Cushing’s disease: natural treatment

Treatment for Cushing’s syndrome

Treatment for Cushing’s syndrome aims to lower the high cortisol levels in the body. The optimal treatment approach depends on the factors that caused the syndrome.

Medical management and Treatment

Treatment options include:

Reduce the use of corticosteroids

Suppose the cause of Cushing’s syndrome is the long-term use of corticosteroid medications. In that case, the doctor may be able to control the signs and symptoms of Cushing’s syndrome by gradually lowering the dosage of the corticosteroid-containing medicine over a period of time while still managing the condition for which you take it. Do not reduce the corticosteroid medication dose or stop taking it alone. Please don’t do it by yourself. This reduction should be performed only under the control of your medical professional.

Cushing's syndrome - causes, symptoms, and treatment

Interrupting the consumption of these medicines quickly could lead to inadequate cortisol levels. Gradually reducing corticosteroid medications allows the body to resume normal cortisol production.

Surgical approach

If a tumor is the cause of Cushing’s syndrome, your doctor may recommend complete surgical removal. A neurosurgeon who may perform surgery through the nose usually removes pituitary tumors. If there is a tumor in the adrenal glands, lungs, or pancreas, a surgeon can remove it with standard surgery or using minimally invasive surgical techniques with smaller incisions.
After surgery, you must take cortisol replacement medications to ensure your body gets the right amount of cortisol. In most cases, your adrenal hormone production will eventually return to normal, and your doctor may stop your adrenal replacement medications. Your endocrinologist will run blood tests to determine if a cortisol replacement is needed and when it can be stopped. However, this process can take up to a year or more. In some cases, people with Cushing’s syndrome never return to normal adrenal function. They then need lifelong hormone replacement therapy.

Western Treatment

Radiotherapy

If the surgeon cannot completely remove a pituitary tumor, he will usually prescribe radiation therapy and surgery. Additionally, radiation can be used on people who are not suitable candidates for surgery.
The radiation can be given in small doses over six weeks or with stereotaxic radiosurgery. In the latter procedure, a large, one-time radiation dose is delivered to the tumor, minimizing radiation exposure to surrounding tissues.

Medications 

Treatment for Cushing’s syndrome with prescription medications can be applied to regulate cortisol fabrication by the patient’s endocrine system if both surgery and radiation don’t achieve the expected improvement. Medications can also be used before surgery in patients with Cushing’s syndrome to improve signs and symptoms and minimize the risk of surgery. Drug therapy may not completely improve all symptoms of excess cortisol.

Ketoconazole, mitotane (Lysodren), and metyrapone (metopirone) are medicines used to treat Cushing’s disease that stop the adrenal glands from making too much cortisol.

Mifepristone (Korlym, Mifeprex) is approved for people with Cushing’s syndrome with type 2 diabetes or glucose intolerance. Mifepristone doesn’t decrease cortisol production but blocks cortisol’s effects on your tissues.

Side effects of these drugs can include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, headaches, muscle pain, high blood pressure, potassium deficiency, and swelling. Some patients manifest even more critical side effects, such as neurological issues and liver harm.

In some cases, a tumor or its treatment causes the pituitary gland or adrenal gland to not produce enough other hormones, and your doctor will recommend hormone replacement therapy.

If none of these treatment options are appropriate or effective, your doctor may recommend surgical removal of the adrenal glands (bilateral adrenalectomy). This procedure will cure excess cortisol production but will require lifelong steroid replacement medications.

What is Cushing’s syndrome? What is the difference between Cushing syndrome and the disease?

It is well known that, with time, cancer wears you out. You suffer so much until chemotherapy makes you thin and weak. However, have you ever wondered if some types of cancer can make you fat? Do you know that getting fat may not only be a result of a combination of eating too many calories, being a couch potato, and having genes that make it easy for you to get fat? There is a disease that makes you fat, with or without eating. A type of tumor causes most cases of this disease.

Cushing's syndrome treatment

This disease is Cushing’s disease. Cushing’s disease can be a very severe condition and has a lot of problems that come with it. In fact, due to the multitude of health problems that can come with the disease, including those that come with obesity like diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, and those that come with Cushing’s disease, weak bones. Suppose you still think these problems are not that serious. In that case, it is estimated medically that, due to the severity of these symptoms, a person with Cushing’s disease has about 4 or 5 years to live after diagnosis if it’s not treated. That is very serious if you ask me. In the next sections, I will discuss the causes of Cushing’s syndrome and the homeopathic medicines you can use.

The body’s exposure to the excess hormone cortisol results in Cushing syndrome, a disorder. Cortisol influences and impacts all kinds of tissues and organs in the human body. These combined effects are known as Cushing’s syndrome.

Iatrogenic Cushing syndrome is when too much cortisol is produced, like when treating chronic asthma or rheumatoid arthritis. Ectopic Cushing’s syndrome occurs when the adrenal gland or another organ of the body produces too much cortisol, or Cushing’s disease is a result of a tumor in the pituitary gland that releases the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This hormone causes the adrenal gland to make too much cortisol.

Cortisol is a normal hormone produced in the outer part of the adrenal glands. When functioning properly, cortisol helps the body respond to stress and change. It mobilizes nutrients, changes the body’s response to inflammation, stimulates the liver to increase blood sugar, and helps control the amount of water in the body. The pituitary gland’s ACTH hormone controls the production of cortisol.

Cushing’s syndrome occurs when your body has too much of the hormone cortisol over time. This could be because you are taking oral corticosteroid medications. Or your body may be producing too much cortisol.

Too much cortisol can cause some of the hallmarks of Cushing’s syndrome: a greasy hump between the shoulders, a rounded face, and pink or purple stretch marks on the skin. Cushing’s syndrome can also result in high blood pressure, bone loss, and sometimes type 2 diabetes.

Treating Cushing’s syndrome can restore the body’s cortisol levels to normal and relieve symptoms. The quicker treatment for Cushing’s syndrome is started, the better the possibilities for improvement.

  • Every year, Cushing’s disease affects about 10–15 people per million.
  • The tumor of the cells of the pituitary gland, known as pituitary adenoma or Cushing’s disease, accounts for over 70 percent of medical cases in adults and about 60 to 70 percent of cases in kids and youths.
  • Cushing’s syndrome, however, most frequently impacts adults between the ages of 20 and 50, and this condition is more widespread in females, accounting for about 70 percent of all cases.

Types and causes of Cushing’s syndrome.

Different things can cause Cushing’s syndrome. They can be either ACTH-dependent or ACTH-independent causes. The major cause in about 70% to 85% of cases is due to adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)-dependent clauses. ACTH is a hormone that increases the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body. 80% of ACTH-dependent Pituitary adenomas, which are tumors in the pituitary gland in the brain, cause about 80% of cases of Cushing’s syndrome. Pituitary glands that are too large for their bodies or tumors that release ACTH in other brain regions are the causes of these cases. These tumors will cause overproduction of ACTH, which will then stimulate the adrenal glands to produce too much cortisol, which is responsible for much of what you see in Cushing’s disease. The minor causes are ACTH-independent causes, which make up about 15-20% of the cases. These are caused by tumors of the adrenal glands, which can be adenomas (benign tumors) or carcinomas (malignant cancerous tumors). This will cause direct overproduction of cortisol by the adrenal glands. Other things that can mimic (but not necessarily cause) Cushing’s disease include drugs like steroids, chronic alcohol use, and obesity. One thing that is usually unique in Cushing’s disease is that there is usually an abnormally high level of the stress hormone cortisol in Cushing’s disease. Cushing’s disease usually shows unexplained obesity, a moon-shaped face, fatty deposits on the shoulders that look like buffalo humps, and, at times, easy bruising on the skin.

Causes and treatment of Cushing's syndrome

Conventional medicine given to stop Cushing’s disease aims to reduce the level of cortisol in the body and to reduce any gland tumors that may be there. Some medicines include the commonly known antifungal ketoconazole and others like metyrapone, aminoglutethimide, mitotane, etomidate, anticancer medications to suppress tumors, etc. They all have their side effects; the side effects of anticancer medications are very terrible, and ketoconazole can have terrible effects on the liver, so much so that it is no longer recommended as an antifungal but used primarily for Cushing’s disease because of the seriousness of Cushing’s disease.

Cushing’s disease

When we say Cushing’s disease, we mean a pituitary adenoma.  A pituitary adenoma is benign hyperplasia of the pituitary gland cells that leads to increased quantities of ACTH, triggering excessive production of cortisol. Most patients have a single adenoma. Initially explained in 1912 by neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing, MD, in his manuscript “The Pituitary Body and Its Disorders,” Cushing’s disease is the most popular cause of spontaneous Cushing’s, accounting for 60 to 70 percent of all clinical cases.

Types of syndrome

Ectopic ACTH syndrome

Some benign or malignant cancers that develop outside the pituitary gland can produce ACTH. This disorder is identified as ectopic ACTH syndrome. Tumors in the lungs (either adenomas or carcinoids) lead to more than 50 percent of ectopic ACTH syndrome cases. Thymomas, also known as NET (neuroendocrine tumors of the thymus), pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, and medullary thyroid cancer, are some less common types of growth that can cause a lot of ACTH to be made.

Adrenal tumors

An abnormality of the adrenal gland, such as a tumor of the adrenal gland, can cause Cushing’s syndrome. Most of these clinical cases consist of non-malignant growths termed adrenal adenomas, which cause a release of excess cortisol into the bloodstream.

Adrenal cortex cancers, or adrenal gland cancers, are the rarest cause of Cushing’s syndrome. Malignant cells emit disproportionate levels of some adrenal cortex hormones, including cortisol and adrenal androgens. Adrenal cortex cancer often causes very high hormone levels and the rapid onset of symptoms.

Familial Cushing’s Syndrome

Most cases of Cushing’s syndrome are not genetic. Nevertheless, some individuals can develop Cushing’s syndrome due to a genetic tendency to develop benign or malignant tumors in one or more endocrine secretors. In primary pigmented micronodular adrenal disease, children or young adults develop small, cortisol-producing adrenal tumors. In multiple endocrine neoplasias (MEN I), aka type I, hormone-secreting tumors of the parathyroid glands, pancreas, and pituitary gland can occur. A pituitary tumor, an ectopic tumor, or an adrenal tumor can all be the cause of Cushing’s syndrome in type I men.

Signs and symptoms of Cushing’s syndrome

Symptoms of Cushing's syndrome

  • Weight gain in the face area (moon face)
  • Weight gain above the collarbone (supraclavicular fat pad)
  • Weight gain on the back of the neck (buffalo hump)
  • Skin changes include easy bruising of the extremities and the development of purple stretch marks (striae), particularly on the abdomen or axillary region
  • Red, round face (plethora)
  • Central obesity with weight gain centered on the chest and abdomen with lean arms and legs
  • Excessive hair growth (hirsutism) on the face, neck, chest, abdomen, and thighs
  • Female-pattern baldness
  • Generalized weakness and fatigue
  • Blurred vision
  • Vertigo
  • Muscle weakness
  • Menstrual disturbances in women (amenorrhea)
  • Decreased fertility and/or sexual desire (libido)
  • Hypertension
  • Poor wound healing
  • Diabetes mellitus
  • Severe depression
  • Extreme mood swings

Homeopathy and Cushing’s syndrome

Many homeopathic remedies can help, depending on the specific symptoms. Your homeopath will examine you and prescribe the appropriate remedy for you. Homeopathy has been described as a medicine that can only be prescribed based on the individual symptoms shown, adapting the remedy to the patient, not the disease. It was tested on 41 people with Cushing’s disease and found that they improved after being treated with the same mix of two homeopathic medicines (ACTH 30c and Quercus robur 30c). The clinical study aimed to determine whether a standardized approach using homeopathically prepared remedies was a valid therapy system for this disease and, if so, whether the results were repeatable among patients. The overall success rate of the therapy was 80%, and the results were broadly similar between the two patient groups, indicating that homeopathy lends itself to treating Cushing’s syndrome, cohort studies, and group medicine. The British Homeopathic Journal published this study in 2001.

In another study, a similar combination of two homeopathically made remedies (ACTH 30c and Quercus robur 30c) was used to treat 41 cases of Cushing’s disease in both horse and canine patients, and the clinical results were evaluated. Homeopathy has been defined as a form of medicine that can only be recommended based on the specific symptoms manifested, matching the remedy to the patient rather than the illness. This study aimed to determine whether a standardized strategy employing homeopathically manufactured remedies was an effective treatment for this illness and, if so, whether outcomes were consistent across species. The treatment’s total success rate was 80%, and the outcomes were largely comparable between the two species, showing that homeopathy, cohort studies, and group medicine are good fits for treating Cushing’s disease.

What are the best homeopathic remedies for Cushing’s syndrome?

Cushing’s disease treatment using homeopathic natural remedies has become increasingly popular worldwide and in the USA.

 

Quercus Robur: This remedy is derived from acorns. It is useful in dropsy, reduced mental responsiveness, puffiness, cravings, ascites (accumulation of fluids in the abdomen that causes abdominal swelling), breathlessness, and varicose veins, which can be seen in Cushing’s disease. Quercus Robur is one of the major homeopathic remedies for Cushing’s disease treatment.

Adrenalinum: this is very good for adrenal balance. It aids in the treatment of Cushing’s syndrome brought on by an overactive adrenal gland, as is frequently the case with ACTH-independent Cushing’s syndrome.

Arsenicum Album: This is good for excessive thirst (usually due to diabetic complications), digestive upset, nausea, vomiting, stomach pains, and skin problems like itching, burning dryness, and easily irritated skin. All these symptoms can be seen in people suffering from Cushing’s disease.

Pituitary Posterium: This is very good for most people with Cushing’s disease who have ACTH-dependent Cushing’s syndrome. This is because it helps with problems in the pituitary glands.

Sulfur: this helps with pain (due to osteoporosis, which is the weakening of the bones seen in Cushing’s syndrome), frequent urination (which can be seen in diabetic complications of Cushing’s syndrome), skin problems, and liver problems.

Chelidonium Majus is useful in treatment for Cushing’s syndrome associated with liver, bile, and digestive issues.

Hepar Sulfuris Calcareum is useful for skin problems, abdominal distention due to ascites or bloating, and liver problems.

Mercurius Solubilis: useful for digestive issues, jaundice, enlarged liver, vertigo, intense thirst, memory and thinking issues, and belching.

Combining these and other homeopathic medicines can give you the best treatment for Cushing’s syndrome. The type of homeopathic remedies you may need will differ depending on your situation, so seeing an expert for homeopathic therapies is advisable.

Homeopathic treatment for Cushing’s syndrome in Philadelphia

Contact our clinic at (267) 403-3085 for homeopathic treatment for Cushing’s syndrome, and we’ll help you book an appointment for the initial homeopathic evaluation. During the appointment, Dr. Tsan will examine you, perform all necessary tests to better pinpoint Cushing’s syndrome type, and select your most customized homeopathic protocol.