alternative thinking

I'm not sure where to start with this post. About a year ago I stumbled upon this book called crazysexycancer tips. You may have seen Kris (the author) on Oprah - she also did a documentary on TLC (I think) entitled crazysexycancer. It was basically her story about having an incurable, indolent cancer and learning how to make herself as healthy as she could, and live WITH cancer. Though I don't always agree with everything she writes (she's a big advocate of raw foods, juicing, complementary/alternative meds, etc), I like her attitude and think she's a positive person. She has a website, sort of like a web community, and I've been part of it for probably about 6 months now, or something like that....and it's getting harder for me to digest much of what is written. Many of these people have cancer, or have a family member with cancer, and are big proponents of CAM (complementary/alternative medicine). Don't get me wrong, CAM has its place - in conjunction with Western medicine. But when a chemo patient is posting that their oncologist told them to stay away from raw food and other people are telling this patient "no, it's fine, don't listen to him", I feel the need to step in and say, there's a reason he told you that - your immune system is decimated by the chemo and you need to minimize your chance of infection. PLEASE talk to your oncologist about it. Needless to say, much of the time, this is either ignored or debated. I feel like many of these patients aren't talking to their oncologists, and it's worrisome to me. One woman posted about having a mastectomy last week and she is trying to decide whether or not to do chemo. Cancer was also found in her lymph nodes. She was exploring "alternative" treatments. It took all my willpower not to post anything, and just to close the screen. Of course, it's an individual choice about whether to do chemo. But one of her reasons was watching her mom go through it decades ago for Hodgkins. Things are much, much different now - yes, I will fully admit that it's still a toxic experience and we need more body-friendly treatments, but for now, it's the best we have. I just worry about patients like this because, like I saw at the breast cancer conference back in Feb, when someone is really, really sick, they'll grab onto anything that provides a kernel of hope. Anything. And when someone posts about how they "cured" cervical dysplasia with their diet, or how vaccines are bad, or how they won't even eat fruit because of the sugar and so forth, it's really hard for me to read this with an open mind. 

As I progress further and further in my academic career and down the path of my journey in oncology, I'm beginning to want more empirically-based information, more info backed up by hard facts. I don't know........I guess maybe I'm torn between being cynical and being hopeful.