King Charles Reportedly Putting Cancer Treatments on Brief ‘Pause’

King Charles III will reportedly put his cancer treatments on a brief “pause” while he is traveling abroad, under the advisement of his doctors. The king is heading out for royal engagements in Australia and Samoa later this month, and royal expert Rebecca English told The Daily Mail that his doctors have opted to pause his cancer treatments until he gets home. The nature of the monarch’s treatment has never been publicly stated.

According to English, the king’s doctors are “happy” to pause his treatment while he is traveling overseas. He will set out on Oct. 18, and will be back by the end of the month meaning he will go without treatment for less than two weeks. This news has not been officially confirmed by Buckingham Palace, though reporters from many outlets have reached out requesting a comment. The 75-year-old monarch has been consulting his medical team on his schedule and work capacity throughout the year, but he reportedly has his busiest itinerary in months on this trip. A source familiar with the king’s plans told The Daily Mail that he and Queen Camilla have “10 engagements a day between them” during this trip.

King Charles underwent “a routine prostate procedure” in January, and later revealed that he was diagnosed with cancer during that procedure. However, from the beginning he and royal spokespeople said that the details of his condition would not be made public out of respect for his privacy. It has never been revealed what kind of cancer the king has, nor what kind of treatment he has been receiving. We only know for certain that the king has not received chemotherapy.

This was a bit of a concern early on considering the king’s history of support for alternative medicine. In his time as the Prince of Wales, Charles was criticized for championing homeopathy, herbal mixtures and other treatments over modern drugs and surgeries. For a brief time the early 2000s, he even produced and sold medicinal products under the company Charles’s Duchy Originals, with a “Detox Tincture” that was heavily scrutinized.

Perhaps most infamously, in 2004 Charles publicly endorsed the “Gerson Therapy,” which is a cancer treatment plan developed by German doctor Max Gerson in the 1920s. It claims that cancer can be battled with a routine of daily coffee enemas and the ingestion of 13 specific fruit juices, as well as vitamin injections. Modern scientists have found no evidence that this treatment plan is effective, and many called out Charles at the time for misusing his influence. They were particularly concerned with how his rhetoric might impact the U.K.’s National Health Service, which has since denounced homeopathy in general.

With no specifics on the king’s current treatment plan, there’s no telling what mixture of science-backed medicine and “alternative medicine” he is receiving. So far, he and the palace have not commented on reports that his treatment will pause during his upcoming international trip.