Cancer and Your Immune System

It may surprise you to know that cancer cells are produced in your body each and every day, to the point where they even form tumors. That’s because each of us is constantly being exposed to carcinogens in our food, air and water supply. Fortunately, your body has a powerful weapon that is constantly on the alert for such abnormal cells and is quick to destroy them once they are found. What is this powerful weapon?

Your immune system!

When you are healthy, the cancer cells and tumors mentioned above never make it past the microscopic stage. Instead, they disappear before you even have a chance to know they exist. According to conventional oncologists, this disappearing act is known as “spontaneous regression.” But in reality it’s all due to the ability of the immune system to identify cancer cells early, before they can multiply, and quickly eliminate them as part of the overall protective role that the immune system performs as it helps to maintain your overall health.

Based on these facts, three things are very clear with regard to cancer:

1) The health of immune system is one of the most important factors that determine cancer patients’ survival.

2) The presence of cancer cells in the body is far less important than the immune system’s ability to properly identify and eliminate such cells, even when they are few in number.

3) Cancer takes hold in the body largely as a result of a functional breakdown or imbalance in the immune system, which can occur as a result of many factors, including poor diet, nutritional deficiencies, chronic exposure to toxins that over time overwhelm the immune system, unhealthy lifestyle choices (smoking, alcohol or drug abuse, etc), chronic stress, and unresolved emotional issues, to name just a few.


How Your Immune System Fights Cancer

When functioning properly your immune system protects against cancer in a number of important ways. First, it assesses whether normal cells have been transformed into cancer cells. This task is performed by specialized white blood cells known as T lymphocytes, or T cells. T cells are produced by the thymus glad and travel throughout the body where they seek out abnormal cells and foreign proteins known as tumor-associated antigens that are released by tumor cells.

If cancer cells are present, certain types of T cells signal other types of white blood cells to spring into action. These include B cells that produce antibodies that neutralize foreign matter in both blood and tissues, as well as other lymphocytes that produce anticancer chemicals known as cytokines. Cytokines act like a natural form of chemotherapy and include tumor necrosis factor, interleukin, and interferon. Unlike chemotherapy drugs, cytokines do their work without harming healthy cells.

Other cancer fighters in your immune system’s arsenal include natural killer (NK) cells and macrophages. NK cells are one of your body’s most immediate and powerful agents for protecting against cancer. A specialized class of lymphocytes, NK cells lock onto cancer cell sites and destroy malignant cells before they can multiply and spread. NK cells are especially important in the early stages of cancer, when they descend directly upon tiny tumors to devour them or cause them to disintegrate before the tumors can grow and start to harm the body. NK cells have little effect against large tumors, however.

Like NK cells, macrophages also destroy cancer cells by ingesting them. They also support your body’s detoxification system by scavenging for waste and debris, and help to regulate cell reproduction as well as the activity of other immune cells. Research has shown a direct correlation between increased macrophage activity and a decreased incidence of tumors and tumor growth. For this reason, macrophage function by itself can often accurately determine whether tumors will thrive or die.

Recognizing the Immune System’s Role in Fighting Cancer

Unlike conventional most conventional oncologists, alternative and integrative cancer doctors have long recognized the importance of the immune system when it comes to treating cancer effectively. For this reason, alternative and integrative doctors emphasize immune-boosting therapies as part of their overall strategy for addressing cancer. By contrast, most oncologists ignore immune function, focusing instead on simply killing cancer cells and tumors through the use of chemotherapy and/or radiation, both of which wreck havoc on cancer and healthy cells alike, especially immune cells. This difference in approach helps to explain why alternative and integrative approaches for cancer are often far more effective than conventional cancer treatments, both in the short-term and in the long-term.

What many people do not realize is that many cancer patients who are treated with chemotherapy or radiation actually do not die from their cancer, but from secondary infections such as pneumonia that are able to take hold in the body after conventional treatments have weakened and ravaged the immune system. That’s why helping to improve and maintain immune function is so vitally important when treating most cancers.

Alternative and integrative physicians accomplish this in a variety of ways, starting with improving their patients’ diet so that the foods they eat enhance all of the body’s functions, rather than impede them, which is what happens when you eat the nutritionally deficient standard American diet (SAD). Other therapies that may be employed to bolster the immune system are nutritional and orthomolecular medicine, herbal medicine, detoxification therapies, hyperthermia (heat-based therapies), and mind/body medicine (for stress relief and to heal painful emotions), to name just a few.

In addition, alternative cancer specialists, should they deem that chemotherapy or radiation is necessary, will use lab tests to help them determine the most appropriate chemo drugs to use that are most specific to each patient’s needs. By tailor-making chemotherapy treatments to match each individual’s unique needs, the chemo drugs that are employed are usually able to be administered at far lower doses than normal because they have been screened for their effectiveness. This not only increases their usefulness, but it also dramatically reduces the otherwise harmful side effects chemotherapy is noted for, sparing the immune system from harm.


The Cancer Establishment Is Catching On But Is It Enough?

Over the past few years drug companies and the mainstream cancer establishment has at long last begun to consider the immune system as part of their approach to treating cancer. Earlier this year, for example, an immune-stimulating cancer drug called Yervoy (ipilimumab) was hailed as “breakthrough” drug for combating late-stage melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Developed by Bristol-Meyers Squibb, it has been approved by the FDA after studies showed that it nearly doubled the number of melanoma patients who survived for three years or more. Since its approval, the drug industry has increased its research into developing other immune-boosting drugs for cancer.

However, the news is not all good. In fact, some of it is downright frightening. That’s because in clinical trials nearly 13% of patients taking Yervoy had severe or fatal autoimmune reactions. In addition, the drug also causes a wide range of side effects, including fatigue, hormone deficiencies, diarrhea, skin rash, and colitis (inflammation of the intestines. Moreover, like many cancer drugs, it is expensive. Plus, because it is new to market, no studies exist showing whether it is safe and effective long-term.

While I applaud the cancer establishment for finally beginning to research immune-boosting drugs, just as I agree that both chemotherapy and radiation have their place as part of physicians’ overall cancer-fighting arsenal, I question the wisdom of relying on drug-based immune-boosting approaches that are not completely safe and also so expensive. Especially when proven safe and natural immune-boosting therapies, such as those I’ve mentioned above, already exist and have a long track record of efficacy.

That’s why I am such a strong proponent of cancer treatments that rely on the “best of both worlds” from both the alternative and conventional fields of medicine. And it’s also why I encourage all cancer patients to explore all of their options from both fields and to seek out doctors who are trained in how to best integrate them. There is no “magic bullet” when it comes to treating cancer, and there most likely never will be. But certainly your body’s immune system is a key part of the complete cancer care picture, and that’s a fact more cancer doctors and patients alike need to recognize.