Category Archives: addiction

Low Dose Chemo and Cancer Treatment

June 28, 2014

 Low dose chemo is an effective alternative cancer treatment approach

cancer treatmentInsulin potentiation therapy (IPT) is the utilization of low doses of chemotherapy and insulin in treatment of cancer. The insulin potentiation therapy may also be used in treatment of other chronic diseases. The use of low dose chemotherapy is safer as compared to conventional chemotherapy that leave patients with many life threatening side effects. The conventional chemotherapy does not only kill the cancerous cells but also kill the healthy cells in the patient’s body leading to a period of intense pain, loss of appetite, loss of hair, weakness, fatigue and even weight loss. The ability of coping with the side effects of conventional chemotherapy varies from patient to patient but generally the experience is not for those faint at heart. These inconveniences have led the patients to look for other safer alternatives in cancer treatment and doctors as well as other medical researchers have been looking for alternatives that can help the cancer patients to be treated more effectively with less severe side effects.

The history of Insulin potentiation therapy (IPT) can be traced back to the early 1920s when insulin was first used in the attempt to treat patients with schizophrenia. Dr. Donato Perez Garcia, Sr. developed IPT and used it to put cancer patients to coma in an attempt to treat them of cancer. His sons took the practice a head and today very many doctors now recommend the use of IPT in treatment of cancer, Needless to mention several publications have been made to avail information in support of this approach to cancer treatment.

Insulin and Cancer

Insulin is the hormone charged with the responsibility of transporting glucose through the bloodstream to the cells to provide energy. This glucose is needed by  both healthy cells and the cancerous cells to survive.

One of the notable difference between cancer cells and healthy cells is that cancer cells depend entirely on sugar and glutamine which is a form of amino acids found in highly concentrated animal proteins. The cancer cells will therefore use all the sugar (glucose) that is found in the bloodstream leaving the healthy cells with inadequate sources of energy to survive on. The healthy cells having no glucose left to utilize become starved and this explains why most cancer patients are always weak and rapidly lose weight.

The amount of insulin used to transport the glucose into the cancer cells is much higher as compared to the amount of insulin hormone used to transport glucose into the healthy cells. Averagely the cancer cells need 16 times more insulin hormones to feed its cells with the glucose.

The cancer cells are very fast in grabbing the glucose available in the blood and that is the basis through which PET scan works. During PET scan a radioactive agent is introduced into the bloodstream within a glucose molecule and since the cancerous cells are the first to race for sugar, they become visible through the scan.

IPT works in the same way as the PET scan, the low doses of chemotherapy drugs are administered in the bloodstream within the glucose molecules and so the cancer cells come scrambling as they are faster in response to glucose than the healthy cells. They utilize the ‘poisoned’ glucose and get killed sparing the healthy cells. In IPT healthy cells are not killed as it happens in the conventional chemotherapy where both the cancerous and the healthy cells are killed. This explains why patients on low dose chemotherapy do not suffer severe side effects as common with patients undergoing conventional chemotherapy.

Potentiation in the IPT is an English word derived from a verb ‘potentiate’ which means to give more power or other to make more potent. In this therapy insulin is used to make conventional chemotherapy more powerful and effective in killing the cancerous cells.

A study that was done at the George Washington University in 1981 revealed that when insulin is mixed with a chemotherapy drug, methotrexate, its strength in killing the cancerous cells improved greatly. With that high potency, patients no longer needed to be given so many drugs to kill the cancerous cells. This combination not only made cancer treatment more effective but also gave convenience to patients as they did not have to use too many drugs to keep healthy.

In numerous ways insulin can help in treatment of cancer patients. Being a hormone that encourages growth, it will trigger cell multiplication by dividing. This allows healthy cells to be more while it puts the cancer cells in a more vulnerable state to be killed by the poisoned glucose molecule in that as the cell divides, it becomes more exposed to the chemotherapy drug in the glucose molecules speeding their death frequency.

Low Dose Chemo

IPT is surely a clever way to kill the cancer cells. You see, Insulin is also known to promote detoxification process as it makes the cells more permeable. This makes it easy for the toxins to be removed from the cells. Detoxification is a crucial procedure in cancer treatment and can be highly achieved through IPT as opposed to the conventional chemotherapy.

The use of low dose chemotherapy has gained popularity over a time and doctors have endorsed this alternative cancer treatment. Going by the simple physiology discussed herein you can see how effective the IPT approach to cancer treatment is. Other advantages that the patient enjoys are that the whole procedure does not leave the patients with life threatening side effects as common in conventional chemotherapy. The drugs given to patients are also manageable as they are more potent. Healthy cells are safe and the patients do not become bald.

Cancer treatment is subject to new inventions and that gives you a reason to find a reliable source of information that will update on the latest medical inventions geared towards making cancer treatment more effective. Contact Dr. Dalal Akoury (MD) who is more experienced in cancer treatment so that you can learn more on cancer treatment and management.

 Low dose chemo is an effective alternative cancer treatment approach

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Role of the gastrointestinal tract in detoxification elimination

June 28, 2014

Detoxification Is A Great Procedure For Elimination

Chemicals From Our Bodies

detoxificationThere’s no doubt that the gastrointestinal tract is a powerful tool in the absorption of nutrients. The stomach and the intestines, in particular, are the workhorses of the digestive team. However, the gastrointestinal tract can also go a long way in helping detoxify the human body of any illnesses it may be struggling with.

The Issue

The human body is exposed to a wide range of xenobiotics and xenoestrogens, which are toxins that are regularly introduced to the human body. Some are by choice – the artificial sweeteners that go into most sodas and many other products are a recent example – but some are not. Since toxins are regularly introduced to the body, it’s important to ensure that some time is spent on a regular basis detoxifying the body of the poisons it’s been introduced to. Detoxification and elimination of toxins does not have to be a complicated process, however; it’s important to realize it’s a fairly simple process that can go a long way to helping you take back your life.

If you are experiencing any one or more of the following problems, you might need to consider detoxification and elimination as a way to regain your health:

  • Fatigue
  • Excessive sinus problems
  • Headaches
  • Gastrointestinal disorders
  • Sleep problems
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Eczema
  • Canker sores
  • Acne
  • Puffy, dark circles under your eyes

So, how much is too much, then? Because toxins in our world are so pervasive, does it mean that, in reality, we are all toxic?

Truth be told, this is a legitimate concern, but there’s also a matter of degrees at play here as well. There’s also the matter of everyone being ever-so-slightly biochemically different. If our biochemistry wasn’t slightly different from person to person, we would all likely get sick at the same time, at the very least. In fact, it is in part because everyone is biochemically different that toxins can affect people in different ways. This can be to the extent that if two people are exposed to the same bad substance, one person may feel completely unaffected by the exposure while the other could be laid up in bed for months.

In fact, there are several diseases linked to toxicity, such as Parkinson’s, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, dementia, and heart disease. Just from such a simplified list alone, you can quickly get an idea that toxicity is a serious issue for all individuals, regardless of the extent to which you might be deemed “toxic”. It’s obviously a good idea to go through a detoxification and elimination process occasionally in order to keep your digestive tract running as smoothly as possible. Getting rid of the toxins will go a long way to allowing your body to absorb nutrients more effectively, thereby making you healthier.

Detoxification

The Detoxification Process

Your gut, of course, is one of the chief loading zones for toxicity. Given ingestion is one of the biggest ways in which we absorb any substance that comes into contact with our bodies, it comes as little surprise that we have a load of toxins sitting in our gut. As a result, we need to clear out those toxins to ensure optimal absorption of the nutrients we need to be healthy.

There are several steps we can take to detoxify our guts:

  1. Drink lots of water

Water is nature’s cleanser, and as such, it becomes a critical component in the detoxification and elimination process. As water hits our stomachs, it helps to dilute the toxins – say, artificial sweeteners from our coffee. The water will eventually make its way throughout our bodies and pull some of the toxins with it. The toxins will then, in part, get eliminated from our bodies via urine or excrement.

Many of us are perpetually dehydrated. This is because instead of drinking nature’s solvent – water – we continue to drink toxic sodas with artificial sweeteners, coffee, or alcohol. This means that we are only ensuring these toxins stay in our systems. Drinking more water – and the more filtered, the better – helps these toxins move through our digestive tract throughout the detoxification process and ultimately get eliminated by our systems.

  1. Keep things moving

If you find that you are regularly constipated, it could mean you have a build up of toxins in your system that are impairing your absorption of material that is good for your system. Improve your intestinal functioning by integrating flax seeds, acidophilus or magnesium capsules into your diet. Any one of these substances can go a long way towards allowing your gut to improve its absorption of nutrients, though if you have any sort of chronic disease, you should discuss taking these supplements with your doctor prior to starting them.

  1. Eat organic foods

Many foods that are not deemed to be organic are inundated with a wide range of pesticides and chemicals to improve their shelf life. This means that there are also a good many extra chemicals introduced into our systems; whether we eat processed cheese instead of fresh, or “unorganic” apples, we are introducing a wide range of unhealthy chemicals into our systems. Because our digestive tract absorbs many of these chemicals, we are, in effect, making ourselves unhealthier.

Eating a steady diet of certified organic foods and drinking lots of water can go a long way towards making our guts healthier and restoring balance. In fact, eating organic foods eliminates these toxins from our diets, which means if we drink greater amounts of water, we help flush these toxins out of our systems. In flushing these toxins out, our digestive tract becomes more efficient and helps decrease our chances of getting one of a myriad number of diseases.

And Finally…

 There are several different ways of helping our digestive tracts restore balance and eliminate toxins from our bodies. One of the best ways is by drinking water. Making an effort to eat organic and taking supplements that can promote digestion will go a long way towards improving the health of our digestive tracts and ensuring that we absorb the nutrients that are essential to the optimum functioning of our bodies.

Detoxification Is A Great Procedure For Elimination Chemicals From Our Bodies

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Neuroendocrine Restoration Will Lead You Out Of Addiction

June 28, 2014

The process of developing an addiction usually follows a pattern, regardless of the activity you become addicted to. There is a common misconception that has likely reified the concept into a simplistic definition; one that is inclined towards substance. Addiction does not necessarily have to deal with a substance. You can develop an addiction to eating, talking, masturbating, just the same way you get addicted to cigarette or bhang smoking.

At early stages the process is usually subtle and mostly subconscious. For the case of drugs, almost all addicts will have succinct picture of how they started; usually a few hurried gulps of the father’s favorite ‘long neck’ caring not to be seen; a bottle of Smirnoff which got them really high and chattering through the party; a stick of marijuana from a willing friend or a cigarette that appeared irresistible given the way a certain fatherly figure seemed to have felt heavenly while smoking it.

This would be followed by a series of like behavior occasioned by similar chances. The person usually repeats the action a number of times over a given period of time and cannot clearly tell the point when they could no longer back off this act.

Neurondocrine Restoration

Why can a person not simply stop the act as soon as they realize it has blown out of proportion? Why do they continue the act against their own will? Why does the process of rehabilitation from drug addiction so delicate that it can be fatal if not properly monitored?

Understanding the mechanism of addiction

The start of addiction is always a voluntary step. Your father smokes, you notice and become curious. You steal and smoke it.

You attend a party, people are all drinking and you are invited to have a taste; it tastes sweet (because it is Namaqua). You drain a glass, and wish it was a few inches deeper, just before you begin speaking louder and more than the music system.

You are just about to make the final turn to the hostel washrooms, when your nose picks a familiar smell. You decide to give a hand shake to the group of comrades involved in a hushed discussion a few meters away; they offer you a stick of bhang, which you accept ‘because you are a man’

You like the experience. So you get bored and feel like doing something different; you want a little adventure so you go for the drug you just tasted a few days back. Remember in each of these cases you could opt to refuse, but you just decided; why not?

Soon you decide to repeat the practice, because you are stressed and a friend said this usually work for them, or merely because you are tuned to it after having liked the experience. You do not notice it, but at this juncture your brain is releasing the happiness hormones like endorphins that stimulate the excitement.

This act becomes the triggering activity for the release of the hormones. Your body starts to relate the triggering activity to the sensation that it will cause as a cause-effect relationship. This begins to condition your body to an addiction.

You are welcoming a new habit; the condition now triggers a biochemical process in your body whose subsequent repetition soon gets your system conditioned to releasing the hormones.

Recovery from Addiction

addiction recoveryYou completely destroy a plant only when you dig its roots. Repetition of an activity gets entrenched as a condition in your system; a system controlled by a central engine in your body called neuroendocrine system.

The neuroendocrine system is the combination of interaction and interplay of the endocrine and the nervous system; the central nervous system.

Our bodies are made up of cells. And cells are components of the network of glands known as the neuroendocrine system that controls the internal state of balance in the body.

Therefore, when the body has been conditioned to react in a certain way, the neuroendocrine system becomes programmed to direct that certain response as a way of life. Getting out of an addiction therefore means deprogramming your body; which simply is reconditioning your hormonal responses.

Every hormonal response is controlled by the neuroendocrine system. For one to fully recover from an addiction therefore, their neuroendocrine system must be reconditioned to direct the normal response.

Dr. Dalal Akoury

Medical Doctor Dalal A Akoury is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist based in South Carolina, Myrtle Beach. She has a vast experience in medicine having served as a medical practitioner for thirty six years after receiving her medical degree from the University of Alexandria, Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Dalal Akoury currently runs a medical facility Awaremed Health and Wellness Resource Centre located in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. This medical facility is the brainchild of the doctor.

Neuroendocrine Restoration Will Lead You Out Of Addiction

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Narcotics and Cancer Treatment

June 28, 2014

Narcotics Can Be Safely Used To Ease Pain in Cancer Patients

Narcotics and Cancer treatmentThe use of narcotic drugs is a scare to all and any mention of this draws mixed reactions, probably due to the well-known life threatening side effects that users of such drugs are exposing themselves to. However, in certain scenarios you may have to depend on these drugs to at least reduce your pain. In this case the narcotics are used with medical intentions having to be administered by a doctor who knows the right dosage as over-dosing may produce horrible side effects. To cancer patients, the narcotics are a necessity they can never run away from as they are very effective in reducing the intensity of pain they suffer, while ailing or undergoing certain treatments (chemotherapy for example)

The pain relieving drugs that are non-narcotics in nature are available, and include; Tylenol, Celebrex and Advil. These drugs are very useful in cancer treatment. However, they can only be effectively used for mild pains but cannot help much in reducing the great pains that most cancer patients have to go through. For this case, narcotic drugs become the only option for these patients. A lot of patients though, are scared of addiction to these drugs and thus repel the idea of the usage on them. But, legal narcotic pain medication can be used safely to reduce the pain in cancer patients without the risk of addiction.

The narcotics used in pain medication are all related to morphine but may come in different forms. The effects of these narcotic pain medication drugs vary in different patients and the different forms also have different side effects. Some of these drugs include; hydromorphone, roxicodone, codeine and fentanyl. These forms are also different in strength and while will take mere seconds to ease the pain, some may take up to an hour to reduce the pain. The drugs may come in forms of tablet, liquid or even as a suspension.

There is a known risk associated with misuse of these drugs and so it is important that the complex combination of these drugs be done by an authorized medical personnel who will be able to reduce the negative side effects of these drugs on the patients’ health while maximize on their benefits. In case of any unexpected side effects the patient is advised to seek the intervention of the doctor as the patient may react differently to the drug as other patients who had undergone the same treatment.

The doctor should monitor the progress of a patient on treatment and see if the patient is doing better with the medication. If the patient is still experiencing the intense pain, then the doctor will give a different combination of these drugs that will be able to reduce the pain and give the patient comfort. This calls for cooperation between the cancer patient and the doctor so that the patient can benefit from the medication.

The patient may at times have to use two different drugs, especially when the pain is continuous and sometimes becomes unbearable. The patient may use a narcotic drug that takes less time to ease the pain while still using the long term pain medication that is subscribed to her by her doctor. In most cases the patient will be in control of the other drug that he will use at certain times when the pain is intense to give her slight breakthrough from the pain. The narcotics that are entirely controlled by patients should not have adverse effects on the patient even if they take them beyond the recommended doses.

One of the discomforts that cancer patients on narcotic pain medication suffer most is constipation. It is therefore advisable that as you take narcotic pain medicines you should also take medicine that will help you evade constipation. If the constipation problem persist even after taking necessary measures, you should talk to your doctor about so that he may change your pain medicine for another that will least affect  your bowel movements. It is also important that you avoid other relaxants when you are using narcotic pain medication. You should not take alcohol without discussing with your doctor as that may work against your medication.

Cancer and narcotics

There have been controversies about the use of narcotic drugs to control pain in cancer patients with many critics saying that the patient’s risks suffering an addiction. The truth however is when narcotic drugs are used as pain medication the doctors give required dosage that will not addict the patients. A patient is different from strict addict that may use the narcotic drugs to suppress depression or simply to get high. When used for medication the patient is not in control of the drug unlike in the case of a street addict who is in control of the amounts he takes. He can overindulge but a patient cannot since he uses the doctor’s subscription.

The issue of affordability features when you want to choose the pain medication to use. Most of these narcotic pain medicines are quite expensive and are mostly paid for by insurance cover plans. If you do not have an insurance policy and you find your drug too expensive, it is advisable to tell your doctor so that he may find you a more affordable alternative that is also effective.

It is good to seek information about narcotic pain medication to cancer patients from experienced doctors so that you will know the best course of action to take in case you or your loved ones are victimized by this disease. For this purpose, Dr. Dalal Akoury (MD) has availed detailed information about cancer treatments on her website. If you are not suffering from this disease but you are affected in one way or the other. Get in touch with Dr. Dalal Akoury so that you may learn much on cancer management and be of help to this generation.

Narcotics Can Be Safely Used To Ease Pain in Cancer Patients

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Stress and Addiction: Where’s the connection?

June 28, 2014

Relationship between Stress and Addiction

Addiction and stressDid you know that excessive stress could lead one to addiction? What is stress and what is addiction and how are they related to each other? Well, I will come to that later in my next paragraph. First and foremost, let’s talk about stress. In everyone’s life, one undergoes or experiences some stress of some kind. With the fast moving life of today one tends to find him or herself always trying to cope up especially since everything and everyone has evolved really fast for the past ten years or so. All this added up together can lead to one easily falling into what we call stress. Did you know that stress can also come from family, friends and peer pressure? These three elements especially the latter has caused lots of pressure in the world today that has been dubbed ‘digital’.

Now let us talk about what stress and addictions are. Well, for starters, stress is some kind of strain or tension felt when one is experiencing environmental, work or even family challenge. This could be as a result of death of a child, a lover and even of a close friend or relative, divorce, peer pressure and financial matters. To mention but a few. Addiction on the other hand is when one is devoted to something that could either be drug related or just devotion to something of some kind. Someone with an addiction problem always have the strong urge and need to always have that thing that they are addicted to. It’s almost if not a disease of some sort and can be treated if one seeks treatment in time.

We all know that a little push is good for everybody thus a little bit of pressure is not harmful. It’s dangerous only when it goes overboard. As the saying goes, too much of something is dangerous, so it stress and pressure. If you push yourself too much you will always get into stress, trying so hard to cope in your job, family or amongst your friends and feeling that you are not meeting their standard could also push one into stress because they will always be trying to fit in. well, trying is not bad but not to an extent that it affects you or drives you into stress and depression. It’s your life we are talking about here.

So how does stress result into addiction?

It’s actually not rocket science to relate the two. Though not all stress will always catapult into addiction, most of them usually do. Infect stress and addiction are almost synonymous. Synonymous in the fact that you can rarely get one without the other. Most or all individuals have their own ways of dealing with different kinds of stress in different ways. Some people will just need to take a few hours or days off from work or whatever stress is it that they are going through and it all goes away but there are some people who will turn to stronger things like alcohol, cigarettes or drugs like cocaine or heroin to relax them from the stress they are undergoing. In most countries, cigarettes and alcohol are legal so they are usually the most sort after as stress relievers. They are equally cheap, affordable and readily available.

One can start by just joining friends or relatives for a social drink over the weekend to put away or forget the stress he or she is went through during the week. It could just be an innocent get together that could start with one weekend then when you go home or is on your own, you will feel like the stress is has gone away or subsided. This trend may go on from weekends to daily because you will always seem to feel tensed during the week and after a few drinks later in the day or even on weekends you will feel better. By this time, you will have found or would thing you have a solution of getting rid of your stress. Is it me or does cigarette make a good companion of alcohol? These two go together very well just like stress and addiction. In fact, it’s almost impossible to separate the two. Most often your drink will be generously escorted with a cigarette. Some will also start with the hard stuff like heroin and cocaine.

  • Addiction

Well, remember we had mentioned earlier that addiction is too much devotion to something regardless of what it is? Now when one starts depending too much on something it becomes addiction. Please don’t get it twisted and start looking for comfort somewhere else as any form of dependency may lead to addiction. However there are many ways to know if you are addicted or headed there especially for the ones using drugs. We all know our body and can tell if there any weird changes. If you start losing weight, getting tremors then start getting worried. Honestly though, do we need to wait to experience all these and is it really worth it?

First avoid stress by always keeping away from whatever drives you into stress. It’s given that some stresses are inevitable like death or even family matters like divorce but it will help to know that we are not the only ones going through such calamities. Issues like peer pressure are avoidable. How? Simple. Keep away from anyone expecting too much from you at the expense of your health. All said and done, alcohol, cigarettes or any form of addiction will never be cure for stress.

If you fall victim of addiction from stress related causes, or suffering any form of addiction, we at New Frontier Medicine Academy.

Stress and Addiction: Where’s the connection?

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