Integrative Oncology
Integrative Oncology or Holistic Oncology; functional medicine and scientific medicine must work together in a chronic condition that requires treatment; Scientific medicine treats, while functional medicine tries to compensate for the things that need to be done in order to prevent the disease from recurring and to improve the quality of life of the person and what has been done wrong until then. In the long term, it aims to establish the right lifestyle for the person.
Studies conducted in recent years have shown that; person's body, mind and spirit are a whole, and the constant communication between the three causes the others to be affected if one is broken. For this reason, instead of considering the body as an integrated system and concentrating only on the parts, it is necessary to consider it as a whole and look at the whole body.
Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are the main treatment modalities in oncological patients. However, considering the treatment process only as one or more of these treatments will impair the quality of life, the process of adherence to treatment, and reduce the effect of the treatment protocols applied. A person is a whole together with his habits, medications, stress status, eating and drinking, sports, daily activities, and social life, and these situations should be taken into account when planning treatment.
If the cancer is caught at an early stage, it can be easily treated with radiotherapy or surgery, which we call local treatments.
However, when it is encountered in the locally advanced or metastatic stage, our treatment success decreases. Because the development of cancer occurs with very complex mechanisms, and the chemotherapy, smart drugs or immunotherapies we have can only stop one or a few of the dozens of pathways responsible for cancer development. However, there are dozens of mechanisms working at the same time, and as the time lost strengthens the cancer's hand, it weakens ours. We have to try methods that will increase the effectiveness of the treatments we have and research new ones.
Complementary therapies with the Integrative Oncology approach can increase the effects of the treatments recommended by scientific medicine, while facilitating the management of side effects. However, these treatments should be applied by Oncology specialists in addition to standard treatments, when necessary. Otherwise, it may be inevitable that the effectiveness of your main treatments will decrease or that unnecessary side effects will be added.
In our clinic, with our team of Dietitians, Psychologists, Physiotherapists and Nurses, our patients are evaluated in a multi-faceted manner and approaches that increase both the quality of life of the patient and the effectiveness of the treatments are offered to them.