce the size of tumors, extend the lives of cancer patients, and eventually, hopefully, find cures to all the different types of cancer.

Sometimes your odds within this system look pretty good. Certain cancers have fairly high 5-year survival rates while others are frighteningly low. As an individual looking at these potentials, your goal is to ensure that, no matter what the statistical probabilities are, you land on the side of survival, and hopefully exceed the five years they measure. But it can be difficult to determine what will tip the balance in your favor, especially as some of the treatment options come with additional risks or threats to your overall health.

If you look beyond the conventional system, you may quickly become overwhelmed and fearful for different reasons. Outside the conventional system, you will find a plethora of alternative and boutique cancer care clinics, eastern philosophies with ancient roots for addressing holistic health, different lifestyle practices that are often touted as the “answer”, and stories of miraculous remission. Distinguishing among them becomes a full-time job and sometimes makes the waters rising around you even more murky. Some of this muddlement is shaped by the knowledge and beliefs of the people around you, including both your oncology team and the family and friends you have chosen to confide in. Those invested in your care may hold strong opinions that can feel supportive when aligned with your perspective, or alternatively, can introduce fear and self-doubt, even undermining options with clear potential benefits.

At present, these two approaches are rarely integrated and are sometimes presented as opposing choices, leading patients to feel they must choose one or the other. In reality, that isn’t the case, you can build a treatment plan that draws from both. The key is to trust your own judgment and make those decisions with careful consideration of the known risks and benefits.

Sometimes, especially if you are receiving your oncology care at a research institution, you will be offered supplemental or complementary care within the conventional system. However, many people are not able to access these more cutting-edge institutions and won’t be introduced to complementary therapies as a legitimate option. This is why I am passionate about changing the narrative through my work. Because there are things that you can do that are known to not only improve quality of life and support overall health but also support the effectiveness and tolerance of conventional treatments and this can only improve your odds of long-term survival, which is top of mind for every cancer patient.

If you’re reading this article, you likely want a deeper understanding of your situation and the full range of options available. If instead you prefer to rely on a trusted expert to guide decisions, that approach is equally valid and deserves to be honored by everyone around you. Ultimately, these choices are yours. Taking a less active role may allow some decisions to unfold by default, which can reduce the burden of decision-making. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, your involvement often becomes more active once initial treatment ends and it’s time to consider the next steps, beyond the urgency of a cancer diagnosis. At this point in the cancer journey, many patients find themselves without clear direction as their treatment has ended and they are no longer being actively cared for by their oncology team. However, this is an important moment to assess your overall health and identify areas where changes could help reduce your risk of cancer. You may wish you had focused on this earlier in your life, but what matters now is the opportunity and new-found motivation to take action. Several core inputs form the foundation of health: sleep, movement, hydration, emotional well-being, breathing, nutrition, minimizing toxin exposure, and, last but not least, light.

Adopting lifestyle changes can feel both empowering and challenging. It’s empowering because it puts you in a position to take meaningful steps that support your health and improve your chances not just of surviving, but of thriving after treatment. It’s challenging for familiar reasons: changing long-established habits is difficult, especially when those changes compete with work, social life, cultural norms, or a tendency toward perfectionism. Even so, these areas are fundamental to overall health and well-being and deserve your thoughtful attention.

In the next article, I’ll discuss each of the core inputs I have listed above, outline baseline recommendations for maintaining health, and explore how each of us might take a different pathway toward optimizing our health as we focus on what matters most and brings us joy and fulfillment. These principles are relevant to everyone, as we are all at risk for developing cancer.

Linked below is an excellent podcast that clearly explains the differences between integrative, alternative, and complementary cancer care. It can be beneficial for cancer patients to understand these concepts, seek out reliable information, and consider including integrative healthcare providers on their oncology team to help evaluate and incorporate complementary therapies into their treatment plan.

To listen to the podcast episode referred to above visit: The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer Episode 335: Can I Take That? Integrative Medicine and Lung Cancer