Urine Therapy for Follicular Lymphoma?

And I thought I'd heard (almost) everything. John Bettens says that he has kept his follicular lymphoma at bay for going on three years now, by drinking one cup of his own urine every day. Maybe. I honestly do hope that Bettens's tumours continue to shrink, and disappear, and stay that way. But I also have to say that I genuinely can't see how that would be related to urine.

The statistical record shows that around one in four or five lymphoma patients experiences meaningful regression (shrinking) of tumours, and most of the rest of follicular lymphoma patients still have a very slow disease course. This makes it a very ripe field for misleading anecdotal evidence.

Alternative Medicine: Devil's Claw for Follicular Lymphoma?

I am not a fan of alternative medicine, as my recent commentary on a German brain tumor study indicates. On the other hand, some people swear by them. Some people on "watch & wait" for indolent lymphoma credit various supplement regimens with preventing their disease from progressing. On the other hand, the scientific literature is generally lacking on this point, and there are whole blogs largely devoted to slaying the beast of pseudo-medicine. My general take is that, if pharmaceutical corporations really were the greedy, money-hungry beasts their foes think they are (and on that point I generally concur), and there really were substantial benefits to be had from alternative medicines, then said Big Pharma would be on the herbs in question like white on rice. That for conspiracy theories.

Anyhow, having said that, while "approaches" like homeopathy literally can't work according to evidence-based medicine, herbal therapies might work -- it's just that they don't deliver standardized or purified doses, so, theoretically, isolating and mass-producing the active ingredients in pill or solution form will always be more effective. Which is why I do tend to keep an eye open for interesting new research on the subject of "alternative medicine." Like, for instance, a curious study on Devil's Claw I found while searching for information about advanced follicular lymphoma.

New German Evidence on Alternative Medicine

Cancer patients use alternative medicines. We all know that. One 2009 study said that 60% of American patients seek out various non-Western therapies, including extra vitamin supplements. In 2010 a review piece said this extended to children as well, although it reached the notably unhelpful conclusion that somewhere between 6% and 91% of kids with cancer patients take complementary or alternative medicine.

Which is why a new German study in Neurology isn't nearly as Earth-shattering as the media seems to think, although it is a useful "me, too" piece. That study says that 40% of German patients with incurable gliomas used alternative medicines. A glioma is a type of brain or spinal cord tumor with a very poor prognosis, which occurs in about 10,000 Americans per year.

Of course, alternative medicines, by definition, are those which are unproven. If they did work, you can be sure that at least one greedy pharmaceutical company would happily jump on it and milk it for every cent they could. One thing that really did disturb me, though, was this finding from the German study: