Hyperthermia (fever therapy)

Hyperthermia (fever therapy) shows that alternative medicine and high-tech methods can be combined easily. Already 2400 B.C. Egyptian doctors used artificially generated fever. There is a remark by Parmenides (540 – 480 B.C.), a Greek doctor and philosopher: „Give me the power to generate fever and I will cure every disease“. In the course of the centuries actively generated fever was used for many diseases, and the doctor Julius Wagner von Jauregg received the Nobel prize for medicine in the year 1927 for his researches on hyperthermia. But just like many other methods, hyperthermia lost its significance for some centuries with the triumph of antibiotics.

Hyperthermia is used during cancer therapy, but it can also be used as a therapy of auto-immune diseases like e.g. rheumatism in order to balance an aggressive or too weak immune system. Hyperthermia causes an intensive circulation, cleansing of the organism and an improved supply of oxygen and lasting stabilization of the immune system.

Today we distinguish between passive and active hyperthermia, whereas there are numerous types of treatment: in the case of passive hyperthermia the patient is locally warmed up with filtered infrared radiation for a certain time. Very high temperatures can be achieved here or a local warming of the tumour area is carried out with short waves. In the case of active hyperthermia the patient receives bacterial lysates which let the organism generate fever by its own for some time.

In both cases the body activates strong self-healing powers due to the higher temperature and improves its immune system. Due to the fever the tumour tissue is better circulated so that e.g. radiation therapies or chemotherapies are less strong and can be better integrated into the tumour issue during that phase. Repair enzymes, which usually protect cancer cells from radiation therapies, lose their function due to the warmth. If these important enzymes are damaged, the tumour cells die at small doses and also resistant cancer cells are eliminated. The warmth has an impact on certain proteins which usually help the tumour cells eliminate chemotherapeutic agents. If these protein pumps are inactive, chemoresistant cancer cells die.

We carry out the active hyperthermia or also fever therapy. Hyperthermia can be used for the following types of cancer: