From cancer to healing

In her first book, the oncologist María Laura Nasi covers the different stages of the patient until healing. Coping with the disease, anti-stress techniques, recovery of balance and good management of emotions. Everything, with an eye on integrative medicine.

The patient comes to his office and puts the medical history on the desk. Cancer of this type, in such phase, with such treatment carried out or to be carried out. She listens, takes notes, and asks more. Where was the imbalance unleashed, why did we get sick, what lifestyle did we lead until the moment of diagnosis. These and other issues are present in the daily practice of Dr. María Laura Nasi, an oncologist and expert in integrative medicine, who has just published her first book where she collects her experiences and teaches how to restore balance to the body.

The text is precisely entitled Cancer as a way of healing. Keys to restore the lost balance (Paidós). There, he gathers real stories of cancer patients and gives a sample of how to heal thanks to anti-stress techniques, good emotion management and a healthy diet; all this, while respecting the parameters of conventional medicine.

What is integrative medicine?

It is a new approach where you look at the person as a whole. It no longer focuses on the disease, but on the patient who is ill and, from the diagnosis, it is about addressing it with conventional medicine and with all the other therapies that serve to help return to a healthy state.

Why is it advisable to treat cancer patients with this type of medical trend?

The paradigm we are using of focusing on disease and treating all cancer patients in the same way is leaving us unanswered questions. The fact of being able to look at the person and direct them to implement everything that helps them restore that psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine network is a very important part of the process. There are studies -especially in patients with breast cancer- that affirm that if an integrative approach is implemented -that is, in addition to its conventional treatment, anti-stress techniques and a good diet are added- it leads to a better quality of life with fewer recurrences .

Why does the word cancer weigh?

It is something historical, of all the social connotation that was put to the word. It comes from a time when there were no effective treatments. After World War II, they saw that the use of toxic gases caused the number of white blood cells in people exposed to it to decrease. Hence the idea of ​​using this technique in leukemias was thought about. Obviously this brought a lot of toxicity and somehow ended up being bad. In addition, the first surgeries were very bloody and made cancer associated with suffering and death. But today, the situation is different. In general, 50% of cancer diagnoses in a civilized country are cured. The healing processes are directed at the tumor or the immune system and the adverse effects of medications are much better controlled. But that phantom of cancer linked to suffering, to weakness, to losing weight, to pain, to collateral effects, continues. There are places and people who don’t even want to name it. And not wanting to face the ghost makes it bigger.

Why do we get sick?

Our being has an incredible innate intelligence: from the union of an egg and a sperm, which are the pure source of information, we develop organs as complex as the kidney, brain and heart. In that sense, it has the wisdom to keep us healthy and regain health. But when it fails, we fall into an imbalance and it makes us more vulnerable to bacteria or viruses that we constantly come across (for example, with a flu epidemic), or to mutated cells that live in our body. We are exposed to carcinogens all the time: ultraviolet light, environmental pollution, cigarette smoke, pesticides that come in foods and processed products, chronic stress, emotional situations that we cannot discharge and lack of exercise. If the cells began to live uncontrollably inside us, they will have a free way to continue growing.