In the following interview, I speak with Professor Massimo Bonucci, a medical oncologist and surgical pathologist from Rome, Italy about the role of nutrition in cancer care. Professor Bonucci is the president of ARTOI, the National Italian Association for Integrative Oncology, a group of 100 doctors from across Italy, a third of them oncologists. I think the best treatment for our patient is chemotherapy, radiotherapy, biological [inaudible] , immunotherapy. It's necessary to use herbal medicine or acupuncture, but the basis is nutrition because every day we eat and we need to have the good food. The vegetable is very good. The fish is very good, and then inside the dish is put the best treatment for the patient, and the food it become a medicine for the people. Professor Bonucci and his colleagues have initiated a unique collaboration with a group of Italian cuisine chefs with the aim of co-designing recipes that will improve patient's quality of life. Back to the amazing idea of writing a recipe cookbook for patients during chemotherapy. I know that you had the tremendous work with chefs and cuisine experts and your experts from ARTOI. Can you talk a little bit about the connection between the two worlds? On the one hand, the scientist and the physician, and the on the other hand, the chef. Yeah. We have a school. A school of cuisine in Bury that use our knowledge to put our knowledge inside the dish and then they use a vegetable for the fish. Use some type of fish because the big fish is not good for the problem of metal problem, and they cooking very slowly because the high temperature is not good for the protein and use many, many herbs like curcumin, like a corymbulosa, like other type of this spice for the dish because this dish is my medicine all day. Another important aspect of traditional herbal medicine use among Middle Eastern population is the challenges faced by the medical profession in providing care to the large population of immigrants and refugees who have emigrated to European countries from the Middle East and North Africa. Healthcare practitioners in Italy, Germany, France, and other European countries need to address the question of how to provide healthcare, which corresponds with the immigrant health beliefs including their affinity to traditional herbal medicine. In the next interview, we discuss these issues with Dr. Guvnor Sophia Kienle, a leading integrative medicine researcher from the University of Witten/Herdecke, Freiburg, Germany. The role of integrative medicine with regard to refugees, there are two roles at least. The traditional medicine that the refugees come from and which they know and they may want to use, and the integrative medicine we have here, which may be well suited to treat certain conditions of the patients, and so, there are two aspects. To give an overall introduction, the refugees really are omnipresent in our life now. They are everywhere. There are in the midst of our life, and so, the total cultural background to have an understanding and to get close to the cultural background and they to our cultural background is very important also for their health because they come here often traumatized and they are endangered to get an additional traumatization here because of cultural gaps. So, the first thing is that we better understand their cultural background and their instant outer background in order to prevent an additional trauma, and for the two, we have no big understanding. Well, no this is too much. We have no understanding at all of their cultural background, their traditional medicine and the importance of their traditional medicine or integrative medicine for their healthcare needs currently, we have no knowledge about this. We just know from some other countries that this is maybe very important. So, for example, to inquire with qualitative methods first and then with questionnaires about their background and how important traditional medicines are to them. I asked Professor Michael Silbermann, the Executive Director of the Middle East Cancer Consortium to discuss what he sees as the extent to which herbal medicine and integrative care might facilitate more effective communication between refugees coming from the Middle East and the European healthcare practitioners. We have to approach them and again to try to get their trust in us that we really want and wish to do something about their well-being, and that can be only done if we build a common language. A language where they feel that we respect what they are because for them this respect means we keep their dignity as human beings, and here we come. If we come and tell them we can use things that it's not new to you, you can add them, we can tries them. You will see. Maybe it works. Maybe it. Like herbal medicine. Like herbal medicine and other modalities within this integral oncology. I think that this is an excellent example where you can learn from one situation of cancer patient to another situation of people who suffer like cancer patients. They suffer both physically, but mostly emotionally, and that reminds me very well on cancer patient. Young cancer women that I met in hospitals in the King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman, Jordan, was the National Cancer Institute in Cairo. Well, I understand Arabic, so I could communicate with them a little bit. When I was impressed that the wheel is a physical issues we're not bothering them so much. What was bothering is emotional, and that was a real suffering, and I think this combination palliation with traditional medicine, spirituality, all these come together beautifully and I am very optimistic that in this way we can really help people who need our help. Absolutely.
