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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Relapsed/Refractory, Elderly Multiple Myeloma
The anti-angiogenic potential exhibited by many natural compounds contained in many Mediterranean diet constituents makes this dietary pattern especially interesting as a source of chemopreventive agents…
I am wondering if the Multiple Myeloma Cancer Coaching Program would work for my mom in this stage of the game. She, like you, has undergone many chemotherapies- her most recent therapy being Daratumumab aka darzalex.
My mom has had an monoclonal protein of 0 multiple times meaning she has reached complete remission. But mom’s m-spike always creeps back up. Mom’s m-spike now is 1.7, she had some leg pain so they did a pet scan.
Her oncologists act as if there are no other options than a really aggressive treatment. Just wanted your thoughts. Rachel
Hi Rachel,
If your mom currently has few side effects and has an m-spike of 1.7, then she is in pretty good shape. Yes, she will have to make therapy decisions soon but her situation currently is okay.
The important thing for MM survivors and caregivers to understand is conventional therapies will stop working eventually. This is called multi-drug resistance aka MDR. The other challenge that your mom is facing is that continuous/increasing toxicity will cause an increasing number of health problems- kidney, heart, immune system, etc.
As your mom’s MM develops resistance to conventional chemo regimens such as revlimid, velcade, etc. conventional oncology must increase the dose of any/all chemo in order to continue to manage your mom’s MM.
It looks as though your mom has done well with her MM thus far. To achieve complete remission (m-spike of 0) repeatedly is great. But increasing the toxicity her body has to deal with will cause more and more side effects.
I am biased of course, but my belief, based on research, is for your mom to undergo low-doses of chemo but add those therapies shown to enhance or synergize with that chemo.
For example, several different non-toxic therapies enhance/integrate with velcade aka Bortezomib-
- curcumin,
- CBD oil (non-psychotropic cannabinoids)
- resveratrol,
- omega-3s, others.
Further, I would encourage your mom to undergo anti-angiogenic nutrition and supplementation (anti-angiogenic = MM fighting) as well. Again to fight her MM without toxicity.
The Multiple Myeloma Cancer Coaching Program discusses all of those topics- anti-MM nutrition, supplementation, integrative therapies and more.
Let me know if you have any question Rachel-
David Emerson
MM Survivor
MM Cancer Coach
Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Recommended Reading:
Multiple Myeloma: Available Therapies and Causes of Drug Resistance
“Nonetheless, MM patients successively relapse after one or more treatment regimens or become refractory, mostly due to drug resistance. This review focuses on the main drugs used in MM treatment and on causes of drug resistance, including
- cytogenetic,
- genetic and epigenetic alterations,
- abnormal drug transport and metabolism,
- dysregulation of apoptosis,
- autophagy activation and other intracellular signaling pathways,
- the presence of cancer stem cells, and the tumor microenvironment…
Concluding Remarks
The introduction of new drugs and combined regimens improved the overall survival of MM patients in recent years. However, drug resistance is still a concern to the majority of patients and particularly for the ones that relapsed or became refractory to those novel therapies.
Understanding the different mechanisms of drug resistance will allow the identification of new targets and the development of novel drugs to counteract this clinical problem. This review highlighted the major novel available therapeutics for MM and causes of drug resistance.
Of note, MM tumor cells may acquire simultaneously various alterations responsible for drug resistance, being particularly relevant when occurring in CSCs. Most importantly, the alterations in MM cells do not justify all cases of drug resistance, and attention needs to be paid to alterations in the tumor microenvironment and to intercellular communication.
It is imperative to be able to classify MM patients and to define at an early stage of the disease appropriate personalized therapeutic strategies. Thus, it will be necessary to fully understand the molecular mechanisms involved in drug resistance for different drugs, in order to identify new molecular targets and therapeutic tools to overcome this problem and prolong MM patients’ survival.”
The Mediterranean Diet, a Rich Source of Angiopreventive Compounds in Cancer
“Diet-based chemoprevention of cancer has emerged as an interesting approach to evade the disease or even target its early phases, reducing its incidence or slowing down tumor progression. In its basis in the essential role of angiogenesis for tumor growth and metastasis, angioprevention proposes the use of inhibitors of angiogenesis in cancer prevention.
The anti-angiogenic potential exhibited by many natural compounds contained in many Mediterranean diet constituents makes this dietary pattern especially interesting as a source of chemopreventive agents, defined within the angioprevention strategy. In this review, we focus on natural bioactive compounds derived from the main foods included in the Mediterranean diet that display anti-angiogenic activity, as well as their possible use as angiopreventive agents.