Integrating Holistic Herbal Therapy and Medical Modalities for Breast Cancer: Some Case Reports

摘要

Breast cancer is the number one problem encountered by CA Care over the past decade. This represents 18.8% of all cancers we have seen. Females in the age group between 41 to 50 years were the most vulnerable, representing 34.7% of those who had breast cancer. Patients who came to us have already undergone medical treatments: surgery (61.7%), chemotherapy (34.2%), radiotherapy (33.6%) and hormonal therapy (25.8%). In spite of these, 20.7% of patients suffered metastasis or recurrence. CA Care provides help in the form of counseling and herbal therapy. Our strategy is to heal the whole person and we advise patients to change their diet and lifestyle, exercise and employ religious beliefs to find peace within. Overall, 28.6% of those who came to us benefited from our therapy in various ways as illustrated in our case reports. While herbs are not "magic bullets" for breast cancer, our case studies showed that herbal therapy is an integral and beneficial component for the overall healing of breast cancer. Declaration of Interest The senior author is a practising herbalist and therefore has financial interest in the herbs mentioned in this article. However, please note that these herbs are not commercially available and has to be specially prescribed by the author. Introduction Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. In the US, one woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every two minutes and one woman dies of breast cancer every eight minutes ( 1 ). In Malaysia, 3,738 breast cancer cases were reported in 2003 and one in 19 women is expected to get breast cancer in their lifetime ( 2 ) . The dilemma facing women today is best expressed by Karen Stabiner: “There is no sure way to dodge breast cancer – no proven preventive, no dependable treatment, no cure... and no means of predicting whom it will strike next. The only certainty is that over 183,000 women will get breast cancer this year (in the USA), and about 44,000 will die of it” ( 1 ). Literature Review More often than not, women with breast cancer are subjected to a battery of treatments: surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormonal therapy. The most important question that patients may wish to ask after undergoing these treatments is: Can I be cured? Or, is there such thing as a cure? It is a common belief that with early stage breast cancer the standard medical treatment can “cure” the disease ( 3 ). However, it is noted that 20 % to 85% of patients diagnosed with early stage breast cancer will develop recurrent and/or metastatic disease despite undergoing the required treatments ( 4 ) . Unfortunately, metastatic breast cancer is generally considered incurable and the median survival is 2 to 4 years ( 3,4,5 ).Following the progress of 1,581 breast cancer patients who had undergone chemotherapy at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Centre, Houston, Texas, USA, P.A. Greenberg et al. noted that only 49 patients or 3.1% remained in complete remission for more than 5 years. They concluded that “most patients with metastatic breast cancer treated with systemic therapies have only temporary responses to treatment. These data show that a small percentage of patients achieve long-term remission with standard chemotherapy regimens” ( 6 ).Cathie Chung & Robert Carlson ( 5 ) presented an account of the natural history of untreated advanced breast cancer based on the records of 250 women with inoperable advanced breast cancer from 1805 to 1933 in Middlesex Hospital, England. Although untreated, 18% of the patients remained alive after 5 years thus bringing to question the actual role of medical treatment. How effective is chemotherapy? Graeme Morgan, Robyn Ward & Michael Baton ( 7 ) reported that in Australia, of the 10,661 people who had breast cancer, only 164 people survived 5 years due to chemotherapy. This works out to 1.5% survival rate contributed by chemotherapy. This observation led Eva Segelove to report that “chemotherapy has been oversold. Chemotherapy has improved sur