Spirituality and cancer disease: a study on the efficacy of antitumor therapies with natural anticancer agents in relation to the spiritual profile

Spirituality is more about constant questioning than about providing fixed or final answers. Cancer patients do not expect spiritual solutions from oncology team members, but they wish to feel comfortable enough to raise spiritual issues and not be met with fear, judgmental attitudes, or dismissive comments. Spiritual needs may not be explicit in all illness phases, yet spirituality is not only confined to the areas of palliative or end-of-life care. Sensitive and effective methods to assess and address spiritual needs of cancer patients are being developed and qualitative research on the topic is underway. In addition, formal education and training in communication about cancer patients’ spiritual issues and in how to assess and address them in the clinical context is being increasingly provided. Spirituality can be a major resource for both patients and physicians, yet it can never be imposed but only shared. Those oncology professionals who are familiar with their own spirituality will be better at recognizing, understanding and attending to their patients’ spiritual needs and concerns. The recent discoveries of the existence of natural anticancer agents either from plants, such as Aloe, Myrrh and Magnolia, or from the human body, namely the pineal hormones, allowed the possibility to elaborate new therapeutic natural combinations as a link between the commonly used palliative and curative cancer therapies, which would have not considered in a separate manner. The present study was carried out to evaluate the influence of the spiritual status on the efficacy of a natural anticancer combination containing pineal anticancer hormones in association with Aloe, Myrrh and Magnolia extracts in a group of 70 untreatable metastatic solid tumor patients with life expectancy less than 1 year. The spiritual sensitivity was evaluated by an appropriate faith test for patients affected by an untreatable disease. The percentages of both objective tumor regressions and disease control obtained in patients with high faith score were significantly higher with respect to those found in patients with low faith score. On the same way, the 3- year percent of survival achieved in patients with high faith score was significantly longer than that found in the other group. This study would suggest the efficacy of an antitumor therapeutic strategies with natural anticancer agents also in metastatic cancer patients form whom no other standard antitumor treatment was available, with a greater efficacy in the presence of a real status of spiritual faith.