Why Your Cancer Care Team Needs A Naturopathic Doctor

Integrative cancer care can be defined as the integration of both conventional and non-conventional treatment options in order to help support a someone diagnosed with cancer. Naturopathic doctors and Cornerstone Naturopathic’s Integrative Cancer Care Team are part of the foremost primary heath care providers in Canada to help guide and deliver such care.

 

 

 

So, what is the benefit of integrative (naturopathic) cancer care and why do you and your cancer care team need a naturopathic doctor? A better quality of life, less side effects from treatment, improved energy and feeling like you’re actually part of your plan; not just following blindly. It’s your health, and we know that merging the right nutrition with the right supplements only makes your chemotherapy, radiation or recovery from surgery better.

 

 

 

 

 

The need for cancer patients to seek out a naturopathic doctor can have benefits far outreaching what is stated above. Oncologists, radiologists, surgeons, and other cancer and oncology focused professionals certainly lead patient care in terms of primary conventional treatments and outcomes. Without conventional treatments, often times cancer has an extremely high risk of aggressively seeding, growing, and spreading further. In our focus, cancer can be well treated and managed by conventional medical means, and then we help our patients with the other side of the equation; feeling poorly, lack of energy, side effects, and a lower quality of life.

 

 

 

We know that nothing is guaranteed when it comes to cancer and health, but adding a naturopath to your cancer care team can not only help patients effectively navigate your overall health and treatment plan, it can often lesson the burden on the conventional cancer care team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What exactly does this mean?

 

 

 

Of clinical note, it is often realized that naturopathic (integrative) cancer care can improve the underlying health of a patient, an integral area conventional medicine admittedly cannot consistently address. Naturopathic Doctors have the potential to help our patients maintain immune system function, improve nutritional status, improve energy, lessen fatigue, and help cultivate better outcomes of recovery from conventional treatment. To put this simply, this means that you’re able to continue with your treatments as your conventional team would ideally like.

 

 

 

 

Chemotherapy and radiation are effectively administered within a pre-determined time schedule and lags in successive drug doses (often due to immune cell counts that are too low, or due to extreme side effects such as nausea, fever or worsened health) can be very detrimental to the patient as well as the overall treatment outcome and plan.

 

 

 

 

The conventional medical system is hugely overburdened as a whole, and medical oncologists and cancer care members understand this threat to patient care. Due to our current medical care crisis, the dilemma arises that although oncologists maintain a sincerity to provide the best level of ongoing care to their patients, it is not always necessarily straight forward or easy to do so. More and more, patients want a greater depth of insight into their health questions, want to be given more time with their doctors, and understandably want the time to have their queries about how natural medicine, supplements, foods and nutrients can effectively impact their overall health. Naturopathic Doctors who hold proficiency within the scope of integrative cancer care do have the ability to optimally fill this and other aforementioned gaps in cancer patient support and care.