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Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedVitamins, cancer and hope
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, July, 2005 by Reagan Houston
Chemotherapy and radiation are standard but even with them, one-third of cancer patients die in five years. Can we improve these therapies? Dr. Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, (1) a physician who had earned his PhD in vitamins and is the author of Vitamin C and Cancer, chose diet and vitamins to combat the weakening caused by the usual therapies. One of Hoffer's early patients had failed pancreatic surgery although a bypass was installed. Her doctor offered no hope. But she had hope. She knew that Norman Cousins (Anatomy of an Illness) had recovered after his doctors had given up. Cousins had used 15,000 mg/day of vitamin C. Hoffer gave her vitamin C at 35,000 mg/day plus other supplements. Seven months later a CT scan showed no sign of cancer. Five years later, she decreased her daily dose of vitamin C. Twenty years after her terrible prognosis, she was age 79. Even pancreatic cancer has been controlled. The American Cancer Society reports that 96% of pancreatic cancer patients die within five years.
Multivitamins
Beginning in 1978, Hoffer (2) started a 15-year test on 134 advanced cancer patients. His approach was to combat the weakening caused by cancer, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy by strengthening the body and the immune system. He offered vitamins (Table 1) and diet (low meat, low sugar, high fruits and vegetables). In his test group with patients having many types of advanced cancers, those who refused vitamins lived a median of 2.6 months. Those who accepted vitamins lived 45 months or 17 times longer.
Hoffer (4) has improved his regimen by adding vitamin D3 at 4,000 to 6,000 IU, Coenzyme Q10 at 300 mg and a combination of curcumin 3,000 mg with bioperin 15 mg. As a major change, he recommends that patients receive 100,000 mg of sodium ascorbate by IV daily. He says "In many cases this kind of very safe chemotherapy ... I think would bring most cancers under control pretty quickly."
To all of his cancer patients, Hoffer offered the vitamin regimen, diet and hope based on the results of earlier patients. Those who accepted vitamins thus had three advantages versus those who rejected vitamins. Self-selection is typical of real life but not ideal for statistical purposes. His vitamin therapy "has given them more energy, has improved depression and anxiety, has created a sense of well being, has eased pain and has often eliminated pain entirely." (1)
Vitamin C
Dr. Ewan Cameron, MB, ChB (5) Senior Consultant Surgeon in Scotland, worked with 500 people with cancer and deemed "untreatable." Instead of a handful of common vitamins, he started his patients on vitamin C only. He administered vitamin C in the form of sodium ascorbate and mostly 10,000 mg/day intravenously for two weeks along with oral vitamin C continuously. His vitamin-taking patients lived four times longer than those without vitamins. Cameron joined with Dr. Linus Pauling, PhD a double Nobel Laureate, to publish the results in Cancer and Vitamin C, 1993.
Many other doctors have also used vitamin C as cancer therapy and published their results. Irwin Stone, D.Sc. (6) and author of The Healing Factor: Vitamin C against Disease; Robert Cathcart, MD a physician in Los Altos, California; Fukumi Morishige, MD in Fukuoka, Japan and Hugh Riordan, MD (7) in Wichita, Kansas, successfully used vitamin C in the form of intravenous sodium ascorbate. Hoffer successfully used vitamin C in the form of oral ascorbic acid by including vitamin E and other vitamins. Edward Creagan, MD (8) and Charles Moertel, MD, (9) physicians at Mayo Clinic, used ascorbic acid at 10,000 mg/day without success. However, they did not administer IV sodium ascorbate or other vitamins. Dr. Mary L. Lesperance (10) followed most of Hoffer's Average Regimen but omitted vitamin E and E succinate. She also chose control patients who were less sick than the test patients. Her test patients did not live longer than the controls.
Vitamin C is Safe
Many people have taken 30,000 mg/day for years. Several doctors have given 200,000 mg/day by IV. Some claim that vitamin C "might" cause kidney stones although doctors who give large doses of vitamin C rarely if ever see stones in these patients.
Excessive vitamin C can cause diarrhea. People with cancer can frequently take 30,000 mg/day while well people have a typical limit of 3,000 to 10,000 mg/day. If people on therapeutic doses of vitamin C develop diarrhea, the dose should be reduced. Humans cannot make the vitamin C they need although animals can. A 160-pound goat can make 13,000 mg/day--a reasonable dose for people with cancer. Hoffer advised his patients to continue the high doses indefinitely. Table 2 includes some of the precautions, side effects and alternatives listed by Riordan. (7) Cameron and Hoffer did not report that they followed the precautions in step 5.
What Types Of Cancer?
Hoffer has treated over 30 types of cancers with impressive results (Table 3). Most of his patients had advanced cancers that could not be helped by surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. For example, all 32 of the breast cancer patients had surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy. The median life of these patients who chose to take vitamins was 70 months while those without vitamins had a median life of only 3.7 months.
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