I have some experience with alternative therapies and will share them as a response to your questions above 1) I did not go off gleevec while doing these. I have very few minor side effects with gleevec and it does not effect my quality of life. in this case its a great opportunity to do gleevec plus something else. 2) I have asked this question over and over to the medical world and the response is very unsure (even novartis cant give a straight answer). I am sure the reason is that they want to be safe and just really dont know. They say to keep away from grapefruit juice and i believe it is calcium supplements when we take the gleevec. this has to do something with the speed of absorption into our system. I have heard slightly different stories from different doctors. Frankly, they dont know & dont really want to be telling you to do something that will hurt - perhaps other people on this list have some more information on this one. My approach was to try things out and monitor my labwork closely. 3) i have not gone off gleevec, but all doctors pretty much agree that if you go off it, it will come back. The speed can vary. some people have gone off it for a year (ie: during a pregnancy), and it comes back to a significant level, others it comes back less, but the general belief is that if you go off gleevec the cml will come back, its just a matter of time. 4) if you go off gleevec for a short period, it does not persay create resistance. but this is a pretty vague definition of 'short period'. i have the sense that a lot of people have gone on and off it for weeks, even months, (i have gone off it for weeks at times at the beginning), and the relative risk for resistance because of this is small. however, again the general consensus is that if you go off the drug, the likelihood of forming a resistance is higher than if you stay on it. perhaps this is because you will have more cancer cells in your system with the possibility to mutate, perhaps another reason, but regardless, while it does not create resistance, it increases the likelihood 5) i dont know of anyone that has cured themselves. I do believe that miracles happen and that diet and nutrition and lifestyle is an extremely important component of keeping CML at bay. My personal experience was that i worked with a woman that was a hematologist and naturopath and at one point i was taking up to 100 pills/day of natural supplements - based on a full analysis of my blood, hair, saliva etc. while my blood tests looked very good, my BMB's showed no reduction in CML that I could attribute to the supplements - in fact the subsequent BMB's were almost identical while i was doing this. After about 9 months of supplementation i quit taking them, then i increased my gleevec from 400 to 600mg and my CML cells plummeted - pretty clear evidence that gleevec was by far the significant player in the game.
I dont know if i will go back to a naturopathic approach again at some point - i am not against it, but i do not have any plans to go off gleevec with what i have seen in myself. i hope this helps Doug --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ [CMLHope] A support group of http://cmlhope.com ------------------------------------------------- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CMLHope" group. To post to this group, send email to CMLHope@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/CMLHope -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
