The Agriculture Department study, published in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science , is only the most recent example of a subtle shift in research toward complementary and alternative approaches for battling cancer and other diseases. And such studies are long overdue. Together, complementary and alternative therapies include a broad range of healing philosophies and approaches. Complementary methods are not intended to cure disease, but rather to help control symptoms and improve well being. For example, a patient may drink peppermint tea to help with nausea, practice meditation to reduce stress, or undergo acupuncture for chronic pain.
Alternative therapies refer to treatments that are sometimes promoted as cancer cures.
There is considerably more risk to the patient when traditional medical treatments are abandoned in favor of unproven or untested alternative therapies. Furthermore, when patients mix and match treatments the use of alternative therapies may counteract the benefits of standard medicines, skew lab test results, or even cause direct harm. Examples of alternative therapies include mega-doses of a particular vitamin or mineral, extreme diets, or products such as shark cartilage that are touted as cancer cures. In an intriguing article published in the journal Cancer , Dr. Wolfgang Sollner and colleagues from University Hospital in Innsbruck, Austria wrote that the use of complementary and alternative medicine is actually a positive sign that patients are actively coping with their disease, rather than a signal of their frustration with conventional care. The researchers noted that many oncologists still fear that the use of non-conventional treatments may lead patients to abandon standard medical care.