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| 2. Age is a factor to be considered. Older people tend to do better with natural therapies alone; chemotherapy seems to work better for younger cancer patients. |
| The faster the cancer cells grow, the more they tend to differ from normal cells; therefore, cytotoxic agents can recognize and destroy such cells more effectively. If the same cytotoxic agents are used to destroy slow-growing cells that are less differentiated, many healthy cells are destroyed in the process. The reason many people lose their hair during chemotherapy is because hair cells divide more rapidly than many other cells and therefore are more affected by cytotoxic agents. |
| Slow-growing cancer cells respond better to herbal and natural therapies because these therapies rend to induce the cancer cell to die through apoptosis (natural cell death) as opposed to necrosis (the explosive bomblike death produced by chemotherapy). Some natural agents that have been shown to induce apoptosis include quercetin, baicalein, genistein, catechins, and podophyllotoxin. |
| Some cancer-cell lines in which chemotherapy has been either curative or very helpful include Hodgkin's disease, childhood leukemias and other childhood cancers, testicular cancer, some lymphomas and, to a certain degree, ovarian cancer, nonsmall-cell lung cancer, and certain types of breast cancer. |
| When faced with a decision about whether or not to undergo chemotherapy or radiation, you should always get a second opinion. A new study has shown that second opinions frequently change treatment options for a significant number of patients. 3 It is essential to gather all the information available when faced with a radiation, chemotherapy, or other toxic therapy decision. Asking the right questions can help you understand goals and possible tradeoffs to the therapy, and that information can help you make a decision with confidencewhich is valuable in and of itself. Some important questions to ask include: |
| What is the goal of the treatment? If I undergo this treatment, am I taking a realistic shot at a cure, will it assure me a few extra years or months, or is this treatment simply to offer pain relief? |
| What is the success rate? How effective has this treatment been for others with a similar condition who have undergone it in the past? |
| How is success measured? Is it measured only by tumor shrinkage? Unfortunately, tumor shrinkage doesn't always correlate with significant |
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