Is chemotherapy really that shit? When does it work?

Is chemotherapy really that shit? When does it work?

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It just delays the inevitable

Doesn't everything?

That's deep bro.

Chemo doesn't work, but it gives the doctors something to bill you for. Or so I've read.

Fuck chemo, stay home, watch old Marx Brothers movies and take mega doses of Vitamin C. Drink plain water. Look into food grade hydrogen peroxide.

That sounds like it works better?

makes you want to throw up when you first start.

>have cancer
>disregard chemo, acquire vitamin C.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

listen to this guy if you want to die.
insurance companies pay out the ass for people who get chemo, they wouldn't do that if there was no evidence that it works.

>getting chemo
LITERALLY POISON

cancertutor.com/deathbydoctoring4/

It's the same as drugging you up, and they line their pockets. Chemo working is a side effect, not it's purpose.

yes, strategic poisoning that kills cells in the body, cancer cells are more susceptible to it than healthy cells, therefore it kills off the cancer and gives your body a fighting chance.

Cant say much about chemo cus im not a doctor but my mom ended up losing her hair because of it and is in bad health shape and it kinda recolored her face a little but she doesnt have breast cancer anymore.im not sure if the treatment helped advance the healing process or what but theres alot of doubt so yeaaaa I think it helps but the risk is too great because in alot of cases whatever sickness is within the person always comes back the chemo just pretty much delays the inevitable in serious situations.

>100 studies say one thing
>but here's a few shittily put together articles that say they're wrong.
>I win

you're like those stupid fucking anti vac parents. no bother though, die a horrible death by refusing cancer treatment if the time comes.

Link me a study, plz?

I'm sorry, man. Chemo just seems too scary for me, y'know?

All cells reproduce; cancerous cells are cells that have acquired various DNA mutations that lead to them reproducing more than they're supposed to (the out of control growth is why cancer is a problem). Chemo kills cells that are reproducing; since most cells in your body reproduce much more slowly than cancer cells, the cancer cells get killed off before the rest of the cells in your body do. Your hair cells and some of the cells in your intestinal lining reproduce pretty quickly, so those may also die, which is pretty unpleasant, but in most cases survival is preferable to kicking the bucket.

There are various kinds of chemo; some are more effective against different kinds of cancers than others, and overall cancer treatment is slowly improving by getting better at targeting only cancerous cells (these days they've branched out beyond simply killing rapidly dividing cells, but I don't know that it's always called chemo when it targets other mechanisms unique to cancer cells). Trust your doctors on the treatment they recommend; get a second opinion if you're unsure and you have time.

just Google john hopkins studies and read them. highly regarded medical school. they even address the myths about chemo.

Over the long run, we're all dead. Before chemotherapy, if you got non-benign cancer, you were just dead, and there was really nothing that could be done about it. Generally they run chemo for several rounds to try to kill off as many cancer cells as possible, but if even one survives, it can end up coming back.

The thing with cancer is that it's the result of a lots of little bits of damage to DNA in cells over time. DNA is basically the instructions in cells for how to create another copy of that cell. So when the instructions get screwed up a little bit here and there, some cells will just function a little worse, and other cells might die. But some damage causes cells to reproduce more than they're supposed to, and cell reproduction is when DNA is most likely to be damaged. So if the instructions get changed from "reproduce until you get this chemical signal from the cells around you" to "fuck it reproduce as fast as possible", you end up with cancer.

Over the course of time, this kind of damage builds up. Even if you kill all the cells that are cancerous with chemo, there may be some cells that were "pre-cancerous"--they had some of the damage that leads to becoming cancerous, but not all of it. But since they're partway there, they're more likely to end up becoming cancerous later on. That's part of why cancer tends to come back even after being treated with chemo.

The body does naturally try to fight back though, right? It's not perfect, and since there's chemo it's obvious that outside assistance is recommended, so theoretically is it possible to buff up your immune system to handle cancerous cells better? The main thing I'm getting from chemo is that when it does it's job, your immune system is also damaged thus if cancer does come back it comes seemingly with a vengeance because your body was ravaged.

This is an interesting discussion and information. I find this stuff somewhat interesting to be honest.

Your body generally fights infections by being able to recognize its own cells based on unique markers on the outsides of the cells (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_histocompatibility_complex). This works pretty well against everything from out in the universe because the unique markers are really really unique, so it's hard for anything else to imitate them. Unfortunately, since cancer cells are mutated forms of your own cells, they have the same unique markers on their outsides as your healthy cells, so your body doesn't have a way to recognize them and attack them. Boosting your immune system without any additional way to recognize the cancer cells isn't going to do anything.

*Sometimes* cancer cells may mutate in a way that leads to changes in the unique markers too, but when that happens your body generally just kills them, so they aren't a problem. If your cancer is causing you health problems, that means that your body isn't able to recognize the cells and kill them.

There are some experimental treatments that are aimed at marking your cancer cells in some way so that your immune system can identify them and kill them, but I don't know how far along those are or how effective they are, and I don't think they work on all types of cancers.

Yeah I had a close family member who developed cancer, and I ended up nearly going into medicine because I found the stuff really interesting :) plus cancer is a super challenging problem... to be honest I'm pretty sure we'll figure out how to upload our brains before we figure out how to "beat" cancer completely (so I'm not sure that we'll ever bother fully "beating" it).