Natural Living

Healthy living: Holistic ways to combat breast cancer

The UK’s leading women’s holistic health expert on her successful fight against breast cancer

The UK’s leading women’s holistic health expert on her successful fight against breast cancer
“You did not have breast cancer,just a hormone imbalance”. This is what the homeopath insisted when I told her about my previous health history. She had known me for precisely 50 minutes and we had spent most of that time talking about my children’s health (since they were the reason for my visit). She never laid a hand on me,inspected me or did anything that in any way convinced me that she knew better than the team of doctors at St George’s who treated me for nearly nine months. “If you had come to me first you could have avoided thata ggressive treatment that will probably lead to you developing real cancer,” she said.

This was not the only time I had been given bad advice about the lump I had in my left breast. The kinesiologist who tested my muscles as he placed little vials of things on my body told me I did not have cancer but I was allergic to diary products. He told me this precisely two weeks before I was diagnosed with cancer that had spread to my lymphatic system. The thermal imaging clinic that made me hold ice cold sticks in my hands as they scanned my breasts diagnosed me as ‘low risk’, three months before I was diagnosed.

“It was the homeopathy,acupuncture, herbal medicine, and EFT that got me through and kept me healthy and sane”

But possibly even more dangerous than any of these practitioners were the people who we put our faith in every day and whose diagnosis I put 100 per cent faith in:western medics. In fact the only reason at all I had visited any other practitioner was because the lump I had had in my left breast had been there for six years and no medical person had ever felt it was worth having it diagnosed. “Too young”, “no history”, “you just have lumpy breasts”, “prolonged breastfeeding”, “breast cancer is an older woman’s disease”. Each time I heard these reasons I gladly left the building as quickly as possible, relieved I was fine.

My chosen path

I was eventually diagnosed by the breast cancer specialist at St George’s. He said that the lump was not typical of cancer but since it had been there so long he wanted to test it. He clearly thought outside the box and I probably owe him my life. Despite all my complementary therapy training and alternative living, it never crossed my mind not to take the conventional treatment I was subsequently offered. Everyone I respect (both in mainstream medicine and complementary medicine), told me I was strong enough to take the chemotherapy. So take it I did, but I combined it with acupuncture, herbal medicine and hypnotherapy and EFT and I rested and nourished myself well.

Everyone has a right to take the path they wish to and believe me the path I took was not easy. But I am deeply uncomfortable with people who refuse mainstream medicine. I am equally uncomfortable with the ‘false hope’ that irresponsible or idealistic practitioners peddle and the way in which they write off the skill of some of the extremely skilled doctors that save lives everyday. But medics can be ignorant too and I have met many who dismiss complementary treatments they have never bothered to inform themselves about or for which they say there is no evidence for. Not everything in this world can be measured using scientific parameters; it does not mean it is not useful or that the benefits do not exist.

No medicine is perfect

I have no doubt that in the end the chemotherapy and surgery saved my life, but it was the homeopathy(post-operatively), acupuncture, herbal medicine, and EFT that got me through and kept me healthy and sane and able to tolerate the harsh western medicine treatment that never addressed my emotions,my spirit or my general wellbeing. No medicine is perfect and western medicine failed to diagnose me for many years, resulting in a far more serious condition than it might have been if I was diagnosed before it spread to my lymphsystem. So this is my belief; there is no such thing as bad medicine.But I do believe there are bad practitioners (both in western and complementary medicine) who either out of idealism or blind faith in their chosen medicine fail to think outside the box. It is medicine practiced by these kinds of people that really does us all a disservice.

Article by

Emma Cannon

Integrated Health Expert & Acupuncturist