Originally published in Issue 1 2008 icon
Patricia Peat is a registered nurse. Following years of experience in oncology, combined with research into natural approaches to cancer she now runs Cancer Options.
Cancer Options is a specialised team of practitioners who provide individual consultancy and coaching into treatment and making decisions for all approaches to cancer.
Details of their services are available at www.canceroptions.co.uk or by calling 0845 009 2041.
Q:
Someone has told me that there is a cyberknife treatment which can treat lung cancers, I can’t find any information about it apart from for brain tumours, am I misinformed?
A:
No you are not misinformed, cyberknife is a treatment also known as radiosurgery. It is very similar to gamma knife which has been used for years for treating brain tumours. Cyberknife is a is a method of using radiotherapy like a scalpel with great precision and without the need to make an incision.
It was successful with brain tumours because you can keep the head very still by, without putting too fine a point to it, bolting it to the table so there is no movement. Obviously this method could not be transferred to the rest of the body because there is tremendous movement inside the body even though we are not aware of it. Apart from the obvious movement of the lungs going up and down the stomach, bowel etc are all in fairly constant motion, making precision impossible.
The difference now is really computer development; they have computer programmes that
track, detect and correct for tumour and patient movement in real time throughout the treatment. The computer adjusts eight times per second to ensure the radiotherapy beam hits directly on exactly where is should without damaging normal tissue. Also compared to standard radiotherapy it is a much smaller dose so can be used more than once. It is also surprisingly pain free, requires no anaesthetic and is frequently done as a day case. In relation to lung cancer, which as we know surgery is often not feasible, and recent research has shown there is debatable gain from it, it is changing things tremendously. Many primary lung tumours that have not metastasised are being cured, which is a remarkable achievement, obviously the picture changes if it has metastasised as you need to deal with things systemically.
With tumours in other parts of the body, it is making treatment possible where surgery is not. We have had several incidences where people were told treatment was not an option and they achieved a great deal with this treatment.
The not so good news is that it is only currently available privately in Europe and America, there is a service opening soon in London, but it will be some time before it is available on the NHS.
Q:
What is the safest source of water to drink, does it affect health and what do you use? A:
That is a good question; there is lots of conjecture on water supplies and lots of contradicting evidence about different sources for water. For each source there are pros and cons in the arguments, from them all being full of chemicals to the most pure water you can drink. As yet nobody has done definitive research so we have to make our way through the information as best we can. There is no way I can personally believe that our tap water source is as safe as we are told.
What I do at the moment is as follows; I live in an area where they put fluoride in the water, if I poured a glass of water and put it to my lips the smell of chemicals is overpowering, I can tell on which day the chemicals are added (2 days per week) because the concentration is powerful. Even if I chose to drink a glass full of chemicals, the smell and taste would prevent me from doing so and I am certainly not allowing my young son anywhere near it. I currently have a double carbon filter which I had installed in when we moved in, not what we wanted but what we could afford. Obviously by the standard of water it is not doing the job so we only drink bottled water (stored in the dark and away from chemicals). I was going to have a double osmosis filter put in, but our research indicates they they take too much out of the water and leave it dead, better than tap but lacking the beneficial elements of water. I am now saving up for a water ionizer which does a much better job of filtrating the water and alkalising it at the same time, which is pretty important as far as I am concerned. At the moment they are around 700, but double osmosis filters were very expensive until they became popular so I am waiting for the price to drop over the next year or so which I am sure they will do. I recently came across a company that rents, and then gives you back 70 80% of the price when you buy a brand new unit, but the total cost was a bit more expensive, however, a useful way of getting a good water supply in the shorter term.