Antibiotics a Chemical Substance

Chemotherapy as a Treatment for Cancer

It was a commonly held notion that along with cancer treatment through chemotherapy come a variety of side effects which may have quite an impact on one's life later on. In the recent years, however, this concept has been changed because the side effects can be controlled and minimized. Considering the fact that chemotherapy is one of the most effective and reliable cancer treatments, many have come to terms with it and are considering the fight against cancer with this process (Cukier).

Chemotherapy can be described as the treatment which involves the chemical substances that enable the body to kill the cancer cells and slow down their growth process. It is a kind of systematic process which allows the cells of the disease to be eliminated from their origin. Weighing out the statistics shows just how many people who suffer from cancer are treated using these procedures and how that assists them to live a healthy and prosperous life ahead. One of the treatment and recovery plan after the completion of the procedure is the chemotherapy regimen which involves the intake of certain drugs which ensure the effective completion of the treatment and complete elimination of cancer from the body. This plan is very important to follow as it is an integral follow up of the chemotherapy treatment.

How does Chemotherapy work?

The body works in such a way that the normal tissues in our body consist of millions of cells that keep growing and when they reach maturity, they do not divide as much as they do while growing. They do divide in circumstances where they want to repair their damaged state. They may split into two new cells which are identical and then they multiply further creating millions of new cells. In cancer however, the cells multiply much faster and keep dividing till there are billions of cells spread out in the body. These masses of cells then come together and end up forming a lump which is known as a tumor (Quinn).

Chemotherapy therefore enters the blood stream and kills all these dividing cells in order to prevent the further spreading. The process of chemotherapy starts by targeting the control centre or the main origin of the cancer which sends out more cells that end up dividing. Cutting off the source of origin ensures that no new cells will be formed. The process then targets the already present cells by interrupting their processes and stopping the division of the cells further into more.

The drugs injected into the body travel in the blood stream and reach all the organs and parts of the body so that the cancer stops where it is rather than spreading to another organ somehow.

As mentioned above, chemotherapy's main purpose is to eliminate all the cancer cells from the body in order to prevent it from spreading further. There are different methods of performing chemotherapy which include, drugs being injected in a person's cavity, it may be injected into the veins with the help of tubes, or it can also be performed by giving the patient some pills to take. The method chosen depends on how serious the cancer is and how fast it is spreading and what drug will be used to take action against it (Keen).

The down side of chemotherapy is that while it is intended to eliminate only the cancer cells, it sometimes fails to distinguish between whether the cell is a healthy one or a cancer cell. Hence, it ends up killing some of the healthy and growing cells inside the body which lowers the immune system and weakens the body. This damage of the normal cells results in the loss of weight, hair and paleness prevailing along with weakness and slow recovery.

Another aspect that is of much consideration when undergoing chemotherapy is that not all the cancer cells in the body develop and spread at the same speed. The drugs used in chemotherapy will usually target one particular type of cells and their particular point in the lifecycle of the cells. This does create a kind of variation in what kind of cells are killed off using the different kinds of drugs.

In the centre of every cell in a human body is a nucleus which is also known as the control centre of a cell, containing chromosomes that hold our genes. The process of chemotherapy actually attacks the nucleus in order to stop the cancer cell from going forth with its division process. The procedure however focuses on the cells that are splitting up into more and give less importance to the stable cells that are not dividing further. But since they fail to distinguish between healthy and cancer cells, some normal cells of the body are diminished in the process (Rn).