Discover 3 kick-butt keys to thriving despite cancer. Important attitudes, behaviors, and major life choices are explored in this episode of Breast Friends Cancer Support Radio network. Listen for tips on managing chemotherapy, the difference between being healed and being cured, reducing pain levels, and getting out of the hospital early. Find genuine hope and practical options to improve outcomes.
https://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/97339/3-keys-to-thriving-after-cancer
Remember hearing that to lose weight you need to eat a low-fat diet? Or that it was fine to eat a fake sweetener?
Did you try doing the right thing by eating lots of salads, only find out later that your favorite dressing consisted of unhealthy soybean oil and high-fructose corn syrup?
Now you can make smart choices in a world of dumb nutrition fads.
Please join me Saturday from 1:30-4pm to hear top nutrition hacks from local experts. Find out
When: Saturday from 1:30-4pm
Where: Grace Tree Yoga & Growth Studio, 8933 Cincinnati Dayton Rd, West Chester Township, Butler County, Ohio 45069.
Tickets Available
you_are_what_you_eat_registration.eventbrite.com
Also, Cancer Treatment SOS is live TODAY at 2pm EST. Learn how to thrive beyond end-stage cancer! Author and speaker Joni Aldrich will be in conversation with #ThriverSoup. Please join me.
Note: Virgil Anderson is alive today and receiving life-saving treatment because he found an organization that provided him with the information and support he needed. As we all share what we learn from our journeys with cancer, whether ours or another’s, we can give each other more options and genuine hope. Thank you, Virgil, for sharing this with us.
Virgil writes:
My story of illness and cancer is similar to the struggles of others: I was diagnosed at 50 with the devastating type of cancer called mesothelioma. I am now very sick and fighting for treatment and for my life. I am limited and unable to enjoy the activities I once did. Just breathing is difficult for me now, and I can blame all this on exposure to asbestos.
My message is an important one, and I want to educate people about the risks of exposure to asbestos. I want other people to know that prevention is important with mesothelioma and that early detection and diagnosis are crucial for effective treatment. Avoid asbestos, but if you have been exposed, get diagnosed and treated as soon as possible.
I grew up in the small town of Williamson, W.Va., and my story with asbestos began in high school. I worked in demolition, taking down buildings with tools and with my own hands. It was hard work and I was exposed to asbestos-laden dust. Disrupting asbestos in older buildings is one of the top ways people are exposed to asbestos fibers.
After that job I moved on to others, including working on cars. I tore out and replaced hood liners and made repairs to cars, including working with clutches and brakes. All of these parts contained asbestos. Without knowing the dangers or how to protect myself, I was again exposed to asbestos fibers.
Asbestos was once used extensively in so many applications, especially in the construction of buildings. The real dangers of inhaling or accidentally consuming this mineral were not known until the 1970s when regulations were finally put into place. Because I never knew the risks, I worked for years around asbestos and now I have mesothelioma.
I am now living with the consequences, as are many other older Americans. Mesothelioma sneaks up on you many years after asbestos exposure. I now have a hard time breathing and even walking. I spend much of my time in bed, unable to do normal daily tasks. My symptoms include chest pain, a terrible cough, and shortness of breath.
Treatment is limited for me. Treatment for mesothelioma is already difficult, but my cancer has spread to the lymph nodes so surgery is not an option. I am hoping to undergo chemotherapy, which may shrink the tumors and bring me some relief, but a cure for this disease just isn’t possible.
I hope that by sharing my story as far and as wide as I can that I will reach people who may still be able to take steps to prevent mesothelioma or to get screened and treated early. If there is any chance you think you may have been exposed to asbestos, do not wait to talk to your doctor about it. Monitor yourself for symptoms and get screening tests to catch this terrible disease early. My story should help others avoid a similar fate.
Psychosocial support in cancer care was addressed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo. This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I have been reporting about.
Dr. Yasmin Asvat, clinical psychologist at the Siteman Cancer Center, said, “What is a healthy emotional response to a diagnosis? All emotional responses are valid and appropriate. They’re human responses.”
Initial emotions can include sadness, anger, shock, disbelief, denial, and for a few, acceptance.
“Our bodies are looking for balance to be restored,” she said. “If we are not getting to adjustment and acceptance, how can we live well through this journey?”
Thirty percent of patients experience chronic distress after a diagnosis. “To what degree is the distress interfering with the ability to cope effectively?”
Normal feelings like sadness, fear, and vulnerability can become disabling feelings like depression and anxiety.
“Distress can be experienced throughout the cancer care trajectory,” she said.
Dr. Asvat sees her role as partner in balancing patients’ goals with fears. She tries to provide physical interventions and strategies for fatigue, pain, insomnia, and developing a healthy lifestyle.
Advances in LeioMmyoSarcoma surgery was addressed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo. This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I am reporting about during the coming weeks.
Jeffrey Moley, associate director of the Siteman Cancer Center, said LMS can occur anywhere in the body and has a 50 percent mortality rate. It most commonly is found in the extremities of the body. Nineteen percent of sarcomas are LMS. High-grade LMS has a greater than 50 percent chance of metastasizing; low-grade has a less than 15 percent chance.
Sarcomas are the only cancers that are graded.
During surgery, the doctors always try to get a negative margin. To avoid amputation, one good option is to do limb-sparing surgery followed by radiation. This decreases the chance of a local recurrence by 30 percent.
MRIs and CT scans give pretty much the same information to the doctors.
The definitive treatment is complete surgical resection.
For abdominal and retroperitoneal tumors, sometimes repeat operations can be very effective, especially for low-grade sarcomas.
Surgical management of uterine smooth-muscle tumors was addressed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo. This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I am reporting about during the coming weeks.
Matthew Anderson, associate professor and director of research (gynecology) at Baylor University, said “Uterine leiomyosarcoma is a unique disease.” As many as 80 percent of women are impacted by a uterine smooth muscle tumor. About 200,000 hysterectomies are performed every year, which costs $3 to $5 billion.
“The only way to know if it’s malignant is to surgically remove it,” he said, because there are no diagnostic markers and no blood tests that can be used to determine malignancy.
Leiomyomas can arise in unusual locations. If they are morcellated, they can create other problems down the road. These myomas tend to respond to hormonal therapy.
They generally don’t tend to respond to chemotherapy or radiation.
About 70 percent of uterine LMS are discovered as isolated uterine masses. Recurrence rates are 40 to 70 percent.
With surgical debulking, doctors can increase progression-free survival from 6.8 months to 14.2 months.
Resection of pulmonary metastases can improve disease-free survival by as long as 24 months. This can include extensive resections while preserving good functional lung status.
Surgery by itself is not the answer. Unseen cells can come back. Ultimately patients have to rely on chemotherapy.
On April 17, 2014, the US FDA issued a safety communication regarding the use of power morcellation for performing hysterectomies or myomectomies. This led manufacturers to withdraw the devices and hospitals generally are not using this method.
Impact: 99 percent of the time, the uterine tumor is not cancer. Yet demand from patients for minimally invasive hysterectomies continues.
There is one case of ULMS in every 1,960 cases.
Short-term, the risk of ULMS should be discussed thoroughly with each patient.
The long-term goal is to develop a diagnostic test that can be used to determine malignancy.
Cancer metabolism was addressed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo. This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I am reporting about during the coming weeks.
Dr. Brian Van Tine, sarcoma program director at the Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis, spoke on “Understanding Your Cancer’s Metabolism.”
Some cancer therapies currently in use involve attempts to change metabolism through diet to alter the course of cancer.
Van Tine, however, said, “There is little you can do with your diet to alter the course of your tumor outcome. Metabolism is tricky. It’s like a wonderfully orchestrated watch.”
If you try to put a halt in the system, the body will try to go another way to accomplish the same task, he said.
When cancer cells are born, they have a different metabolism from the rest of the body. The purpose of cancer is to grow. In the metabolic process, nine out of ten cancer patients don’t have a urea cycle (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27982/ ) and don’t express ASS1 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/445) in their tumors.
These two conditions make Leiomyosarcoma patients prime candidates for a metabolic-based therapy. Dr. Van Tine is studying possible future treatments for cancer / sarcoma patients using metabolic therapy. Click here for an explanation of his research.
Immunotherapy as a cancer treatment was addressed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo. This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I am reporting about during the coming weeks.
Dr. Mohammed Milhelm, Holden Chair of Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Iowa, said “Sarcoma doctors aren’t happy with the current treatments available. I’m trying to move immunotherapy into sarcoma treatment.”
Historically, immunotherapy is used to stimulate the immune system, yet if our immune systems are always accelerated, we would not live. “We have a good brake system in our bodies,” he said.
Immunotherapy is using the body to target the tumors. “A lot of people are thinking about immunotherapy in combination with other treatments,” he said. “We are still trying to understand how the immune system works. It’s tricky and complicated.”
A lot of questions are coming up about how to do immunotherapy. Sometimes imaging months after treatment ends might show significant improvements. Combining immunotherapy with radiation might help the immune drug work better.
Newer, more powerful drugs are on the horizon. “We’re learning a lot from the melanoma world and trying to transfer it to other cancers. There haven’t been enough immunotherapy treatments with LMS to know if it is effective.”
Swelling can be a big problem, especially in the bones and the brain, and is a concern researchers still don’t know how to address.
There is a lot of promise right now, but researchers don’t yet know how to translate it into treatments for LMS.
Chemotherapy clinical trials for leiomyosarcoma (LMS) were discussed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo. This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I am reporting about during the coming weeks.
There are 70 different types of sarcoma, and treatment is moving toward individual types of sarcoma using genetically specific molecular therapy, said Dr. Scott Okuno, Chief Medical Officer in Sarcoma Alliance for Research Through Collaboration, a non-profit research cooperative, and professor of oncology at Mayo Clinic.
“As we get deeper into LMS, we find molecular subtypes of LMS,” he said.
He explained that adjuvant treatment is preventative. Typically a tumor is removed and the patient is given additional treatment to eradicate microscopic metastatic cells.
Neoadjuvant treatment is given prior to removal/ablation of a tumor, and is used to shrink the tumor and eradicate any microscopic metastatic cells.
In determining which path to follow, the physician will look at outcomes. For neoadjuvant treatment, for example, perhaps 33 percent (about three of 10 patients) will have a recurrence.
With adjuvant treatment, there might be another 33 percent reduction in recurrence—which means instead of three out of 10 patients with recurrence, there will be two out of ten patients with recurrence.
Chemotherapy is given when a tumor cannot be surgically removed.
In clinical trials, a tumor has to decrease in size by 30 percent to be considered a partial response.
Progression has to be a greater than a 20 percent increase for the treatment to be considered no longer working.
Sometimes the lump might get bigger but the tumor is dying, so the percent increase in size is allowed. One needs a sarcoma specialist to determine if the growth is from dying cells or from a growing tumor.
Dr. Mohammed Milhelm, director of the Melanoma Program at the University of Iowa, added, “We really don’t know what’s going on inside the tumor.”
Dr. Okuno said Gemzar and Taxotere together aren’t showing much difference beyond just what Gemzar can do. Dacarbazine alone doesn’t make much difference. Yet when Gemzar and dacarbazine are combined, patients tend to have better outcomes. A difference in outcomes also was found in the rate of infusion—for example, infusing the same amount of chemotherapy over a longer period of time can result in better outcomes.
Clinical trials for leiomyosarcoma (LMS) were discussed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo. This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I will be reporting about during the coming weeks.
Dr. Peter Oppeli, assistant professor of medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine, said LMS is one of the more common types of soft-tissue sarcoma. It is found in smooth muscle cells that naturally occur in the intestines, blood vessels, and the uterus, all of which are in charge of involuntary action in the body. For pregnant women, these muscles play a key role in labor and delivery.
LMS can originate anywhere smooth muscles are found. In almost half of all new LMS diagnoses, it is found in the uterus. It also occurs in the body’s extremities and in the abdominal cavity, especially in the back part of the abdomen.
There are about 2,000 new diagnoses each year. Compare that to another type of cancer, such as colon, which has about 135,000 new diagnoses each year.
Because LMS is rare, it is more challenging to come up with treatments. Any new drug for a rare disease is cause for a lot of excitement. Trabectadine, for example, was approved by the FDA in October 2015.
New drugs are approved when they show proven benefit from a clinical trial.
Clinical trials are research studies for understanding cancer and how to treat it. Trials can look at new drugs, combinations of drugs, ways to ease side effects, new forms of radiation, and new surgical methods.
A Phase 1 clinical trial is for finding the right dose and finding out the treatment’s side effects.
A Phase 2 trial involves larger groups of patients. In a Phase 3 trial, large number of patients are treated to confirm effectiveness.
The vast majority of clinical trials do not have a placebo-only option. Placebos usually are combined with standard effective treatment, so every patient gets what is determined to be the best treatment.
What is research protocol? It is the rule book for each clinical trial. Each trial will have a unique/specific protocol that describes inclusion and exclusion criteria for potential treatment.
Is a clinical trial going to help a particular patient? “We hope so, but cannot say with certainty that enrolling is going to be beneficial,” Dr. Oppeli said.
Almost every standard treatment has first been proven effective in clinical trials.
After his talk there was a 10-minute time period for questions.
A lot of clinical trials have interim times to see if a trial is helpful or not. Then if not shown effective, the trial is stopped. If the results look promising, the trial continues.
Thriver Soup Ingredient:
For more information on clinical trials, go to www.cancer.net for a large video library.