Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
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Bence-Jones Proteins Myeloma
“Between 50 and 80 percent of people with multiple myeloma (MM) will have Bence Jones protein in their urine…”
You’ve received a multiple myeloma diagnosis. You’re scared because you’ve been told that MM is incurable, because you’ve never heard of this type of cancer before and because of something called Bence-Jones proteins, is/are damaging your kidney health…
Complicating your fear is talk of diagnostic tests- symptoms, staging, blood, urine, bone imaging- and on and on. Unless you are a medical professional yourself, you probably find the diagnostic testing jargon to be confusing and possibly frustrating.
My experience as a MM survivor is to start at the end and work your way forward.
Kidney failure is the second most common COD (cause of death). You have years of MM survivorship ahead of you. You want to do everything possible to protect or even improve your kidney health. Especially if you can treat your Bence-Jones proteins.
If you’ve been told you have
- light chains or
- Bence-Jones proteins (BJP)
this blog post may help.
For reference, MM oncologists, patients and survivors often use the acronym CRAB when discussing a patient’s symptoms. CRAB stands for Calcium, Renal, Anemia and Bones. When talking about light chains or BJP, we are talking about the R or renal aka your kidney function.
In general, if you are trying to figure out if your kidneys are working normally or not, you will look at your
- Creatinine
- eGFR
- BUN
The reason why this is important to you is:
- You need to know if your multiple myeloma itself is damaging your kidneys-
- You need to know if you can handle the therapies (chemotherapy) that will fight your MM and if chemotherapy may damage your kidneys further-
- Most importantly, you need to learn about those non-conventional therapies that may prevent further kidney damage or even heal your kidneys-
Research has already established that the therapies below can cause kidney damage. If your induction regimen includes bisphophonate therapy (zometa, pamidronate, etc.), if you have an MRI “with contrast,” or if you take NSAIDS for bone pain, you may be further damaging your kidney health.
- chemotherapy,
- bisphosphonate therapy,
- contrast agents and
- NSAIDS
Beyond Bence-Jones proteins damaging your kidney is discussed in the first study linked below. And that is that clinical research of side effects caused by chemotherapy regimens may be subjective. The idea that kidney damage may be, on average, more serious from, for example, chemotherapy regimens, than research has identified.
The key, in my opinion anyway, is first to test your kidney health regularly (creatinine, BUN, eGFR, etc.) and second, undergo evidence-based, non-toxic therapies shown to improve the health of your kidneys.
Curcumin, vitamin D3 and resveratrol for example, all have been shown to either protect kidney function from chemotherapy or improve kidney health.
Have you been diagnosed with multiple myeloma? Is your myeloma causing kidney damage? To learn more about evidence-based therapies shown to prevent and health kidney function scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP.
Hang in there,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Recommended Reading:
- Multiple Myeloma Symptoms Cloud Multiple Myeloma Side Effects-
- Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance (MGUS) Explained
- Do Antioxidants Interfere w/ my Multiple Myeloma Treatment?
Variation in how side effects are reported clouds drug safety
“A new study finds significant variation in how drug side effects are reported, potentially making some drugs seem safer or less safe than they really are…
“Without standardizing how we present such data, there is the potential for misinformation about these side effects…”
“Determining if a side effect is treatment-related or not is subjective. If you rely on this, you get rid of some of the background noise of coincidental symptoms. However, you can also miss more subtle side effects…”
What to Know About Bence-Jones Proteins
“Bence Jones proteins are small proteins produced by plasma cells—small enough to pass through your kidneys, one of your body’s main filtration systems. When your body has too many of these proteins, they easily pass from your bloodstream into your urine. A person who has a type of cancer affecting the plasma cells, like multiple myeloma, often has Bence Jones proteins in their urine.
Between 50 and 80 percent of people with multiple myeloma will have a urine test positive for Bence Jones proteins…
Kidney disease- Ordinarily, antibodies are too large to be filtered through the tubules in the kidneys. Bence Jones proteins are small enough to enter the filtering units in the kidneys where they can build up and cause problems. Some types of proteins are more likely to harm the kidneys in this way than others.
What causes Bence Jones protein in urine?
“Between 50 and 80 percent of people with multiple myeloma will have Bence Jones protein in their urine…
The Bence Jones protein is a building block of the antibodies made by cancerous tumors, so detecting it can help doctors diagnose types of cancer. Learn more about the test and results in this article…
Healthy urine does not contain Bence Jones protein, so its presence is an indication of a health problem.
Other names for this test include:
- urine protein electrophoresis (UPEP),
- urine immunofixation electrophoresis, or
- immunoassay for free light chains...
Multiple myeloma happens when the plasma cells, which make the antibodies that fight infection, start to multiply uncontrollably and release Bence Jones protein. This protein does not serve any useful function in the body…”
Efficacy of curcumin on prevention of drug-induced nephrotoxicity: A review of animal studies.
“Drug-induced nephrotoxicity is a frequent serious adverse effect, contributing to morbidity and increased healthcare utilization. Prevention or reversal is key. Curcumin has useful biological features that include antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer properties. This review covers aspects of curcumin in relation to prevention of drug-induced nephrotoxicity…”
“Recent observations have indicated that chronic kidney disease seems to be associated with a high incidence of nutritional vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency as manifested by decreased levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This contributes to the inability to maintain the levels of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D; therefore, current practice guidelines suggest repleting vitamin D status by the administration of native vitamin D as a first step in the therapy of the abnormalities of bone and mineral metabolism in chronic kidney disease. The efficacy of this therapy is extremely variable, and active vitamin D sterols may be required, especially as kidney disease progresses…”
“Different diseases and disorders that affect the kidneys include, but are not limited to, glomerulonephritis, diabetic nephropathy, polycystic kidney disease, kidney stones, renal fibrosis, sepsis, and renal cell carcinoma. Kidney disease tends to develop over many years, making it difficult to identify until much later when kidney function is severely impaired and undergoing kidney failure. Although conservative care, symptom management, medication, dialysis, transplantation, and aggressive renal cancer therapy are some of the current strategies/approaches to kidney disease treatment, new preventative targeted therapies are needed…”