How long term can a person take the DCA, 6 months, years ?

Q: Taking DCA 2 week on with 1 week off I understand... How long term can a person take the DCA, 6 months, years ? Kreuzman. A: Dear Mr. Kreuzman, thank you for your question. There are no official guidelines on how long DCA can be taken. Regarding safety, there have been documented reports of people taking DCA for more than 4 years (https://www.dcaguide.org/news/dca-and-cancer-melanoma-long-time-remission-and-stabilisation-case-presentation-101258). In some clinical studies, children have taken DCA for even longer periods of time. If someone has stage IV cancer which has spread, then DCA and other regimens should be taken as long as possible to keep cancer stabilized or cured. How long can a person take Sodium dichloroacetate also heavily depends on how well the patient tolerates the DCA protocol, whether there is any preexisting liver failure or previous nerve injury. Diabetes can also cause nerve damage, therefore, preexisting diabetic neuropathy should be treated as much as possible before continuing the Sodium dichloroacetate treatment. Some people take it for years to keep themselves in remission. Our suggestions for longer time periods would be: • Stop taking DCA if you experience side effects. You can resume once they resolve. • Stop taking DCA if you have severe chronic liver failure, acute hepatitis, chemotherapy-associated liver injury. You can resume DCA once the liver is in better function. • Stop taking DCA if you experience abnormal liver enzyme (AST, ALT, GGT) elevation 2.5 times from the upper limit of normal levels. Take 1) silymarin or milk thistle, 2) essential phospholipids. Take a break till the liver enzymes return to normal levels. • Take DCA till you treat cancer or you want to maintain remission. Please don't forget to take the neuroprotective supplements such as Vitamin B1, Alpha-Lipoic acid and, if possible, Acetyl-L-Carnitine.

For stage 4 it recommends DCA to be taken constantly. Does this mean without breaks ? For how long ?

Q: For stage 4 it recommends DCA to be taken constantly. Does this mean without breaks? For how long? I'd guess until markers are normal and there is no need to continue. Or do you recommend continuing as a preventative? Please clarify. Thanks, Dana A: Dear Dana, it means that you still need to take breaks, otherwise peripheral neuropathy can ''kick-in" more swiftly and prevent you from using DCA for cancer prevention as soon as you‘re in remission. If one has stage IV cancer, the treatments that are given by the oncologist should also be continued. Most of the time, it will be chemotherapy, target therapy or immunotherapy. DCA goes well with most of these treatments, however, it goes especially well with target therapy and immunotherapy. A lot of cancers develop some sort of resistance to chemotherapy after its given frequently. Please understand that the main goal of treating stage IV cancer is transforming it into a chronic disease and prevent it from causing further harm through metastastis and growth. To achieve this, someone with stage IV cancer should constantly take some kind of anti-cancer treatment and monitor his health as well as tumors as a routine. Therefore, take DCA as a single agent or in combination with other methods to prevent cancer from spreading and getting larger. This means taking it for the rest of your life. Sometimes you develop any side effects such as peripheral neuropathy, which will make you to take a pause until they resolve. After they‘re gone, resume the DCA protocol. Cancer markers are one of the main ways to follow the progress / regress of the tumor advancement. The most accurate tumor markers that correlate with the size of the tumor are – 1) CA-125 (for ovarian cancer), 2) PSA (for prostate cancer) and 3) CEA (for colon cancer). You can repeat them every 3 months to see how well is the cancer responding to treatment. If they drop, it means that the malignancy is shrinking. One must also have imaging scans performed, to see if tumors are decreasing or increasing in size and to make sure if all the metastasis are gone. If you achieve remission, you can lower your DCA doses. DCA can be used as a preventative for cancer relapse if desired. Most of the cases take in doses lower than before, at least 50-80 % of the original dose that helped you achieve remission. Don’t forget that you can combine DCA with other natural methods or regimens that prevent cancer.