Welcome and Introduction

I am often asked, no repeatedly and incessantly asked why there is no research on botanical medicines and oncology. I am asked this by fellow T-CAM practitioners, patients and by medical doctors and I always reply, there is a great deal of research both in vivo and in vitro as well as some very good randomised control trials. There are two international journals on integrative oncology; Journal of the Society for Integrative Oncology and Integrative Cancer Therapies, there are any number of good peer reviewed T-CAM journals such as eCAM and Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice as well as Phytomedicine and perhaps another dozen. There is also a great Chinese journal The Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine and The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

Today we have quite literally thousands of research articles published in reputable peer reviewed journals, many available in Pubmed. Take a look at “My NCBI” (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) or . The problem isn’t the information but keeping up with the information. In doing my exegesis for my DSc at Charles Sturt University and the lab research at Guang ‘Anmen Hospital I have spent many thousands of hours in finding, collating and interpreting tens of thousands of documents from all over the world. There is good and solid information on botanical medicine and cancer and but unfortunatly a far greater amount of misinformation that is irrelevant and sometimes shockingly stupid.  

Not all of the research is yet of the ‘Gold Standard’ as many studies are not randomised controlled trials (RCT) but this should not be a barrier to making clinical interventions. As long as there is sufficient information, which suggests efficacy AND safety we can proceed to help those that suffer.

I have started this Blog to share with others the fruit of my efforts. The information I will post will all be referenced to indicate some efficacy. I want to specifically look at inflammation and cancer. How does chronic inflammation create the initiation, progression and metastasis in tumours. How does reducing the inflammatory markers such as CRP, SAA, IL-6 by the use of botanicals alter tumour growth. How does lowering these markers effect angiogenesis and increase apoptosis? I will post research on those botanicals, which reduce inflammation, increase cell mediated immunity and increase oxygenation to tumours. I will look at which compounds can be used in conjunction with orthodox medical interventions.

I will attempt to post quite regularly so please sign up for emails so you may keep up to date. I never share emails or will never commercialise this site. Also please  post a comment and let’s start a dialogue to bring complementary oncology into an integrative approach to cancer treatment. 

Daniel