More practical challenges in using bioenergy to treat cancer

We have now seen this pattern several times, so it's worth mentioning. We treat someone with some kind of aggressive, scary cancer, and it seems to halt temporarily or significantly slow down, with the added side effect that the patient has a much improved (sometimes near normal) quality of life. Then the person decides to take a break from treatment because it doesn't seem necessary, or because they go on holidays, or the weather is inclement making driving difficult. During this break the cancer resurges. The patient then begins to doubt the efficacy of the treatment and quits for good. So in effect the patient quits because the treatment didn't work when we didn't do it. That's like saying aspirin doesn't work because your headache didn't go away when you didn't take it.

There is a kind of magical thinking applied to energy healing that is not applied to more orthodox therapies. The expectations are different: you will give your physiotherapist six to twelve weeks to fix your bad back or wonky knee, but if I can't fix it in one shot with a bioenergy therapy, you won't come back to see me the second time. Granted, cancer is a bit more complex. But people don't seem to appreciate the significance of a therapy that seems to halt it temporarily or to slow it down without the side effects of radiation or chemo, and gives the patient a decent quality of life and some extra time. The thinking seems to be that if you can't make it go away, the treatment is not worthwhile. At the same time, this thinking is not applied to the conventional therapies now being used, which more often than not give the patient extra time with decreased quality of life, and sometimes decreased quality of life with no extra time at all.

Why it's hard to know ...

This is why it's hard to know what works ...

I am treating someone who has lung cancer, using the Domancic Method because the person is also receiving chemotherapy and the use of the Bengston Method is contraindicated during conventional treatment. In addition to the chemo and the energy treatments, the patient is also receiving intravenous vitamin C. After one chemo session the tumours have shown sign of shrinkage. Both the Domancic treatments and the intravenous vitamin C were started not long before the chemo. So, what worked? To make matters even more interesting, the chemotherapy drug is an experimental one. So if the cancer remits, the experimental drug will be credited for the remission, and this case will form part of the statistical analysis. In the meantime, the patient feels good and has no significant side effects from the chemotherapy. Onwards and upwards, keeping the clinicians happy and the experimentalists confounded.

I think what we are doing here is called "integrated medicine".

UPDATE Nov. 17: Unfortunately the lack of significant side effects from chemo did not continue. After the second round of chemotherapy the patient developed pneumonia and I haven't heard anything more since then.