Saunas and complementary cancer care

Heat therapies can play an important role in detoxification.

When you combine the best of complementary and orthodox cancer care, what do you get?

Treatments such as far infrared heat therapy, which uses modern technology and ancient wisdom to help the body through its healing journey.

The ancient Greek doctor Parmenides once stated, “Give me a chance to create fever and I will cure any disease.” These days, more naturopathic and medical doctors, such as Drs. Jim Chan of Vancouver and John Cline of Nanaimo, BC, are discovering how far infrared heat therapy indeed assists in one of the key tenets of wholistic cancer treatment: detoxification.

Why is far infrared therapy beneficial? It’s a form of heat (hyperthermic) treatment that involves artificially raising the temperature of the whole body or specific body part by sauna, or a specific body part, in a very specific way. Heat is a form of energy. Far infrared heat energy penetrates deeply—four to five centimeters into the skin, the body’s largest detoxifying organ. Its molecular vibrations “jiggle” the tissues and speed up metabolic exchanges between cells.

Vancouver naturopathic physician Jim Chan, who has treated about 5,000 cancer patients, explains that far infrared therapy has the ability to break up the protective rings around harmful molecules in the body so they’re no longer cancer causing. It also weakens the bonds between toxins and human tissues; so stored toxins can be flushed out of the system faster and in greater quantities through the skin (via sweating), liver and bowels.

Wholistic cancer treatment involves strengthening the immune system and killing toxic cancer cells, which can be done with interventions such as diet modifications, nutritional supplements, anti-cancer herbs and the more orthodox chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Positive mental attitude and stress reduction are also often recommended. But even if you’re doing everything else right, without good detoxification, unhealthy substances remain a burden in the body and can slow or prevent recovery.

Toxins we’re all exposed to include carcinogenic heavy metals as well as pesticides and other chemicals in food, household products, water and air. Many of these toxins are stored in our body’s fat cells and accumulate over time. However, the toxic load of cancer patients is routinely even higher than in the average person.

Cancer cannot survive in an environment of temperatures more than 42 C (107.6 F). In addition to its detoxifying effects, far infrared heat actually helps kill cancer cells, increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy and reduce the side effects of conventional

therapies. At the same time, it boosts the body’s regenerative abilities and decreases pain by increasing circulation, which makes it beneficial in treating other conditions such as arthritis, gout, poor circulation, neuralgia and abnormal nerve function.

At the Cline Medical Center in Nanaimo, medical doctor John Cline supervises successful cleansing programs involving far infrared heat. “Organizations such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency have now taken a serious look at hyperthermic therapy as a means to detoxify individuals who are ill from exposure to environmental poisons and several good studies have been published,” he writes in a recent wellness bulletin.

In one cancer study by the European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology that examined five-year survival rates of patients with malignant melanoma, 28 per cent of those who underwent only radiation survived five years. Of those who combined radiation and infrared hyperthermia treatment once a week, 46 per cent survived. Neither group did any other wholistic therapies.

Another trial at St. George Hospital in Bad Aibling, Germany involved late-stage ovarian cancer patients who had previously undergone chemotherapy. Using a combination of chemotherapy and hyperthermia, 69 per cent experienced positive improvements and 15.5 per cent went into remission.

Investigations into far infrared and other heat treatments will no doubt continue to move mainstream as science, technology and good old common sense come together. As the late, great cancer doctor, Josef M. Issels, known for his incredible successes in treating “incurable” cases, said about heat therapy: “Artificially induced fever has the greatest potential in the treatment of many diseases, including cancer.”

"Artificially induced fever has the greatest potential in the treatment of many diseases, including cancer." - Dr. Josef M. Issels