Cancer is one of the most feared illnesses today, for good reason. Nearly every one of us has had friends or loved ones who have wasted away from this affliction. Many cancer specialists have become so hardened to cancer all that they stop giving the best medical commodity of all; compassion. That is where alternative medicine steps in.

There are far more alternative treatments to cancer than there are kinds of cancer, and this is the first indication that alternative medicine is a viable alternative. Further, medical science is in a quandary since very often a state is reached where they can continue treating the patient for the illness, but they personally don't hold much hope for recovery.

Alternative practitioners approach the subject from a different angle though. Instead of treating symptoms or trying to make a person's body 'well' again, they premise that the body has an ideal, but that it was never entirely well in the first place. This gives them a huge advantage.

Personal success stories abound regarding how potent the right kind of care and the right attitude plays such a positive part.

For instance, one young woman was diagnosed as having ovarian cancer, and was duly admitted to a hospital. After three days of testing, the results came in. She didn't just have ovarian cancer rather the cancer had spread. Two days later she had extreme surgery. Ovaries, a large portion of the bowel, part of the stomach and the spleen were all removed.

Yet for all of this, doctors told her that the cancer had spread to the liver and lymph nodes. They told her that there was no hope, that they'd put her on chemotherapy but that the chemo would only prolong her life by a short time. They gave her six months to live, and advised her to get her affairs in order.

This sounds pretty compassionate, doesn't it? She was resigned to her fate, and she, her children, and her husband prepared for the worst as advised by the traditional doctors.

Providence favored her. Learning of her plight, a friend who happened to be practicing Shamanism gave her a suggestion. He told her to try drinking a cup of slippery elm tea two times a day. If it didn't help at all, she was no worse off. The slippery elm was also substantially less expensive than the medication she was already taking for pain.

She decided that it couldn't hurt, and at least gave her a ray of hope though it wasn't very strong.

Inside of a month, she was feeling strength returning. Nine months after being told she would die in six months, she was doing everything she'd done before the initial diagnosis. Three and a half years after being told that she should start planning her funeral, she has been re-diagnosed. The cancer is in remission, and the doctors have no explanation for it. These are highly touted specialists in their field.

Did the slippery elm tea really help, or was it just the placebo effect? The jury is out on that one. However, consider this: The mind has amazing restorative powers that are still not understood. Whether the tea really helped or whether she simply believed that it would and became well because of it is immaterial.

The fact is that the alternative practitioner gave something that the medical doctors did not; hope.

This is one of thousands of similar examples. The point is that the alternative treatments won't work every time for every person, any more than aspirin will always relieve a headache in all people. The hype about alternative medicine is that it can't help. The truth is that it does.

Learn more about this author, Rex Trulove.
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