At Oasis of Hope Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico, patients from all over the world have taken advantage of an integrative, complementary system of alternative medicine that has achieved significantly high survival rates for a range of common Stage 4 cancers. Oasis of Hope’s clinically supported approach is anchored first in doing no harm by avoiding the over-use of aggressive conventional therapies. It is additionally centered on treating the whole person - body, mind, and spirit.
The hospital’s philosophy puts individual patients, their families, and their quality of physical and spiritual life first when preparing any treatment plan. This outlook has won broad support over recent years, even within the conventional medical community. Physicians have begun to recognize that it is impossible to treat a tumor in isolation: Since disease affects the whole person, treatment must involve the whole person as well.
To give one example: In December 2016, the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies published an article noting the success of whole-person approaches, advocating for new systems that support ways of integrating each patient’s emotional, psychological, social, and existential needs in treatment. The article’s authors additionally noted that plans designed to support healthy lifestyle changes, among other factors, contributed to the overall success of cancer treatment in the groups studied.
Additionally, the American Cancer Society lists on its website a number of types of practitioners able to treat patients with cancer. The list includes professions, such as osteopathy, that focus on the “whole person” approach to care.
