by Dr. Joseph Mercola, public domain
(May 29, 2022) — In this interview, Dr. Nasha Winters, coauthor of “Mistletoe and the Emerging Future of Integrative Oncology,” reviews some of the benefits of this ancient herb in the modern world of oncology. Winters is herself a cancer survivor, so this topic is close to her heart.
“I’m coming on 30 years out of a death sentence, a terminal cancer diagnosis,” she says, “and still to this day get met with so much resistance to what I’ve learned for myself, and for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of other patients directly, as well as way more than that, indirectly, through the training of their physicians …
My crazy controversy is that I focus more on the human organism and the health of that terrain versus the condition, the disease or the label that overlays that person.”
Mistletoe Has a 100-Year Oncological History
Mistletoe, a semi-parasitic plant that grows in the branches of trees all over the world, has been used as a herbal medicine for thousands of years for conditions such as epilepsy, spleen disorders, pain and rheumatic conditions.
Just over 100 years ago, in 1917, Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher with incredibly keen observation skills, noticed the mistletoe looks a lot like a tumor, and proposed it might have anticancer properties. Many vitalistic medical practices, such as Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, naturopathy and homeopathy, for example, use the doctrine of signatures, which is what Steiner was suggesting.
“For instance, you look at a walnut and it kind of looks like a brain and we think, I wonder if that’s any good for the brain? And sure enough, we find some significance in how it impacts the brain. Or things like lungwort. When you look at it, it looks like a lung and we’ve learned that this herbal medicine is very helpful for lung conditions,” Winters says.
A Swiss doctor named Ita Wegman applied Steiner’s observation of mistletoe to see how it would impact a patient with cancer, and the plant has since enjoyed over 100 years of consistent application in oncology, both standalone and as adjuvant support.
“Interestingly enough … Steiner understood that you needed to harvest different components of the plant — berries that bloom in the winter, which is very abnormal, and the leaves that grow in the summer … and grow inward.
It has a very interesting behavior compared to other plants, and that was an observation of how cancer works as well. It goes against the rhythm. It grows out of sync with the organism. That is very much what he recognized.
And as such, he harvested the plant and aspects of the plant at different times, blended it, and then took a particular extract from it. He also noted that it needed to be injected, because you need to remember, 100 years ago we didn’t know about lectins, we didn’t know about viscotoxins, yet somehow, he understood that you needed to inject it to get the anticancer benefit.
You could take the full tincture. You could take it in other ways, and it has a lot of other medicinal impacts, but then it doesn’t have the anticancer impacts, the reason being, we’ve learned — or at least we suspect, because we’re still learning — is that those lectins and things get broken down in our GI tract and they don’t get into the bloodstream; they don’t access the immune system in the way they need to …”
Mistletoe Can Be Used as an Adjunct for All Cancers
According to Winters, mistletoe is likely to be useful as an adjunct therapy for all cancers, and she, along with several other doctors, has been training physicians on how to use mistletoe for several years now.
“One of our physicians has been using mistletoe for 45 years in his practice, and what we’ve seen clinically, and what the research suggests, is that this therapy, it has always been about using it with others. It plays very well with others.
It was never really developed to be a standalone therapy, though believe me, we’ve seen impact with that as well. And it has virtually no contraindications with any of our standard of care therapies. So, we can literally inject this into a patient the morning before they go into a surgery, or they can start on this therapy the very day they’re going to start a round of chemotherapy or radiation.
It bypasses first phase detox pathways of the liver, so it doesn’t interact, intervene, speed up or slow down detox processes that could otherwise cause some adverse events, or change the desired effect of a certain medication, herbal intervention or dietary intervention.”
Mistletoe Is a Key Cancer Treatment Adjunct
In fact, mistletoe has been shown to enhance other interventions. Even the most toxic treatments seemingly work better and with fewer adverse effects when combined with mistletoe.
“This should be utilized, in my personal opinion, with every patient going through a standard of care approach to just enhance their experience with treatment,” she says.
“There are a lot of things that we kind of have to be careful with … but mistletoe, in my experience, and that of my colleagues, is that this is probably the least harmful and least contraindicated substance and therapy I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. It’s pretty extraordinary and rare to find something that is this applicable to the masses …
As I said, it has over 100 years of continuous use, and has over 250 very good randomized studies … It just completed a Phase 1 clinical trial at John’s Hopkins in the United States as an IV application for solid tumors, and is getting ready to be moved into a Phase 2 clinical trial.
It is the most studied integrative oncology therapy in the world, and it is utilized in upwards of 60% to 80% of all cancer patients in Europe. In parts of South and Central America, all over Southeast Asia and India, in different parts of Europe, this is just part of their medical system … It’s just in the United States where we have a little bit of resistance to embracing it into our conventional medical system …
As a naturopathic physician who’s been practicing integrative oncology for some time and who has teachers, mentors, colleagues from all over the world, some of the most powerful anticancer therapies I’ve seen that are beneficial even to the standard of care model of treatment — things like artesunate, curcumin, quercetin, green tea extract, all of those in intravenous forms — have been taken out of our ability to use here in the United States.
Do my colleagues still find workarounds to get access to these very important medicines? Absolutely they do, but they have to tread very carefully and very lightly. But again, you go north of the border or south of the border and you have no problem accessing these therapies. Or go to Europe — and this is what I’ve been doing for the last two years.
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I’m always interested in considering holistic supplements. It’s what I did for my recurring foot infections. Getting proper medical treatment was important to rid my body of the infection. But keeping myself healthy through other means has done wonders as well.