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When you are dealing with cancer, whether in a “conventional” way or a natural one, setbacks are unavoidable. Your body reacts to a supplement or a medicine in an unexpected manner, or you are overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to do and take, or a myriad other things that don’t go the way you planned. Here are a few things I encountered on my path and so can speak from experience on how to deal with them.

Gastritis

I cannot imagine this not being a real problem for at least some people taking dozens of supplements in large doses and concentrated forms. I had two bouts of gastritis that forced me to stop virtually all supplementation and set me back by at least 4-6 weeks.

The bottom line here is that it doesn’t matter what vitamins, supplements, etc. you take and how much of them you take: what matters is how much of it actually gets assimilated. With a bad stomach, you have to severely cut down on what you take in order to avoid exacerbating the situation, thus prolonging the recovery. Stomach problems need to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

Here’s a tried and true protocol to restore your stomach to normal function in 2-3 weeks:

• Morning, on an empty stomach: Pantoprazole 40mg. Proton pump inhibitors, of which Pantoprazole is one, have the slight added benefit of lowering the acidity of the body and thus creating a less hospitable environment for cancer cells. Pantoprazole is by prescription only; the OTC version is Prilosec or Prevacid.
• Evening, before bed: Famotidine 40mg (prescription). OTC version is Pepcid.
• Eat small meals every 2-3 hours rather than three large ones.
• Precede each meal with two tablespoons of raw cabbage juice (15-20 mins before eating).
• If experiencing burping and persistent stomach pain, take pancreatic enzymes after every meal to speed up the digestion (burping and pain are caused by acid and food sitting in the stomach for too long).
• For stomach pain, take the Hungarian medicine No-shpa. It can be found in food stores that are usually called “International” and are owned by Russians, Ukrainians, or Poles.
• Simplify your diet for the duration of this mini-treatment. Exclude anything hot, cold, spicy, sour etc. Best for the stomach are foods that gently cover it and protect from acid: grains (oatmeal, buckwheat, wild rice, quinoa), chicken soup, fish soup. Yes, I know that grains are full of carbs, so you certainly shouldn’t overdo them, but small amounts will sustain you when you cannot have a wide variety of foods.
• Right before meals, take a tablespoon of psyllium husk soaked in water for a few hours or boiled flax seeds: both are viscous and do a great job covering the esophagus and the stomach with a protective film. Caution: if taking psyllium, make sure it is well mixed and there are no lumps as lumps, if there’s dry psyllium inside, can get stuck in the throat and be hard to wash down.

As general stomach protection when taking a lot of supplements, you can also take Famotidine/Pepcid as a preventative: 20mg in the morning on an empty stomach, 20mg at night before bed.

Other items of note

• Thymosin Alpha 1 injections for low white blood cells and immune system in general.
• For low white blood cells, both Chlorophyll and Thymus PMG also work quite well.
• Shark liver oil can be taken for low white blood cells as well, although not for long. Sharks, being larger and longer-lived, also tend to be high in mercury.
• Skin brushing (with a fairly rough brush) to reduce elevated iron levels in the blood, especially when coupled with anemia (yes, it happens).
• CurcuPlex-95 for elevated Human Transgrowth Factor Beta.
• L-Lysine injections for herpesvirus and other viruses.
• Candida is a very frequent problem and needs to be taken care of. Use either this formula or this one.
• Ragland blood pressure test to easily check adrenal function.
• Low stomach acidity is sometimes caused by some RSO varieties due to (apparently) overuse of neem, which is a natural pesticide but slows down gastric emptying, causing food to sit in the stomach for hours without being digested and then begin to ferment, causing non-stop belching and a constant fullness. This is a fairly serious problem as you are not getting the nutrients from food and your supplements. Treat with Zypan, if needed, supplementing with Betaine HCL and digestive enzymes. Slow digestion can be assisted by MotilPro.

Diagnostics and Tests

• Blood tests. Many tests are available for purchase directly, without a visit to the doctor, and fairly inexpensively – in many cases less so than the copay for a doctor’s visit would be. Keeping track of the trends in how your blood responds to various adjustments is crucial and can be done with tests like CBC, CMP, Thyroid panel, Basic Health profile, and many others.
• Try to avoid PET/CT scans: the radiation dose of either is massive and will certainly not contribute to good health in the long term. If you can get away with an ultrasound, X-Ray, or an MRI (no contrast), you should do one of them instead. A mammogram produces only a 15% drop in deaths, so its 80% accuracy is not particularly relevant when you look at what truly matters. In many cases a simple ultrasound is more accurate than a mammogram and without the latter’s repercussions (putting a breast with a possible tumor in it in a crushing vise can easily cause the tumor’s membrane to rupture and cancer cells to spread).
• There is a type of blood test called the “Greek test”, developed by RGCC labs in Greece. It includes things like the Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) count, supplement matching based on your DNA profile and a lot more. The tests are pretty expensive and not covered by insurance, however, there is nothing else out there quite like them.
• The Grail Galleri Test checks for over 50 types of cancer and can detect cancer at very early stages.
• For heavy metals and many, many other health parameters, the Quantum Magnetic Analyzer cannot be beat. Highly accurate in many aspects, especially toxins.
• Another provider of highly detailed tests is Genova Diagnostics. The insights their tests, like the NutrEval, provide are truly invaluable.
• CellCore Biosciences makes not only fantastic supplements, but also various blood tests, including a detailed vitamin test.
• Another specialized test that may be helpful is Nagalase. While it doesn’t show presence of cancer cells directly, it does show if there is infection, inflammation, or cancer in the body.
• There is also functional lab testing that provides much deeper insight into your health situation than standard blood tests that a medical doctor may order.

Interactions

• Discontinue a few days before a surgery (these are generally blood-thinning substances): Turmeric, Milk Thistle, Bromelain, CBD.
• Discontinue a few days before a CT/PET scan: Graviola/Soursop and Berberine.
• If taking immunosuppressants or diabetes medications (e.g., metformin), do not take Berberine.
• Other interactions of natural supplements and drugs can be checked on the Memorial Sloan Kettering site here.
• There is a very little known concept in medicine called the Number Needed to Treat (NNT). It tells you how many people have to be treated with a certain drug in order to avoid a certain adverse outcome. Considering that many conditions resolve on their own, this number is significantly higher than you may think, and the vast majority of drugs taken by people serve absolutely no good purpose. For instance, something that may seem patently obvious, like using antibiotics for bronchitis, actually does virtually nothing when it comes to averting real harm. Statins for heart disease patients (with a known heart condition) have even more damning NNT stats — 1 in 39 basically means that out of 39 people taking statins, 38 will see no benefit whatsoever, and what’s worse, 4 of them will have muscle damage. It’s a good concept to keep in mind and to refer to when you’re not sure if you should perform a procedure or take a drug recommended by a doctor.