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Health: Survivor creates cancer wellness website

Karen Weintraub
Special for USA TODAY
Rami Rones, left, and Jeff Sirlin have started Cancer Wellness TV online which offers videos to help cancer patients.

Jeff Sirlin was 37 with a 2-year-old son when he was first diagnosed with colon cancer.

Three years later, the cancer recurred and the Needham, Mass., resident underwent more treatment — for a total of 5 surgeries, 25 rounds of chemo, and 30 radiation sessions.

It was at his worst, when he was barely able to get out of bed, that Sirlin decided to start a website for cancer patients and their families.

He wanted to help them gain access to mind-body programs such as deep breathing, Tai Chi and yoga, tailored to people like them, as well as nutrition information and tips on feeding patients with no appetite for food.

The vision he developed, along with mind-body consultant Rami Rones, launched last month, as Cancer Wellness TV, includes short videos on a wide range of topics aimed at helping people feel more comfortable in their own skin.

Mind-body techniques have been proven to enhance healing, reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, improve sleep and help overcome fear, stress and depression, said breast cancer surgeon Diane Radford.

Radford, who works at Mercy Clinic outside St. Louis, said she’s impressed with the quality of the videos on the Cancer Wellness TV site, and its whole-body approach.

Other websites offer great information for cancer patients, but she said she hasn’t seen anything comparable with videos. The information she saw on the site appeared to be backed by science and offered by legitimate experts, Redford said.

“This is certainly something I would recommend to my patients,” she said.

Cancer treatment often focuses on treating the disease. But “it’s not enough to just fix the flat tire,” said Rebecca Kirch, a DC-based healthcare quality consultant and former director of Quality of Life & Survivorship for the American Cancer Society. “We want to put the air back in.”

Kirch said she likes the approach of offering videos to let people pick and choose what they want to watch, and focus on what they can do to “live well with the disease,” rather than just surviving it.

Sirlin said he never knew how badly he could feel until that second round of treatment, now nearly two years ago. But even at his worst, he wanted to take action — to help in his own recovery.

Jeff Sirlin was 37 when he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Mind-body approaches helped him feel like he wasn’t just lying passively waiting for people people to do things to him, said Sirlin, who continues to exercise and practice Tai Chi, Qigong and deep breathing.

There are about 100 videos on the site, all viewable for free — an important part of Sirlin and Rones’ vision for the site. The pair hope to get up a to few hundred or a thousand to give cancer patients, survivors and caregivers a full range of options.

The two have self-funded the site and the featured experts have donated their time. “Later we’ll worry about how we’ll make the money,” Rones said.

Many hospitals offer services like yoga, support groups and rehabilitation to their cancer patients. But not everyone lives close enough to benefit, and sometimes they’re too sick to venture out, as Sirlin was at his worst.

Cancer survivor Jeff Sirlin, left, and mind-body consultant Rami Rones are creators of Cancer Wellness TV.

Sirlin and Rones are quick to note that the videos are meant to be an addition to medical care, not a substitute for it. They have focused on approaches that have some research support, and — like relaxation techniques — will cause no harm and offer some benefits for anyone, regardless of cancer status, Sirlin said.

Julie Silver, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a cancer rehabilitation physiatrist at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, said it’s important for people to recognize that these complementary therapies can be great for overall wellness, but aren’t proven to treat most specific symptoms.

“If somebody is not gaining weight and losing muscle, that would require medical oversight, not simply watching a video,” said Silver, who founded the STAR (for Survivorship, Training and Rehabilitation) program now used at hospitals nationwide, and wrote the book “Before and After Cancer Treatment.” “I strongly urge people to have their medical issues addressed and followed by their medical team.”

Rones said he wanted to develop the website so he could reach more people than he can through private sessions or the student classes in Tai Chi, Yoga and Qigong that he teaches at Boston-area hospitals.

The videos — such as one on getting up from a chair — are designed to build strength and confidence in people who have been robbed of both by their cancer, Rones said.

Fighting cancer today takes a team of supporters, including family oncologists, radiologists, nutritionists, and others with cancer, said Rones, adding that he’d like to add his website’s resources to that team.

When people with cancer work toward their own recovery it’s empowering for them and for their frightened family members, Rones said. “It’s a positive ripple effect.”

For more information, go to cwellness.com.

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