Hyperthermia

While in Germany, I tried whole body hyperthermia. Hyperthermia is a cancer treatment where the whole body is heated to a high enough temperature that it can damage or kill cancer cells. The maximum temperature used is dependent on the clinic - at Hallwang it was 40 degrees celsius or 104 degrees fahrenheit. From what I understand, other clinics might go to 43 degrees celsius but a sedative is used so the patient is more or less asleep for the procedure. At Hallwang, you are wide awake for the whole thing which scared the crap out of me at first.

To start, you sit in a hot bath to gradually bring up your temperature. Then, once it is high enough, you move into a tent with heat lamps that reminded me of an incubator. Thank god your head pops out the top so it is not affected by the heat. The nurse stayed in the room the whole time, monitoring my heat rate and blood pressure every 15 minutes or so. They also give you fluids to replace the massive amounts that you are losing by sweating profusely.

After spending 45 minutes to an hour in the incubator, the sides are folded on top of you to make a sort of body bag which you stay wrapped in for another hour. Now that I am typing this, the whole process sounds like some sort of cruel and unusual torture but really the worst part of it was my anxiety over needing to pee after all of these fluids had been pumped into me. Luckily I was able to hold it but the nurse did offer to put a diaper on me if needed, haha.

Unfortunately whole body hyperthermia is not available in Canada. Some Naturopaths or alternative medicine clinics might offer local hyperthermia which is done with a machine that treats a specific area. This can be effective on a tumor but if you are trying to treat circulating tumor cells like I am, whole body hyperthermia is the only option. I found that a lot of people at the clinic had not tried it but it is something I would definitely recommend. Call me weird but I actually enjoyed it...maybe not the treatment itself but the feeling you have after is unreal, like you have just sweat out every single toxin in your body.

Many people go to clinics in Germany for this treatment alone or it can be even more effective when combined with other therapies. This video gives a good overview if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGzXCS-UbVo