𝗦𝗲𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲:
The translation of the video will be made available as soon as possible.
Cancer treatment goes beyond fighting the disease. Alongside the elimination of the cancer cells, the patient’s mind, spirit, and the rest of the body must be taken care of.
In 1998, the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM) was created to coordinate the activities of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the area of alternative and complementary medicine. The term “integrative oncology” was first used by Dr. Robert Wittes, director of the cancer treatment and diagnosis unit at the NCI, in 2000.
Functional medicine takes an integrative approach to patient healing, by proposing the inclusion of complementary therapies to the traditional therapies used against cancer, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, among others. In recent years, medicine has undergone some changes, namely, concepts that aim to prevent cancer or other non-chronic diseases, always pointing out the important and fundamental role of nutrition in this process.
The purpose of this approach is to optimize the quality of life, mitigating the physical and emotional effects that may involve this period of the patient’s life and the people around him/her.
There are many benefits of functional and integrative medicine during cancer treatment. This approach helps to lessen the physical adverse effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, such as nausea, pain, and fatigue; it helps to alleviate the emotional distress caused by cancer treatment, such as the symptoms of anxiety and depression that can manifest from the diagnosis, it helps to regulate the patient’s sleep pattern, which can be modified both by the action of the drugs and treatments and by the emotional factor; it gives the patient tools to build a capacity for self-recovery that they may not even know they have; it provides quality of life in palliative care for advanced cancer cases with no possibility of cure, among others.
Our daily choices have a lot of influence on our genetic code, and when we make the best choices, we are improving our health. The relationship between diet and cancer is increasingly impactful. More and more cancer patients are showing the concern they have for their diet, an important tool in the battle against metastasis and reinfection.
In this fifth webinar of our 4th cycle “You are what you eat”, we talked about functional and integrative medicine and how this approach can help cancer patients, and highlight the latest technological advances and challenges yet to be overcome in this area of research.
