New developments in cancer treatment
Introduction
Finding a cure for cancer is one of the biggest challenges the medical scientists are faced with today. The illness is a very serious one that, if detected too late, has a certain risk of leading to a painful and unpleasant death. It puts a high psychological strain on the patient as well as on the relatives, since there is the awareness that the person suffering from the illness could die quite soon. Cancer can affect several organs and there are different types of cancer. There is risk-enhancing behaviour for some types of cancer, like smoking, which increases the risk of lung cancer, and sunbathing, which is a risky behaviour that is likely to facilitate the outbreak of skin cancer. There are also some types of preventive mechanisms, such as regularly examining your breasts for irregularities to detect and treat breast cancer in women as early and as effectively as possible. However, in theory, cancer can touch anyone and it can remain undetected for a long time. People that have familiy members suffering from cancer are at higher risk of developing it themselves.
Cures for cancer
At the beginning, it is important to know that there has not yet been discovered a miracle cure for cancer. Despite this fact, time and again, very inspirational stories are told about people who were diagnosed with cancer in the final stage and were given very little time to live, but ended up surviving the tumour and getting well completely. Such cases can only be viewed as modern-day miracles, but often there is no possible medical explanation. In 1992, the drug Taxol was discovered to treat forms of cancers that mainly afflicted females. Nowadays, chemotherapy is a successful treatment that can help overcome cancer, but it has many side effects and is a long, tedious process. Some believe that a healthy lifestyle can help heal cancer, but from a strictly medical point of view this is highly unlikely, and it would be hazardous and even foolish to pursue such a treatment in the hope that it would be a suitable cure. It is, however, true that a healthy lifestyle can help prevent cancer, amongst other illnesses and diseases. There is absolutely no doubt about the fact that making a varied and nutritious diet based on the nutrition pyramid, exercising and taking care of your body are things that will help you lead a healthy life. Some cancer types, like colon cancer, have in fact been directly linked to the consumption of overly fat and therefore unhealthy food. There are special foods like berries and vegetables which are meant to enhance the cancer prevention effect of a healthy diet even further, so if you feel you are at particular risk of getting cancer, maybe because of your family history, it might be a good idea to lead a healthy and stressless life.
While cancer cannot easily be cured, the pain associated with it can be relieved to some degree. There are drug and non-drug approaches to pain relief, and depending on how far the cancer has developed in a patient or in how much pain they are in, a treatment suitable for them will be chosen and carried out to ensure maximum pain relief.
An especially important thing for cancer patients and their loved ones to remember is not to lose hope. Of course doctor’s diagnoses should be taken seriously, but, as stated above, there have been cases of patients given a couple of days to live who achieved full recovery, for no other plausible reason than their own mental state and their will to live and to survive. Furthermore, treating cancer patients with utmost care as if they could die any second might be a natural reaction, but it is unlikely to cheer them up and get their mind off things. It is therefore probably a better idea to try to be as cheerful as possible, as hard as it might be, and to remember that even though the person might be in bad health, they are still the same human beings they used to be and want to enjoiy the rest of their lives. Therefore they should not be treated too differently than before.