We seem to be facing a barrage of e-mails asking Chris Woollams a ‘quick question’ after having a Personal Prescription. The problem is that, to give an accurate and safe answer, usually there is no ‘quick answer’ by e-mail.
I am happy to help people, but I must avoid a potentially dangerous reply, usually to a question where I don’t understand the context.
I think the problem arises because of any of four factors:
i) Panic - Hospitals and oncology departments have fallen to pieces with massive delays for CT scans and meetings with Doctors and oncologists. I have a patient in Yorkshire waiting for an oncologist to come up from London, because her Hospital is short staffed. It's a crisis in most areas, while a few hospitals continue to function well.. People in poor response areas can't find out much by way of info; and panic has increased in cancer patients. They often dwell on the saga of the delays, rather than concentrate on moving their health forward. For the first time, I have had three of four patients who are positively rude because of this ‘panic factor’. People with cancer must try to avoid stress and to be calm.
ii) Misinformation - Because of these failures of the current medical system, people are diving on to the Internet for information and reading a single study that says something does or doesn't work for their cancer. They don't understand that to act on something, you may have to read 10 articles, as I do, on the subject. That's why my CANCERactive articles may have 15 references! For example, a patient had been told that CoQ10 is bad for you if you have a sarcoma. Another had read that fasting could cause cancer progression with his cancer. They asked me if it was true. I had to look through about 6-10 PubMed articles before I could give a sensible reply. So much for being asked a quick question!!
The panic is also causing more people to go to 'Clinics' in the UK or more usually abroad (Germany, Mexico etc.). I have one lady who has been told that the Clinic is trying to stimulate her immune system, when in reality they are just selling her almost irrelevant treatments. A on- off IVC treatment, or one, every 4 weeks, is a waste of money. It doesn't really work if you don't have it every 5 days. We have the research. IV Turmeric/curcumin? IV artemisinin? These two compounds work best when you keep the pressure up on your target over 8-12 weeks. Again, we have the research.
I had one lady patient given IV glutathione immediately after her IPT, in a Nevada Clinic. The IV glutathione will just block all the free-radicals the chemo creates!! I get asked all the time about clinics abroad. From what I have seen over the past two years, most are a complete waste of money. And people e-mail me asking about them, when they are just about to go, already there, or even have just returned!
iii) Poor advisors - Thirdly, many patients have rushed off to a nutritionist in their local town and while I respect their knowledge of illness and these people may well have a lot of training, I worry that many have not specialised in cancer. Most patients coming to me are already on supplements, half of which have nothing to do with their cancer (and could even conflict with their treatments). And they can even be misinformed. Only yesterday I had a patient who had had expensive blood tests; I picked up on their cholesterol and fasting blood sugar being too high to fight cancer, and on their low Ferritin, Hematocrit and red cell levels being linked to their fatigue and hair loss (in connection with a poor thyroid function). The nutritionist had picked up none of this and wanted to sell them supplements for their white cells which were low because of their chemo (but actually still in range).
The net result is that patients are getting more and more stressed by having no plan, but instead, conflicting views, and this adds to their panic and confusion. If you have cancer, only talk to cancer specialists!
iv) E-mails are blunt - The fact is that e-mails are very blunt and can confuse. A lady with pancreatic cancer had several bleeds in her stomach (almost certainly caused by her drugs). She kept being admitted to Hospital. Part of my brief was to help fight her cancer but I had to avoid blood thinners so she got no more bleeds. Unfortunately, many effective anti-cancer supplements are blood thinners! I worked around them.
I then received a panic e-mail saying "I'm back in hospital; I have another bleed. What should I do?". I told her to come off all the supplements and have a face to face chat. When she came out of Hospital and we talked on Zoom, she was quite aggressive. "Why did you take me off all the supplements? My oncologist has told me the bleed this time was coming from a new tumour which is near my liver and is oozing blood". So, different place, different reason to the previous bleeds. How could I possibly have known from her e-mail?
And this is the fourth issue. Patients do not/cannot understand the complex disease called cancer - and this is made worse by the panic and confusion. Most e-mails I receive asking 'a quick question' give me no background, not a clue as to why the question has arisen and why it matters. And so I repeatedly say, please have a face to face, and people interpret this as I'm too busy to answer a quick question. And then they can get rude.
No, I just want to get the answer right!!! And I certainly don’t want to cause a health risk, because I don’t know an important background fact.
Do you want a quick answer, or the right answer?
I also often have to go back through their notes to be clear on their cancer and to understand the context of their question.
Quick Question: “It’s been four months now since our PP. Which supplements can I drop? Can I have some dairy?”
Quick question: “I suddenly have diarrhoea. Is it one of the supplements?”
The answer is very different if you just had surgery for colorectal cancer; or drugs for Er+ve breast cancer. You may have had parasites in India, or Hashimoto’s, or a DVT. I need to look it up.
In truth, there’s almost no such thing as a quick question - certainly not on an e-mail; it takes time to answer a ‘quick question’ properly. I want to get the answer right.
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