From time to time I receive comments from readers who express opinions about what they will consider in treating their dog’s cancer.
These particular folks segregate themselves into a single group…the “anti” people.
First, we have those who are very impressed with conventional veterinary care. This is my background, so I see the appeal. Big machines, big words, big science, big studies. Strong, powerful, reliable, reproducible.
And getting re-soundly beaten, mercilessly, by canine cancer.
Members of this camp tend to be “anti” herbs, supplements, dietary manipulation, and other forms of “hocus pocus” that don’t have multiple double blind, placebo-controlled studies done to support efficacy and safety.
The other “anti” people want to rely on things like homeopathy and acupuncture to cure their dog’s cancer. They don’t want to “poison” their dog with anything that is not “natural”.
Please, everyone, it is time to wake up!
First, to the “anti alternative” set (conventional care only): have you taken a look at the efficacy data for chemo and radiation treatments of systemic cancers lately? If you have, you will no doubt agree that the numbers, overall, are abysmal.
And you guys, who don’t want to use anything that comes compressed in a tablet or in an injection vial, you need to wake up too (the “alternative people”). If a certain conventional protocol can give your English Mastiff another year of life, you just extended your dog’s life 10-18% or something. Suppose a human lived for 80 years. This human’s life would be proportionally extended another 8 to 14 “human” years with this treatment!
On top of that , if you think that a little Carcinosinum under your dog’s tongue will cure the osteoarcoma making his leg swell twice it’s size, you are probably living in a dream.
Now, let’s get a grip on the big picture. It is absolutely critical to balance efficacy with life quality, to weigh survival times with what is manageable, and to factor in personal ethical considerations and beliefs with guardianship. Aspects like these are fundamental.
But, it is high time to avoid letting our rigidity, bias, and resistances get in the way of what can help. Weigh all options, be flexible, formulate a plan choosing from all the of what is available, modify it as needed, and do it.
If you need help getting the structure and data you need to look at all these aspects of canine cancer care, from all angles, consider the Dog Cancer Survival Guide.
I wish you all the very best,
Dr D
There has been much online talk these days about dogs with mast cell tumors (read, Palladia) which are the most common canine cancer.
So I thought I’d just add some fuel to the fire and give my readers some overall guidelines about mast cell tumors and chemotherapy.
As many already know, these cancers come in different grades (1, 2 and 3). Grade 1 are almost always benign, grade 2 are intermediate (some benign and some malignant) and grade 3 are universally malignant.
Your vet will give you the grade following receipt of the biopsy report, which is completed by a path lab after submission of tissue from the tumor.
Wide excision (removal of a large swath of normal-appearing tissue around the tumor) cures many mast cell tumors. Pretty much all grade 1, and about 90% or so of grade 2 mast cell tumors are gone permanently after wide excision. Grade 3 mast cell tumors are candidates for chemo and possibly radiation and more as they will often come back and spread even after surgery.
The tricky guys are those grade 2 mast cell tumors. Since some behave like benign tumors and some like real cancers, what are we supposed to do?
Well, the key is in getting more information about your dog’s individual tumor. There are a couple of bits of information that are valuable that can help you predict the behavior of your dog’s grade 2 mast cell tumor.
The single most important one is called the mitotic index. This is the number of cells that are actually dividing seen by the pathologist under the microscope.
The magical cut off is somewhere around 5. This means that if the tumor has a mitotic index of less than 5, it usually will behave less aggressively and in my opinion do not require surgery, as long as you have clean margins on the removed tumor.
More than 5? We need to now consider hitting these guys with the full spectrum approach (diet, supplements, chemo, and other strategies discussed in The Dog Cancer Survival Guide).
You may read about other markers (kit, AgNORs, Ki67) but these are much less useful than mitotic index. If the mitotic index is around 5 though, consider these other markers for more data.
By the way, not all vets may know about this stuff, so remember to be your dogs primary health care advocate and speak up! You vet is the one who has to order this testing of the biopsy specimen from your dog.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil!
Best to all,
Dr D
Friends,
Today’s post will likely be met with some skepticism from those immersed (and confined) to our Western medical approach. So if this is your framework, please keep an open mind. You will be pleased to know that the information here is taken from little known, but still Western, data banks.
I have recently been looking into some ways of decreasing some of the horrible effects of severe mast cell tumors in dogs. Lots of talk these days about Palladia, but there is more you can do!
As many of you are well aware, these cancers are able to release, on an intermittent basis, large amounts of chemical signals that produce nasty effects on the body. There are many different ones, and to avoid being utterly dull, here are just a few: histamine, substance P, and heparin.
The one which we have traditionally focused on is histamine. Histamine is the same stuff that our bodies, and those of our canine companions, release during an allergic reaction.
It does bad things like create swelling, redness, pain, blood pressure changes, vomiting, loss of appetite, acid stomach, and more.
Much of the sickness that dogs afflicted with mast cell tumors suffer from is caused by histamine excess.
Some focus has been placed on blocking the effects of histamine with various medications. However, very little has been placed on cutting off the body’s supply of histamine.
This is an intriguing and quite novel approach to dealing with histamine excess, and to my knowledge has not been tried in dogs. So here’s the info…give it a try, see if it helps the dog you love, and let our community know!
The basic story is you cut out foods that eventually end up increasing active histamine levels, by hook or by crook. Now, most of you know that carbohydrate restriction is important is helping with cancer generally. I discuss details of the dog cancer diet at length in the e-book, The Dog Cancer Survival Guide.
Here’s a new twist for those caring for a dog with a mast cell tumor diagnosis, especially the more aggressive ones (Grade 2 and 3).
Turns out there is some cutting edge new research going on in human medicine about ways to combat digestive upset, depression, anxiety, allergies, asthma, and more. Many cases of these syndromes involve excessive histamine effects in the body. There are very few diseases like mast cell tumors in people, but we humans do suffer from a close relative of mast cell tumors called systemic mastocytosis.
Anyway, those in the inner circle promote cutting off the wellspring of histamine in the body by simply not eating foods that promote histamine levels. Why not use a similar approach for dogs with mast cell tumors, another condition with histamine excess?
The biggies are those foods that are fermented as a part of processing. Dogs usually don’t eat or drink a lot of those (drinks with alcohol, the more “moldy” of the cheeses like blue, sauerkraut, and vinegar).
But…. there are some out there who feed their dogs tofu. Be careful! Practically speaking, tofu could be viewed as a histamine brick.
Another big no-no, if one were using this approach, is fish! Bacteria in the intestine of fish are quite busy making a lot of histamine, and levels rise after the fish passes away (but before the remains are gutted for food).
Dyes in food and the benzoates (BHT, BHA, sodium benzoate, benzoic acid) are also excluded from the diet. Read those labels!
Here is a link for more data. Note that the items on the restricted list not only contain histamine, but also are more prone to causing mast cells to release their illness-causing histamine reserves.
I hope this helps-
Best,
Dr D
Dear Dog Lovers,
I wanted to touch base with you about some information from the real-life streets of veterinary medicine.
Occasionally I will get a question about the use of “black salve”. This rather ugly looking ointment is in a group of medicinals called the escharotics. An escharotic is a preparation that injures the tissue it is applied to, and creates a scab. A scab is an eschar.
So the idea is you put the stuff on the external cancer, the ointment kills the cells that you presumably want gone, they die, and then slough off.
Most of the black salve preparations contain an “olde-time” active ingredient called bloodroot, or Sanguinaria candensis. This plant contains some mighty strong alkaloids, including one called sanguinarine. This is potent stuff folks. Sanguinarine paralizes a pump in the cancer cell membrane vital to survival, and the cells die.
There is a really significant issue that you need to know before slathering your dog’s skin tumor with sanguinarine-containing goo.
The problem is, although it does a pretty good job of killing cancer cells, it is very tough to tell how far a given cancer has spread into the surrounding neighborhood (around the tumor) before applying black salve. Why does it matter?
The reason this is so critical is that some cancers really spread radically. They send cancer cell sheets out around the visible growth, but these spreading cancer cells are invisible to the naked eye. Guess what happens when they die off (after some potentially severe inflammation and discomfort)?
The dead cancer cells slough, leaving in some cases large swaths of open tissue where the tumor cells used to be. This can sometimes be a nuisance and other times a horror show (warning: graphic).
Bottom line? I would never advise the use of any version of black salve unless it is under the direct supervision of a veterinarian, and even then, use caution. Sometimes things turn out great, but there have been nightmares.
Best to all,
Dr D
In the last post, I focused on really looking at the source of the information you are receiving about your dog’s cancer. Let’s get into some specific examples of questionable “intelligence” you may have received.
Some, claiming authority in the area of supplements for dog cancer, are pushing Pau D’Arco. Be careful, everyone!
Let’s look at Pau D’Arco. This is the common name for a tea, capsule, liquid extract, salve or tablet from Tabebuia impetiginosa, a tree common in South America, especially Brazil. The bark is used for these medicinal preparations.
Pau D’Arco does have a lot of postive test-tube (”in vitro”) effects on cancer cells. Unfortunately, lots and lots of compounds kill cancer cells in test tubes. The clinical trials in people (”in vivo”, or in living bodies) have been mixed, with the most well-designed one (”Early Clinical Studies With Lapachol”) yielding little benefit. Read more here.
The American Cancer Society does not like Pau D’Arco for use in people due to safety concerns. One could make the claim that they are just part of the “machine” trying to keep miracle cures suppressed to aid Big Pharma.
Whatever your belief is, and few people could deny the force of Big Pharma’s strategic influence, the concern over safety and effectiveness is well-founded at this point.
What is the evidence?
Well, lapachol, an active component Pau D’Arco, is toxic to developing embryos in pregnant lab animals. It also messes up fertility of male lab rats. Okay, granted, most chemotherapy agents have similar effects, so Pau D’Arco cannot be tossed out on this basis alone. It should never be used in breeding animals, obviously.
At oral doses necessary for required concentrations around cancer cells, Pau D’Arco caused vomiting, blood clotting problems, and diarrhea. Well, these are not good either, but one could also state these side effects are seen with chemo too, and that would be a valid point. Of course, it is no-brainer to state that Pau D’Arco should never be used before surgery, during wound healing, in animals with blood clotting problems, or with tumors that could bleed.
Pau D’Arco has hydroquinone in it. This is bad stuff. Not only is it carcinogenic (irony of all ironies), but it is toxic to vital organs too. Read all about it here. Well, again, the same could be said of some of our common chemo drugs.
So what really makes Pau D’Arco dicey? One thing that is quite bothersome is a lack of batch standardization. Not only do the lapachol and other components vary from tree to tree, but sometimes they are actually absent.
On top of that, sometimes the the trees from which the bark is taken are from different Tabebuia species. The tree appears to be getting more scarce due to it’s reputation, and we are getting herbal preparations containing the wrong bark.
Finally, chemo drugs are used under strict veterinary supervision. Pau D’Arco usually is not. Both have real side effect concerns. Substances with these possible adverse health effects should not be used by a layperson without supervision.
There is no doubt that Pau D’Arco should be studied more or used as a template for new drugs, since the active compounds in the bark may have merit. However, since it contains some things that could, from time to time, pose real health hazards, and the batches vary in composition (does your dog’s batch have a lot of hydroquinone???), it is a gamble that I cannot take with dogs I care about.
Please be careful of what you read!
For more information on herbs or supplements for dogs with cancer, check out The Dog Cancer Survival Guide.
Best to all,
Dr D
