Cancertreatment In Thailand

[AndrefromHolland]

I would like to get in touch with somebody who knows more about healthcare in Thailand, espacially in the specific treatment and new developments of small cel lungcancer.

I am a man of 58 years old, from The Netherlands. Together with my family I am fighting and struggling to keep on living a few years more, espacially for my wife and youngest sun who is now 12 years old.

My prognosis in life is not so good, because this cancer is very dangerous and difficult to treat. Since may 2006 I have been treated twice with cisplatin/etoposide. The last cure finished 6 weeks ago and the respons was not so good.

At the moment my condition seems all right, I look recovered and I feel healthy. I am still very strong and active in sports. But inside my body is this "secret" illness in my system. I have one tumor in the outside of my left lung, it can not be operated or radiated because it is located against the aorta. I also have a small tumor in the backbone. My oncologists say that there can be a new outbreak with new metastases and the danger is that there is probably immunity of the cancercells against the most used chemo agents like cisplatin and etoposide.

I heard that there are clynics in Thailand where they have special trials according this small cell lungcancer. I hope te meet with people who can tell me more about this special treatments.

In the passed we have been in Thailand and we met a lot of very kind people. I also met with a very nice boeddhist priest and now I am a boeddhist myself. Now I hope again to find some more positive things through this forum.

Friendly greetings from,

Andre de Groot.

[Sheryl]

Dear Andre,

So sorry to hear about your problem. There are indeed a number of researchers in Thailand working on this. Soem clinical trails have already been completed, some are ongoing but no longer recruiting patients, and 2 are currently recruiting patients as follows:

1) Phase III: erlotinib alone vs. erlotinib plus sunitinib (Pfizer): altho there is a placebo grouop, the placebo group still gets erlotinib (just not the new drug) and a number of recent trials have established that erlotinib is effective in extending the average life expectancy in NSCLC, from what you say you have not yet been treated with it. To get information on a study site in Thailand you need to fill out a form on this website:

https://trialinfoemail.pfizer.com/pages/lan...lotinib%20Alone

And you can read a general description of the study at this link: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT...land&rank=4 Also at that link is an email contact at Pfizer for this study. There are sites in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

2) Phase III: a new drug called BIBW2992 (Boehringer). This uses a placebo and is only for patients who have already been treated with either erlotinib or gefitinib and still; progressed so you might not be a candidate. details including a contact person's email are at:

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT...land&rank=5

If it does not prove possible for you to enter either of these trials, or you decide against it, it would still be wise to seek ttreatment from one of the physicians who have or are currently conducting clinical trials on treatment of NSCLC as they will have the most up to date information. From what I have read erlotinib is certainly worth a try if you have not had it yet. I know there is at least 1 doctor at Bumrungrad involved in an ongoing (but no longer recruiting) clinical trial for Genentech, not sure which of the doctors it is though. You might be able to find out from Genentech or by calling the international relations department at Bumrungrad.

There have been many trials done and some ongoing at Chiang Mai University Hiospital, the following link gives the results published for one and has an email contact for the chief investigatpr, I suggest you email him for suggestions as to doctors in Thailand who are fully up to date on new treatments:

http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/16579000

I suspect the same doctor would be involved in the current ongoing trials as well.

Because of your young age and otherwise good health you may tolerate the effects of chemo better than some of the patients mentioned in the article.

Good luck and feel free to contact me either by PM or in this forum if I can be of further help

[zzdocxx]

God bless you and good luck.

[Mozi]

I'm in Singapore and have been interested in cancer therapy since year 2000. In Thailand, I have checked and made a trip in September 2008 to meet with Dr Banchob. So far, I would say he should be the best doctor for (non-allopathic- clarification inserted by moderator) cancer therapy in Bangkok.

w w w . b a l a v i n a t u r a l m e d i c i n e . c o m / i n d e x . h t m l [remove spaces]

It is a natural therapy approach, so if you have been used to the western medicine approach with chemotherapy and radiation, you'll need a change in mindset.

However if you want the best result, i recommend that you consult Dr Sundardas in Singapore:

w w w . n a t u r a l t h e r a p i e s . c o m

If you are in early-mid stage, there is a likelihood to have things under control, but if it's late stage, what can be done is improvement in the quality of life, pain management and life extension.

Edited November 22, 2008 by Sheryl
removal of link which presents factually inaccurate information. Insertion of clarification that what is being referred to is an "alternative"approach

[Mozi]

Hope this helps, discussion between conventional medicine and naturopathy.

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Conventional medicine vs. naturopathy: How to fix a leaky roof

People often ask me about the difference in philosophy between conventional medicine and naturopathic medicine. While the differences are numerous, some of the more fundamental ones can easily be explained. Imagine your body is a house, and the health of your body is the maintenance of that house. If you don't do regular maintenance on this house, the roof of your house begins to leak and you might notice water dripping into your home every time it rains. The water is a symptom of an underlying problem -- a roof with poor maintenance.

The difference between conventional medicine and naturopathic medicine can be described in the way that health practitioners would perceive this problem and attempt to resolve it. Conventional medicine would look at the water dripping out of the roof and find a way to measure it. So they would have a number, which might be 60 drips per hour, and they might say anything above that (such as 70 drips per hour or 100 drips per hour) is a disease, and they would name that disease something like, "Roofoporosis Disease."

They would identify the symptom itself -- the water -- as being the disease, and they would try to figure out which chemical would take care of it. In this case they might prescribe water absorbing crystals that you would spread around the house to absorb this excess water, completely ignoring the integrity of the roof, as well as the need to actually repair the roof and not allow water to drip through it. If you said to them, "well, maybe we should think about repairing the roof," they would say, "The problem is clearly the water -- you can see the water, here's a measurement of the water." They might even say if you don't aggressively treat this excessive water, you're going to end up flooding your entire house.

In contrast to that, a naturopathic approach involves a little more investigative work. A naturopath would use the dripping water as a clue, but then ask: what is the underlying fundamental cause of this water dripping into the home? The naturopathic physician would trace the water back to the stain in the ceiling, and this stain would indicate that water has been chronically dripping in from a leaky roof. Then, he would trace it through the attic to the roof and find a hole in the roof. After a bit of detective work, he (or she) would decide to patch the hole, repair the roof and stop the leaking water at its source.

Treat the problem, not the symptom

Naturopaths aren't treating the water -- the symptom -- and this confuses conventional medicine to a great degree. They don't understand how someone can treat cancer without treating the tumor itself. Because conventional docs think the symptom is the disease or the disorder. But naturopathic medicine sees the cancer tumor as only a symptom of a much deeper problem. Just like the water dripping into the home is only a symptom of a broken roof in need of repair, a cancer tumor is only a symptom of a serious underlying metabolic problem.

The naturopathic physician would fix the cause of the problem, but they wouldn't stop there. They would also realize that if the roof has one hole in it now, it seems likely that there could be other holes that are beginning to form, too. They would look at it from a holistic perspective and work to not only solve today's problems, but also prevent the development of other chronic degenerative problems that share the same cause.

Conventional medicine, having ignored the leaky roof in the first place, would play a game of prescribing a never-ending chain of treatments to mask all the various water disorders, each of which would be given a unique disease name. If water dripped onto your wooden furniture, it would be called something like Furniture Disease, whereas if the same water dripped on your carpet, they might call it Soggy Carpet Disease. No matter what the water dripped on, conventional medicine would have a different name and a different treatment for it. Even though all these problems have the same common cause (the leaky roof), medicine would find a way to turn it into a dozen different diseases and treatment plans, all while completely ignoring the root cause.

Naturopathic physicians and Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners, on the other hand, will listen to their patient's symptoms but not necessarily treat those symptoms directly. Sometimes they even appear to ignore the symptoms completely, even though they are in actuality looking beyond them and treating the fundamental causes of the disease. There are really only a few basic causes of all disease. Conventional medicine has over ten thousand names for various diseases, but these are merely symptomatic descriptions. Every single one of them is based on one of the following three causes:

Number one: the body (or the mind) doesn't have something it needs, such as nutrition, oxygen, air, sunlight, love, sleep, etc.

Number two: the body (or mind) has too much of something it can't use or is toxic.

Number three: the body (or mind) doesn't have the proper flow, either energetically or physically. This means it cannot remove metabolic waste products, nourish cells with fresh blood, or neurologically respond to a stimulus.

No matter what symptoms you present at the doctor's office, the naturopathic physician will investigate the root causes of disease: your exposure to toxic chemicals, your levels of chronic stress and the health of your relationships, your level of physical exercise, and your exposure to sunlight, fresh air and fresh water, among other factors. These are simple causative factors, but when they are out of balance, deficient, or present in excess, they combine to create all the different biochemical problems that conventional medicine labels as disease. In other words, these three causes can combine in ten thousand different ways, creating ten thousand different symptoms, and conventional medicine has invented a name for each one.

But treating disease is wasted effort if it remains focused on the symptoms. Preventing disease is sort of like doing basic maintenance on your home; it's something you have to do routinely, something you do preemptively to prevent disease from occurring. And you have to cover all the basics: nutrition, exercise, avoidance of toxic chemicals, avoidance of chronic stress, good flow and circulation, and a healthy mind and emotional state. These things go together to create a healthy body and mind.

This fundamental idea -- which is centuries old and was understood in China thousands of years before the rise of modern pharmacology -- remains utterly neglected by modern medical science. Today's medical practitioners cannot grasp this simple concept, and they still insist that there are more than 10,000 different diseases, each requiring specific chemical or surgical treatments.

It's like running around a leaky house with a pail trying to catch all of the drops of water while billing Medicare for the cost of the pails. It would be better to simply fix the roof. But knowing that the roof is leaking requires some detective work, and conventional medicine has abandoned anything resembling real detective work. Today, it's all about identifying and treating the symptoms, then waiting for the patient to return with more symptoms caused by the treatments used on the first round of symptoms.

Someday, this whole system of modern medicine will be looked upon as quite foolish. Because it doesn't take a genius to figure out that fixing the leaky roof is the best way to prevent water from dripping into your home.

Edited November 25, 2008 by Mozi

[Sheryl]

The above post, while accurate AFAIK (and I am no expert in it) with regard to "naturopathy", is not accurate with regard to modern medicine (which I do have some expertise in).

Modern medicine clearly differentiates between symptomatic management and curative treatment and most definitely does seek to identify and treat underlying causes. It also treats with many other modalities than just "chemicals"including some that ovberlap with what a Naturopath might also do e.g. advising diet and life style changes.

It also involveds extensive "detective work" both in the the process of differential diagnosis of individual patients and in the sub-discipline of epidemiology which looks at populations as a whole.

Where naturopathy and allopathy differ seems to be in (1) how they conceptualize underlying causes and (2) a comparatively greater emphasis in naturopathy on what in modern medicine would be termed, fo infectious disease, "host factors", or for non-infectious disease, "predisposing factors", i.e. why the body was susceptible to the disease process in the first place. Modern medicine does not ignore these, but it does place a comparatively much greater emphasis on treatimng the immediate cause of the disease than on addressing the susceptilibilty aspect.

This last is where some people find benefit in using the 2 systems in a complementary fashion.

It is fine to explain naturopathy but sweeping inaccuracies with regard to modern medicine are contrary to forum rules; please note the new health forum-specific rules which have been pinned. The rules are new, so some time is being allowed for people to become familiar with them, but will be applied and violations will result in formal Moderator action in future.

Also please note the last paragraph of that pinned notice.