Full Answer
Who is Dave Weil?
Sep 14, 2010 · September 14, 2010. For nearly a decade now myself and others have been highlighting the potent anti-cancer and potentially cancer preventive properties of cannabinoids. Now Dr. Andrew Weil, a best-selling author and world-renowned leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, has lent his powerful voice to this discussion.
What is Weil’s opinion on prior probability?
The Anti-Inflammatory Diet emphasizes choosing and preparing foods that help keep you healthy. It's not a weight-loss plan, although some people do lose weight on …
What kind of doctor should you see for cancer?
The study was published in the November 2004 issue of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. While there's no evidence that Essiac or Flor-Essence can …
What did Weil say about what you eat?
Some people with cancer will have only one treatment. But most people have a combination of treatments, such as surgery with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. You may also have immunotherapy, targeted therapy, or hormone therapy. Clinical trials might also be an option for you. Clinical trials are research studies that involve people. Understanding what they are and …
How much exercise is needed to fight cancer?
Exercise is proven to help in the fight against heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some types of cancer. Experts recommend at least 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity such as walking.
How often can you eat fish?
Lean meat, including skinless chicken, and dairy products are limited to twice a week. But you can have fish and seafood almost every day. Cooking and shopping: You may need to make more trips to the grocery store to buy fresh produce and seafood. Cleaning and preparing fresh produce can take time.
What are some examples of animal protein?
Animal protein is limited, except for fish, some cheeses, and yogurt. Load up on protein-rich vegetables such as beans, soybeans, and soy products instead. Processed foods like chips and cookies, products made with high-fructose corn syrup, and any food made with partially hydrogenated oil are off the list.
Does fish oil help with arthritis?
Omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in fish and fish oil, have been shown to reduce pain and tenderness in inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. Inflammation is also suspected by many experts to be at the core of heart disease, Alzheimer ’s disease, and cancer.
Who is Andrew Weil?
Dr. Andrew Weil is a rock star in the “complementary and alternative medicine” ( CAM) and “integrative medicine” (IM) movement. Indeed, it can be persuasively argued that he is one of its founders, at least a founder of the its most modern iteration, and I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who did more in the early days of the CAM /IM movement, back before it ever managed to achieve a modicum of unearned respectability, to popularize CAM. In fact, no physician that I can think of has over the course of his lifetime done more to promote the rise of quackademic medicine than Dr. Weil. The only forces greater than Dr. Weil in promoting the infiltration of pseudoscience into academic medicine have been the Bravewell Collaborative and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine ( NCCAM). Before there was Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Mark Hyman, or any of the other promoters of IM, there was Dr. Weil.
What is the argument for RCTs?
The heart of the argument in this paper is that RCTs should be only one (presumably of many) factors that determine whether medicine considers and intervention to be effective or not. As the title suggests, safety and patient preferences play a prominent role in Weil’s argument, but first Weil yokes poor Sir Austin Bradford-Hill, FRS, a pioneering early to mid-20th century epidemiologist best known for his work linking smoking to lung cancer and pioneering the RCT, into his service. Bradford-Hill proposed a set of criteria for drawing causality about disease etiology, but his nine criteria are sometimes used in considering the effectiveness of treatments.
Is placebo medicine effective?
Outside of the rigorous, carefully controlled world of RCTs, placebo medicine can seem to have effectiveness, which is exactly why proponents of pseudoscientific medicine love pragmatic trials. The populations aren’t as well-defined; often there is no placebo control; and they are almost always unblinded.
What kind of treatment is needed for cancer?
Some people with cancer will have only one treatment. But most people have a combination of treatments, such as surgery with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. You may also have immunotherapy, targeted therapy, or hormone therapy.
Is it normal to be overwhelmed with cancer?
When you need treatment for cancer, you have a lot to learn and think about. It is normal to feel overwhelmed and confused. But, talking with your doctor and learning all you can about all your treatment options, including clinical trials, can help you make a decision you feel good about.
What is the treatment for cancer?
Radiation Therapy . Radiation therapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses high doses of radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Learn about the types of radiation, why side effects happen, which ones you might have, and more.
What is the procedure that removes cancer from the body?
Surgery. When used to treat cancer, surgery is a procedure in which a surgeon removes cancer from your body. Learn the different ways that surgery is used against cancer and what you can expect before, during, and after surgery.
How many types of cancer treatments are there?
There are many types of cancer treatment. The types of treatment that you receive will depend on the type of cancer you have and how advanced it is. Some people with cancer will have only one treatment. But most people have a combination of treatments, such as surgery with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.
What is immunotherapy for cancer?
Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps your immune system fight cancer. This page covers the types of immunotherapy, how it is used against cancer, and what you can expect during treatment.
What is targeted therapy?
Targeted therapy is a type of cancer treatment that targets the changes in cancer cells that help them grow, divide, and spread. Learn how targeted therapy works against cancer and about common side effects that may occur.
What is stem cell transplant?
Stem cell transplants are procedures that restore blood-forming stem cells in cancer patients who have had theirs destroyed by very high doses of chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Learn about the types of transplants, side effects that may occur, and how stem cell transplants are used in cancer treatment.
What is precision medicine?
Precision Medicine. Precision medicine helps doctors select treatments that are most likely to help patients based on a genetic understanding of their disease. Learn about the role precision medicine plays in cancer treatment, including how genetic changes in a person's cancer are identified and used to select treatments.
Can nutritionists help with cancer?
Nutritionists can also play a key role for the person with cancer. "Cancer treatment can debilitate your body, and you need to be eating a healthy diet to give you the strength you need to deal with the side effects and fight the cancer," Lichtenfeld says.
Is acupuncture safe for cancer patients?
It's not that complementary medicine is off limits. In fact, some complementary therapies, such as acupuncture, have been embraced for cancer patients. But the rule of thumb is to tell your doctor about anything and everything you're doing in response to your cancer, whether it requires a prescription or not.
Does cancer care matter?
Where you get your initial cancer care may matter most, both doctors say. "The best cancer care may require the best operations from the start, the best decisions about useful of different treatment modalities, and exposure to trials and new therapies," Saltz says. "Many people will get cancer diagnosed, quickly get an operation to remove it in ...
Is cancer treatment evolving?
Besides, cancer treatment is evolving at a rapid pace. Your friend may have had one kind of treatment for their cancer five years ago, and since then, a new drug may have emerged that improves on the old treatment regimen. Side effects may vary, too.
Does St John's wort help with cancer?
Just because something is natural doesn't mean it has no side effects, and some herbs and botanical remedies have been documented to have negative interactions with cancer treatments. For example, St. John's wort, often taken for depression, can reduce the effectiveness of certain chemotherapy drugs.
Is cancer a doctor or a hospital?
When it comes to cancer, not all doctors and hospitals are created equal. At minimum, says J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD, deputy chief medical officer with the American Cancer Society, you should find a doctor affiliated with a hospital that is accredited by the Commission on Cancer. "These programs have multidisciplinary teams, information about access to clinical trials, and comprehensive, state-of-the-art care," Lichtenfeld says.
Why is it important to know about prostate cancer?
This is important because cancer treatment poses many risks for individuals, not the least of which are treatment-related side effects and long-term effects. In addition, we know that some cancers, such as prostate cancer, may not cause a person any serious harm or even shorten their lives if they are left untreated.
Can you wait to get cancer treatment?
This tells us that the perceptions and fears associated with a cancer diagnosis may lead reasonable people to opt for more treatment, even if they are reassured that it is possible to watch and wait and that they may never need treatment. In some situations, such as the diagnosis of a precancerous lesion, the degree of anxiety a person feels may be ...
What is the danger of bacteria?
The main danger is that the bacteria will become the enemy and infect the person. To prevent this, researchers have modified the bacteria to not only thrive in the environment of a tumor, but also to struggle to survive in healthy tissue. This is a revolution in the way people have thought about cancer treatment.
Does chemotherapy kill cancer?
Chemotherapy delivers cancer killing drugs to the bloodstream, but these drugs can only reach as far as the blood vessels reach, and most of the tumor’s blood vessels do not get to the center of the tumor. This is where the bacteria, specifically salmonella, can come to the rescue.
Can bacteria kill cancer?
Combined with conventional treatment such as chemotherapy, researchers are hoping bacteria will be very effective at killing tumors and, further, stopping them from spreading. If proven safe and effective, this bacterial treatment could provide a vital victory in the war against cancer.
Efficacy, Effectiveness, and Safety, OH, My!
Trying to Shrink The Importance of The RCT
- The heart of the argument in this paper is that RCTs should be only one (presumably of many) factors that determine whether medicine considers and intervention to be effective or not. As the title suggests, safety and patient preferences play a prominent role in Weil’s argument, but first Weil yokes poor Sir Austin Bradford-Hill, FRS, a pioneering early to mid-20th century epidemiolog…
Use and Abuse of Systems Biology and “Holistic” Methods
- Unable to abuse poor Bradford-Hill anymore, Weil moves on to list “unique” features of CAM/IM research that—surprise!—turn out to be not-so-unique and not nearly as difficult to take into account in SBM (or even in EBM) as he implies: I like the admission that most CAM/IM is placebo medicine, though. Oh, you didn’t see that? The emphasis on the “healing relationship” between pr…
The Rest of The Rest
- Those who have actually read Dr. Weil’s article will note that I have not yet mentioned one point that Weil hammered on relentlessly, apparently thinking himself Maxwell bringing his silver hammer down upon the heads of those who think scientifically, the better to knock the propensity towards SBM (or even EBM) out of them. That issue is safety. Weil goes on and on about patien…
Conclusion
- The proposals in Shannon et al are nothing original, although I must grudgingly tip my hat to Weil and his acolytes for having repackaged old ideas in a very attractive, slick new package. In essence, they boil down to a massive appeal to other ways of knowing, hence the attack on RCTs in which they point out deficiencies that those of us advocating SBM and EBM have recognized f…
Reference
- Shannon, S., Weil, A., & Kaplan, B. (2011). Medical Decision Making in Integrative Medicine: Safety, Efficacy, and Patient Preference Alternative and Complementary Therapies, 17 (2), 84-91 DOI: 10.1089/act.2011.17210