Yale medicine radiation oncologist Dr James Yu joins Kate hawker to talk about alternative therapies for cancer that people are trying.

Cancer patients are choosing to delay medical treatment for alternative therapies. That includes the likes of trying Chinese herbs, meditation, bee venom and extreme dieting.

Oncologists say relying on these unproven therapies is an alarming trend.

Yu says there's hundreds of different methods being used.

"It's difficult to say which ones are the main ones they're trying because it hasn't been studied.

"Conditional Chinese medicine, massage, special diets."

Yu says being complimentary and alternative medicines, naturally the methods are all unproven.