With the costs of health care and the mistrust of conventional medicine both increasing, home remedies and homemade treatments are also on the rise. Two do-it-yourselfers have come up with their own ingenious and unconventional ways to potentially treat cancer and kidney stones without doctors, hospitals or medications.
I couldn’t stand on my head if my life depended on it, yet that’s exactly what doctors in China told rice farmer Zhu Qinghua that his wife had to do after a kidney stone was found in her remaining kidney (one was removed in 1993). To avoid risky surgery, doctors told Zhu’s wife to stand on her head until the stone dislodged.
Zhu Qinghua stapping his wife into the kidney stone-removing bed
Instead, Zhu spent $161 and built a kidney stone-removing bed. Based on the concept of the gravity-inversion bed, Zhu’s invention straps his wife in securely while upside down, then vibrates her vigorously using the driving wheel of a tractor. The bed quickly and safely dislodged her kidney stone and Zhu was granted a patent to manufacture and sell his life-saving contraption.
Zhu Qinghua with the plans for his invention
One of the many treatments for cancer is heat therapy – exposing affected areas to high temperatures to kill cancer cells. Another Chinese farmer, Jia Binhui, has leukemia which did not respond to a bone marrow transplant. When doctors in China told him that blasting cancer cells with 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) heat could kill them, he decided try the expensive treatment at home.
While the doctors recommended using hot water, Jia found he couldn’t keep the temperature constant so instead he built a barbecue pit in his garden After stoking the coals to the proper temperature, he lies between two logs suspended over the heat for as long as he can tolerate it.
Jia getting the fire ready for his treatment
Will it work? Heat therapy dates back to Hippocrates and has been used for cancer treatment since at least the mid-1800s. Of course, that’s in a controlled environment under the supervision of medical experts, not in a backyard barbecue pit. Jia will know more when he returns to the hospital for a check-up.
If necessity is the mother of invention, desperation may be the father. Both of these do-it-yourself treatments are dangerous but are also based on science and one has led to a real medical innovation. There are certainly stranger treatments than lying over an open fire and many prescription drugs are risky. If Jia recovers, his cancer-fighting barbecue pit could have pharmaceutical companies sweating.