There are many options in the treatment of cancer. One of the options to consider is the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM, for its acronym in English). CAM is the term for products and medical practices that are not part of standard care. Standard care are practicing physicians, osteopaths and auxiliary health professionals such as registered nurses and physiotherapists. Alternative medicine use means other than the standard treatments. Complementary medicine indicates the use of alternative treatments with the standards. Examples of CAM therapies are acupuncture, chiropractic and herbal medicine.
Archive for the ‘Cancer Therapy’ Category
Cancer Alternative Therapy
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010Posted in Cancer Therapy | No Comments »
Immunotherapy
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
The researchers have developed biologic response modifiers to enhance the immune system’s ability to find and destroy cancer. These substances are used for the following functions:
- To stimulate the antitumor activity of the body by increasing the number of NK cells in tumors or produce one or more chemical messengers (mediators).
- Act directly as agents for destroying tumors or as chemical messengers.
- To curb the body’s normal mechanisms that decrease the immune response.
- To alter the tumor cells, thus increasing their likelihood of triggering an immune response, or make them more susceptible to damage by the immune system.
- To increase the body’s tolerance to radiation or chemicals used in chemotherapy.
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Combination Therapy
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
For some cancers, the best therapy is a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Surgery or radiation to treat cancer is confined locally, while chemotherapy kills cancer cells that have escaped outside the region. Sometimes radiation or chemotherapy given before surgery to shrink the tumor, or after it to destroy any cancer cells that are left. Chemotherapy combined with surgery increases the survival period for those with colon cancer, breast or bladder cancer that has spread to nearby lymph nodes. Surgery and chemotherapy may, in some cases, cure advanced ovarian cancer.
Rectal cancer has been treated successfully with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In advanced colon cancer, chemotherapy given after surgery may prolong the disease-free survival. Between 20 and 40 percent of the head and neck cancers are cured with chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy or surgery. In those that do not heal, these treatments often relieve symptoms (palliative therapy).
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Chemotherapy
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
The ideal anticancer drug is one that could destroy only cancer cells without harming normal ones, but this drug does not exist. Despite the narrow margin between benefit and harm, many people with cancer can be treated with anticancer drugs (chemotherapy) and some can be cured. Currently, you can minimize the side effects of chemotherapy.
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Radiotherapy
Saturday, June 5th, 2010
The radiation destroys especially rapidly dividing cells. Usually, this means that it is cancer, but radiation can also damage normal tissues, especially those in which cells normally reproduce rapidly, like the skin, hair follicles, the inner wall of intestines, ovaries, testes and bone marrow. Specify the maximum radiation source is what most protects normal cells.
The cells have enough oxygen are more susceptible to the effects of radiation. The cells near the center of a large tumor, they sometimes get so little blood and little oxygen. As the tumor gets smaller, surviving cells appear more blood supply, making them more vulnerable to the next dose of radiation. Thus, delivering radiation in repeated doses over a long period, increases the lethal effect on tumor cells and decreases the toxic effect on normal cells. The treatment plan aimed at full repair of normal cells and tissues because the cells have the ability to heal themselves after being exposed to radiation.
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Essiac Method “Natural Cure For Cancer?
Monday, May 10th, 2010
The plants that compose the method Essiac are Burdock root Lampazo or, Acedrilla or sorrel, Indian rhubarb, slippery elm inner bark.
The method Essiac is a mixture of several medicinal plants that a patient received a herbalist Canadian Ojibway tribe. This patient told the nurse Rene Caisse, which was the one that gave its name to the remedy and called it Essiac (her last name backwards)
His case is interesting because in 1922 he left the hospital where she worked as a nurse and went to Ontario (Canada) where he began to spread among people with cancer, the remedy he had known. Their hard work had such an impact that seeing their successful Canadian government in 1938 was about to legalize it as a medicine for cancer patients. (more…)
Posted in Cancer Therapy, Chemoembolization Therapy | No Comments »
Cancer Therapy
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
In Brief Cancer is a cellular process that does not work, When suffering from cancer disease, the body loses control provider, which resulted in good cell growth becomes uncontrolled. These cancer cells will attack the local network, migrate and breed elsewhere.
Cancer itself is originated from the cells to mutate and this abnormally change .cells maintain its mutations through a process of cell reproduction despite the efforts of the body’s defense system trying reduce abnormal cells. The mutated cells are (derived from an abnormal DNA) and then moves to the entire body and stay in one or more organs. There are currently more than a hundred types of cancer that grows in the human body.
So many types of cancer, with DNA to abnormal each and various differences in the symptoms and signs, it is not possible in this brief review to discuss everything. based on my experience at Johns Hopkins Hospital, one symptom that often arises is losing energy. (more…)
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Gastrointestinal Cancer Therapy is Becoming more Personalized
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010The discovery of more markers of gastrointestinal tumors and its own cellular diversity is expanding therapeutic strategies. Changes in traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy, for example, come from the hands of these molecular changes.
Key concepts:
1. There are cell groups, as the core, where traditional chemotherapy acts differently from the usual
2. The strategies are increasing in terms of molecular knowledge. It depends on the effectiveness and reduced toxicity
The cellular heterogeneity of digestive tumors that requires diagnosis and treatment is not limited only to the determination of certain markers, such as K-ras, “but must take into account the mutations that occur in b-raf in PI3K, as well as loss of P-TEN, the only way to individualized therapeutic decisions. (more…)
Posted in Cancer Therapy, Chemotherapy, Gastrointestinal | 1 Comment »
Olive Oil may Improve Breast Cancer Therapy
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Ramon Colomer, head of the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Girona, is a member of the team that reveal just how an element of the diet such as olive oil penetrates into the depths of the cells to act on a gene associated with breast cancer. In his view, the results of his group put emphasis on original research path that can have a significant impact on both prevention and treatment of this tumor. The investigation “clearly shows a relationship between dietary components and ontogenesis” he says.
In this experimental study has shown that the administration of olive oil along with a widely used drug in the treatment of breast cancer (transtuzumab or monoclonal antibody Herceptin) significantly increases the effectiveness of therapy. If these experimental results are confirmed in humans, “olive oil may improve breast cancer therapy,” says Colomer.
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Therapy for Prostate Cancer is Risky for the Heart and Bones
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Men treated with androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer are at high risk of fractures and death due to cardiovascular events.
Men with advanced prostate cancer could receive androgen deprivation therapy (ADT, by its initials in English) to stop testosterone production that promotes tumor growth.
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