Breast Cancer Treatment in Mexico
Understanding, Diagnosing, and Treating Breast Cancer Holistically
About Breast Cancer
Breast cancer stands as the second most prevalent cancer among women in the United States, surpassed only by skin cancer. Each year, approximately 250,000 American women are diagnosed with this disease. This type of cancer primarily develops from cells in the ducts or lobes of the breast, with ductal tumors being more common. These cells undergo mutations, causing them to divide excessively or survive longer than normal, eventually forming a mass or tumor. Women with a family history of breast cancer are at a heightened risk, with a first-degree relative’s diagnosis potentially quadrupling the risk.
Signs and Symptoms
Breast cancer can manifest through various signs and symptoms, including changes in the breast or nipple’s texture and appearance. The most common symptom is a lump in the breast or armpit, particularly in the upper outer quadrant of the breast. Other symptoms can include swelling, tenderness, or skin texture changes. Some women may experience nipple discharge. However, many women do not exhibit any of these signs before diagnosis, and their cancer is detected during a routine mammogram.
Types of Breast Cancer
Breast cancer can be categorized into different clinical types, including:
- Inflammatory: synchronous, metachronous
- Morphological: ductal, lobular, metaplastic
- Immunohistochemical: triple-negative, hormone receptor-positive, Her 2 positive
Breast Cancer Diagnosis
The diagnostic process for breast cancer involves various methods such as:
- Physical and Exploratory Exam: A thorough examination of the breasts to detect any abnormalities.
- Mammography: This technique identifies tissue abnormalities by evaluating their detailed characteristics.
- Ultrasound: Utilizes sound waves to create images of deep structures and assess whether a breast nodule is a solid mass or a benign lesion.
- Biopsy: The only definitive method to diagnose breast cancer, helping to understand the tumor’s precise characteristics.
- MRI: Employed for special clinical conditions, it creates images of breast tissue without using radiation.
Holistic Medicine for Breast Cancer
At our institute, we employ integrative interventions to bolster the body’s ability to combat breast cancer and manage the side effects of conventional treatments. These interventions encompass proper nutrition, supplementation, and innovative therapies such as:
- Autologous Cellular Therapies
- Systemic Perfusion Hyperthermia
- Dendritic Enhancer Treatments
These therapies facilitate the patient’s journey towards healing by supporting and enhancing the primary cancer therapies’ effects, preventing cancer recurrence, and increasing survival rates.
Common Integrative Treatments
Some of the prevalent integrative treatments used in treating breast cancer patients include:
- Immunotherapy: Aims to enhance the body’s natural ability to detect and eliminate cancer cells by stimulating the immune system’s natural defenses and providing new avenues to attack cancer. This includes pharmacological immunotherapy, which utilizes drugs to stimulate the immune system to work harder or smarter to attack cancer cells.
- Dendritic Enhancer: Utilizes T-cell modulators to educate the immune cells to recognize specific antigens, like malignant breast cells, enhancing the immune system’s strategies against cancer.
- Hyperthermia: Directly treats a tumor using heat or increases the vulnerability of cancer cells to other treatments such as immunotherapy, B17, vitamin C, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy.
- Glutathione: A vital antioxidant that prevents cellular damage and plays a significant role in removing and detoxifying carcinogens.
- Selenium: An essential mineral that plays a critical role in maintaining a healthy immune system. It has been found to have potential protective effects against certain cancers, including breast cancer, by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation, which are linked to cancer development.
- Nutrition: A customized diet plan to enhance the immune system’s healing ability and cater to the patient’s current and long-term nutritional needs.
- Vitamins and Supplements: Including vitamin C, which has been shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence and mortality.
Through our holistic approach, we strive to put our patients on the path to healing, offering them a beacon of hope and a chance for a healthier future.
Immunotherapy
The goal of cancer immunotherapy is to improve the body’s natural ability to find and destroy cancer cells. Successful immunotherapeutic approaches stimulate the natural defenses of the immune system and provide new ways to attack cancer. This is possible with comprehensive interventions that include cell therapy / immuno-pharmacological therapy in combination with nutritional, endocrine measures and supplements.
Dendritic enhancer or T-cell modulators
T-cell Modulators are peptide chains composed of tens of amino acids that appear to store all the experience of the immune system. The great intellectual leap to understand is that T-cell Modulators do not transfer antibodies nor create them directly, but its function is to educate, and teach the immune cells to recognize specific antigens that could happen to them unnoticed i.e. Breast malignant cells.
T-cell Modulators do not cure anything but work to make a “smarter” immune system so that it is the body itself eliminating disease. They are therefore vital in developing the strategies of the immune system against cancer.
T-cell Modulators contains several immunoactive components that have been shown to act synergistically in raising Dendritic and NK function and also effective as adjuvant therapy in Breast cancer treatments, elevating dendritic and NK function as much as 250%.
Hyperthermia
Hyperthermia involves the use of heat to directly treat a tumor or increase the vulnerability of cancer cells to other forms of treatment, such as immunotherapy, B17, vitamin C, chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
In a group of patients with superficial breast cancer and chest wall recurrence, the addition of hyperthermia to their treatment increased local tumor eradication, and recurrence.
Liposomal Mistletoe
Mistletoe helps fight tumor-induced immune suppression. Natural killer cells (NK) are a type of white blood cell that looks for and destroys breast cancer cells. Research has shown that NK cells can spontaneously recognize and kill a variety of breast cancer cells.
Mistletoe has been called a “biological response modifier” due to its ability to improve various aspects of immune function. Studies show that it activates natural killer cells, T cells, macrophages and monocytes.
A special proprietary form of liposomal mistletoe created with nanotechnology has been created for use in our breast cancer treatment approach.
Gluthatione
Glutathione is the most important antioxidant produced by your body and a master detoxifier of every cell in your body. It prevents cellular damage caused by free radicals and peroxides.
Glutathione metabolism is able to play both protective and pathogenic roles. It is crucial in the removal and detoxification of carcinogens, and alterations in this pathway can have a profound effect on cell survival. However, by conferring resistance to a number of chemotherapeutic drugs, elevated levels of glutathione in tumor cells are able to protect such cells
Personalized nutrition
A typical diet, characterized by dependence on animal products, refined carbohydrates and unhealthy fats such as processed vegetable oils, can promote an inflammatory environment in the body. A pro-inflammatory diet has been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and an increased risk of death from breast cancer.
We custom-make a diet targeted to enhance the immune system’s ability to heal and provide our patients with the right nutrition for their current and long-term needs.
Vitamins and supplements
Breast cancer patients who take supplemental vitamins, including vitamin C, are 22% less likely to have a recurrence of breast cancer after treatment than those who do not take supplements. Women who take vitamin C after diagnosis are 15% less likely to die of the disease than those who do not take the supplement.
Selenium
In one study, selenium levels were measured in the blood of 546 patients with a recent diagnosis of breast cancer. Women with the lowest levels of selenium were more than twice as likely to die during the five-year follow-up than women with the highest levels. A second study found that breast cancer patients with high dietary selenium intake were significantly less likely to die from the disease.
We use intravenous selenium as part of our breast cancer treatment approach.
Diseases Treated at Integrative Immunotherapy Institute
Questions? We've got answers.
How do you handle complications or side effects?
Patients are monitored daily during treatment. Side effects are tracked, documented, and addressed in real time; sometimes with medication adjustments, sometimes with supportive therapy, occasionally by pausing a treatment. The treating physician reviews the patient's status every day the patient is on-site.
Can I continue treatments I'm already on at home?
Usually yes, but it depends on the specific medication and how it interacts with our protocol. Bring a complete medication list to the consultation. We coordinate with your home physician where possible.
Will my treatment plan change while I'm here?
Sometimes. Blood work, imaging, and response markers are checked during your stay, and the protocol is adjusted if the data suggests it should be. Any meaningful change is reviewed with you before it's implemented.
How is my treatment plan decided?
After we receive your medical records, imaging, and pathology, your case is reviewed by the medical board. They draft a proposed protocol, which therapies, in what sequence, over how many days. You then have a consultation with the treating physician to review it, ask questions, and adjust before anything begins.
Do you offer CAR-T therapy?
Yes, we offer CAR-T therapy in addition to our broader autologous immunotherapy program. Both are built on the same core principle; collecting the patient's own immune cells, engineering or activating them to better recognize cancer, and reinfusing them to do the work. The specifics of which approach fits your case, and how it's delivered, are reviewed during the medical consultation.
What supportive therapies do you offer?
IV vitamin C, ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, peptide therapy, IV nutrition, metabolic support, lymphatic therapy, and others, selected based on the patient's case, not applied as a fixed menu. These are supportive, not curative; they're used to help the body tolerate and respond to the core treatment.
Do you use radiation?
Radiation is not delivered on-site. When radiation is part of the recommended plan, we coordinate with established radiation oncology centers and incorporate it into the broader protocol.
Do you use chemotherapy?
We do, when it's the right tool for a given case, and we say so clearly. For some cancers, low-dose or fractionated chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy is more effective than immunotherapy alone. We don't reject chemo as a category; we use it strategically and at the lowest effective dose.
Do you only treat late-stage or terminal patients?
No. We see patients at every stage, newly diagnosed, in active treatment elsewhere, in remission and looking to lower recurrence risk, and patients who have exhausted conventional options. The protocol is adjusted to the situation.
How does diet affect my immune system?
Our immune system is our army, responsible for protecting us from any possible threat, internal or external. Our food supply is full of chemicals more now than ever, to create shelf life and to preserve the quality of the product, and to avoid contamination, yet it is not related to nutrient lifespan. We now know that food can trigger inflammation and alter our digestive processes, potentially leading to severe dysfunction and disease.
Why are supplements part of the Institute nutritional plan?
Supplements are a main part of a healthy diet regimen. We offer a more specialized line of supplements to our patients designed for them. Our medical team takes into consideration your medical history, lab work, specific medical tests, genetics, physical state, lifestyle, age, gender and type of disease.
Your supplements are reviewed and altered with time as our patients heal and their body finds the balance it needs.
What are the characteristics of the Institute nutrition plan?
Our nutritional plan is:
- Chemical and preservatives free.
- Organic fruit and vegetables.
- Hormone free meat.
- Personalized supplements.
- Metal and mercury free fish.
- Hypo allergenic.
- Gluten and diary free to promote immune tolerance.
- Alkaline to optimize the internal environment to fight and overcome cancer.
How do you create my nutrition plan?
Your personalized nutritional plan is developed, reviewed and redefined by our specialized medical team with our clinical nutritionist, kitchen staff and functional trained chefs.
They take into consideration your unique needs in a stressful situation, nutritional deficiencies, the nutritive food you desperately need, allergies and personal preference of taste and food appearance.
What is the main difference between Enhanced Low Dose Chemo vs conventional chemotherapy?
At the immunotherapy Institute, we use a proprietary method called “Enhanced Low Dose Chemotherapy”, this is a metabolic-supported low dose chemotherapy.
“Enhanced Low Dose Chemotherapy” targets a cell and changes its composition.
First, it attacks the cancer cell through its internal environment and then via the external environment by “prepping” the cancer cell so it becomes more vulnerable to treatment.
In more simple words, “Enhanced Low Dose Chemotherapy” is just a fraction of the normal dose and it only goes after the cancer cells instead of your whole body, which reduces or eliminates the horrible side-effects of conventional chemo.
What kind of hyperthermia do you offer?
There are two types, regional and systemic.
Regional refers to the increase of temperature of a single zone or area.
Systemic is whole-body hyperthermia, which refers to the increase in temperature to hyperthermic levels over the entire body.
Hyperthermia is proven to enhance the effect of anti-cancer treatments like immunotherapy and conventional treatments such as chemo or radiation.
Positive trials have established hyperthermia, in combination with anti-cancer drugs, as a breakthrough cancer treatment.
Hyperthermia doesn’t have any side effects.
Another thing you might wonder is, How long will each session be?
We see great outcomes with 2 to 4 hour-long sessions.
What are the benefits of the hyperthermia we use at our center?
It’s fast acting. You’ll feel results within the first couple of sessions.
You’ll be alert, you won’t have to go through sedation and anesthesia.
You won’t experience any discomfort, which allows for a much larger period, and hence, achieves in a single session, what would take us up to 8 sessions to achieve with other methods.
What is the difference between the Immunotherapy offered through your program and what my doctors are recommending at home?
There are two main types of immunotherapy, chemical, and autologous immunotherapy; we have seen great success with the latter.
In the autologous cellular immunotherapy process, we collect your immune cells and infuse them back into your body after culture.
In the process we activate the anti-tumor response and “train these cells” to effectively target and attack cancer cells.
Autologous Cellular Immunotherapy is made out of specific types of cells mainly Dendritic, NK cells and T lymphocytes.
These cells act against the cancer cells and recharge the immune system.
When they find a tumor cell, the NK and T cells bind themselves to its membrane and inject toxins which kill the cancer cell.
In less than five minutes, the cancer cell dies and the NK and T cells move on to their next target.
Every single case has different specifications, which is why its so important to explore your unique situation.
To find out if this is the right therapy for you, please contact us via phone or Facebook.
What are the side effects of cancer treatment?
Because our program employs natural treatments that only enhance the body’s own natural ability to attack cancer, there’s no negative side-effects. Patients who have previously undergone chemotherapy will be administered a chemo-preconditioning program that will decrease the negative side-effects like, such as hair loss, nausea, toxicity, anemia, and others, until the body is in optimal condition for our treatment program.
What is the probability of curing my cancer?
Unfortunately there’s no guarantees, however our statistical studies have shown that if admitted into our program, there’s a very high chance that the patient will have a positive outcome, in fact on average, 80% of our cancer patients have managed to control their cancer into a manageable state that allows them to gain quality-of-life and avoid the major set-backs known to most cancer patients, or in many cases have completely cured their cancer. Please talk to our doctors so that they can assess your situation and provide a better idea of your possibilities.
Can I undergo treatment at the Institute if I've undergone chemotherapy?
Yes, many of our patients are still doing chemotherapy or have had it done in the past. One of the great benefits of our treatments is that it doesn’t affect being in chemo like most other treatments, in fact, many of our most successful cases have already done chemo in the past. Our treatments will precondition the body to eliminate the toxic effects from previous chemotherapy to get the body to its optimal condition for the treatment.
Can the Institute treat Stage IV cancer?
Yes, in fact, over half of cancer patients are stage IV and although each patient’s outcome is different based on their current health situation, medical history, eating habits, and overall lifestyle, our studies have shown that 90% of our cancer patients have benefited from our treatments. It’s very important that patients in stage 4 make timely decisions because time is of the essence for the treatment to take a positive effect.