Saturday, January 28, 2012

Did Alternative Medicine Kill Steve Jobs Or Did It Extend His Life?

By Michael Pritsker


Learn what some experts say about the computer giant's decision to put off surgery and seek natural methods. Natural methods are also known as alternative medicine. An example of alternative medicine is chiropractic therapy, acupuncture, etc. You probably know his name. But, even if you don't, it's pretty much a guarantee that he has affected your life in some way almost on a daily basis. His name is Steve Jobs. You've heard of him I'm sure. The company he started began out of a garage and is called Apple. They make iPhones, iMacs, MacBooks, iPods, iTunes, and more. You get the idea.

Whether you enjoyed Steve Jobs or not, there are some things you just cannot deny from his life. First, Steve Jobs is the quintessential storybook American dream. At birth, his parents gave him up for adoption to a middle-class California family, with the requirement that he go to college. After just one year at Reed College, Jobs dropped out and traveled to India to seek enlightenment. After his return to the US, Jobs and his friend named Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer. In the very first year, they assembled computer boards in a garage and brought them to local computer enthusiast groups to try to sell them off.

A little later, they developed the Apple II. It was a roaring success and the company went public four years later. In December of 1980, Steve Jobs' net worth passed the $200 million mark. He was only 25 years old at the time. After that, there were several up and downs. Jobs was actually fired from Apple and then brought back to save it a decade later. And, he did. Nowadays, depending on the stock market, Apple is either the most valuable company in the world, or a close #2.

So what does this all have to do with alternative medicine killing Steve Jobs or possibly extending his life? There is plenty here. But, the first thing to realize is that Steve Jobs was no fool. He was not some guy with negligible intelligence who read some stuff about cancer treatments on the internet and decided to risk his life doing them. And he was not the type to get conned by slick marketers peddling a cure for all cancer. On the contrary, Jobs was a mastermind and a visionary. From what seems to be the case, he looked at the research. He researched the pros versus the cons. And he allegedly decided to put off surgery for pancreatic cancer for 9 months in favor of other, more natural approaches.

According to the web page on MyHealthNewsDaily "After Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003, he allegedly delayed surgery to remove the tumor which was the recommended treatment. He delayed it for nine months. "During that interim period, he attempted to treat his cancer with alternative medicine, including a special diet, according to news reports.

"I believe that he must have really refocused his health practices [through changes in diet and exercise]," said Dr. Ashwin Mehta, an Assistant Professor and Medical Director of Integrative Medicine at the University of Miami's Sylvester Cancer Center. "To do as well as he did, he must have done a lot of things right. Therapies such as meditation acupuncture and exercise may be used in conjunction with standard cancer treatments in order to improve health and reduce the side effects, which can include fatigue, chronic pain and problems with sleep." "Could such a delay in treatment have worsened Jobs' prognosis, and ultimately hastened his death?" According to Dr. Maged Rizk, a gastroenterologist at Cleveland Clinic, "I don't think waiting nine months for surgery was a bad decision."

"The bottom line is that the mind is such a powerful thing that it's unreasonable not to use it as an ally in the course of standardized medical treatment," Mehta said. "I would never say to one of my patients, 'you don't need to continue with your radiation treatment or your chemotherapy, all you need to do is meditate and adopt healthy sleep habits, and start an exercise routine, and then you can cure yourself,'" Mehta said. "The realism is that's not the case." But, used the right way, integrative medicine may provide a meaningful impact on the health of a patient with cancer.

Here's something very important to note about this story: The average life expectancy for someone with a metastatic neuroendocrine tumor is about two years, according to PCAN. (It remains unclear whether Jobs' cancer was metastatic when he was diagnosed.) Jobs lived for 8 years after his diagnosis.




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