Optimizing Your Body Terrain

How can you improve your body terrain and tumor microenvironment?

The cells in the tumor microenvironment play a role in your cancer’s development, spread, and response to treatment. Conventional carethe cancer care offered by conventionally trained physicians and most hospitals; examples are chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy, self carelifestyle actions and behaviors that may impact cancer outcomes; examples include eating health-promoting foods, limiting alcohol, increasing physical activity, and managing stress, and complementary carein cancer care, complementary care involves the use of therapies intended to enhance or add to standard conventional treatments; examples include supplements, mind-body approaches such as yoga or psychosocial therapy, and acupuncture can all improve your body terrain to make your tumor microenvironment less supportive of cancer. The most powerful approach combines all three types of care.

Body terrain issues reflect your natural internal states that are out of balance. To be most effective in addressing imbalances, we recommend identifying whether you have any imbalances and working to return to balance. A physician or other licensed health professional can test for these imbalances related to cancer: 

Testing and supporting your terrain

Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO, and Karolyn Gazella

Alschuler LN, Gazella KA. The Definitive Guide to Cancer, 3rd Edition: An Integrative Approach to Prevention, Treatment, and Healing. Berkeley, California: Celestial Arts. 2010.

In Part 3 of this book, Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO, and Karolyn Gazella provide in-depth information on four body terrain factors:

• Immune function
• Inflammation
• Hormone imbalance
• Bblood sugar imbalance and insulin resistance

If you find an imbalance, work with a health professional to develop a plan to return to balance, and then retest as needed to check progress and maintain balance.

Cancer treatment and optimizing your terrain: a two-pronged approach

Modifying your biochemical or microbial terrain, by itself, is not enough to control or cure cancer. On the other hand, conventional cancer treatments alone will not consistently keep the cancer from coming back.¹Alschuler LN, Gazella KA. The Definitive Guide to Cancer, 3rd Edition: An Integrative Approach to Prevention, Treatment, and Healing. Berkeley, California: Celestial Arts. 2010; Block K.I. Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment. New York: Bantam Dell. 2009. A tumor is merely the most obvious symptom of an altered, unbalanced system. For the best outcomes, you need both cancer treatments to remove the tumor and changes in your body terrain to make your body less favorable for recurrence.

Get the most from conventional treatments

Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery focus on killing or removing the cancer “weed.” You first need to use the appropriate treatments for your cancer type. A weed killer may not work if you’ve misidentified the weed and used the wrong pesticide, or if you used a pesticide to which the weed is resistant. Correctly identifying your cancer type and then choosing the right conventional treatment(s) is crucial to success.

Keep the cancer at bay

Even when successful, both the new targeted therapies and the older approaches of surgery, radiation, and old-line chemotherapy often fail to prevent the spread or recurrence of the disease. They neither pick up renegade cancer cells, strengthen the body’s biological balance, nor reach all of the underlying molecular accidents that initiated cancer in the first place. As a result, even if the original malignancy is gone, the remaining biological imbalance creates an environment for cancer to recur.²Block K.I. Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment. New York: Bantam Dell. 2009. pp. 2-3. Gardeners know that simply removing a weed will not keep your garden patch weed-free for long. You need to tend your soil continuously, keeping the weeds from getting out of control.

The need for conventional care

Unconventional medicine approaches, if used alone (and therefore called alternative approaches) may promote a flawed myth that boosting your immune system through natural or other approaches can eradicate cancer.

Integrative physician and CancerChoices advisor Keith Block, MD, illustrates this when describing the link between immunity and cancer. He replays the all-too-common scenario of a patient saying, “I’m concerned about the side effects of chemo and radiation. I want to do everything possible to get well, but I would much prefer to treat my cancer naturally, by boosting my immune system. Can you help me?”³Block K.I. Life over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment. New York: Bantam Dell. 2009. p 346.

Dr. Block explains that the immune system is just one of a number of factors influencing cancer. The immune system might not even identify cancer as a potential threat. Cancer’s presence and ability to grow indicate that it has evaded your immune system. The longer the tumor has been growing, the more adept it is at escaping the surveillance of your immune system. But even if your immune system does recognize cancer cells, your normal immune response may not be enough to get rid of the cancer. “Since most cancers have been growing for years by the time they are diagnosed, most alternative and even experimental immune-based treatments are ineffective at best, and could delay effective treatment.”⁴Block K.I. Life over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment. New York: Bantam Dell. 2009. p 347.

Dr. Block cautions that you may place yourself at serious risk if you avoid appropriate conventional therapies in the misguided hope that immune manipulation will rid you of your cancer. In most cases, if your cancer is accessible, you are best off having the tumor treated conventionally, and only then enhancing your immune system’s resources. Active immune strategies do have an important role, but to date they are more for containing growth or sustaining a remission than shrinking or eliminating tumors.⁵Block K.I. Life over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment. New York: Bantam Dell. 2009. p. 348.

Self-care actions you can take