A healthy and high-functioning immune system is one of the body’s most important weapons against cancer.  While cancer is normally attributed to causes other than the immune system, research has shown that building up a strong immune response can help the body fight cancer – a point well-recognized by mainstream medicine and alternative cancer treatment clinics.

The immune system helps fight cancer and heal the body in two ways.

1. An enhanced immune response helps the body recognize malignancy better.  A malignant tumor occurs when DNA damage to the cells eliminates the function of “programmed death,” causing them to grow and divide without stopping or dying the way a normal cell would.  This forms a growing tumor that will eventually spread to other parts of the body.

The immune system, in addition to recognizing pathogens like viruses and bacteria, can recognize malignant cells as something that should be destroyed.  This means that a body with a stronger immune system will have an easier time destroying cancerous cells.  With assistance from immunotherapy treatments like vitamin D3, vitamin B12 or a Myers Cocktail of vitamins and electrolytes, many patients’ bodies will be even more capable of fighting cancer.

2. The immune system helps fight opportunistic infections that overtake a weakened body.  When a patient’s immune function is low and their body is stricken with cancer, they are less able to fight off infections unrelated to their disease.  Their resistance to pathogens is lowered, and opportunistic infections – infections that take over the body when immune function is low – can make sicknesses like pneumonia and influenza deadly.  This resistance is lowered even more by some traditional cancer treatments like radiation and chemotherapy.

By using immunotherapy to keep the immune system in high function, doctors can help prevent opportunistic infections and also renew the body’s ability to fight malignant tumors.  As an alternative cancer treatment program, immunotherapy has a number of benefits for the patient’s health and future.

According to a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a small group of patients with advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (or CLL) responded extremely well to an unconventional treatment and are all in remission one year later.  The patients were given a genetically-modified version of their immune system’s own T cells, which destroy tumors by identifying specific proteins on another cell that mark it as cancerous.

In the study, researchers removed samples of each patient’s own natural T cells and gave the cells an artificial receptor for a protein called CD19, which is found on cancerous cells in leukemia patients.  The genetically modified T cells attacked more cancer cells than they would have had they not been modified.

The patients in the study had tried other, more mainstream treatments for cancer with less success, and the results they achieved with genetic T cell therapy are demonstrating that alternative cancer therapies are often an excellent choice for patients.  Mainstream medicine is beginning to recognize alternative cancer care as a viable and successful option more than ever before.

Several of Camelot Cancer Care’s treatments also focus on improving immune function with safe and FDA-approved therapies.  Ultraviolet blood irradiation, or UVBI, is an alternative treatment option that – like genetic T cell therapy – boosts the immune system to kill cancer cells.  Not to be confused with radiation therapy, UVBI involves passing the blood through crystal tubing and exposing it to a frequency of UV light that kills bacterial and viral cells.  These dead cells serve as antigens, which trigger the immune system and help it to recognize and kill cancerous cells.  This FDA-approved treatment has few side effects and is an excellent way to safeguard a patient’s body against recurrence.

Coley’s toxins, also called mixed bacterial vaccine or fever therapy, is another treatment which triggers an immune response that recognizes tumor cells as invaders and kills them.   The therapy introduces a mixture of bacterial cultures that activate the immune system, and it has been shown to be effective in many soft tissue sarcomas and osteosarcomas.

Mainstream medicine is beginning to accept and endorse other forms of cancer treatment.  This exciting new research is bringing patients’ and doctors’ attention to alternative cancer solutions and paving the way for other therapies to take a more prominent role in the treatment of cancer.