by Paul Fassa

Health Impact News

Among all the health professionals, M.D.s, herbalists, osteopaths, chiropractors, legal advisers as well as grass roots activists promoting medical cannabis for various applications interviewed on the Holistic Cannabis Summit, the interview of Dennis Hill is unique because he self-medicated with cannabis and cured his prostate cancer in six months.

Holistic Cannabis Network co-founder Donna Shields introduced Dennis Hill as a biochemist who worked in the research department of the prestigious MD Anderson Cancer Institute in Houston for several years during his younger days. Decades later in 2010, he was diagnosed with aggressive Stage III adenocarcinoma of the prostate.

He had worked in the research wing of MD Anderson, but sometimes talked with patients in the institute’s clinical areas. He was depressed and saddened with the amount of suffering from the treatments and struck by the amount of entourage support they had to have to continue with those treatments.

He often thought, “I hope this never happens to me.” He vowed to find other treatment options if it did happen to him.

Searching for an Alternative Treatment for Prostate Cancer

After his diagnosis he realized he had no one for support where he currently lives. Dennis described himself in his interview as a private person who lives alone. So he was hoping for an option outside mainstream oncology that he could pretty much do alone without being poisoned.

A lady friend of Dennis’ told him cannabis cures cancer. But he thought that was ridiculous. She told him her nephew cured his cancer that way, and there was a recent cannabis conference in San Francisco. She commanded him to look it up and research cannabis for cancer!

It wasn’t the idea of using marijuana for any other reason that struck him as ridiculous. He was an occasional recreational marijuana smoker during his youth, even as a biochemist. He knew it was harmless, but considered it non-medicinal, especially for cancer. After all, he had worked in the research wing of the MD Anderson Cancer Institute for 10 years.

He took his friend’s advice and researched PubMed for studies of cannabis for medical purposes because he understood science speaks. Some were in foreign languages without translations, but there were enough that were translated and others from America in English. He became convinced after reviewing many cancer cannabis studies that he had found a potential option.

Now that he was ready to try cannabis for his cancer, Dennis was in a quandary for a supplier. It was 2011 and he lived in a small town. A friend told him of a local person who grew and sold bud and that she would get cannabutter (cannabis infused butter) made for him from the trim, which is what’s left after removing the more profitable buds.

He had no way of knowing how much THC or CBD was in the cannabutter, but he simply dosed daily up to tolerance, finding that the more he took the more he could tolerate as time went on.

Judging from the way he experienced his self-medication compared to smoking marijuana during during his youth, he estimated the cannabutter to be high THC but maybe less potent. He also explained how he later came to understand that high THC is important for treating cancer.

During his self-treatment with cannabis, the intern M.D. who had referred him to a urologist was enthusiastic and wanted Hill to stay in touch and report his progress. But the urologist wouldn’t have any of it, and was antagonistic the whole time. Fortunately this was California, and Dennis had obtained his medical marijuana card.

During that six months, Dennis Hill also discovered a cannabis co-op near his small town in California. Without money exchanging hands, everyone chipped in for the planting, harvesting, and making cannabis oils with the whole plant and not just the buds. He said it’s known as “hash oil.”

Remission and Recovery from Cancer

After only three months, the main tumor was gone, but a few metastatic lesions remained. In another three months, all traces of cancer were gone.

Donna Shields asked how Dennis coped with all that cannabis in his system for the whole six months.

He explained how the whole six month treatment that evolved from cannabis butter to whole plant hash oil created no interruptions with his daily life. He was a former track scholarship athlete at the University of Houston, and he runs two miles every morning, which he continued all through his high dosage cannabis treatment.

And he never missed a day of work at either of his two jobs during that time. He said he actually enjoyed the treatment. He took two doses daily, before work was a smaller dose and after work a heavier dose. Donna spoke of how debilitating conventional cancer treatments are and how it would have been impossible for him to continue his routines under those treatments.

Updated Advice

Although Dennis did what he could do with limited knowledge to cure his prostate cancer without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation, he has done enough of his own detailed research during his five years since being cancer free to make this advice for cancer patients on the Holistic Cancer Summit:

Use a strain that’s 50/50 THC and CBD. Because the CBD helps counteract the THC’s psychoactive effect or high, one who has problems functioning with the psychoactive effects can continue to function with higher amounts of THC. Both THC and CBD destroy cancer cells, but they do their damage differently. The THC destroys cancer cells’ mitochondria, the part of the cell that creates energy, by breaking its walls, while CBD inhibits the metabolism of the cancer cell’s mitochondria. Thus making the 1:1 THC to CBD ratio ideal for cancer patients. These activities target only cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

For those who cannot get cannabis with THC because of local laws, Dennis recommended using CBD. Both he and Donna Shields agreed it’s not as potent as THC for cancer, but they declared it was a step in the right direction that could be part of another natural regimen with the right supporting diet.

Upon being asked if he saw mainstream medicine going more toward cannabis medical applications, Dennis expressed doubts, but added at a recent cannabis conference, a physician did publicly remark that eventually, after further research and clinical applications, all pharmaceuticals could be replaced by cannabis.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized it is possible.

We Lost the War on Cancer – Review of Alternative Cancer Therapies



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We have lost the war on cancer. At the beginning of the last century, one person in twenty would get cancer. In the 1940s it was one out of every sixteen people. In the 1970s it was one person out of ten. Today one person out of three gets cancer in the course of their life.

The cancer industry is probably the most prosperous business in the United States. In 2014, there will be an estimated 1,665,540 new cancer cases diagnosed and 585,720 cancer deaths in the US. $6 billion of tax-payer funds are cycled through various federal agencies for cancer research, such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The NCI states that the medical costs of cancer care are $125 billion, with a projected 39 percent increase to $173 billion by 2020.

The simple fact is that the cancer industry employs too many people and produces too much income to allow a cure to be found. All of the current research on cancer drugs is based on the premise that the cancer market will grow, not shrink.

John Thomas explains to us why the current cancer industry prospers while treating cancer, but cannot afford to cure it in Part I. In Part II, he surveys the various alternative cancer therapies that have been proven effective, but that are not approved by the FDA.