ABSTRACT

By the year 2000, cancer will emerge as the number one cause of death in the United States. Despite the enormous effort to combat cancer, the number of new cases of nearly every form of cancer has increased annually over the last century. Still worse: from 1930 to the present, despite the introduction of radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy with biological response modifiers, despite computed tomography scans, magnetic resonance imaging scans, and all the other new medical technology-life spans for almost every form of adult cancer except cervical cancer and lung cancer have remained constant, which means that there has been no significant progress in cancer treatment. The successes in the treatment of cancer plateaued in the 1970s, and no real advances have been made since then. However, chemotherapy and radiation therapy continue to have a role in cancer treatment but produce morbidity. Nutritional modification, including the use of certain nutrients, and proper life-style can dramatically decrease the morbidity and side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. There have even been some reports that nutritional and life-style modification actually increase survival. Numerous studies show that nutrients used with chemotherapy and radiation therapy can enhance tumor killing and preserve normal tissue.