Cancer in Pets: Why it Occurs and Holistic Treatment/Prevention Protocols

By Burton Miller, DVM

I have been receiving many new cases of cancer in pets to treat, mostly by referral from owners of pets who have been treated for cancer at the Animal Wellness Center.  This category of cases has been the most gratifying to treat, as the results in most cases have exceeded the expectations of the pet owner (and in many cases even my own).

Conventional medicine views cancer as a local phenonmenon.  Cells loose normal control in cell divison, and pile up into tumors in that locale; later they may spread to distant locations via metastasis.

In holistic medicine, cancer is considered to be a local manifestation of a systemic disease state, and that state is of immune system failure.  One of the many functions of the healthy immune system is to be on active survellance mode, searching out, recognizing abnormal cell growth, and killing those abnormal cells. 

For cancer treatment to be successful, defining success as a state of remissions where the life span of the cancer patient is significantly exteneded with good comfortable quality of life, the immune system must be rehabilitated.  This approach summarizes the holistic cancer protocol that I have been using successfully for over a decade.

What are the factors that weaken the immune system?  Enviornmental chemicals from food, water, air pollution, are everywhere.  Radiation energy, from sunlight and electromagnetic sources (powerlines, cell phones, appliances) is everywhere.  Vaccination has been implicated in a number of types of pet cancer (Diamond, 1997; Dodds, 1995).

Prevention involves minimizing vaccinations, feeding the best quality food that your budget and time allow (this often means thinking outside the bag) and making home prepared food, helping your pet get rid of accumulating enviornmental pollutants through detox therapy (see related article, "Detoxification as a Cornerstone Therapy for Most Chronic Diseases). 

TREATMENTS FALL INTO FOUR BASIC CATEGORIES:

1.  Therapy that stimulates immune system function - Immune system cells can be stimulated by a number of plant extracts.  What these have in common are a class of molecules called complex polysaccharides, which mimic    similar molecules in the wall of bacteria.  All cancer patients treated at The Animal Wellness Center receive these herbal medicines. 

2.  Treatments that Detoxify - Detoxification therapy removes one of the barriers to good immune response, leaving the patient in a toxic state reduces the probabality of successful treatment.

3.  Treatments that increase the local oxygen level at the tumor sites - Oxygenators are substances that increase the amount of oxygen, locally, the tumor site, this is the mechanism that can actually result in cancer cell death as cancer cells thrive in a low oxygen enviornment.  Examples of oxygenation therapy include ozone therapy and the use of nutritional supplements, such as dimethyglycine.

4.  Treatments that prevent the tumors from stimulating new blood vessels to grow into them ("angiogenesis") - Anti-Angiogenesis therapy uses plant extracts and mineral formulas that have been deomonstrated to reduce the rate at which tumor cells trick the body into providing new blood supplies for their expansion. 

Using these therapies has resulted in many remissions from my care.  Following the basic formulas of improved diet, detoxification, and vaccine minimization has resulted in many fewer cancer cases that originate in the general population of Animal Wellness Center patients, that I've experienced, during my 30 years that I've practiced conventional medicine.