Acupuncture & TCM for  Cancer Patients during Recovery

Did you know that acupuncture has long been recognized as a non-drug  treatment for nausea and vomiting?  Here is some recent info from the National Cancer Institute, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the Society for Integrative Oncology on the use of acupuncture for these side effects associated with chemo and radiation treatments for cancer.  Please contact the clinic if you are interested in improving your health and your appetite as you battle cancer.

A recent (2018) paper from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center noted that there were more than 3.1 million breast cancer (BC) survivors in the United States and that this population often lives with long-term symptoms such as hot flashes, musculoskeletal pain, and chemotherapy-induced pain and peripheral neuropathy.

Widespread ignorance, often due to low awareness of complementary modalities, among both medical doctors and the public, leads to declines in quality of life at a time when the body is in need of supportive and protective therapies.  Being treated using chemo and radiation techniques is known to damage tissues and organs in our gastrointestinal and neurological systems. More specifically, conventional treatments for cancer can lead to bone marrow suppression (reduced hematopoietic cells),  nerve damage (direct primary neurotoxicity) and the damage/death of  gastrointestinal tissues, reducing the ability of patients to digest food properly and get proper nutrition.

While acupuncture is recognized for applications in these situations, e.g., for pain management, nausea and vomiting, the cultural impoverishment in our healthcare system, manifest as monolithic ethnocentrism,  has not served the public well.

As noted above, widespread ignorance leads to the public being deprived of drug free options e.g., improved digestive capacity with acupuncture and herbal formulas, and an 1800 year old TCM herbal formula being used to improve chemo treatment efficacy for hepatocellular carcinoma (e.g., PHY906, Huang Qin Tang).

In addition, movement therapies (e.g., chi kung techniques) can reduce pain and increase range of movement that could improve their quality of life as they battle these tough conditions. A few years ago, one of my clients recovering from breast cancer treatment and surgery at the local Providence group, noted that their oncology department clinicians never discussed movement therapies to reduce both anxiety and stress and post surgical pain.

Cancer survivors have to keep their therapeutic options open when considering how to improve their lives. It would be unwise to depend on oncologists to suggest alternative and complementary therapies to support them on their journey of recovery, as other patients of mine fighting cancer have also noted, in anger.