In this instructional video Dr. Andersen (Dr. A) expands on the concept from his book Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment that a cancer patient’s experience can be organized into four logical phases. He explains that the purpose of this framework is to help patients, caregivers, and clinicians allocate their limited energy and focus appropriately at each stage. The first phase, Primary Prevention, occurs before a cancer is known and emphasizes lifestyle, environmental, and infection‑related actions that keep the body’s epigenetics in a non‑oncogenic state. The second phase, Diagnosis through Active Treatment, covers the stressful period of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or combinations thereof, where the patient’s primary effort is managing treatment protocols and side‑effects, while integrative oncology can be used to mitigate toxicity and support the main therapy. The third phase, Recovery and Repair, follows a break or completion of active treatment; here the focus shifts to rebuilding normal cells, providing optimal nutrition, botanical medicines, and other supportive measures to prevent cancer stem‑cell reactivation. The fourth phase, Secondary Prevention, is the post‑recovery period aimed at preventing recurrence. It expands on primary‑prevention strategies but adds monitoring and correcting treatment‑induced derangements such as hormonal imbalance, nutrient depletion, toxin load, and chronic infections. Throughout, Dr. Andersen stresses that each phase demands a different allocation of resources and that integrative oncology can complement conventional care at every step.
Chapters
Hey, it's Dr. A. I got a question again. It's great. Keep sending the questions in, by the way. And I do try to look at all of the comments to pick up questions and stuff. So that's the best way to do it, through the comment section. But this one was a little different than some of the other ones we've had. And it basically says, Hey, Dr. Andersen. I just read your newest book, which is Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment, so thank you for writing the book. And in it, you talk about this concept of there being 4 phases to the cancer journey, and I'd like to have you, you know, talk about that on camera and answer this question, which is, what are each of the phases? Because I'd like to share it with somebody who doesn't have your book and might be interested. Well, first, thank you very much for reading the book, which means you've got it somehow. So for those who don't know, that book, which I'll put a link below, it's available as audiobook, it's available as an ebook, almost all the ebook forms, it's available as Amazon paperback, and then on my website I've got hardbacks that I sign that you can get as well. So there's all sorts of ways to get the book. But in the book, one of the things I talk about is the idea that you can think of the cancer journey as in 4 phases. And why would we do that? Well, the reason is that in the different phases, you as the patient, your caregivers, your loved ones, and your healthcare providers, but you specifically as the patient have different amounts of energy available. Different amounts of focus that you might want to put on some things and not on others. And those can change during the 4 phases. So the idea with knowing these 4 phases is not so much that there's 4 phases. They're just, they're kind of logical if you think about it. But it's if I'm in this phase, let's put the energy into the stuff I want to do in that phase and we can deprioritize some other stuff, right? So what are the 4? Well, let's go through those first. The first phase is what we call primary prevention. That means you don't have cancer that you know of and you're trying to prevent it. Now, why would that be part of the cancer journey? Because everybody who has cancer starts in that first phase of primary prevention. They don't know they have cancer. So in primary prevention, your goals there are to have your body in a position and have your epigenetics in a position through the way that you are working, through the way you're taking care of your body, the kind of food you're putting in, the cleanliness of the water and all the air and all that stuff. All those things you want to be going and swimming in the direction of not getting cancer, not turning on the oncogenic system. So in that phase, you're not putting any effort into treating cancer, certainly, because you don't— either you don't know you have it or you don't have it. Most people have their cancer a long time before they know that they have cancer, but you may just be trying to prevent it. So in that phase, you're really focusing on preventive things, which are healthy lifestyle, lots of things that you can read in my other books and look up online, etc. Now, there are things also such as, you know, certain types of infections predispose you to cancer, so getting those cleared up. Toxic exposures can predispose you to cancer, remove those if possible, etc. So that's primary prevention. It's a lot about, if you look at it as a pie, 100% of the pie is just about prevention and energy going into that, most of which are things you can do something about. The second phase is from diagnosis through active treatment. Now this is usually a really, really stressful time obviously for everybody involved, because now you're diagnosed with cancer, the diagnosis nobody wants, and you have to come to grips with that, but also now you're probably being told by a number of healthcare providers, you know, that you need to do this and this and this. And so diagnosis through active treatment is a really busy time. Now, that might be just surgery. It might be chemotherapy or radiation or some combination of all 3. In some cases, your oncology team might tell you, well, you know, given your age or given your health or given the type of cancer, there really isn't a treatment for it that we can offer you. So this is a time where you're sort of balancing, uh, what, what amount of energy do I put into what. So, for example, if you're having, you know, surgery and then you're going to do some radiation, you're having radiation, you're going to do some chemo, Or all 3. Most of your time in this period, in the beginning anyway, is going to be focused on, uh, those treatments, you know, because you're not going to have a lot of time if you're going in and you're going to be getting surgery and then you're going to do some radiation and chemo. Uh, you're not going to have a lot of spare time on your hands in most cases. So during those times, really core things in your body become very, very important. So those core things tend to be dealing with the side effects of these treatments. They tend to be getting enough nutrients in because you may not be feeling very well, but you still need to keep your body running. They may need to be involved in, you know, hydrating enough and also dealing with the side effects of the treatment because there's— none of those treatments come without side effects. So most of your energy is really going into these sort of base level things of of dealing with the treatment at hand. Now, there's nothing right or wrong about, you know, which treatment or what's going on. And with cancer, uh, it's very specific to not only your cancer type and the grade and the stage and things, but also to you. Because if you, uh, you know, such as a call I had with a family earlier, you know, you're 11 months old as a child, unfortunately, and you have cancer. Very different sort of criteria and what might be done than if you're an adult and you have a similar cancer. If you are a really healthy 30-year-old, you're maybe going to have totally different options than an 85-year-old person does. So even though a cancer may have the same name, it's going to have different staging and grading and have different factors related to your health as far as what's offered to you. And, uh, and then the treatments might be, uh, one that's available, or it might be a bunch that are available, and you'll have to work through that with your providers. But the point of this is, in phase 2, your efforts and your energy are going into these treatments. Now, if you're adding on integrative oncology ideas to go in with those treatments, uh, those are good because they usually can help you with dealing with the side effects, the Sometimes they can make the treatments you're getting work better, in my experience anyway. They can do all sorts of really good things. But then your effort really is aiming those treatments at the other treatments you're getting. Now, it's a little simpler if your oncologist has said, we don't have a standard treatment for you. Or in many cases, oncologists will say, if I was your age or in your health, I would not do the treatment I'm offering you personally. And people will not do that. Well, then your integrative options are, you know, wide open at that point. What's the third phase? So first phase is primary prevention. You don't know you have the cancer yet. Second phase is diagnosis or active treatment. Third phase is recovery. So when you're done or in a break from your active treatment, third phase is recovery. This is hugely important. Now, Most of the time, your oncology team will tell you, go recover, because they have great faith in your human body being able to have an immune system and recover and all that, which is good. But a lot of times people seek, say, integrative oncology advice, and they should, in, in that phase of recovery, because there's a lot of things that can be done to refeed your body the right nutrients and help you in healing up from a surgery or radiation or chemo, or all 3, and getting your cells back on track. Why is the 3rd phase so important? Because the damage done to the cancer in phase 2, diagnosis through active treatment, is great. We want to beat up the cancer. But what we found, and you can read about this in my first book, Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, but in phase 2, if we beat up your cancer cells with radiation or chemo, And then we don't do any good healing in phase 3 recovery, we embolden the cancer stem cells so that they will go quiet. And then at some point in the future, they will come back. And if you do chemo and/or radiation, the likelihood of the cancer stem cells coming back and opening up is higher. That doesn't sound like good news. We wrote about it in the book. It's in lots of research, but it's the way it is. So how do I avoid that? Well, Phase 3 in recovery and repair. Well, during that time, if you're on a break from, say, chemo radiation, or you're done or whatever, there's a lot of things you can do with your nutrition. There's a lot of things you can do with botanical medicines, herbs, and a number of other things to help you recover and repair. So in that case, then, most of your efforts going into repair and recovery. Over here in phase 2, Most of your efforts are going into synergy with the treatments and all that stuff. Repair and recovery is pretty much all about putting your efforts into you building up and getting your normal cells as healthy as possible. Because what keeps the cancer stem cells from, you know, sort of coming back and saying, hey, we're here with some new cancer, is to keep your normal cells as healthy as possible so the cancer stem cells can't recruit them. That's a lot longer story, and it's written about a lot in— Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, the earlier book, but that's the basic idea. So what's the 4th phase? So if we go, we've got primary prevention. I don't know I have cancer yet and I'm trying to prevent it. Number 2 is diagnosis through active treatment. Number 3 is recovery and repair. Number 4 is called secondary prevention. This has become thankfully one of the growing areas of interest, especially in the integrative oncology world, But also in the standard oncology world. So what is secondary prevention? Well, primary prevention is I don't know I have cancer and I'm trying to prevent it. Secondary prevention is I already had cancer and I don't want it to come back. So what are the goals of secondary prevention? Well, here you're beyond recovery from your treatments, you're beyond recovering from surgery, whatever you've done. Now what you want to do is kind of like with primary prevention where you're living a lifestyle and doing things to not get cancer. Over here in secondary prevention, you're living a lifestyle to do that, but what we find in people is that they had a lot of treatments for their cancer, say chemo, surgery, radiation, or some combo of those. There's a lot of things in secondary prevention that you need to look into. For example, your hormones can get very deregulated when you're in treating cancer. Uh, your, uh, General reserve of nutrients can get quite low when you're heavy in treating cancer. Levels of toxic things can be elevated, need to be checked for. Chronic infections that you didn't have before or that were quiet before can become reactivated. So in secondary prevention, it's a lot more than just, you know, recovering. You certainly have to do all of work of the diet and lifestyle things, but you also want to remember that you need to work with somebody, whether it's in your standard oncology world or integrative oncology, etc., to look at these other determinants of your health that get messed up during the treatment of your cancer. So hormonal areas are big, your digestive tract can be really wrecked after cancer treatment. As I said, toxic things might need to be looked for, chronic infectious things, and on and on and on. Well, I'm Dr. A. That hopefully answers the question about the 4 phases of cancer and why we divide them up. It's all about where you allocate resources. I want to thank everybody who has subscribed and sharing this with friends. So please continue to like, share, subscribe, notifications, all those good things, and I will keep answering questions. So thank you very much.
