Esophageal Cancer Treatment – Naturopathic Medicine

Naturopathic Medicine for Esophageal Cancer

Physicians at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) hospitals and facilities can consult with naturopathic practitioners to incorporate naturopathic medicine into your esophageal cancer treatment plan. In particular, naturopathic medicine can assist in maintaining your physical well-being and strength, as well as lessening side effects of conventional esophageal cancer treatments (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy).

What is Naturopathic Medicine?

Naturopathic medicine is a distinct system of primary health care. While not a licensed healing art in Illinois and Oklahoma where CTCA hospitals are located, it is an art, a science, a philosophy and a practice of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of illness. It uses the least invasive, most physiologically supportive methods possible. Methods used at CTCA are consistent with these principles, and are chosen based on an individualized analysis of your needs during your esophageal cancer treatment. Naturopathic practitioners consult with oncologists at CTCA to provide diverse cancer treatment techniques, including modern and traditional, scientific and empirical methods.

The following principles are the foundation for the practice of naturopathic medicine:

The Healing Power of Nature

Your body has the inherent ability to establish, maintain and restore health. Naturopathic medicine seeks to leverage this ordered and intelligent natural healing process, where nature heals through the response of the life force. The physician's role is to facilitate and augment this natural healing process by identifying and removing obstacles to your health and recovery, and supporting the creation of a healthy internal and external environment for you.

First Do No Harm

Naturopathic medicine believes in using methods and medicinal substances that minimize the risk of harmful effects and apply the least possible force or intervention necessary to diagnose or treat cancer. Therefore, the diagnosis, treatment and counseling of esophageal cancer patients should always be complementary to and synergistic with the natural healing process.

Doctor as Teacher

Beyond an accurate diagnosis and appropriate prescription, it is also the doctor’s responsibility to create a healthy interpersonal relationship with each cancer patient. A healthy, cooperative doctor-patient relationship has inherent therapeutic value. By facilitating patient understanding and education, the physician can empower you to take responsibility for your own health. Your physician must strive to inspire hope, as well as understanding.

Treat the Whole Person

Health and disease can be influenced by the complexities of physical, mental, emotional, genetic, environmental, social, spiritual and other factors. Naturopathic medicine recognizes the harmonious functioning of all aspects of you as being essential to your health. The multifactorial nature of health and disease requires a personalized, comprehensive approach to esophageal cancer diagnosis and treatment. Each can be addressed and evaluated, helping to treat the whole person—not just the cancer.

Prevention

The ultimate goal of naturopathic medicine is prevention. This is accomplished through education and promotion of healthy lifestyle habits that can help keep disease and cancer at bay. The doctor assesses environmental risk factors, as well as hereditary susceptibility, and makes appropriate interventions to avoid further harm and risk to you. The focus is on building your health. Because it is difficult to be healthy in an unhealthy world, it is the responsibility of you and your physician to establish a healthy internal and external living environment.

Naturopathic Practice

While naturopaths are trained to be primary care physicians, some choose to emphasize particular treatment methods (see below) and others may concentrate on particular medical fields such as pediatrics, gynecology, allergies, arthritis, etc. Even though it has its own therapeutic specialties, naturopathic medicine incorporates the natural therapies of many different healing traditions. What makes a therapy part of the naturopathic scope of practice is the way it is applied (i.e., on the basis of the six naturopathic principles of healing). The current scope of naturopathic practice includes, but is not limited to:

Clinical nutrition: That "food is the best medicine" is a cornerstone of naturopathic practice. Healthy foods and nutritional supplements can not only help strengthen your body in its fight against cancer, helping to reduce side effects and fatigue, they can also work to prevent disease. Foods and nutritional supplements can help detox the body and often treat many medical conditions more effectively than by other means, with fewer complications and side effects. Naturopaths use diet, natural hygiene, fasting and nutritional supplementation in their practice.

Botanical medicine: Many plant substances are powerful medicines. Where single chemically derived drugs may address only a single problem, botanical medicines are able to comprehensively address a variety of problems at the same time. Their organic nature of natural botanicals makes them compatible with the body's own chemistry, and thus less prone to toxic side effects.

Physical medicine: Naturopathic medicine has its own methods of therapeutic manipulation of muscles, bones and the spine. Naturopaths use ultrasound, diathermy (the controlled production of "deep heating" beneath the skin in the subcutaneous tissues, deep muscles and joints for therapeutic purposes), exercise, massage, water, heat and cold, and gentle electrical therapies.

Oriental medicine: Oriental medicine is a healing philosophy that is complementary to naturopathic medicine. Meridian theory offers an important understanding of the unity of the body and mind and adds to the Western understanding of physiology. At CTCA, acupuncture is one therapy used for esophageal cancer treatment that can unify and harmonize the imbalances present in the body, which in turn stimulate the immune system and the healing response.

Psychological medicine: Mental attitudes and emotional states may influence, or even cause, physical illness and cancer. Counseling, nutritional balancing, stress management, hypnotherapy, biofeedback and other therapies can all be used to help esophageal cancer patients heal psychologically.

Homeopathic medicine: Homeopathic medicine is based on the principle of "like cures like." Clinical observation indicates that it works on a subtle, yet powerful, energetic level, gently acting to strengthen the body's healing and immune response and triggering a healing process.

Next Topic: Mind-Body Medicine for Esophageal Cancer