Cancer Fighting Herbs: Pros & Cons

As many as 88 percent of all cancer patients seek help from herbs and other alternative therapies. It’s easy to see why. Certain herbal remedies appear to work — after all, the potent anticancer drug taxol comes from the bark of the yew tree — and compared with nauseating, painful, expensive, and sometimes ineffective conventional treatments, taking herbs or drinking medicinal teas may seem like an attractive option….CONTINUE READING

But remember that the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require testing for herbs and supplements as it does for conventional drugs, so it always pays to be cautious in the largely unregulated world of herbal medicines.

Here’s a look at what’s known about the potential strengths, weaknesses, and side effects of some of the most popular herbal treatments for cancer.

This herb, also known as Huang ch’i, may help fight cancer by stimulating the immune system. When researchers at the University of Texas Medical Center mixed astragalus with the blood of cancer patients in a test tube, the function of cancer-killing cells called T lymphocytes improved by 260 percent. However, the American Cancer Society says there is no convincing scientific evidence that astragalus helps to fight cancer or mitigate the effects of chemotherapy.

The downside is that the herb can cause low blood pressure, dizziness, and fatigue, and overdoses can damage the immune system. When used orally in appropriate dosages, usually nine to 30 grams a day, astragalus seems to be safe, according to the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database.

Once touted as a safe, effective herbal treatment for prostate cancer, PC-SPES is actually serious medicine with equally serious side effects. Researchers from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School found that the herbal cocktail — a combination of eight traditional Chinese herbs including saw palmetto, skullcap, licorice, and Panax pseudo-ginseng — dramatically increased estrogen levels and decreased testosterone in eight cancer patients.

This hormonal shift has the potential to slow the growth of prostate cancer (which is why many prostate cancer patients take estrogen), but it comes with a price. All eight patients reported breast tenderness and a loss of sex drive, and one patient developed a blood clot in his leg.

And while PC-SPES has been proven to shrink prostate tumors, it was taken off the market in February 2002 after it was found to contain traces of the prescription drug warfarin (a blood thinner). Because the PC-SPES was tainted with prescription drugs, it is unknown whether it was the PC-SPES, the prescription drugs, or a combination of the two that led to the results.

Subsequent tests have found additional traces of strong drugs in PC-SPES, including an artificial form of estrogen and a pain reliever called….CONTINUE READING