Archive for the ‘curing brain cancer’ Category

Two new insights to curing brain cancer

Wednesday, March 16th, 2016

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

This is how Rick Simpson oil targets brain cancer cells.

This is how Rick Simpson oil targets brain cancer cells.

I have not written on the brain cancer topic now for almost five years.  But I’ve come across two new treatments that show much promise (and it’s effective for many other cancers besides just brain cancer).

The first is intravenous Vitamin C with DCA – you can learn more about it here – http://www.lemmo.com/cancer-care/dichloro-acetic-acid/.

The second is Rick Simpson Oil.  I’ve attached a picture of how this oil you can make yourself attacks cancer cells (not just brain cancer).   He has an extensive facebook page as well with a wide variety of ways people use it in their cancer treatment.

Tumor Treating Fields to Live with Brain Cancer

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

After the Burzynski Clinic, the next brain cancer treatment we were evaluating for my Mom before she passed away was using Tumor Treating Fields.   We had started the paperwork process to get her into the program in Boston.   It was a little bit of a hard sell as it would have required her to have her head shaved for as long as the treatment took (which could have been years).

Here is great TED talk that shows the efficacy for treating cancers of all types. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/bill_doyle_treating_cancer_with_electric_fields.html

A tribute to my Mom

Saturday, March 10th, 2012
My Mother in 1955 - This is a picture she sent to my father when he was stationed in Japan.   This is what I think she looks like in heaven as when we die I would to believe we all revert back to how we looked in our early twenties.

My Mother in 1955 - This is a picture she sent to my father when he was stationed in Japan. This is what I think she looks like in heaven as when we die I would like to think we revert back to how we looked in our twenties.

By Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

For those of you who may have been following my blog posts regarding my mom’s recovery from brain cancer, I’m sorry to report that one of the by products of brain cancer led to her demise.   She suffered her final seizure on February 7 that rendered her essentially brain dead and she passed away six days later.   Seizures from brain cancer are not caused for the same reasons as seizures from epilepsy.  And they are not necessarily something that will happen to everyone – unless they have brain surgery.   The one drug that may have been able to have stopped the seizures due to the glutamate reaction was not approved for brain cancer and I could not get any of her physicians to take a chance on it.   My mom led an exbuerant, and inspiring life filled with laughter and love.   We held a celebration of her life last weekend.  Here is the link to her tribute video my friend Jody Kasch helped create.

Lessons Learned – here are my take aways from my foray into brain cancer land with my Mom.

1. Get to the Bruzynski Clinic at the first diagnosis of brain cancer.  The sooner you get these folks involved in cancer recovery, the better chance of success.

2. Do not do a brain biopsy for a diffuse glioma – this caused far more problems than it solved.  The neurosurgeon was quite persuasive in his pitch on why we should do a very invasive biopsy saying “I certify neurosurgeons in NY and I would not certify a neurosurgeon who would not do a biopsy for brain cancer.”   Well then of course most neurosurgeons in NY certified by him would take the same position.

3. Give up sugar, adopt a ketogenic diet, avoid as many environmental toxins as possible, stay away from cholesterol lowering drugs that impact your liver, and do the tumeric root and mushroom capsules daily.  I did a blog post on what I learned about recovering from brain cancer here.

4. Always have hope you will recover – my Mom did the best when she was hopeful.  Only hang around with people who also believe you can recover.

5. If a drug has been shown to work for a co-morbiity factor (the seizures), find a doctor who will prescribe it.  Here is a copy of the peer review paper that shows how the drug sulfasalazine, approved for Chron’s disease, can suppress seizures from brain tumors. glutamate-release-by-primary-brain-tumors-induces-epileptic-activity

6. People who develop brain cancer need strong caring advocates as they develop deficits due to their condition.   Simple things like feeding themselves becomes very difficult and even if they look like they can still feed themselves, start making them very small simple meals throughout the day that are easy to eat to insure they are getting adequate nutrition.   They also may lose “executive functioning” gradually over time – this requires care and finesse to gradually take over without being intrusive.

7. Enjoy your life and the people in it while you are healthy.  Go for it.

Zen and the Art of Eldercare

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

A few years back on a road trip through Alaska I listened to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the main character works through his serious neurosis by completely focusing on his motorcycle and how and where it takes him through life. As I figure out my way from the dark existence I find myself in with this sisyphean task of taking care of my Mom with brain cancer, I was reflecting on how my journey is similar to what the main character experiences in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Talking with my friend Zienna yesterday about the quagmire I’m in, she said, “You are only in a quagmire because you are living in your ego. “ She went on to explain a three phased egoic model based on either being a rescuer, a prosecutor or a victim. And I could tell which one I was being based on how I was feeling. If I was feeling over burdened, I was playing the role of rescuer. If I was feeling angry, I was playing the role of prosecutor and if I was feeling self-pity, I was playing the role of victim. WOW – I am living all three roles in this situation I find myself in. No wonder if feels so dark and yucky here for me.

Rising Above the Insanity of Eldercare

Rising Above the Insanity of Eldercare

Last year based on David Hawkin’s book, Power vs. Force, I assembled an energy of emotions matrix. In Hawkin’s book, he shows how our emotions carry energy. And the more positive your emotion, the more energy and positive influence you have in your life. I created a summary that showed a return on investment based on emotional energy. The more positive emotion, the more of a return you got back living in that emotion. According to Hawkin’s this impact is logarithmic. The lowest level positive emotion is courage (which is the absence of fear) and Hawkins placed that at a 200 level. Anything below that level, and whatever emotion you are experiencing is giving you a fractional return on the energy you are investing. In my company we coined this “living above the line or living below the line.” The line being the demarcation of positive vs. negative emotional energy. I naturally live at a fairly high level of emotions – the your success is my success level. So for every moment I spend living at this emotional level, I get a 10,000 times return on investment. I am learning more how to live at higher levels, and I get glimpses of how to do that here and there – especially in meditation.

So creating a mind map of Zienna’s egoic model, I thought, hmmmm this feels a lot like a below the line existence. No wonder if feels so dark to me here. I decided to create an above the line mirror of the egoic model. I call this the love triangle (ooooh – that doesn’t sound so good). In the love triangle, you have partner, advocate and victor. In the partner role, you feel energized, in the advocate role you feel hopeful and in the victor role you feel you are winning. In this model, you feel that you are one with others that you are all in this together and that we will prevail.

In the Buddha Brain book, the authors talk about one of the causes of suffering is hatred. Hatred breeds in an environment where you feel it is us vs. them – a divisive situation. This is what exists in the below the line existence of the egoic model. In the love triangle, it is an inclusive existence that increases individual capacity to love others. The way I can tell the difference – when I’m living below the line in my eldercare responsibilities I feel burned out. When I’m living above the line, I feel inspired. (Inspired enough to share my experiences with others).  The main way I am going to stay above the line in this situation is to make taking care of myself the priority over taking care of others.   The only way I can be there for others is to be there for myself, first.

Living like it’s Ground Hog’s Day to Cope with Caregiver Burnout

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

I managed to take ten days off from my current angel duty of brain cancer recovery support for my Mom. Unfortunately, the folks that stepped in had a “hiccup” and our star patient ended up back in the hospital. From the sounds of it, she is set back to her condition six weeks ago – before we started her recovery program. The thanksgiving visitors thought we were deranged for pursuing a recovery approach. They did not think it was worth doing. WOW – what a very fast demonstration of my post on how cancer is a belief system. We are alive until we are dead. When people are treated as if they are going to die, is it any surprise the outcome is death?

I am writing this on the plane heading back earlier than expected. On the first leg of this flight, I was disgruntled and disheartened. I was enjoying settling back into my home and regaining some semblance of “normalcy” in my life. And I was rekindling some great friendships that had taken a back seat to the chaos of my life. I was enjoying getting on with my life and did not want to head back to angel duty, yet.

Something shifted for me between planes. I remembered Bill Murray’s Ground Hog’s day movie where he has to live the same day over and over and over until he finally starts to enjoy and accept his strange fate. It’s only then that he wins the girls heart and gets to move on to Feb. 3rd. Seeing that I was born on Ground Hog’s day, can the same experience be happening with me here? That until I learn how to enjoy and accept my fate as the lead angel on this tour of duty, nothing will change with it or for me?

I got on my next plane with a “bad” number for boarding the Southwest flight. It was a number where your only choice is a middle seat. The one choice I did have was which middle seat. That was good enough for me. I was happy. I picked a row with a sweet looking older woman in the aisle seat and a friendly grunge looking 20 something guy at the window. Like Bill Murray did when he was stuck repeating ground hog’s day, discovering the small choice I had in this situation helped me reignite my inherent joie de vivre. I had a blast with my row mates on the flight – probably because I was back to my natural state – happy. Lets hope I can remember ground hog’s day as my cure for caregiver burnout. I’m ready to go back to my angel duty with a spring in my step and a smile on my face.

Cancer is a Belief System and What I Would Do Today To Cure Cancer if I Got It

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t – you are right.    I’ve seen this first hand with how my Mom has been treated by the medical establishment regarding her cancer.   The first round of doctors believed that my Mom being 78 years old was going to have a fast demise from her brain cancer and they acted in accordance with that belief.   The second round of doctors believed my mother had the ability to recover from her cancer and acted in accordance with that belief.

Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist talks about how cancer is a belief system in his seminal work “The Biology of Beliefs” where he proves how cancer is a belief system.   People’s belief systems are entirely made up of the culture in which they were raised and how they continue to cultivate their beliefs.   I was raised to believe that you could accomplish anything you put your mind to.  I’ve had the good fortune to have many corroborating experiences to that belief throughout my life, and some amazing guides along them way.

One set of guides have been various research librarians I’ve worked with throughout my technical career – first as an Aerospace Engineer in the Air Force and then as a research scientist for a large multinational corporation.   Their philosophies where everything you need to know to solve your current problem has probably already been discovered – you just have to find it.

And I did find it.   I learned about gene targeted therapy at the burzynski research clinic.   And I learned that the genes that can cause cancer and those that can suppress cancer can be turned on and off throughout your life due to various factors such as pollutants, aging and trauma.  To counter the effects of cancer, you have to turn off the genes that are causing the cancer and turn on the genes that suppress cancer.   There are many many ways to do this.

Based on my research and my experiences, at this time, it is my belief that there are four things I would do if I were to get a cancerous tumor in my system that I wanted to remove.

1. Consume at least 8 g of curcumin (turmeric) a day in a gel (oil based) capsule- to turn off the cancerous cells.  Curuminoids are water soluble for six hours, but are much more stable in oil – which is why I prefer the gel caps over the powdered based turmeric pill formulations which are not as readily absorbed in your blood.   For curing cancer, I’d do the mega doses of the turmeric supreme gel caps over the curcumin root tea as that is too weak a formulation.  You may be able to find the turmeric supreme gel caps at Whole Foods.   (Beevers C, Li F, Liu L, Huang S (2006). “Curcumin inhibits the mammalian target of rapamycin-mediated signaling pathways in cancer cells”. Int J Cancer 119 (4): 757–64.) And also consume a tea made straight from the root  – as this is the most pure form.   The curcuminoids are only good for six hours so make new tea several times a day and drink it continuously.

2. Consume a mix of medicinal mushrooms – to turn on the immune response cells that fight cancerous cells.  I like the Purple Mushroom Defense because they also include the Agaricus Blazei mushroom that research shows inhibits the growth of blood vessels to support tumors.   You can learn more about the medicinal properties of mushrooms by Paul Stamet.

3. Create an alkaline environment in my blood system by drinking high PH water and eating a low calorie ketogenic diet of raw green vegetables with sufficient protein and plant based fats to create an inhospitable environment for cancer cells and to  starve the cancerous cells.

4. Every four hours, go into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber with inhaling straight oxygen for an hour.   The super oxygenates the brain and cancer cells cannot exist in an oxygen rich environment.

And since I want to keep my cells healthy in my life, what I am doing is:

1. keeping my immune system strong with daily exercise, a healthy diet that stimulates the good bacteria in my gut , limit my sugar consumption to keep my blood sugar levels low, surround myself with positive, uplifting and happy people and environments,  take a medicinal mushroom supplement to keep the tumor suppressor genes alive and well, and focus on learning something new every day and developing mastery of  a significant new skill every year.

2. minimizing the environmental toxins in my life from all realms.

3. drinking curcumin root tea several times a day to decrease cell protein receptors that have the tendency to increase with age (this allows cancer cells to grow and also has been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease).

4. Doing an hour a day several times a week in my regular hyperbaric oxygen chamber that is in my bedroom (does not have pumped in oxygen as that is very dangerous in an at home system)  – but it still super oxygenates my blood and helps keep my brain healthy.

Targeted Gene Therapy to Cure Cancer and Some Alternative Approaches that Also Help Slow Aging

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
Targeted Gene Therapy To Counter High Levels of VEGF

Targeted Gene Therapy To Counter High Levels of VEGF

This is an extremely complex picture of how gene’s help cancer cells grow.  Faults in two types of genes cause cancer: oncogenes, which drive the growth of cancer cells, and tumor suppressor genes, which prevent cancer from developing. The concept of the targeted gene therapy is to attack the most vulnerable parts of the cancer cells based on the person’s specific genes that are causing the growth of cancer cells and the genes that have been turned off preventing tumor suppression.   The four boxes in red are the chemo drugs my Mom is taking to cause cancer cell suicide based on aging gene dysfunction that enabled this brain tumor to exist in the first place.  At the Burzynski Research Clinic, they made this determination by taking a blood sample looking for specific gene markers that told them which genes were turned on and which were turned off causing the growth of her brain tumor.  The one cell growth factor that I have been studying is the mTOR protein.   Inhibiting mTOR slows aging.   The one drug my Mom is taking to stop mTOR (and stop the cancer cell proliferation) is Afinitor.  Several other substances inhibit mTOR in cell cultures – curcumin, EGCG (in green tea), caffeine, and resvratrol (in red wine and grape juice). (Beevers C, Li F, Liu L, Huang S (2006). “Curcumin inhibits the mammalian target of rapamycin-mediated signaling pathways in cancer cells”. Int J Cancer 119 (4): 757–64.) You have to consume a lot of curcumin to kill the cancer cells – but it is physiological possible according to the research – “Phase I clinical trials have shown that high doses (8 g/day) of curcumin can be delivered to patients, yielding 1.77 ± 1.87 μM average peak serum concentration, with virtually no deleterious side effects.  We observed complete abolition of S6K1 and 4E-BP1 phosphorylation and reduced levels of mTOR phosphorylation/autophosphorylation upon 2 h treatment with 2.5 μM curcumin. Our results suggest that the lowest concentration of curcumin that could possibly affect these critical phosphorylation events is well within the range of physiologically achievable concentrations of the compound in cancer patients.”

Getting Better and Better Everyday in Every way – thank you Dr. Burzynski.

Monday, November 14th, 2011

A month ago today my Mom was unconscious for 24 hours in a hospital in Venice, Florida, her left eyebrow twitching for five hours.   We had left Connecticut two days earlier where she had been put on hospice after a visit to her neuro-oncologist Sept. 22nd.   One of my brothers, my father and I  figured if she was on a death watch, why not go to Florida and enjoy whatever time she had left.   In Florida,  at the hospital after her second seizure, my Mom was again put on hospice.  Going into hospice was a condition to leave the hospital and bring my mom home.   Otherwise they were going to put her into a “rehabilitation” center.   None of us liked that idea and my parents have long term care insurance that covers in home health care.

ONE month later, my Mom is on the path to recovery.   We do have the hospice nurse in Florida in part to thank for this.   My mom was on a fast decline because of brain swelling due to the seizures caused by her brain tumor.   During her second seizure, the attending physician caring for my Mom when she was unconscious was insistent that my Mom’s quality of life would be much better if she had steroids –  if she were to wake from being unconscious.   She did wake up, but the second second seizure did set her back.   Her voice was inaudible as it was so weak.   She could no longer sit up.   She spent most of her days sleeping since they had doubled the dose of her anti-seizure medication to keep her from having seizures.    The attending neurologist did not want to give my Mom steroids – saying he wanted to “save” them for when they were really needed.   Fortunately the hospice folks disagreed.   The steroids were going to improve the quality of her life (they actually probably saved her life) so we were given a prescription.   The steroids helped her stay alive long enough for us to get her to the Burzynski clinic.

Now my Mom converses loud enough so we can all understand her and is becoming quite the comedian.   When asked if she had shortness of breath at the clinic – she replied “only when they throw cold water on me.”   My Mom can now sit on the couch without slouching and without supports.   She can reach for things without falling out of her wheel chair.   She can even walk in the pool.  She is eating  three times more food than she was a month ago and is awake and alert the majority of the day.   She has left side paralysis because of the swelling from the brain tumor – but the reflexes are starting to work again in her left leg and she can wiggle the toes on her left foot.   She can stand without as much support on her right leg.   She is gaining weight.   She is starting to write again and is learning how to count again.   Its pretty amazing to see the capabilities she lost from this brain tumor and how fast she is regaining them as the cancer is starting to go away.   Hope isn’t even required anymore as it’s just a known that she will continue to get better.   Her goal is to be able to walk by her grand daughter’s wedding in July.

Success Inspires People to Stay the Cancer Cure Course

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

I’m reading a fantastic book recommended by my Mom’s Feldenkrais therapist in Florida.   It is by Norman Doidge, MD – The Brain That Changes Itself about how people can overcome deficits and achieve any level of personal performance that suits them.   We all have weak areas and the techniques in this book could help anyone who wanted to give them a fair shake.   What is amazing about the stories in the book is that it really doesn’t matter how the brain has been damaged – when the people profiled in the book wanted to develop a capability they didn’t have but knew they wanted, they were able to over time do just that.   What the book emphasized that hit home for me right now is how people reach a learning plateau and need time to rest and assimilate new skills.   This does not mean that improvement has ceased.   It’s important to note this when working with my Mom as she recovers from the impact of brain cancer.   She is doing an amazing job regaining capabilities – but it’s haphazard and some days are better than others.

Wild Alaskan Salmon on the Burzynski Cancer Cure Menu

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

We met with one of the three nutritionists at the Burzynski Clinic.   Having followed an anti-cancer diet now for three years successfully keeping cancer at bay with my own adrenal tumor, they were the FIRST medical professionals I have met in this whole cancer saga who paid the proper attention to the role of diet in cancer recovery.  What was even more fantastic – their in-depth analysis of just why wild Alaskan salmon is so good for helping their patients recover from cancer.   According to the Burzynski nutritionist “wild Alaskan salmon contains an antioxidant “astaxanthin” that is about 500x more powerful than vitamin E and beta carotene in neutralizing, cleaning up, and preventing free radical damage and disease.   It is loaded with healthy omega-3 fats (DHA & EPA) the can keep your at your healthiest and that also have an amazing effect on serotonin levels, a brain neurotransmitter known for its ‘feel good, feel happy’ qualities.”