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

LET'S BEGIN!...

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

Discover what some experts say about the computer giant's 
decision to put off surgery and seek natural methods... 

You probably know his name.  But, even if you don't, it's pretty much a guarantee that he has affected your life... probably every single day. His name is Steve Jobs.  The company he started out of a garage is called Apple. They make iPhones, iPods, iTunes, iMacs, MacBooks, etc.

 Whether you liked Steve Jobs or not, there are some things you just cannot deny...

 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  stipulation that he attend college. 

        After one year at Reed College, Jobs dropped out and traveled to India to seek enlightenment.

        After his return to the United States, Jobs and his friend, Steve Wozniak, started Apple Computer.

        In the first year, they assembled computer boards in a garage and brought them to local computer enthusiast groups to try to sell them.  

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.  

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 All This Have To Do
With Alternative Medicine Killing Steve Jobs 
Or Extending His Life

Plenty.  But, the first thing to understand is that Steve Jobs was no fool.  He was not some guy with minimal 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 fooled by slick marketers peddling a cure.

On the contrary, Jobs was a genius and a visionary.  From what seems to be the case, he looked at the research... the pros versus the cons... and allegedly decided to put off surgery for pancreatic cancer for 9 months in favor of other, more natural approaches.

        According to MyHealthNewsDaily.com: 

"After Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003, he allegedly delayed surgery to remove the tumor -- the recommended treatment -- for nine months.

"During that interim period, he attempted to treat his cancer with alternative medicine, including a special diet, according to news reports.

 "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."

"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 mediation, 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."

"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 reality 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.

"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.

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.

  Dr. Tim