Every year in Hawai'i about 5,000 people are diagnosed with cancer. Here, as elsewhere, receiving a cancer diagnosis is like being dropped into the middle of a minefield with no instructions, training or map to get you out.

To make matters worse, cancer patients are often faced with conflicting treatment options prescribed by medical professionals.

An estimated 60 percent to 70 percent of people with a cancer diagnosis turn to complementary treatments as part of their response, according to the American Cancer Society.

Most do not tell their doctors. If they do, too often they find their doctors uninterested, unresponsive or disapproving.

In the past, medical schools rarely offered students the opportunity to learn about complementary treatments, so neither doctors nor their patients are sufficiently informed about what works and what doesn't.

The eight-month-long Hawai'i Cancer Lecture Series, presented by the Turning Point Cancer Center, the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Department of the University of Hawai'i Medical School and the Hawai'i Center for Attitudinal Healing, is the most comprehensive discussion of cancer to take place in Hawai'i.

The series, which starts tomorrow, focuses on prevention and response to cancer. The goal is to bring doctors, patients and family members together to learn from experts how complementary treatments can be integrated into conventional cancer prevention and care.

One of the reasons for the confusion faced by so many patients is that the conventional medical and complementary healthcare communities often have widely differing views regarding what causes illness, how to prevent it and how to respond to it.

Conventional medicine focuses on responding to, rather than preventing, illness. The approach most often addresses the symptoms of the disease, working with drugs and surgery as a response. Complementary, holistic professionals, on the other hand, focus more on the underlying problems in the body that allows a disease to manifest.

They work with the body's natural healing system using primarily natural substances and treatments that may include discussion of lifestyle, nutrition, stress, and emotional and spiritual conditions as problems undermining the body's natural healer.

Combining complementary treatments with conventional treatments may offer the best possible means of preventing and responding to cancer.

Acupuncture, for example, can be used to correct an energy imbalance in the body that could weaken the body's immune system, opening the door to cancer.

After diagnosis, acupuncture can be used before and following chemotherapy to reduce side effects of treatment.

Nutrition is another area to be addressed in the lecture series. Studies show that certain foods we eat can weaken our immune system and perhaps even feed the cancer cells, promoting cancer cell growth or undermining the work of conventional treatments.

Other complementary treatments could include massage therapy. When used on a regular basis, it can diminish the negative impact of stress.

Our beliefs about ourselves, our bodies and our health can also play a role in keeping us healthy or helping us return to health.

There is a need for bridging between conventional medicine and complementary medicine to create an integrated approach to preventing and responding to cancer. Naturopathic physicians can play a role in that bridging.

The Hawai'i Cancer Lecture Series is also designed to help bridge the gap, as well as open communication between doctors and patients and increase awareness on the part of the public.

Over the next eight months, the series will bring to Hawai'i experts who can speak to health and medical professionals, people with cancer and people interested in preventing cancer about the many ways that complementary treatments can be part of a pursuit of health and healing.

In addition to the Turning Point Cancer Center and the John A. Burns School of Medicine, it is significant that Hawai'i's two major hospitals, Kaiser Permanente and Hawaii Pacific Health (which includes Straub, Kapi'olani, Pali Momi and Wilcox on Kaua'i) are joining as sponsors of the series.

The age of humane, integrative, co-managed oncology has arrived.

Michael Traub is past president of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and a founding member of the Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians. He is on staff at North Hawai'i Community Hospital. Laura Crites is founder and director of the Turning Point Cancer Center, which initiated the Hawai'i Cancer Lecture Series. They wrote this commentary for The Advertiser. For more information on the free public lecture series, call 941-8253 or go to www.turningpointcancercenter.com.