Chemotherapy is a sort of treatment based on various combinations of drugs that are meant to reduce the growth of cancerous cells within a patient’s body. Although following chemotherapy treatment or so-called cancer therapy, the patient may have to deal with several side effects of chemotherapy.
Hair loss or alopecia is one of the side effects of chemotherapy that is very often encountered in cancer patients although it is false to assume that someone suffering from thinning hair or alopecia is necessarily ill with cancer. The question is why does hair loss appear to begin with? Well, chemotherapy is a treatment relying on dramatic chemicals that are meant either to slow down or kill the cells that grow or replicate too fast.
The problem is that cancer treatment therapies are directed towards all the cells in the body that have this characteristic disregarding whether they are cancer cells or healthy cells. That is why, in addition to hair loss, many cancer patients may also have to deal with other side effects of chemotherapy related to their digestive system or skin.
Even if this is one of the side effects of chemotherapy that most of us know about, thankfully, alopecia is only temporary. Usually it is not a long term side effect and it stops once the cancer treatment is over. Eventually, hair will start growing back but its thickness, texture and color may be a bit different from what you were used to having before.
Yes, it’s 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. In the case of hair loss, prevention is achieved by putting on a cold cap meant to cool the scalp and reduce blood circulation in the area. As a result, the blood will not carry the drug to the hair follicles and this means that one’s hair will be protected from the damage of the drug.
However, side effects of chemotherapy are an obstacle and doctors are still trying to reduce their number. Even if one solution to preventing side effects like hair loss from appearing is available, the same solution may not work for another drug that leads to the same problem. 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.
Karen Shain is one of many co-authors of the book “Living an Abundant Life,” and publisher of many eBooks for Health, Happiness and Success. Karen Shain is also the Founder of Bloomees.com, a shopping network of hundreds of stores where members can join for free and receive cash back on purchases made through the Bloomees Shopping Network.
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Posted under chemotherapy
This post was written by hair_loss on May 1, 2009
