Alternative Prostate Cancer Treatment
Cancer of the prostate is an extraordinarily personal and painful test for any man to endure, but alternative prostate cancer treatment options are evolving with every passing day. Several new, exciting options are being tested all over the world.
One of the major problems with prostate cancer is that almost any invasive method of surgery is going to result in incontinence and the loss of sexual ability in a large number of patients. Because of that, most new alternative prostate cancer treatment procedures are seeking to ‘go non-invasive’, though obviously living with incontinence is better than the alternative.
Here are some of the more promising procedures under development and being used in small numbers.
Cytoluminescent Therapy as Alternative Prostate Cancer Treatment
CLT uses a photosensitizing agent derived from chlorophyll which naturally accumulates in cancer calls, causing them to be extremely light-sensitive, and then shines red light onto the prostate (from the rectum) while also bathing the entire body in infrared light. The effect is that the photosensitizing agent causes all of the free radicals in the cancer cells to effectively ‘detonate’ inside the cell, killing it. The upside is that the treatment works very quickly — the downside is that it works very quickly. If the tumors are of any appreciable size or are widespread throughout the body, the sudden death of that many cells can cause sudden overwhelming flu-like symptoms and even necrosis of the cells surrounding the tumor (which can be quite painful). Research is ongoing to find a way to balance out the speed of the tumor’s deaths.
Focal Cryotherapy as Alternative Prostate Cancer Treatment
If you’ve heard of cryogenic freezing, you can probably guess what this means. After using detailed MRI and other scanning equipment to get a very firm grasp on the precise location of the tumor, the focal cryotherapist literally freezes the part of the prostate that is cancerous, killing it and the cancer with it. It sounds dangerous, but the reality is that 95% of patients studied have no recurrence of cancer after the operation, and it leaves the nerves associated with sexual potency and continence intact. The downside is that focal cryotherapy will not work on a cancer that is widespread or metastasized.
Prostate-Specific Diet as Alternative Prostate Cancer Treatment
A low-fat, high-fruit, high-veggie, and high-whole-grain diet called the Pritkin Diet, along with an exercise program, has been clinically shown to double the effectiveness of exercise alone in killing cancer cells. There are several theories on diet and cancer relations, but this is the only high-carb diet that seems to be effective in dealing with cancer, and it is specific to prostate cancer. The theory is that, as prostate cells are particularly vulnerable to oxidative stress, consuming a high-antioxidant diet (lots of raw fruits and vegetables) strengthens the tissues of the prostate while attacking the tumor directly. Similarly, by reducing fat, you tend to reduce meat consumption (as most dietary fat comes from meat) — and studies have shown that eating cooked (and especially charred) meat causes carcinogenic chemicals to build up in the prostate, promoting cancer growth.
As of yet, there is no perfect cure for prostate cancer, but research continues ever forward. Keep your ear to the ground and look out for new unconventional procedures. Alternative prostate cancer treatment can mean avoiding all of the pain and side-effects of chemo or radiation therapy, and that alone makes them sincerely worth considering.