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About Our Clinic and Approach
How long has Dr. Shinde's clinic been operating?
Our clinic was founded in 1986 by Akhilesh Shinde and has operated continuously from Indore, Madhya Pradesh for nearly four decades, now run as a three-generation family practice alongside Dr. Amrita Shinde and Dr. Mayank Shinde.
Is your approach alternative medicine or integrative medicine?
We practise strictly integrative medicine — Ayurvedic supportive care used alongside, never instead of, standard oncology treatment. We are firmly opposed to the "alternative medicine" framing that suggests Ayurveda can replace surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, and we actively discourage any patient considering delaying or skipping prescribed treatment in favour of herbal therapy alone.
What cancers do you have experience treating?
Our clinical team has experience supporting patients across more than 28 cancer types, including breast, lung, blood, brain, colon, liver, pancreatic, ovarian, cervical, oral, prostate, kidney, thyroid and many rarer cancer types. Specific clinical focus areas vary by team member, with Dr. Mayank Shinde particularly experienced in blood and brain cancers.
Consultation and Cost Questions
Is the first consultation genuinely free?
Yes, completely free, with no hidden charges or obligation to continue. This has been our practice since 1986. You only pay a modest amount for herbal medicines once you decide to proceed with treatment.
Do you charge for online consultations the same as in-person?
Yes — online and in-person consultations follow identical pricing, meaning the first consultation is free regardless of format, and ongoing costs relate only to the medicines themselves.
How much do the herbal medicines typically cost?
Costs vary based on your specific formulation, cancer type, and treatment duration. We discuss exact costs transparently during your consultation before you commit to anything, so there are no surprises.
Treatment and Safety Questions
Will Ayurvedic treatment interfere with my chemotherapy?
When properly coordinated, it should not. We review your current medications and treatment schedule before recommending any formulation, specifically checking for known interactions, and we encourage informing your oncologist of any supportive care you begin.
Can I start Ayurvedic support before my first chemotherapy session?
Yes, and many patients find this beneficial — starting from diagnosis allows time to build baseline strength and address anxiety before treatment begins.
What if I'm currently taking other supplements or vitamins?
Please bring a complete list of everything you're currently taking, including over-the-counter supplements, to your consultation. We review your full regimen to avoid any duplication or interaction.
Logistics and Access
Do I need to travel to Indore for treatment?
No. Most of our patients are treated entirely through video consultation and courier-delivered medicines, regardless of where in India or the world they live.
How long does medicine delivery take?
Typically three to five working days within India, and seven to fourteen days for international shipments depending on customs processing in the destination country.
Can family members join the consultation?
Absolutely — we welcome spouses, adult children and other family members in consultations, recognising that cancer affects the whole family, not just the diagnosed individual.
Questions About Specific Cancer Types
Do you have experience with rare cancer types?
Yes, our nearly four-decade practice has exposed us to many rare cancer diagnoses alongside the more common types. If your specific diagnosis isn't explicitly detailed on our website, please contact us directly to discuss your situation.
Can you help with metastatic or stage 4 cancer?
Yes, we provide supportive care across all cancer stages, including advanced and metastatic disease, with goals appropriately adjusted to focus on quality of life, symptom management and comfort alongside whatever active treatment your oncology team is providing.
Questions About Herbs and Formulations
Are your herbs tested for quality and purity?
Yes, all herbs are personally sourced and processed under our clinic's own quality control, a practice maintained since the clinic's founding specifically to ensure consistency and purity rather than relying on third-party commercial suppliers.
Will I need to take many different herbal medicines?
Formulations are kept as practical and manageable as possible — typically a small number of combined preparations rather than numerous separate items, recognising that treatment already involves significant medication burden for most patients.
Questions About Ongoing Care
How often will I need follow-up consultations?
This varies based on your treatment phase and specific situation, but typically ranges from every few weeks during active chemotherapy to monthly or longer during stable recovery or survivorship phases.
What happens if my treatment plan changes?
Please inform us immediately of any changes to your oncology treatment plan — new chemotherapy drugs, surgery scheduling, or treatment discontinuation all may require adjustment to your supportive care formulation.
Questions About Our Clinic's Approach
Why don't you charge for consultations like other clinics?
This has been our founding principle since 1986 — ensuring cost never prevents a patient from receiving an initial assessment and honest guidance about whether our approach might help their situation.
How is your clinic different from other Ayurvedic cancer practitioners?
Our consistent emphasis on integrative (not alternative) positioning, in-house herb sourcing and processing, transparent oncologist coordination, and nearly four decades of focused clinical experience across thousands of patients distinguish our practice, though we encourage patients to evaluate any practitioner's approach carefully and ask direct questions about these same dimensions.
Questions About Formulation Ingredients and Sourcing
Where do your herbs come from?
Our founder Akhilesh Shinde established the practice of personally sourcing herbs from forests and natural growing regions across India, a tradition the clinic has maintained for nearly four decades. This direct sourcing relationship allows us greater quality control than relying on commercial herbal suppliers.
Are your formulations standardised or individualised for each patient?
Individualised. While we draw on a consistent base of well-understood herbs for specific conditions, the exact combination, proportion, dosing and timing is adjusted for each patient based on their specific cancer type, treatment phase, constitution and current symptoms.
Do you publish your formulation ingredients?
We provide complete ingredient transparency to patients and their treating oncologists upon request, though we don't publish specific formulation recipes publicly, consistent with standard practice for individualised medical prescriptions.
Questions About Specific Treatment Phases
Can you help during the diagnostic/pre-treatment waiting period?
Yes — this period, often filled with anxiety while awaiting staging results or treatment planning, is one where supportive care addressing stress and building baseline strength can be particularly valuable before active treatment begins.
What about palliative or end-of-life care support?
We provide supportive care focused on comfort and quality of life for patients in palliative care settings, always coordinated with the patient's palliative care or hospice team, with treatment goals appropriately shifted toward comfort rather than active disease-fighting support.
Do you support patients through clinical trial participation?
Yes, with particular care taken to ensure any supportive formulation doesn't interfere with clinical trial protocols — we ask patients to share their complete clinical trial documentation so we can coordinate appropriately with trial requirements.
Questions About Family and Caregiver Support
Can caregivers get support for their own stress and wellbeing?
While our primary clinical focus remains the cancer patient, we recognise caregiver wellbeing significantly affects overall family functioning during treatment, and we're happy to provide general wellness guidance for caregivers during consultations, alongside encouraging appropriate caregiver support resources when needed.
How do you communicate with family members about a patient's care?
With the patient's explicit consent, we welcome family involvement in consultations and are happy to discuss treatment approach and progress with family members the patient designates, while maintaining the patient as our primary decision-making partner throughout.
Questions About Long-Term Relationship With Our Clinic
Is there a minimum or maximum duration for treatment with you?
No fixed duration — treatment length depends entirely on your individual situation, treatment phase, and personal decision about how long you wish to continue integrative support, whether that's a few months during active treatment or ongoing wellness support for years afterward.
What if I want to pause treatment with you and resume later?
Completely reasonable and accommodated easily — simply reach out when you're ready to resume, and we'll pick up your care based on your updated situation at that time.
Frequently Overlooked Questions Patients Ask Us
Beyond the most common questions, patients occasionally raise more nuanced concerns that deserve equally thoughtful answers. Some wonder whether their specific genetic or family cancer history should influence their integrative care approach — and while we're not genetic counsellors, we do consider relevant family history context during consultation, particularly for cancers with known hereditary patterns like certain breast and ovarian cancers. Others ask whether their specific dietary background or cultural food practices need adjustment — we work within each patient's existing food culture rather than imposing unfamiliar dietary frameworks, finding ways to apply Ayurvedic nutritional principles using familiar regional ingredients and cooking methods.
How We Approach Uncertainty and Difficult Questions
Cancer treatment inevitably involves uncertainty — about prognosis, about how a patient will respond to specific treatments, about what the future holds. We don't pretend to have answers we don't have, and we're comfortable acknowledging uncertainty honestly with patients rather than offering false confidence to ease difficult conversations. We've found that patients generally appreciate this honesty more than they would appreciate comforting but ultimately hollow reassurance that doesn't reflect genuine medical uncertainty.
Our Broader Commitment to patient Questions and Answers
Patient Questions and Answers represents just one dimension of the comprehensive, integrative supportive care our clinic provides. We encourage you to explore other relevant pages on our website, or simply reach out directly with any questions specific to your situation that this page hasn't fully addressed. Our team remains available via WhatsApp at +91-8889188821 for any follow-up questions, with no obligation beyond an honest, informative conversation about how we might be able to support your specific cancer care journey.
Why We Take the Time to Explain Things Thoroughly
We recognise this page contains more detailed information than many websites provide on similar topics. This is deliberate. A cancer diagnosis brings an overwhelming volume of new information, decisions and uncertainty into a patient's life, and we believe thorough, honest, accessible explanation — rather than brief, superficial content — genuinely serves patients trying to make informed decisions during an exceptionally difficult time. We would rather a patient spend extra minutes reading comprehensive, useful information than leave our website with unanswered questions or an incomplete understanding of what we offer and how we approach cancer care.
Connecting What You've Read to Your Own Situation
Every cancer journey is different, and while this page provides general information relevant to many patients, your specific situation — your cancer type, stage, treatment plan, overall health, and personal circumstances — deserves individualised attention that no website page, however thorough, can fully replace. We encourage you to use this content as a foundation for understanding, then bring your specific questions and circumstances to a free consultation where we can address your situation directly and personally.
Take the Next Step
Whether you're ready to book a consultation today or simply want to keep this information for future reference as you consider your options, we're here whenever you're ready. Call or WhatsApp +91-8889188821, available Monday through Saturday, 11AM to 6PM IST, with online consultation options available for patients unable to visit our Indore clinic in person. As always, your first consultation comes at no cost — a practice we've maintained since 1986 and will continue maintaining as a core commitment to accessible, honest cancer care support.
A Closing Thought on Trust in Cancer Care
Trust between a patient and any healthcare provider — conventional or complementary — forms the foundation of effective care, perhaps nowhere more so than in the emotionally charged context of a cancer diagnosis. We've worked to earn that trust over nearly four decades through consistent actions rather than words alone: transparent communication about what we can and cannot offer, genuine coordination with conventional oncology rather than competing claims, accessible consultation regardless of a patient's financial circumstances, and honest acknowledgment of evidence limitations rather than overstated promises. We hope this consistent approach, reflected throughout this website, gives you confidence in considering whether our integrative supportive care might have a place in your own cancer care journey, or that of someone you love.
We're glad you took the time to read through this page in full, and we hope it has given you a clearer, more complete picture of how we approach this aspect of integrative cancer care at our clinic.
We're glad you took the time to read through this page in full, and we hope it has given you a clearer, more complete picture of how we approach this aspect of integrative cancer care at our clinic.
We're glad you took the time to read through this page in full, and we hope it has given you a clearer, more complete picture of how we approach this aspect of integrative cancer care at our clinic.
We're glad you took the time to read through this page in full, and we hope it has given you a clearer, more complete picture of how we approach this aspect of integrative cancer care at our clinic.
