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.
Researchers concluded that additional attention should be paid to rising treatment costs and cost sharing is needed to address the increasing financial toxicity affecting patients with Multiple Myeloma.
Are you a newly diagnosed Multiple Myeloma patient? First of all, I’m sorry for your diagnosis of MM. Second of all, while conventional oncology cannot cure your myeloma, they can prescribe a variety of very expensive therapies that can help you go in and out of remission. This is what is meant by MM being very “treatable.” Unfortunately, these MM treatments create a common multiple myeloma side effect called financial toxicity.
I encourage you to learn about both integrative and complementary therapies. You may choose not to undergo any of these therapies shown to combat multiple myeloma side effects.
As the study linked and excerpted below confirms, Multiple Myeloma is an expensive cancer. Even great health insurance won’t cover all the co-pays, deductibles, etc.
Please watch the video below to learn more about the evidence-based, integrative therapies to combat treatment side effects and enhance your chemotherapy.
Simply because an expensive therapy such as an autologous stem cell transplant is recommended by your oncologist doesn’t mean that you have to do this therapy right away.
My point above is that you can save thousands of dollars by taking integrative therapies with conventional chemotherapies and you can postpone standard-of-care therapies.
If you would like specifics about any of the above, scroll down the page, post a question and I will reply ASAP.
“Financial toxicity is increasingly affecting patient quality of life and medication adherence in patients with cancer. Due to the use of novel therapies and the need for extended treatment duration, patients with multiple myeloma are more vulnerable to it.1…
Patient-reported financial toxicity was common in an insured population with multiple myeloma, according to a study published online ahead of print in The Lancet Haematology…
Eligible patients were given a paper survey to complete on arrival for routine follow-up visits, and were asked to finish it before or after the visit. Insurance and treatment data were gathered from the patients’ electronic health records…
Results showed that:
59% of patients reported that treatment costs were higher than expected,
70% of patients had at least minor financial burden,
36% applied for financial assistance, and
21% of patients borrowed money to pay for medications.
Researchers concluded that additional attention should be paid to rising treatment costs and cost sharing is needed to address the increasing financial toxicity affecting patients with cancer.”
The Most BioAvailable Curcumin Formulas
“Based on a review of these studies, it is evident that better bioavailability of formulated curcumin (CU) products is mostly attributed to improved solubility, stability, and possibly low first-pass metabolism”
A search of the Pubmed database for the word curcumin yields 601 studies spaning health topics from multiple myeloma and colorectal cancer, to chemotherapies that synergizes with CU, to Alzheimer’s Disease, arthritis and more. Based on years of reading studies and personal accounts, I think it is safe to say that CU supplementation is safe and relatively inexpensive.
I have read about myeloma patients taking daily doses of CU from 400 milligrams to 8 grams (1000 milligrams = 1 gram). By almost any measure, CU is a safe, inexpensive wonder drug.
The only challenge is that CU is famously difficult to absorb in the body. In other words, a person has to mix curcumin with some sort of fat (coconut oil, chocolate, etc.) or take a brand of curcumin capsule that is already formulated to be more “bioavailable” in order to derive the full benefit of CU.
The study linked and exerpted below reviews different formulations of CU. The study itself lists the three most bioavailable formulation/brand of CU and I’ve added an excerpt from a further review from Consumerlab.com that lists four additional bioavailable brands of CU.
“Curcumin is a widely studied natural compound which has shown tremendous in vitro therapeutic potential. Despite that, the clinical efficacy of the native CU is weak due to its low bioavailability and high metabolism in the gastrointestinal tract. During the last decade, researchers have come up with different formulations with a focus on improving the bioavailability of curcumin. As a result, a significant number of bioavailable curcumin-based formulations were introduced with the varying range of enhanced bioavailability.
The purpose of this review is to collate the published clinical studies of CU products with improved bioavailability over conventional (unformulated) CU. Based on the literature search, 11 curcumin formulations with available human bioavailability and pharmacokinetics data were included in this review. Further, the data on clinical study design, analytical method, pharmacokinetic parameters and other relevant details of each formulation were extracted.
Based on a review of these studies, it is evident that better bioavailability of formulated curcumin products is mostly attributed to improved solubility, stability, and possibly low first-pass metabolism. The review hopes to provide a quick reference guide for anyone looking information on these bioavailable curcumin formulations.
exhibited over 100-fold higher bioavailability relative to reference unformulated CU. Suggested mechanisms accounting for improved bioavailability of the formulations and details on the bioanalysis methods are also discussed.”
APPIP ERROR: amazonproducts[
AccessDeniedAwsUsers|The Access Key Id AKIAJAJ37JVNL7OUU4CA is not enabled for accessing this version of Product Advertising API. Please migrate your credentials as referred here https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/migrating-your-product-advertising-api-account-from-your-aws-account.html.
]
No treatment from diagnosis in 12/09 until recently is doing well. I think the decision to have or not have an autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) or not depends on how well you think you can control your MM for the next decade or so with intermittent chemo combined with non-toxic therapies.
For example, what were your blood counts before VTD and what are they now? Has your MM responded well to your chemo? I will link info below about the “cure vs. control” debate in MM therapy.
While the link is a long and boring paper, the point is that the patient must decide if he/she wants to try to “cure” the MM with aggressive chemo or “control” the MM with intermittent chemo.
Because I MM cancer coach through a program of evidence-based, non-toxic, MM therapies I believe in the “control” approach obviously.
I don’t know much about the MM specialists in Scotland but there are several MM experts in the US who have build a practice of MM control. I will link the website of Dr. James Berenson. He is a control specialist.
Hello David I’ve been in touch with you before. I live in Glasgow, Scotland.
I was diagnosed with MM in December 2009 and had no symptoms or treatment till excruciating pain at the beginning of this year. I was taking numerous supplements and Budwig Diet during the years without symptoms. Have now been on Velcade, Dexamethasone and Thalidomide since beginning of May 2016. I take numerous supplements including Beta Glucan, green tea extract, D3 with K2, B complex. Had been taking curcumin being a follower of yourself and Margaret’s blog but read that it’s a blood thinner and since I inject daily with blood thinners I stopped curcumin for now. Was on Q 10 but also read that it can interfere with some if my treatment so stopped that too.
Now being advised by medics to have a stem cell transplant. Sounds grim and my gut reaction is to say NO. They have a cut off age of 70 which I will reach in November. They’ve given me 2 to 3 weeks to think about it. My wish would be to find a way through diet and supplement to keep the disease at bay without the stem cell transplant.
I’d appreciate your comments and any advice. Sorry this is so long.
