How Homeopathy Fights Lung Cancer

Even though 28 percent and 30 percent five-year survival rates for stage IV lung cancer patients represent a huge improvement over traditional chemotherapy, Dr. Forsythe wanted to do better. In a third set of clinical trials, Forsythe tested a homeopathic preparation on 19 volunteers. In this study, 7 patients, or 39 percent of the group, were still alive 5 years after the beginning of the study, with no side effects from the treatment.

What Are Homeopathic Medications?

When most commentators talk about "homeopathy," they are really talking about "homeopathic medications." In the practice of homeopathy, the doctor gives a homeopathic remedy chosen as a "similar" to whatever seems to be causing the patient's ailment. If someone has a rash, for example, the homeopath might administer an infinitesimally tiny amount of a caustic substance to "train" the body that it does not have to react to whatever is causing the rash with inflammation.

The reason most mainstream physicians and researchers are skeptical of homeopathic medicines is that the amount of the substance used in treatment can be so small that there is a real question whether it exists at all.

A treatment substance (the similar) may be diluted as many as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times, so many times that there is uncertainty whether there would be even a single molecule of the substance in the solution used to make the remedy (which is then dripped on to a sugar cube or a pill so it can be taken by mouth). Homeopathic researchers maintain that water "remembers" the substances placed in it and acts in the same way as a tiny, tiny dose of the toxin. 

Obviously, homeopathic remedies don't cause side effects, given the fact that they are typically amost only water. But it is amazing that sometimes that they also manage to work — even on animals and microorganisms whom, we suppose, can't experience the placebo effect.

What Is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy, however, is not just about taking homeopathic pills. It is also about a relationship between the doctor and patient. To choose the right remedy, the homeopathic doctor does not just look at lab tests and choose a drug to treat the numbers on the lab report. The homeopathic doctor spends several hours getting to know the patient's lifestyle, medical history and personal history, diet, daily habits, and emotional issues.

Then on the basis of the totality of the information presented by the patient, the homeopathic physician identifies the "central delusion" of the patient that causes the body to imagine it cannot be healthy, which is corrected with the single remedy that is determined to be most likely to change the symptom pattern toward health.

Homeopathic remedies aren't something you take over and over again. They work, or they don't. But the relationship with the homeopathic physician continues after you take the therapy. And that may be the critical ingredient in homeopathy that really gets results — although there is just enough information from studies that did not involve doctor-patient interaction to lend credence to the idea that homeopathic medicines also work through some kind of as-yet unknown pharmacological mechanisms.

If You Have Lung Cancer, Does It Make Sense to See a Homeopath?

If you have lung cancer, and your doctor recommends an expensive and painful treatment that may or may not extend your life by a single month, it could well be that this is exactly what you want to try. Sometimes people need to come to resolution with the people in their lives or their personal histories, and that extra month makes that possible.

If possible, however, don't just take a homeopathic pill. See a homeopathic physician, and do so as early as possible after your lung cancer diagnosis. The process of interaction with the doctor may make a critical difference in your comfort and the course of your disease, as Dr Forsythe's research has shown.