Cancer Information - 08 - Chemotherapy & Radiation

Chemotherapy is the most common cancer treatment recommended and performed when cancer has spread or may spread from its original primary tumor site.  A specific drug is prescribed depending on the type of cancer detected.  This type of pharmaceutical drug target any fast growing cells in your body, being cancer cells one of them but not limited to.  That's why hair, digestive tract cells, white blood cells, bone marrow that produces red blood cells and lymphocytes for the immune system, are all affected in a negative way, that may take an year or more to fully recover.

Not all cancer patients can endure this type of aggressive and toxic treatment.  Its side effects can be noticed from day one or later, depending on the sensitivity and health condition of a particular individual.  Common side effects are gastrointestinal distress (nausea, vomit, diarrhea), fatigue, immune system depression that sometimes can lead to fatal infections, low platelets count in the blood resulting in bruises and bleeding, temporary or permanent hair loss.

Chemotherapy is used with the intent to cure, to prolong life expectancy or to palliate symptoms.  It is particularly effective with fast growing cells, like in lymphomas and new born cancer cells.  It is ineffective with older cancer cells and cancer cells in the center of a large tumor (they can not be reached).  Besides this general rule, cancer cells obey to Darwin's law of survival of the fittest, so after a round of chemotherapy usually the weaker and younger cells die, while the survived cancer cells "have learned" and become more resistant to further chemotherapy treatments.

Chemotherapy is usually used combined with other conventional cancer therapies like surgery and radiation.  It may be used to decrease the size of a tumor to make it operable, it may be used after a surgery to reduce the possibility of metastasis, as the cancer cells that may spread from a tumor surgery can be more easily targeted with chemotherapy compared to those cells when they were shielded inside a tumor.  Chemotherapy is also combined with radiation with the intent of killing cancer cells located at the center of the tumor, usually unreachable by chemotherapy drugs.

Alternative clinics may use chemotherapy in much smaller doses using a protocol known as IPT - Insulin Potentiation Therapy.  An insulin shot is given prior to administering the chemotherapy drug, creating a low blood glucose level situation, which increases the cancer cell permeability to chemotherapy drugs, allowing a much lower dose to have a much higher effect.  Besides this altered technique, which has less side effects, some of these clinics also carry a sensitivity blood test, where in a special laboratory it is looked for the more effective chemotherapy drug for that particular patient rather then rely on a generic drug for a particular type of cancer.  While I believe this is a enhancement on the general purpose approach of conventional medicine, I doubt this is a panacea for all cancers, as recent studies found that a tumor is composed with different type of cancer cells, so a particular chemotherapy drug may fit some of those cancer cells but hardly all.

Alternative practitioners recommend the use of antioxidants in high doses, immune enhancers, and herbs to decrease the level of side effects.  Chemotherapy is a high oxidizer, so taking large amounts of antioxidants could make sense.  However conventional doctors and oncologists do not recommend taking supplements during the round of chemotherapy, fearing that it may interfere with its action.  Alternative doctors and practitioners say that there is not a single scientific study that can prove this theory.  I don't know who is right, but I know that if I sense that chemotherapy is too much that I can handle, between abandoning this treatment in the middle or start taking supplements like coenzyme-Q10 in high doses, I would chose the last option.

Then we came to the final question every cancer patient will have - how efficient is chemotherapy?  It depends on what type of cancer, what stage the cancer is (I to IV), how aggressive the cancer is, how far the disease has progressed, etc.  As a general rule and as stated before, cancers with fast growing cells like lymphomas or testicular cancer, are highly prone to be treated successfully with this cancer therapy.  We all know that lung, pancreatic, liver cancers and some brain cancers are usually the hardest to treat, either using conventional or alternative therapies.  Statistics are played by both sides of the fence, with conventional medicine claiming a general cancer success rate of around 50%, while alternative practitioners claim that chemotherapy is only able to save 2% of the cancer patients, using in a misleading way conventional medicine statistics that refer to stage IV cancer patients and not all cancer patients.  It was a war of words that sometimes resembles politicians.

A fact is that with every round of chemotherapy your body becomes weaker, with decreased immunity, with the bone marrow severely affected and difficult to recover, with remaining cancer cells that "learned" and are stronger than ever, so your odds are lowering after every round of chemo, to the point that a simple gastrointestinal infection, created by the existing bacteria in your gut, can kill you.  So this is a treatment that has to be assessed in every possible aspect, you should consult at least three or four specialists on your cancer type, and evaluate it against other possible alternative treatments.

Regarding Radiation Therapy, I would advise you to read thoroughly the wikipedia article located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy.  It is a therapy mainly used to decrease the size of large tumors, some of them may be life-threatening as they may block blood vessels or organs, and in these particular cases it is even advocated by alternative practitioners (at least some).  It causes immediate side-effects and long-term side effects, some of them are permanent.