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Cancer Treatments
Dear Dr. Lee,
My dog was recently diagnosed with cancer. She had surgery to remove her tumour, but there is a high chance it may have already spread, even though it doesn’t show up yet on the tests. I have been referred to an oncologist for her, but I’m not sure what to expect there, and if there were any alternative approaches we could try for her.
W. L.
Dear W. L.,
There are many different avenues to explore when one is treating a pet with cancer. I will try to outline the main ones for you, but keep in mind this is just an overview, and additional therapies may also exist for your pet. One of the mainstays of cancer therapy, especially in Western medicine is surgery. I’m glad that you and your dog have already gotten through that. From a holistic point of view, I don’t think surgery is the wrong thing to do, but we don’t always jump to it quite as quickly. In this case, with the main tumor removed, we now deal with trying to minimize growth of any additional tumour cells which may have spread, or been left behind at the original site. In cases where surgery was not performed, either through choice or because the mass was inoperable, we also want to limit the growth, or even shrink, the original tumour. After surgery, the usual options in Western medicine are chemotherapy, radiation treatment, or both. Most of you know chemotherapy consists of different medicines which kill tumour cells. They also kill other rapidly dividing cells, which is why in humans we see hair loss, anemia, low white blood cell count, and some other side effects. These drugs are fairly toxic, but can be powerful anti cancer tools. Radiation treatment is a concentrated beam of radiation delivered to a specific area on the body, with the goal of killing the cells it is aimed at. This can be useful if we know where new tumours are cropping up, or at the original surgery site if the original tumor was incompletely removed. For animals radiation treatments require general anesthesia for each treatment since they won’t stay still otherwise, and we can’t aim radiation at a moving target. Radiation treatment can also be a powerful tool in the cancer arsenal, but there are also side effects to worry about, such as damage to the normal tissues being burned by the radiation. If you elect to see the oncologist, these are likely the options which they will discuss with you. Each different kind of cancer responds differently to chemotherapy drugs and radiation, and an oncologist will be able to give you statistics regarding the chances of success for your dog’s particular disease. One can certainly mix holistic medicine with western cancer treatments in an effort to give the dog every possible chance, or sometimes after exploring all the pros and cons of each modality, we choose to use only holistic treatments.
When I treat a cancer patient using holistic medicine (with or without western medicine added in), the first thing I address is the diet. Almost every cancer patient should be on a low carbohydrate diet. Tumours love to eat carbohydrates, so a dog eating a diet high in carbs is being robbed of most of her food resulting in weight loss, while her tumour is eating and growing well. A diet with higher fat and protein content will actually feed the dog, not so much the tumour. And fresh cooked food has nutrients you just can’t get from a bag. But it’s often not enough to just use a generic low carb diet, even if it’s fresh cooked. Different dogs need to eat different types of food, both in health and disease, so it is important to keep these individual differences in mind. Food therapy is so important to us all I could go on and on, but this is just an introduction. I also start all of my cancer patients on herbs, but the herbs vary widely depending on how strong the patient is, where the cancer is, and what the underlying root of the disease is in terms of Traditional Chinese medicine. I tend to stick with Chinese herbal formulas and certain Western herbs, either alone or in combination. Usually these herbs are taken internally, but sometimes I use them topically. The goal of herbal therapy is to strengthen the body, and correct underlying problems which caused the cancer to crop up in the first place. Other practitioners may choose different types of herbs, or even homeopathic remedies. It depends on the disease, the practitioners training and areas of expertise, and informed choices on the part of the pets “parents”. Acupuncture is also useful in cancer in several ways. It helps to balance the immune system, get the qi, or energy, moving through blocked channels, stimulate appetite and decrease pain, as well as balance the body overall.
So although I am sorry to hear of your pet’s diagnosis, try not to be too discouraged.
There are many options available to your pet to increase quality survival time to the fullest, or best case scenario, to cure her.
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