XI'AN: The war between people and cancer is a violent one across the world.

Li Yan, a Chinese scientist in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province in Northwest China, claims to have found a new approach to fight the fatal disease.

After a decade of careful research, Li has come to the conclusion that cancer may be controlled through treatment on the nervous system.

The nervous system controls the actions and reactions of the body and enables the body to adjust to its environment through its network of specialized tissues, he said.

"From my analysis and clinical observation of a large number of cases, I've found that cancer cells may proliferate when the nervous system fails to help the body properly adjust to its environment," Li said.

Li believed that helping improve the nervous system's function may stop cells becoming cancerous.

Li noted that for years, operations, radiotherapy and chemotherapy have been the major medical methods used in Western medicine to combat cancer.

After the treatments, patients often suffer from deteriorated health and some still die.

Likewise, many traditional Chinese herbal concoctions also kill healthy cells as well as cancerous cells. But improving patients' nervous systems, which may help prevent cells from turning cancerous, does not hurt healthy cells, Li said.

Li pointed out that one tricky matter about the nervous system is that the system functions by receiving signals from all parts of the body according to the outside environment. It relays these signals to the brain and spinal cord and then sends appropriate return signals to muscles and body organs.

Thus, the brain, or the mind, here plays a crucial role in affecting the cells by the signals they receive from all parts of the body. When the mind and the body receive stressful or what Li terms "provocative" signals, usually from the outside environment, the nervous system sometimes has a hard time enabling the body to properly function and normal cells may turn cancerous and cancerous cells may increase.

During his research, Li investigated 160 patients who died of breast cancer. The results showed that 95 per cent of them had been strongly "provoked" in mind and many suffered from a sudden nervous disorder.

"Among more than 2,000 cancer patients I have treated, 80 per cent were provoked seriously before they were afflicted with cancer," Li said.

This provocation could include sudden unwelcome changes in daily life such as losing a job or the death of a relative, disappointment in a love affair or failing in business. Some people are well able to handle these emotions, but others are greatly affected, Li said.

"Zhao Xiaoling, for instance, who died of breast cancer at the age of 46, was badly affected when her 17-year-old son was killed in a traffic accident. One year later her cancer was diagnosed, and the heart-broken mother died three years after her son's sudden death," the scientist said.

Li also conducted experiments in his study. He put three groups of white mice who had been given cancer cells in excellent, normal and bad circumstances.

After a long period of observation, Li found that the group of mice in loud surroundings in which they were constantly frightened, suffered from a fast growth of the malignant tumours. In the group which was in calm surroundings with light music playing, the tumours grew very slowly.

During his research, Li has also found that when the brain, does not send any meaningful signals at all, such as in patients suffering from mental disorder, cells will stay as they are.

For instance, none of the 890 patients who died in the past 30 years in a psychiatric hospital in Xi'an died of cancer, Li discovered after going through their medical files.

"This shows that those mental patients who had lost their normal thinking and normal reaction capacity to unusual provocation can often avoid suffering from cancer. It indicates that unusual feelings and mind provocation is an important factor in cancer," Li said.

From careful research and long periods of observation and experiment, Li has come up with his own theory of fighting cancer: adjusting and improving the nervous system may stop cancer cells from increasing and may protect normal cells from turning cancerous.

Li's seemingly simple theory has attracted attention in scientific circles.

In 1993, a group of noted Chinese scientists and doctors discussed and praised Li's theory in a seminar sponsored by Xi'an Municipal Science and Technology Committee. In 1994, the State Science and Technology Commission listed Li's theory and his anti-cancer medicine as one of the State key research programs and allocated research funds of 100,000 yuan (US$12,000).

It is the first key project of Chinese medicine to be listed among the State-level research programs.

(From China Daily)