 A mentor of mine tells the story of a particular woman who came on a retreat. Now this retreat was typically catered towards emotional healing, right? It was called Shanrendal and it's based on a confusion method of healing that was really based on digging up whatever was causing a lot of prior wounds throughout your life and really dealing with lots of triggers through life. Now this particular woman was there because she had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis with just a few months to live. And so she figured, well, I might as well try everything possible that can help me heal as many of my own cancer patients say and I'll do anything. I'll do emotional healing, I'll do medical treatments, alternative treatments. So she was on this retreat. Now part of the retreat is a very, very uncomfortable exercise where you dig up everything that caused issues with your family and with your parents throughout your life. So it is one of those things where you revisit your childhood for all the possible traumas that made you feel a certain way. And from this particular exercise, the woman said she'd begun experiencing so much emotional upheaval that she started consistently vomiting, vomiting, vomiting. And after that she felt much, much better. Now she came home from the retreat feeling, you know, emotional catharsis, feeling some degree of healing of the psyche, but she still had cancer. Now over the next few months she said that the tumors gradually began to regress. So they gradually began to go away and she went in for a checkup with her oncologist and the cancer had actually been gone. Now for her she thought she was fine and everything was good and she was scot-free and it was these one in a hundred thousand spontaneous remission. Now as time went on something happened where she had some interaction with her mother or her father or one of her family members that again was associated with that past prior trauma. And whatever the experience was had caused so much emotional upheaval and so much she was so distraught that not long after the cancer came back with the vengeance and she actually ended up dying from it. Now there are many ways of supplementing conventional cancer care, but in this video I thought I would talk about the fascinating history of spontaneous remission. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book Master of the Day. Now before we jump in don't forget I've put together two important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine you can always reach out to my private practice below this video. Now in the West I would be remiss not to begin with the story of Saint Peregrine Lazioci. Now there's a very fascinating paper that's called William Bradley Coley MD and the phenomenon of spontaneous regression. Now in the West the idea of spontaneous remission frequently begins with a case report of this saint Saint Peregrine Lazioci. Now Saint Peregrine Lazioci was a 13th century Italian saint. He was later canonized as a saint due to his unending work preaching and converting people. Now one day he noticed that he had a growth protruding from his leg and when the best physicians around him remarked that the growth was without a doubt malignant they ultimately concluded that his only option for survival was amputation of his leg. Now the particular growth grew to the point where it broke through the skin and quote such a horrible stench was given off that it could be endured by no one sitting by him. However when it came time to have the surgery and amputate his leg the physician could find no sight of the growth and in fact the growth never even returned. Now Lazioci died many years later at around age 85 due to an illness that was unrelated to that original suspected cancer. Now ultimately the historical precedent of studying these spontaneous remissions goes back far longer and even examples of holy sites like lords are most likely examples of something similar. Now whereas many of these cases of spontaneous remission i.e. the cancer goes away and it shouldn't likely have a very clear physiological component meaning there is a medical biological reason that have happened whether or not we understand why or how it's possible that in many of these famous healing sites there is a powerful psychosomatic component i.e. the set and the setting of this beautiful healing vista this healer that the person goes to also possesses some aspect of a psychosomatic component. Now while these kinds of spontaneous regressions or remissions are very rare some researchers have said one in 70,000 one in a hundred thousand these can possibly occur i think i wanted to use this as an opportunity to discuss cancer a little bit more from a traditional chinese medicine point of view because inevitably when i see patients in my practice the conversation always becomes the same sort of thing. How this unique human with these unique factors and these unique lifestyle choices ultimately ended up them in that seat in front of me where we are dealing with the emperor of all maladies cancer for some people sure it may have been purely chemical exposure you know one fascinating case report in the literature is of these young boys that were chimney sweeps that were developing testicular cancer at an astronomically high rate as a result of the soot that they were being exposed to so it is known obviously that certain chemicals are known carcinogens cigarettes gasoline you know chimney soot but for other people it's the person who's the excessively driven person they may eat well they may exercise but their curse is that they're going a hundred miles a minute they're working 80 hours a week because they cannot shut off that drive that yes is so adaptive and so useful for career success but it's so maladaptive when it comes to their health for other people it's the lack of consciousness in the way that they eat and they just eat whatever tastes the best whatever is the easiest and that is their achilles heel while for others it's just they are living a life that is so cancerous from an emotional or a psyche point of view that their life poisons them slowly because every day their body is firing off stress hormones because they are living a life that does not feel true to them and for many of us it is all three or all four of these combined and I thought I would leave you with a final quote from one of my medical mentors a doctor named Brian McMahon he really encapsulated how all of these unique myriad factors come in to produce disease in that person's body in a very unique and distinct way that might have been different had they had a different life or lifestyle or different choices he said it helps us understand and really grasp what it is about this individual situation that is producing these symptoms Chinese medicine says that you treat the root not only the manifestation or the surface symptoms what does it mean to go to the root it means to understand and appreciate the unique qualities of an individual the way in which their life situation is impacting them as an individual how does that manifest in their overall circulation their overall life functioning and physiological function what are those factors that may be impairing and limiting them and producing disease as opposed to wellness so for all of us the highest level of medicine yes is not only no medicine but is the most individualized form of medicine available and that means you as a human in your unique life with your unique stressors and the treatments you're doing or not doing and your own personal habits from the immaterial the way you think your trauma your emotions all the way down to the material that cigarette you put in your mouth that burger or that salad you put in your mouth every single day so some interesting food for thought about the history of spontaneous remission and a little bit about individualized care when it comes to medicine and traditional Chinese medicine so don't forget guys i have two very important links below the video there and also don't forget to check out this related video right here