If you're fighting cancer, or if you know anybody who is fighting it, the information I'm going to give you now is critical. It's critical for two reasons. One, as you will see, it will not only extend your life, but it will also improve the quality of your life. And two, the information has been out for over 17 years and you will still not hear it from any oncologist (including the ones at the supposed great cancer centers). The study was published in the European Journal of Cancer way back in 1999.
The authors begin their report by stating that the hormone melatonin "...has been proven to counteract chemotherapy toxicity, by acting as an antioxidant agent, and to promote apoptosis of cancer cells, so enhancing chemotherapy cytotoxicity." Just to be clear, what they are saying here is that melatonin decreases the toxicity of chemotherapy while at the same time increasing its ability to kill cancer cells. If that doesn't sound like the most perfect natural addition to conventional chemotherapy, then I don't know what does. So, based on this fact, the researchers set out to evaluate the effects of giving melatonin along with chemotherapy in several different cancers.
The researchers looked at total of 250 men and women who had advanced metastatic cancer. Of these, 104 had lung cancer, 77 had breast cancer, 42 had gastrointestinal tract cancer, and 27 had head and neck cancers. They gave some of the patients in each group 20 mg per day of melatonin in addition to their regular chemotherapy. The rest did not get the melatonin supplement. They used the following chemotherapy drugs: cisplatin, etoposide, gemcitabine, doxorubicin, mitoxantrone, paclitaxel, and 5-FU. Here's what happened.
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According to the authors, "The one-year survival rate and the objective tumor regression rate were significantly higher in patients concomitantly treated with melatonin than in those who received chemotherapy alone." Specifically, the chemotherapy was effective in killing the tumors in 34% of the patients taking the melatonin compared to only 15% in the non-melatonin group.
Clearly the melatonin dramatically improved the efficiency of the chemo drugs. And, in terms of survival, the melatonin group had a 51% survival rate after one year compared to a 23% survival rate for the patients not getting the melatonin. The results mean that if you take melatonin along with your chemotherapy, your treatments will be more than twice as effective and you will be more than twice as likely to be alive a year later. If there was any drug out there right now that was one-tenth this good, it would be all over the news and every oncologist would be prescribing it. And that's not all.
The melatonin also dramatically reduced side effects and improved the quality of life. Listen to the researchers once again. "Moreover, the concomitant administration of melatonin significantly reduced the frequency of thrombocytopenia [platelet destruction], neurotoxicity [nerve damage], cardiotoxicity [heart damage], stomatitis [mouth sores], and asthenia [weakness and poor appetite]. This study indicates that the pineal hormone melatonin may enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy and reduce its toxicity, at least in advanced cancer patients of poor clinical status."
So please take my advice on this. If you're being treated for cancer or if you have been treated for cancer, please get a second opinion from a practitioner who is well versed in natural therapies for cancer. Melatonin may be the single best overall natural anti-cancer therapy, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other therapies out there that will improve the way traditional therapies work while at the same time decreasing the toxicity.
Yours for better health,
Frank Shallenberger, MD
Source:
Lissoni P, Barni S, et al. Decreased toxicity and increased efficacy of cancer chemotherapy using the pineal hormone melatonin in metastatic solid tumour patients with poor clinical status. Eur J Cancer. 1999 Nov;35(12):1688-92.