A prominent question in nearly every survivor’s mind is “What do I need to do so this never happens again?” Most would rather not “watch and wait” if there are measures that would reduce the risk of a future round of disease. While mainstream cancer treatment centers are to be acknowledged for their heroic efforts to remove immediate threat to life, even the most effective standard treatment may only return the patient to the brink of disease. Without preventive treatment that modifies potential contributing causes of the patient’s recent disease, it may be just a matter of time before he or she is tipped back over the disease threshold. The IOM report identified prevention as an essential element of survivor care, but the meaning it assigned to prevention—checking for cancer recurrences and second cancers—overlaps the definition of surveillance.2 We who treat cancer survivors must clearly distinguish between surveillance—ie, detecting a course of disease already afoot—and true prevention: advance action that keeps a new course of disease from developing.When approached from a holistic view rather than through the lens of single-mechanism agents, prevention possibilities expand dramatically. A holistic approach views disease as the result of degradation of the “internal terrain” as a result of events and effects of one’s personal history (eg, medical, emotional, environmental). In this context, prevention of cancer must include measures that identify and normalize oncogenic features of the terrain (eg, inflammation, glucose/insulin dysregulation, immune derangement), restore the body’s homeostatic mechanisms to working order, and modify controllable factors that contribute to terrain derangement. naturalmedicinejournal/journal/2015-01/when-cancer-survivors-return-primary-care?utm_source=Natural+Medicine+Journal+List&utm_campaign=9ad843d6a2-January_2015_NMJ&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1c8ddd2c4-9ad843d6a2-279613565
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 19:49:57 +0000
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