anyone ever have Cancer?

You might want to consider enteral nutrition. The efficacy is very good (far better than Pentasa, for instance, and for many people as effective as steroids) and you would not have to worry about immunosuppression. It would involve using a complete liquid formula diet for a few weeks to induce remission, and then using the supplement on a daily basis in addition to your regular diet to help maintain remission.

I had a cancer surgery and removed a part of my kidney due to renal cell cancer inside the kidney a few years ago. I got the diagnose Crohns the same month. My specialists both suggested that they would not let me have any Crohns medicine that supresses the immune system, because the cancer could return. my GI would not even let me use prednisone for more than just a few months, he didn't like the idea at all, but I had a flare, that had been active prior to the kidney surgery and it continued during and after the surgery as well.

I used prednisone to try to stop the flare, but as soon as I tapered off of prednisone, the flare returned and got worse than before.

I then decided to try Low Dose Naltrexone (google it). LDN is a fantastic medication, only 4.5 mg each night, my flare stopped within a few weeks and the diseases has been kept on bay for more than two years now. Due to anecdotals LDN may also prevent a cancer from "flaring" because LDN is increasing our endorphins by 300 %, due to pilots done recently. LDN is a medication that gives zero side effects (exept for the first 10 days) and that is inexpensive. (20 $ / 1 month).

LDN is working better if you avoid sugar, flour, starches.

Dr. Chris Steele a famous TV doctor in UK (he is UK's dr.Oz) is promoting LDN, look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVpjsDK0LPA

 

 

Wantrelief, what stage was your melanoma? Have you had only one or multiple melanomas? I would think that would have some impact on your decision.

There has been some research, such as that recently posted here on this site, that there can be an increased rate of skin cancer with use of imuran or 6mp. I think the biologics also might increase the rates. But it's important to note those are increased rates of non-melanoma skin cancers. Since melanomas are rarer than other skin cancers (relatively speaking), the data on them isn't as good, so it's hard to know whether these meds increase likelihood of getting melanomas.

For somebody who has already had a melanoma, there's probably too little data to really know whether these meds increase likelihood of it coming back and/or spreading. I would be concerned too, like you are and like many doctors are, about giving immunosuppressants to a person with history of melanoma. But I think that's based more on gut feeling than on hard data. I would also think the staging of your melanoma would matter, ie, stage 1, 2, 3, etc.