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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Myeloma and Memory
Myeloma and memory. Brain-boosting, cognitive-enhancing, sharpen focus, yada yada, yada- call it what you want. Most myeloma patients who have undergone chemotherapy experience a debilitating side effect called chemotherapy-induced cognitive dysfunction, commonly known as chemobrain.
I read an exchange on an MM Facebook Group the other day.
A MM patient asked the group:
“Is anyone taking an over-the-counter medicine for memory?”
To which another MM patient replied:
“Just to be clear, there are no over-the-counter medicines for memory. There are “supplements “ most of which havent any scientific verification. A lot of people do say they help them.”
The issues contained in this common exchange are all outlined in the article linked below. In my experience, the challenges faced by MM patients and survivors are:
- Conventional medicine hasn’t studied chemobrain much.
- Conventional medicine takes a dim view of almost any therapy that isn’t clinically trialed and approved by the FDA.
- MM patients are often looking for “over-the-counter” therapies to help their chemobrain.
I linked the video below because I felt that much of the information in the video could help MM survivors.
Chemo brain after cancer treatment – Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
I struggled with my own cognitive dysfunction in the years following my conventional therapies. I underwent some testing in 2005. A psychologist diagnosed problems with me, usually associated with dementia in older people.
In my experience, MM patients and survivors have to look beyond conventional oncology and cobble together their therapy plan consisting of:
- nutritional supplementation,
- lifestyle therapies,
- and brain games such as BrainHQ.
If all goes well, my DIY brain health therapies will prevent cognitive decline, often associated with old age. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
Are you an MM survivor? Email me at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com to learn more about managing MM with both conventional and non-conventional therapies.
Good luck,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Brain-Boosting Supplements: All Hype or Some Hope?
Media consumers are bombarded daily with aggressive, testimonial-driven ads for pricey supplements purported to sharpen memory, focus, and working brain function.
Some even claim to stop or slow the development of dementia.
Patients, especially older adults, may express interest in these supplements during clinic visits…
Most claim to be “clinically tested.” However, since the FDA exercises only limited regulatory control over these products, they are not held to the same purity, safety, and efficacy standards as are FDA-approved drugs…
“Manufacturers have a lot of leeway to market them as they want,” said Pieter Cohen, MD, director of the Supplement Research Program at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Somerville, Massachusetts, and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “That’s not to say they haven’t been studied — there might be small studies posted online done in, say, 100 people in another country, for example.”
Cohen, therefore, does not generally recommend that his patients take them to improve brain health, “although I do recommend supplements to patients who need them to treat medical conditions,” he told Medscape Medical News…
These OTC brain enhancers may feature, alone or in combination, nonpharmaceutical ingredients such as vitamins (including vitamin E), minerals like magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, turmeric, and herbal compounds like ginseng, Ginkgo biloba, and coffee fruit extract. Some feature alleged boosters of brain performance that are less familiar, including alpha-GPC (L-alpha-glycerylphosphorylcholine), huperzine A, the Chinese mushroom lion’s mane, L-carnitine, and the Ayurvedic medicine compound Bacopa monnieri.
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