What is Cancer
Coping with Cancer

• Make a decision
• Organize support group
• Get a comprehensive report and a second opinion
• Educate your self
• Understand the bigger picture
• Take your time to make decisions
• Consult the experts
• Organize your doctors
• Select the best medical option
• Use healthy strategies
• Consider herbs and acupuncture
• Pain control
• Healing

Cancer is one of the most dreaded diagnosis. No one wants to hear the doctor say, “you have cancer”. There is basis for this, cancer has become the second leading cause of death in the U.S. and through out all the world.

Cancer per se is not a disease, rather it is a name generally given to more than 200 diseases that have common or similar origin. Cancer is a group of cells that has lost its normal control mechanisms and thus instead of normally dividing, it has wild and unregulated growth. As cancer cells multiply and grow rapidly, they form a mass of cancerous tissue – what we call tumors. Tumors continuously grow and spread, invading and destroying normal adjacent tissues (metastasize) of the body. If the growth can’t be stopped, it interferes with the vital body process.

Even when a cell becomes cancerous, the immune system is thought to be able to recognize it as abnormal and destroy it before it replicates or spreads. Cancer is more likely to progress in people whose immune system is altered or impaired, as in people with AIDS, those receiving immunosuppressive drugs, those with certain autoimmune diseases, and older people, in whom the immune system works less well than in younger people. However, even when a person’s immune system is functioning normally, cancer can escape the immune system’s protective surveillance.

Early diagnosis is vital to the success of treatment. Doctors agree that when tumors are small and have not yet spread, the effectiveness of treatment is high.

Being diagnosed with cancer will definitely put a person in a state of anxiety, fear, panic and horror. It is like waking up one morning in the middle of the wild jungle having no training, no equipments, no maps, no provisions, knowing so little about jungle survival and your only hope is your guide who woke you up.

Treating cancer involves a lot of hope. Advances in science and health has improved the cancer survival rates in recent decades. Before World War II, surviving cancer 5 years after diagnosis was considered the exception. But today, approximately 60% of those diagnosed with cancer lived at least 5 years and many lived longer.

Studies have shown the value of alternative therapies in supporting mainstream oncology in treating cancer. Evidences clearly show that by combining alternative therapies and mainstream oncology, there is a higher chance of survival and remarkable improvement in the quality of life.