| The Testicular Cancer Resource Center |
This page has been part of the TCRC for a very long time, but it was never intended to provide information about "alternative" treatments for testicular cancer. Don't get me wrong, I don't assume that Western Medicine knows all there is to know about curing cancer. Nor do I deny that some traditionally alternative medical techniques such as acupuncture, meditation, massage, manipulation and so on can actually be helpful or even curative in the right setting.
However, testicular cancer is not one of those settings. In the past I never needed to seriously discuss "alternative" remedies because the kind of people who promoted that sort of thing stayed away from testicular cancer. They understood that modern medicine has done a very good job with testicular cancer, essentially curing almost everyone diagnosed with early stage disease, and interfering or delaying these modern treatments would likely just cause the patients to end up with more serious cancer.
Sadly, this is no longer true. We are in the age of alternative facts and scam artists and conspiricy theorists. If I search on Amazon.com for books on testicular cancer in 2023, of the first 18 hits, I find literally seven books promoting alternative remedies that are either snake oil, conspiracy theories or deceptively packaged diet books and there is an eighth book that is poorly translated gibberish!
My point is that unlike many cancers, testicular cancer is typically easily treated. When caught early, it can be treated by simply removing the testicle and then watching for a recurrence. Even when the cancer is Stage III and the lungs are full of tumors, it is often possible to cure the disease for good in 12 weeks using chemotherapy. Sure, it isn't always this easy and people do still die from this disease, but delaying the initial treatment because you want to explore these rabbit holes of alternative treatments greatly increases your risk of requiring significant additional therapy that might otherwise not have been needed. In other words, don't buy a book on testicular cancer that professes to prevent the disease or cure it with a coffee enema or talks about remedies big pharma doesn't want you to know about. Go to the doctor. Get a real diagnosis and then get treatment appropriate for that diagnosis.
I think a little sound advice here is a good way to start off:
Keep your doctor in the loop! Regardless of where you are in your TC treatments, you need a sound medical team backing you up and helping you make decisions about your life and body. If you do decide to go down some "road less traveled", you will definitely need a good sounding board to guard against doing further damage...it is very important to find an "alternative practitioner" that you trust, has a good track record, and (even more important) references from "satisfied customers".
Let the buyer beware! The reason I say this is because often times those who "offer" unconventional cancer methods prey upon the weakened state that the most desperate of us are in...physically and/or mentally.