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.
Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.
“It provides guidance to myeloma patients, who are at risk for severe (covid) infection because they may be immunocompromised due to the disease itself and the cancer treatment.”
“All Life is a series of calculated risks,”as a wise person once said. But for the multiple myeloma (MM) patient/survivor trying to understand his/her cancer and the covid-19 virus, those risks and calculations are complicated. I have followed how MM patients react to both the covid-19 virus and the associated vaccines in an effort to educate myself and MM patients, survivors and caregivers. As of 4/22, here where we stand…
MM, or should I say monoclonal proteins, compromise the immune systems of MGUS, SMM and MM patients making us more susceptible to the covid-19 virus as well as long covid-
Mild side effects from getting vaccinated are common. Adverse events- more serious side effects- are rare but have been reported-
Vaccinations for the MM patient, in general, don’t provide as much protection from the virus that they do for non-MM patient.
However, according to research, vaccinations seem to have a cumulative effect (third study below)- so a booster vaccination can provide some protection- but the article below still urges caution for MM survivors.
After following these two main issues- the covid-19 virus and MM, my belief is that MM patients and survivors are at an increased risk of the virus. The issue for MM patients and survivors is to figure out how best to protect ourselves from covid-19.
While the vaccinations are not without their own risks, these risks are less than the risks posed by the covid-19 virus to the MM patient/survivor.
I would not be me if I didn’t plug those lifestyle therapies and nutritional supplements shown to-modestly- protect the MM patient from the covid-19 virus. I am a MM survivor, have been vaccinated, boosted and supplement with those supplements that research has shown also provide moderate protection- think vitamin D3, N-acetyl-cysteine,exercise, sauna, others.
If you have questions or comments, please scroll down the page, write a post and I will reply to you ASAP.
“MM patients showed higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection (RR 2.09, 1.58–2.76) and a higher excess mortality in 2020 (difference in excess mortality 9%, 4.4–13.2) than non-MM patients. By interrogating large EMR datasets from HCO in Europe and globally, we confirmed that MM patients have been more severely impacted by COVID-19 pandemic than non-MM patients…”
“Most immunocompromised people with a blood cancer called multiple myeloma benefited from a third dose of COVID-19 vaccines, a promising sign after it was shown that two doses tended to not be sufficient for them.However, some people with multiple myeloma still remained vulnerable and may need a fourth dose or antibody treatments as restrictions lift and new variants emerge, according to a new study…
“It provides guidance to myeloma patients, who are at risk for severe infection because they may be immunocompromised due to the disease itself and the cancer treatment.”
Mount Sinai’s previous research had shown that breakthrough infections occurred in multiple myeloma patients due to poor or no response to the normal regimen of COVID-19 vaccines, the majority of which were the two-dose mRNA vaccines. These vulnerable patients’ lack of complete protection led to antibody testing and a third vaccine in hopes that this would increase the immune response…
In this latest study, blood samples were collected from 476 patients with plasma cell disorders over a period of 15 months and were compared to samples collected from healthy, vaccinated health care workers. The findings showed that the third dose significantly increased the level of antibodies in patients with and without prior COVID-19 infection but levels of COVID-19-fighting antibodies in multiple myeloma patients remained below those observed in healthy people…
Just more than a quarter of the multiple myeloma patients had no detectable antibodies after the standard two doses of the vaccine, but in these patients, 88 percent developed antibodies after a third dose. The third dose also resulted in a significant increase of other immune cells such as T cells and B cells, which also help neutralize COVID-19…
After the third dose, neutralization of the wild-type virus increased in multiple myeloma patients in patients who had minimal or no response to the standard two doses. However, neutralizing titers against the Omicron variant was still lower in myeloma patients as compared to healthy controls. Therefore, a subset of patients may still remain vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection...”
“The rate of infection in patients with Multiple Myeloma is much higher than in the general population, with bacterial and viral infections predominating…”
FDA approved, standard-of-care therapies, prescribed by my board-certified oncologist saddled me with:
short-term (nausea, alopecia, etc.)
long-term (chemobrain, CIPN, etc.)
and late-stage (cardiomyopathy, etc.)
side effects. Most resolved themselves in days or weeks. Some did not. All of those conventional therapies cost 000’s of dollars and resulted in remission, relapse, remission, relapse and “there’s nothing more we can do for you.”
Which is what forced me to take responsibility for my healthcare decision-making. Conventional medicine can do only so much.
The bottom line, for me anyway, is that I make the best decision I can. And that decision is often as much for those around me as much as they are for me. And then I live with the consequences of those decisions. Which is why I chose to be vaccinated against the COVI-19 virus.
If you are a cancer survivor and you’re wondering about getting vaccinated, scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP…”
Leave a Comment:
2 comments
Kathryn Guillaum says
a couple of years ago
I got half a 4th booster two weeks ago and get the other half in late July.
Mild side effects of sore.ish shot site, a little fatigue ( well ya know, who’s counting?), and a few chills. So I’m ok with that.I still don a mask and isolate, like I have been since this pandemic began. 👍
