Cancer Treatment: Side Effects of Chemotherapy
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By chemotherapy one generally refers to the drug combinations prescribed for the treatment of cancer or tumors. Many
side effects of chemotherapy treatments are permanently reported by people undergoing a chemical intervention.
Hair loss or alopecia is one of the side effects of chemotherapy although it is false to assume that someone suffering from thinning hair or alopecia is necessarily ill with cancer. How is chemotherapy hair loss explained? Well, chemotherapy is a treatment relying on chemicals that are meant either to inhibit or kill the cells that grow or replicate too fast.
Even if only cancer should be eliminated, it has been impossible so far to target only the cancerous cells; in the present conditions all rapidly growing tissues will be destroyed. Thus, besides hair loss, other side effects of chemotherapy administration include skin decay and digestive problems, because both hair and soft membranes are constantly renewing themselves.
Even if this is one of the side effects of chemotherapy that most people are familiar with, few really have a clue about the temporary nature of such side effects. At the end of the treatment the hair follicles will resume normal functionality. After a while, hair will start growing back but its texture and color may be a bit different from what you were used to having before.
True, there are pretty many side effects of chemotherapy and researchers have been doing their best to find ways of preventing them from happening or at least reducing them. You can prevent hair loss for instance by putting some cold compresses on the scalp and thus reduce the blood circulation in the area. As a result, the blood will carry less drug to the hair follicles and this means that one’s hair will be protected from the damage of the drug.
All in all, side effects of chemotherapy are a challenge and scientists do their best to discover ways to reduce them. Even if there may be solutions for a certain problem, lots of them still remain open to research. The same goes for hair loss; the cold cap may have the wanted effect of doing away with alopecia only in the case of certain drugs, but it may not work with some other ones.
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