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Integrative Medicine

Enhancing an anti-cancer strategy with natural compounds

1. Increase immune response
2. Inhibit angiogenesis
3. Inhibit metastasis and invasion
4. Inhibit abnormal gene expression
5. Induce differentiation and apoptosis
6. Controlling inflammation

Integrative Medicine

Complementary and Alternative Medicine approaches to colon cancer therapy

What is Complementary and Alternative Medicine?

Complementary and alternative medicine is a collection of medical practices, systems and products that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine practice. Complementary medicine is often used to complement the side effects of conventional medicine while alternative medicine as the name implies is used as an alternative to conventional medicine. Conventional medicine in the United States is practiced by medical doctors (M.D.), doctors of osteopathy (D.O.), physical therapists, and registered nurses. The best of both worlds is a combination of conventional, alternative and complementary medicine to provide a comprehensive approach that is known as integrative medicine. Integrative medicine takes a holistic approach, accounting for the health of body, mind and spirit. It combines both conventional and alternative medicine, making use of all appropriate therapies to improve ones health.

The University of Arizona which is a leader in Integrative Medicine education has outlined the defining principles of integrative medicine. It is important to review these if considering an integrative medical approach.

1. Patient and practitioner are partners in the healing process.
2. All factors that influence health, wellness, and disease are taken into consideration, including mind, spirit, and community, as well as the body.
3. Appropriate use of both conventional and alternative methods facilitates the body's innate healing response.
4. Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive should be used whenever possible.
5. Integrative medicine neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically.
6. Good medicine is based in good science. It is inquiry-driven and open to new paradigms.
7. Alongside the concept of treatment, the broader concepts of health promotion and the prevention of illness are paramount.
8. Practitioners of integrative medicine should exemplify its principles and commit themselves to self-exploration and self-development.

Integrative Medicine and Colon Cancer

There are literally hundreds of supplements, diets and strategies for an integrative approach to treating colon cancer. Trying to sort out the gimmicks from the truly helpful information is often difficult, and sure to confound even the most savvy researcher. The following is a comprehensive review of a therapeutic approach that borrows the strategies of conventional medicine and applies them to the utilization of nature's most powerful cancer fighting compounds.

Cancer is a complex disease resulting from the culmination of several cellular and genetic processes gone awry. Given cancer's complicated nature it is essential to combat its complexity with an all-inclusive treatment strategy. In the early days of oncology, single agent chemotherapy drugs were often disappointingly ineffective due to cancer's ability to rapidly mutate and build resistance towards a single compound. Recently great success has been achieved by utilizing combinations of chemotherapy drugs or cocktails in order to attack cancer from several angles and avoid its becoming resistant to any single agent.

Drawing on the same combination approach of conventional medicine, therapy utilizing a large combination of natural compounds can target cancer at each of its development stages. It is vital to note that combination therapy is entirely implicit in nature, and it has been the often unsuccessful pursuit of conventional medicine to target a disease with a single compound. As Jim Duke, an expert in cancer fighting plants has been heard to say, herbs and plants contain "a menu of chemicals from which the body selects what it needs."

Please explore each targeted anti-cancer strategy for a review of the important natural compounds

1. Increase immune response
2. Inhibit angiogenesis
3. Inhibit metastasis and invasion
4. Inhibit abnormal gene expression
5. Induce differentiation and apoptosis
6. Controlling inflammation