Oncologists speak out against antioxidants

Many oncologists are now they're telling their cancer patients to stop taking antioxidants while they're undergoing treatment. Why? Because they're saying there's chance that antioxidant supplements could be lowering the effectiveness of cancer treatments like radiation treatment and chemotherapy.

Give me a break. This makes me so angry, I'm not even sure where to start.

But I'll start with oncologists, those practitioners of the dangerous quack medicine known as chemotherapy. I've been outspoken against this barbaric and often useless practice for years. Chemotherapy attacks and kills not just cancer, but it also blunts the body's immune system in the bargain. While this extreme treatment has been effective against testicular cancers and lymphocytic leukemia, there's little doubt that in many cases it's hard to tell which the "therapy" will kill first - the cancer or the patient.

In spite of what you might have been told or believe, chemotherapy is hardly the exact science that it pretends to be. And yet, on the mere hunch that antioxidants could be protecting the cancer cells that chemotherapy seeks to destroy, oncologists seem perfectly comfortable telling their patients to layoff the antioxidant supplements.

Now I've hardly been the only one to sing the praises of the amazing benefits of antioxidants. And there are indeed many pro-antioxidant docs out there who claim that they may even boost the affect of chemo and radiation therapies.

Even the author of the study claiming that antioxidants are having a negative impact on these cancer treatments admits that there's just not enough data for a definitive answer.

But this hasn't stopped oncologists like Gabriella D'Andrea of New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from telling her patients to avoid all supplements during their course of treatment.

Since these antioxidant supplements are so damaging to chemo and radiation treatments - so much so that not even the scant few milligrams found in a daily vitamin should be taken - surely oncologists must recommend that their patients also avoid all foods rich in antioxidants, right?

Wrong.

"People ask me, 'What should I eat?'," D'Andrea says. "And we just don't know."

I find it unnerving that an oncologist like D'Andrea - heck, ANY doctor - could have so little proof and yet so much absolute conviction that she's in the right. It's shocking.

D'Andrea's closed mind just re-enforces my already poor view of oncologists and their wrong-headed - and unproven - methods.

Morning sickness meds: Safe or not?

A new anti-nausea drug is supposed to be safe for pregnant women suffering from morning sickness. This news is sure making me sick, though.

I remember all too well another widely prescribed anti-nausea drug from half a century ago… and the tragedy it left in its wake.

Women throughout Europe and Canada took an anti-nausea drug called Thalidomide, and it caused devastating fetal birth defects, like severely shortened or missing limbs. (Thankfully, it was never approved for use in the U.S.)

You'd think they'd learn their lesson, but here we go again. A new drug called metoclopramide, is being marketed in Europe and Israel as Reglan (among other names). And according to a new Israeli study, it has no impact on the fetuses of its users.

Time will tell. Although metoclopramide is sold in the U.S., it's NOT approved as a treatment for morning sickness. Let's hope it stays that way.

I find it shocking that the same doctors who advise pregnant women to avoid even Tylenol during all three trimesters would actually recommend a drug to battle nausea.

Why take a drug that could potentially lead to birth defects when there are safe, natural alternatives? Next time you're feeling nauseous, try a little ginger.