Tips for Cancer Patients

Cancer is a disease in which a group of cells with in the body displays uncontrollable growth.

Acorrding to WHO: Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide: it accounted for 7.9 million deaths (around 13% of all deaths) in 2007.

While a complete cure for cancer is still in its research phase, treatments such as Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy, and Surgery has been adopted as the current means to battling this deadly disease with varying success rates based on the stage of the disease.

However these treatments leave fatal side effects. In some cases, they might have actually have a bigger contribution to the patient’s death as opposed to the cancer dieasea it self. In this article I’ll focus on Chemotherapy.

20 Things you need to know about Chemotherapy is a good article that talks about how Chemotherapy works and what you need to do or find out from your doctor before the treatment. The main idea behind the treatment is to stop cell division of these cancerous cells. But this would also have a large impact to other cell that divides often, such as white blood cells (reducing immunity), red blood cells (reducing oxgyen lv in body), mouth cells (causing a dry and uncomfortable mouth). Other effects include, hair loss, dry / discoloured skin and nail and  bone marrow problems.

Other Links

Cancer Council – Understanding Chemotherapy. Also has a list of other good resources to cancer.

Cancer Research UK – Side effects of Chemotherapy and how to reduce these side effects

Diet for Cancer Patient – a blog by a friend of mine regarding some diet recommendations for pre/post chemotherapy patients.

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