Cancer therapy insights

Dr Mary Hardy, of the United States, speaks to a mostly medical audience in Dunedin yesterday about combining alternative therapies with conventional medicine to reduce the side effects of cancer treatment and to garner other health benefits.

Dr Hardy is medical director at the Simms/Mann Integrative Oncology Programme at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Examples of useful treatments included ginger for nausea, fish oil to improve the efficacy of mainstream cancer treatment, medicinal mushrooms for general health, Vitamin E for neuropathy, and homeopathic calendula cream to reduce radiation burns.

Dunedin medical oncologist Dr David Perez, introducing her, said conventional medicine was ''useful'' but was not the ''whole story''.

The US was ahead of New Zealand in integrating alternative medicine into conventional cancer treatment, he said.