Curcumin powerfully protects the brain against the harmful effects of conventional cancer treatment. This is especially important when considering that chemotherapy has now been shown to cause significant brain damage that can lead to learning and memory problems.

And there is still another advantage. Because curcumin has such powerful anticancer properties, one can use much smaller doses of conventional chemotherapy, thus reducing dangerous side effects such as heart failure, kidney damage, and damage to the gut, liver, and brain.

One of the most common reasons that patients discontinue conventional cancer treatments — an act that makes their prognosis much more grim — is the side effects of the drugs. By combining curcumin and other anticancer extracts with lower-dose chemotherapy drugs, an interruption in treatment can be prevented.

I have used curcumin to treat a number of cancer patients who were receiving conventional treatments. All were amazed that they did not get sick the way other patients not using curcumin did, even though some of my patients were getting much higher doses of chemotherapy.

Interestingly, studies have shown that curcumin not only enhances the effectiveness of radiation treatment against the cancer, but also protects surrounding normal cells within the treatment area.

In fact, there are many natural plant extracts that can suppress and kill cancer cells selectively, and are even more effective when combined with curcumin. These include

• Quercetin

• Ellagic acid

• Resveratrol

• Luteolin

• Apigenin

• Proanthrocynadin

• Catachins

• Epigallocatechin gallate

• Hesperidin

These natural agents are much more effective than chemotherapy because most chemotherapy drugs attack only one or two cancer cell processes, and the cancer quickly adapts to overcome the drug.

This makes the cancer stronger, and, as a result, it grows faster and becomes more invasive. The bottom line is that a person suffering from cancer dies much faster when the conventional treatments finally fail.

Natural extracts, on the other hand, attack the mechanisms critical to cancer cell survival, growth, invasion, and metastasis — so many, in fact, that the cancer cell becomes overwhelmed and cannot develop resistance.