Treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation are proven cancer fighters. But a new survey suggests a number of people in the United States — nearly 4 in 10 — believe that alternative medicine alone can stop cancer in its tracks.
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Why learn the truth about cancer treatment?
Learn the truth so that you can feel more comfortable with your cancer treatment. Research advances have improved cancer treatment to make it more effective and to reduce side effects. Yet some misleading ideas about cancer treatment still persist.
Do you have to have treatment for cancer?
Myth: Everyone who has cancer has to have treatment. You can decide this after consulting with your doctor and learning about your options. A person with cancer might choose to forgo treatment if he or she has: A slow-growing cancer. Some people with cancer might not have any signs or symptoms.
Can the mind help fight cancer?
Researchers are now experimenting with methods of actively enlisting the mind in the body’s combat with cancer, using techniques such as meditation, biofeedback, and visualization (creating in the mind positive images about what is occurring in the body).
How can I live a normal life during cancer treatment?
A lot of research has gone into making it easier for people to live more-normal lives during their cancer treatment. For example, drugs are now available to help better control nausea and exercise programs are encouraged. The result is that you're often able to work and stay active during your treatment.
Are cancer treatments worth it?
Suffering through cancer chemotherapy is worth it -- when it helps patients live longer. But many patients end up with no real benefit from enduring chemo after surgical removal of a tumor. Going in, it's been hard to predict how much chemo will help prevent tumor recurrence or improve survival chances.
What is the point of cancer treatment?
The goal of cancer treatment is to achieve a cure for your cancer, allowing you to live a normal life span. This may or may not be possible, depending on your specific situation.
What are the 3 goals of cancer treatment?
The goals of cancer treatment include eradicating known tumors entirely, preventing the recurrence or spread of the primary cancer, and relieving symptoms if all reasonable curative approaches have been exhausted.
What are the 4 goals of cancer treatment?
There are four main goals for chemotherapy:Curative therapy to kill all cancer cells.Adjuvant therapy which targets cells left after surgery to prevent recurrences.Neoadjuvant therapy to shrink tumors before surgery.Palliative therapy to give relief when not possible to remove all tumor cells.
Are chemo patients toxic to others?
Chemotherapy drugs are considered to be hazardous to people who handle them or come into contact with them. For patients, this means the drugs are strong enough to damage or kill cancer cells. But this also means the drugs can be a concern for others who might be exposed to them.
Why is curing cancer so difficult?
Cancer cells, although different in many ways from other cells in the body, are known to evade our immune system or suppress key elements of the usual immune response. In some cases aggressive cytotoxic (killer) T cells — the immune cells that locate and kill invading pathogens — actually infiltrate tumors.
What is the most successful cancer treatment?
Top of the best cancer drug list is Celgene's Revlimid (lenalidomide). This drug has been very successful in the treatment of multiple myeloma as it promotes immune responses that slow tumour growth. It is also used to treat myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).
Can cancer be cured completely?
There are no cures for any kinds of cancer, but there are treatments that may cure you. Many people are treated for cancer, live out the rest of their life, and die of other causes. Many others are treated for cancer and still die from it, although treatment may give them more time: even years or decades.
Which cancer is known as silent killer?
Pancreatic cancer is often called the silent killer, and with good reason – most patients don't experience symptoms until the cancer is big enough to impact the surrounding organs.
How long after chemo does your body get back to normal?
Most people say it takes 6 to 12 months after they finish chemotherapy before they truly feel like themselves again.
Can cancer spread while on chemo?
While chemotherapy is one of the oldest and most successful ways of treating cancer, it doesn't always work. So, yes, cancer can spread during chemotherapy. Spreading could mean the tumor keeps growing, or that the original tumor shrinks, but cancer metastasizes, forming tumors in other areas of the body.
How can you avoid getting cancer?
Consider these cancer-prevention tips.Don't use tobacco. Using any type of tobacco puts you on a collision course with cancer. ... Eat a healthy diet. ... Maintain a healthy weight and be physically active. ... Protect yourself from the sun. ... Get vaccinated. ... Avoid risky behaviors. ... Get regular medical care.
What kind of treatment is needed for cancer?
Some people with cancer will have only one treatment. But most people have a combination of treatments, such as surgery with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. You may also have immunotherapy, targeted therapy, or hormone therapy.
Is it normal to be overwhelmed with cancer?
When you need treatment for cancer, you have a lot to learn and think about. It is normal to feel overwhelmed and confused. But, talking with your doctor and learning all you can about all your treatment options, including clinical trials, can help you make a decision you feel good about.
How effective is chemotherapy?
While chemotherapy, particularly in the form of combinations of drugs, remains one of the most effective weapons against cancer, it has been joined by an array of other treatments. As scientists have learned more about the basic mechanics of cancer cells – particularly the molecular changes that allow normal cells to become cancerous and to grow and spread in the body – they’ve found new ways of intervening in the cancer process. Their discoveries have given rise to drugs known as targeted therapies, which are designed to block the specific genes and proteins driving cancer growth.
What is a panoply of cancer treatments?
The panoply of new cancer therapies includes agents that are hybrids of different treatments. These include so-called conjugate drugs, which fuse a chemotherapy drug to an antibody that delivers the drug directly to cancer cells.
How do cancer cells exploit surrounding normal cells?
Today, scientists know a great deal about how cancer cells exploit surrounding, normal cells for their own benefit, how tumors tap into the bloodstream to nourish themselves, and how cancer cells evade an attack by the human immune system . The result is a new generation of therapies that take aim at cancer’s unique vulnerabilities: anti-angiogenic ...
What are the advances in cancer screening?
Advances in screening include mammography for breast cancer, colonoscopy for colon cancer, and the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for prostate cancer. The treatment advances of the past 70 years would not have happened without the ingenuity, persistence, and probing intelligence of cancer scientists, nor would they have happened without ...
What was the first treatment for childhood leukemia?
In 1947, when Dana-Farber Cancer Institute founder Sidney Farber, MD, set out to find a drug treatment for childhood leukemia, cancer treatment took two forms – surgery to cut out cancerous masses, and radiation therapy to burn them out.
Who founded Dana-Farber Cancer Institute?
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute founder Sidney Farber, MD. The possibility of treating cancer with chemical drugs – chemotherapy – had long intrigued physicians but was generally dismissed on the grounds that any treatment capable of killing cancer cells was thought to be too toxic to patients. That theory began to crumble in ...
Why is a Dana-Farber mammogram important?
Dana-Farber practitioners with a mammogram machine. Equally important has been progress in the early detection of cancer – critical, because the disease is often more treatable in its earlier stages. Advances in screening include mammography for breast cancer, colonoscopy for colon cancer, and the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) ...
How to help people with cancer?
Massage therapy can decrease stress, anxiety, depression, and pain and increase alertness, according to some studies. Prayer and spirituality help many people with the emotional side effects from cancer. Tai chi and yoga have been shown to improve strength and balance in some people.
How to help someone with cancer feel better?
Examples might include meditation to reduce stress, peppermint or ginger tea for nausea, or guided imagery to help relieve stress and pain during medical procedures.
Why is alternative medicine alarming?
This is alarming because evidence shows that people who use alternative therapies in place of standard cancer treatments have much higher death rates. The terms “alternative,” “complementary,” and “lifestyle” medicine are used to describe many kinds of products, practices, and treatments that are not part of standard or traditional medicine.
What is alternative therapy?
Alternative therapy refers to non-standard treatment used in place of standard treatment, while complementary therapy usually means methods used along with standard treatment. Lifestyle medicine is a newer field that describes its approach as preventing and treating illness through healthy eating, physical activity, ...
Why are alternative therapies so popular?
Alternative and complementary therapies are often appealing because they use your own body, your own mind, or things that may be found in nature. But sometimes these methods wrongly claim to prevent, diagnose, or treat cancer even when they have not been proven to work through scientific testing.
What is biofeedback therapy?
Art or music therapy may promote healing and enhance quality of life. Biofeedback uses monitoring devices to help people gain conscious control over physical processes that are usually controlled automatically , such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, sweating, and muscle tension.
Can cancer spread to other parts of the body?
Some concerns include: Delaying surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or other traditional treatment by using an alternative therapy can allow the cancer to grow and spread to other parts of the body. Some complementary and alternative therapies have been reported to cause serious problems or even deaths. Certain vitamins and minerals can increase the ...
Why is it important to hear the word "cancer"?
This is important because cancer treatment poses many risks for individuals, not the least of which are treatment-related side effects and long-term effects.
Why do people with slow growing tumors feel the need to act?
This is because the word “cancer” makes the diagnosis feel urgent, and it is hard to feel like one is "doing nothing.".
Can prostate cancer cause shortening of life?
In addition, we know that some cancers, such as prostate cancer, may not cause a person any serious harm or even shorten their lives if they are left untreated. The researchers in this study presented an imaginary scenario to volunteers using a web-based survey.
Can cancer be treated?
The researchers found that using the "cancer" label led many people to choose surgery. This tells us that the perceptions and fears associated with a cancer diagnosis may lead reasonable people to opt for more treatment, even if they are reassu red that it is possible to watch and wait and that they may never need treatment.
What are the treatments for cancer?
Standard treatments, like chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, and immunotherapy, effectively treat cancer. However, nearly 4 of every 10 survey respondents (39%) mistakenly believe that cancer can be cured only using alternative treatments, such as oxygen therapy, following a certain diet, or taking vitamins and minerals, ...
How long does it take to travel to see a cancer doctor?
Among people with cancer in urban and suburban areas, only 2 in 10 have this concern. In addition, people with cancer in rural areas spend an average of 50 minutes traveling each way to see their cancer doctor. Patients in urban or suburban areas spend an average of 30 minutes traveling each way.
What age group is most likely to believe that alternative medicine alone could cure cancer?
Demographically, younger people between the ages of 18 and 37 in the recent survey were the most likely to believe that alternative medicine alone could cure cancer. The oldest cohort, ages 72 and older, was the least likely to hold this view, according to the survey.
How many times more likely is cancer to die from alternative treatments?
People who eschew traditional, evidence-based cancer treatment in favor of alternative therapies are 2.5 times more likely to die in a given period than those who follow their doctors’ recommendations for standard care, multiple studies have indicated.
What percentage of people with cancer use alternative medicine?
Alternative therapies are popular, though. Somewhere between 48 and 88 percent of people with cancer use complementary and alternative medicine as part of their cancer care, previous research shows. But that caveat — “part of” their care — is what matters most, experts say.
Can acupuncture cure cancer?
Experts say therapies such as acupuncture are beneficial as complementary treatments. But they alone can’t beat cancer. Experts caution that treatments such as oxygen therapy by themselves can’t cure cancer. Getty Images. Let’s say you find yourself in the doctor’s office staring down a cancer diagnosis.
Can alternative medicine stop cancer?
But a new survey suggests a number of people in the United States — nearly 4 in 10 — believe that alternative medicine alone can stop cancer in its tracks.
How to improve your will to live?
With each passing day, try to complete what you can and have that satisfaction that you have done your best. Be bold, be venturesome, and be willing to experience each day to the fullest to enhance your enjoyment of life.
Who said the cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians?
We have known for over 2,000 years— from the writings of Plato and Galen— that there is a direct correlation between the mind, the body, and one’s health. “The cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians,” Plato concluded, “because they are ignorant of the whole.
Why are positive attitudes important?
But patients with positive attitudes are better able to cope with disease-related problems and may respond better to therapy. Many physicians have seen how two patients of similar ages and with the same diagnosis, degree of illness, and treatment program experience vastly different results.
Why do we have a will to live?
Like all creatures in the animal world, human beings have a fierce instinct for survival. The will to live is a force within all of us to fight for survival when our lives are threatened by a disease such as cancer. Yet this force is stronger in some people than in others. Many physicians have seen how two patients of similar ages and with ...
What is the most important thing in the will to live?
Nurturing Hope . Of all the ingredients in the will to live, hope is the most vital. Hope is the emotional and mental state that motivates you to keep on living, to accomplish things, and to succeed. A person who lacks hope can give up on life and lose the will to live. Without hope , there is little to live for.
What is the meaning of "living in the present"?
living in the present, not the past, setting realistic goals and being willing to compromise, regaining control of their lives and maintaining a sense of independence and self-esteem, trying to resolve negative emotions and depression by actively doing things to help themselves and others, and.
Why do we use our strengths?
We use our strengths to gain success to live life to the fullest. Circumstances often limit our hopes of happiness, cure, remission, or increased longevity. We also live with fears of poverty, pain, a bad death, or other unhappy experiences.
Cancer Myths-What Can We Believe?
Cancer affects us all. If a village is needed to raise a child, it is also required to fight cancer.
Does Eating Sugar Cause Cancer?
Not exactly. This myth finds its source in the fact that some cancer cells consume sugar or glucose. But the idea that sugar can actually cause cancer or that your cancer will go away if you stop eating sugar has little scientific basis.
Do Mobile Phones Cause Cancer?
Far from it. Cancer cells are caused by cellular mutations, some of which are genetic. Others can be caused by external factors like chemical exposure or environmental factors.
Does Stress Cause Cancer?
Like the sugar myth, this one is also a little tricky. Studies spanning over several years have found no evidence linking stress to cancer. Stress by itself is unlikely to cause cancer.
Is There Anything I Can Do To Prevent Cancer?
Cancer does tend to have a mind of its own, and some people think there is little they can do to make a difference.
Call Us Today to Send Healthy Cancer Gift Baskets!
Rock the Treatment is here to help you be part of the village that fights cancer. We do this by offering healthy gift boxes for people getting cancer treatments. If you know anyone getting chemotherapy or radiation, sending a healthy cancer gift basket is a wonderful way to show you care and provide support.
