Welcome to Naturopathic Cancer CARE

In this inaugural episode of PROSPER Natural Cancer CARE, Carla Wrenn, a Naturopath, Nutritionist, and Functional Medicine Practitioner, provides an overview of her approach to cancer care. She outlines her aim to help individuals with cancer feel as well as possible during all stages from diagnosis, through treatment and beyond, to support their overall health, wellbeing and quality of life.

Carla emphasises her evidence-based approach and discusses the principles of Integrative Oncology, including daily symptom management, reducing treatment side effects and maximising treatment results. She also highlights the importance of supporting recovery, reducing the risk of cancer recurrence, and improving quality of life through education on diet and lifestyle factors.

Key Strategies:

1. Minimise Treatment Side Effects: Carla focuses on using personalised, evidence-based natural medicine and lifestyle strategies to reduce treatment side effects.
2. Chemoprevention: She explains the concept of chemoprevention and how researched supplements may help to address cancer growth factors and reduce progression risks.
3. Address Co-morbidities: Carla identifies and addresses any other health conditions that could impact a patient's cancer outcome.
4. Education: She provides education on diet and lifestyle modifications to support overall health and wellbeing.

Carla discusses her thorough approach to patient assessments, which includes reviewing medical history, pathology reports, lifestyle factors and more. She emphasises the importance of understanding each patient's unique needs and preferences, even if it means referring them to other professionals or services.

Finally, Carla introduces the concept of a Care Plan, personalised to each patient's goals and current needs, which includes evidence-based supplements and lifestyle strategies for managing side effects and supporting overall health.

Next Episode Preview: Join Carla in the next episode as she delves into the fascinating evidence base behind "The Hallmarks of Cancer," which informs much of her approach to cancer care.

Find PROSPER Natural Cancer CARE on Instagram @prosper.cancer.care or visit www.prospercancercare.co.

For more information or to get in touch, connect with Carla on Instagram @carlawrenn or visit www.carlawrenn.com.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended to be informational only and represents the opinion of the participants, but not necessarily their workplace. It is not intended to be used as medical advice and does not take the place of advice from a qualified health care practitioner in a clinical setting. Please check with your healthcare practitioner before embarking upon any of the treatments or lifestyle changes discussed.

Transcript

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Welcome to Prosper Natural Cancer Care. I'm Carla Wren. We discuss naturopathic cancer care, integrative oncology and lifestyle medicine. Examining complementary medicine tradition, science, evidence-based personalised health care for people with cancer. If you or a loved one has a cancer diagnosis, or you're a professional with an interest in complementary medicine or cancer care, you've come to the right place. Let's prosper. But before we start today, let's take a moment to define the word prosper and why it's an important word for me in the work I do. Prosper is defined as to flourish physically, grow strong and healthy, to become strong and flourishing, to cause to succeed or thrive. These words and words like choose hope are important to me as I aim to empower, educate, and encourage people in my practice and on this podcast. Please be sure to take a moment at the end of today's show to listen to the very important disclaimer. Today on my first Prosper Natural Cancer Care podcast, I wanted to start with an explanation I give all patients in their initial oncology support appointment. It's a welcome of sorts to the care I offer as a naturopath, nutritionist, and functional medicine practitioner. It's what I think about and where I think I can best fit in as part of a patient's care team. I think about how I can help the patient's overall health. The patient, of course, will most often have a GP, a surgical oncologist, a medical oncologist, maybe a radiation oncologist, nurses, and other care team members around them. So while they think about the cancer, I want to think about the patient's overall health. My aim is to help people with cancer feel as well as possible while undergoing treatment, and to provide a plan to support their overall health through this process. I use clear, evidence-paced approaches to do this, and I utilize the principles or aims of integrative oncology, which are to help people feel better on a daily basis, reduce and manage the side effects of treatment, maximize the results of cancer treatment with evidence-informed strategies, support recovery from treatment, decrease the risk of cancer coming back with evidence-informed strategies, extend quality of life wherever possible, provide education on diet and other modifiable lifestyle factors. You may have liked to read more about integrative oncology through the Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians or the Society of Integrative Oncology. In my practice, these ideas can be simplified down to four key strategies I try to apply with each person with cancer. I use personalized evidence-based natural medicine and lifestyle strategies to do the following four things. First up, minimize the side effects of treatment wherever possible. Secondly, use research supplements to provide chemo preventative actions. This word chemo preventative refers to the administration of a medication or supplement for the purpose of preventing disease development. Addressing the terrain of cancer growth and aiming to reduce the risk of progression. Addressing any comorbidities that you may have that could influence cancer outcomes is the third step. These are the kind of health complaints the patient may have had before they had cancer. People with cancer, of course, have had a health history that might involve other concerns. Maybe it's insomnia or type 2 diabetes, inflammation or immune dysregulation from an autoimmune disease. All of these are very important to consider when consider the patient's cancer outcomes, but their overall well-being. And four is to provide education on diet and other modifiable lifestyle factors. And there's loads of research on this. Patients most commonly present to my clinic for help with minimizing the side effects and for help with diet, nutrition, and other modifiable lifestyle factors advice. These are the key things I usually work with in the first session. On meeting people with cancer, I spend a great deal of time listening to their story and reviewing their diagnosis, histopathology, treatment recommendations or schedules, as this information is all really important and needs to be as accurate as possible. I look at their general pathology. Maybe I'll even request further pathology. I'll do a dietary analysis, look at their lifestyle factors, do a health timeline, discuss family history and environmental exposures, and look at their mood and more. We do all this to determine where they are on the cancer continuum, what help they need and what help they want. Sometimes what I offer and what a person wants can be quite different. And in this case, I will aim to refer on to a more appropriate professional or service. From there, I go on to create a care plan, which is a personalized plan based on a patient's goals and aims and my suggested best way forward. This might include side effect support, help to address their comorbidities, dietary and lifestyle advice, further pathology testing, or maybe even some of the supplements I've researched to provide the best chemo preventative results by addressing the drivers of cancer growth and development known as the hallmarks of cancer. I hope this first episode of Prosper Natural Cancer Care has left you feeling inspired. Join me on our next episode to learn all about the fascinating evidence-based, the hallmarks of cancer, that has inspired so much of what I do. For more information on Prosper Natural Cancer Care, visit ProsperCancerCare.co. For more information and to get in touch, please visit Carlarren.com. Disclaimer. This podcast is intended to be informational only and represents the opinion of the participants, but not necessarily their workplace. It is not intended to be used as medical advice and does not take the place of advice from a qualified health practitioner in a clinical setting. Please check with your healthcare practitioner before embarking upon any of the treatments or lifestyle changes discussed.