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“In 1994, Dr. Gonzalez conducted a pilot study of his program for 11 patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Five lived longer than two years, and two lived longer than four years.”
Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat- especially for conventional oncology
Gonzales doesn’t promise cures for pancreatic cancer. But his therapy can extend life…a lot
According to the NYT article below, “He (Gonzalez) assured me that he never recommended his treatment over cancer therapies with proven value.” Conventional oncology can offer therapy for pancreatic cancer with minor proven value with probably negative side effects.
I turned to a controversial cancer therapy myself only because conventional oncology left me with long-term and late stage side effects and “there is nothing more we can do for you.”Pancreatic cancer patients face the same long odds. Keep in mind that there are a growing number of evidence-based complementary or integrative therapies shown to help pancreatic cancer patients.
Please take a moment to watch the short video below in order to learn more about some of these therapies:
Have you been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer? What stage? Please scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP.
“When Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez died in July, there was not much notice. He did not get an obituary in The New York Times or in most other major media outlets.
Yet Dr. Gonzalez, whom I interviewed in 2003, was a fascinating figure in the world of cancer, walking a tenuous boundary between orthodox oncology and alternative medicine — or what is now called complementary medicine. Though his beliefs and treatments have fierce critics, his insights shed light on the mysteries of cancer.
Beginning in 1980 as a medical student, Dr. Gonzalez reviewed more than 1,000 medical charts from a dentist named William Kelley. Dr. Kelley claimed to have cured his own liver and pancreatic cancer in the 1960s by rejecting surgery, radiation and chemotherapy in favor of nutritional therapy, consisting of pancreatic enzymes, minerals, vitamins and coffee enemas.
The pancreatic enzymes were critical because, Dr. Kelley believed, they digested cancer cells. But his treatment relied on two other theories. First, he claimed that the regimen also detoxified the body, allowing patients’ immune systems to destroy cancer. Second, he believed that all cancers differed from patient to patient, so each patient should receive individualized treatment.
Once Dr. Kelley — working with a group of like-minded physicians — began treating patients, he ran afoul of the American Cancer Society (who claimed he was a quack) and various professional societies. Eventually, his dental license was suspended; patients interested in his regimen had to travel to Mexico to be treated by him.
After Dr. Gonzalez finished his chart review and interviewed more than 400 of Dr. Kelley’s patients, he concluded that the regimen worked. Hundreds of people who supposedly had terminal metastatic cancer had lived for five, 10 or more years…
Working with another physician, Dr. Linda Isaacs, who at one point was his wife, Dr. Gonzalez advocated a nutritional regimen similar to that of Dr. Kelley, including vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. He prescribed coffee enemas, which Dr. Gonzalez believed improved liver function and the excretion of waste. Finally, he gave cancer patients up to 45 grams of pancreatic enzymes. According to Dr. Gonzalez’s website, his cancer patients took 130 to 175 capsules daily, and his noncancer patients took 80 to 100 each day.
In 1994, Dr. Gonzalez conducted a pilot study of his program for 11 patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Five lived longer than two years, and two lived longer than four years. No patients in a comparison group treated with standard chemotherapy survived more than 19 months. This led the National Institutes of Health to fund a controlled trial at Columbia University that formally compared Dr. Gonzalez’s regimen with chemotherapy for 55 patients who had advanced pancreatic cancer. The results, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2010, showed that on average, the patients getting the chemotherapy lived three times as long than those getting the enzymes.
I interviewed Dr. Gonzalez while researching a book on famous patients, which included the story of the actor Steve McQueen, who traveled to Mexico in 1980 to try Dr. Kelley’s regimen for his terminal mesothelioma. (Mr. McQueen ultimately died of his disease.) If I arrived expecting to find a shady character who manipulated vulnerable patients, I did not find one. Dr. Gonzalez was highly affable and professional. He assured me that he never recommended his treatment over cancer therapies with proven value. He was available, he said, for those with progressive disease or those who rejected standard chemotherapy.
But more affecting than Dr. Gonzalez were his patients. He introduced me to one woman who had been diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer more than 10 years earlier but was alive and well on his protocol. To underscore his point, Dr. Gonzalez showed me her pathology report, which confirmed what he had said. I met several other patients whose lives, they believed, had been saved by the hundreds of capsules they ingested each day….
As someone trained to practice scientific medicine, I found my encounter with Dr. Gonzalez to be a challenge. Not only was there no good data showing his regimen to be effective, but much of what he prescribed did not really make medical sense. Wasn’t it more likely that most of his patients had been misdiagnosed or that their cancers had stopped growing for other reasons? Dr. John Chabot, the Columbia professor who ran the N.I.H. trial, admired Dr. Gonzalez’s devotion to his patients but felt he was “misguided due to his zealotry.” Also, because insurance companies rarely pay for unconventional treatments, Dr. Gonzalez’s regimen often cost his patients tens of thousands of dollars…
Despite the lack of evidence of the treatment’s efficacy, Dr. Isaacs continues to use the Gonzalez protocol for patients who see a connection between cancer and nutrition. And Dr. Gonzalez’s work lives on in other ways. New immunotherapy treatments seek to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer. And recent studies suggest that cancer is a different disease in different people and that treatments need to be personalized.
[…] is important to note, though, that Gonzalez himself never recommended his treatment over cancer therapies with proven value. If you have cancer, you […]
Sorry to hear about your mom's pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Please keep in mind that while conventional oncology may not offer much hope for pancreatic cancers there is plenty of reason to consider integrative or alternative therapies.
Below are several links to possible therapies for pancreatic cancer. With more specific information I can do more in depth research and offer more ideas for possible therapies- specifics such as stage, genetic markers (if any), additional organ involvement, things like this. I understand not wanting to undergo chemo but I will include articles/studies for supplementation that may enhance chemo efficacy (such as curcumin).
Consider researching the following-
1) Dr. N. Gonzalez and enzyme therapy-
2) Surgery if possible- debulking tumor burden is critical-
The bottom line after cursory research is tumor surgery if possible, supplementation with omega 3 fatty acids, curcumin and enzymes- consider low dose chemo with these supplements as per links above.
I will research add'l options with more specific diagnostic information.
Thanks for your extensive reply. I appreciate you caring support
What we know is that it is stage 4 and it has spread to the liver.
I don't know the size of the tumor or if it is in the head or tail
We are expecting mineralized herbs tomorrow from a company that has great results
We are feeling our other next step is to send scans to the top pancreatic specialist to ensure they have been properly read. I have been hearing that cancer is often misread
I would be grateful for your recommendations on where to send the scans tomorrow and leads would be great
I have no personal experience with pancreatic centers so I can't recommend centers per se. I have to rely on what I have read.
Two of the top conventional pancreatic cancer centers are Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD and MD Anderson in Texas.
I mentioned surgery to debulk the tumor so I am sending you info on cyberknife for pancreatic cancer. Yes, cyperknife is a form of radiation but not the typical form of radiation used to treat cancer generally. Stanford pioneered cyberknife therapy so they might have more experience reading scans to tell you if the tumor can be reduced. Then you would possibly pursue the other therapies that you are researching.
