Recently, I saw a patient freshly diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. He had been my patient for a number of years already and had apparently responded well to homeopathic treatment. That is, the symptoms he had complained of were alleviated and his sense of well being increased. He felt well and there were no indications of illness. Then he underwent a routine colonoscopy...
To say the least, it is troubling when someone who took good care of himself in ostensibly good health is suddenly found to have such a life threatening pathology. Unfortunately, these days such stories are not rare. People of all ages, from all walks of life and at all levels of health are susceptible.
Because cancer and other serious degenerative diseases have become such common phenomena in contemporary life, it may appear that they arise randomly. Perhaps it is all just a big lottery and we have little to no control over the combination of numbers on our ticket.
Ironically, the current emphasis on genetics in medical research, although meant to be explanatory by way of prognosticating who is more - or less - likely to develop a particular disease and helpful by way of suggesting appropriate lines of treatment, or even, someday, leading to the development of specific medicines or therapies, actually only emphasizes this 'life as a crapshoot' outlook. After all, who can control his or her genes?
But, I don't actually subscribe to that point of view. It is not a matter of randomness; it is a matter of complexity. Albeit there are many factors of which we have little to no control - our genes being a major one. But as the developing field of epigenetics is showing us, while we can't change our genes, we do have some control over how they express themselves. That is, lifestyle in the broadest sense of the word - how and where we live, work, play, love and worship - matters.
All those factors give rise to a great deal of variability and a great deal of complexity. All of them play some role in determining a person's health and if, as a healthcare practitioner, one has some tools to discern what factors predominate for an individual who is manifesting disease then there is an opportunity to address their illness on a causal level.
So, getting back to my patient, I asked him to come in for a hands-on assessment called 'Autonomic Response Testing' to gain some clarity as to the factors involved with his disease. (See http://www.centerforhomeopathy.com/art/.) ART, which was developed by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, is a diagnostic technique that relies on feedback from the autonomic nervous system to assess the overall state of health, as well as areas and causes of disturbances throughout the body.
In this case it proved to be quite valuable as there was a clear indication that the patient was suffering from an abundance of mycotoxins, that is, pathological fungi, not only in the colon but also in other organs of the digestive system. This no doubt was the major factor in the degeneration of his internal ecology that ultimately resulted in his developing cancer. Looked at from a different perspective, one might say that this was the factor that stimulated his genetic disposition toward cancer to express itself.
While finding no place in modern conventional medical thought or treatment, there has been research pointing toward a connection between cancer and systemic fungal infection. Most famously, it is associated with an Italian oncologist named Tullio Simoncini and his book "Cancer is a Fungus". In it, he writes that a fungal infection - specifically a candidal species infection - is always the foundation of every cancer and that a tumor is the outcome of the organism trying to protect itself against the spread of the fungal colony into specific tissues.
Accordingly, Simoncini developed a therapy using sodium bicarbonate - humble, inexpensive baking soda - because of its capacity to alkalize the body, and, in turn, creating an environment in which the fungi cannot live. His strategy is to get the sodium bicarbonate as close as possible to the site of he tumor. It can be taken orally in digestive cancers, via enema for rectal cancer, as a douche for vaginal and uterine cancer, intravenously for lung and brain cancer, inhaled for the upper respiratory tract, spread through the capillaries and surrounding tissues for breast and lymphatic cancer, and introduced via catheter into arteries flowing to internal organs such as the liver, pancreas and prostate.1
Of course, despite documented successes, for his efforts Simoncini was censured by the conventional medical community and, in the end, lost his medical license.
Simoncini is not alone in pointing out how pervasive and destructive these can be. For instance, Jiri Cehovsky, the Czech homeopath and developer of autopathic therapy (of whom I wrote in a previous column) in his book "Get Well with Autopathy", discusses the pervasiveness of candidal infections and the vast array of illnesses it can cause.2
But he also suggests that aside from candida, parasitic infestations of other microorganism, especially chlamydia pneumoniae and toxoplasmosis, are nearly as prevalent and also are at the root of numerous pathologies. Cehovsky theorizes that the efficacy of his autopathic preparations utilizing a person's own saliva and breath is due to the fact that, in essence, they transform the specific micro-organisms in that person into dynamic medicines that detoxify their body of them.
Whether or not candidal infection is the sole cause of cancer as Simoncini claims is certainly debatable. It would seem reasonable to assume that there may be other organisms and other factors involved. But it points to the fact that underlying cancer and many other diseases is a degradation of the internal environment of the body that allows for opportunistic infections to prevail.
In the case of my patient, regardless of the road he travels in dealing with his cancer, addressing the fungal infection via sodium bicarbonate, diet, homeopathic preparations and other nutritional supplements will be of utmost importance.
1. http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/en/summary-simoncini-therapy/
2. Cehovsky, Jiri. Get Well with Autopathy, pg. 179. Alternativa Publishing, Ltd, Prague, 2012