Cancer patients' friends and families often feel helpless and at a loss as to what to do when they learn of a loved one's diagnosis. While they mean well and want to help, often they are as thrown as the person receiving the diagnosis when they learn that someone close to them has cancer.

As a 10-year cancer survivor and also someone whose Mom, Dad, two aunts, and Grandpa have received cancer diagnoses, I don't know what's more challenging: to be the one diagnosed or to learn a loved one or friend is now a cancer patient. As a cancer patient, your job is clear to follow whichever course of treatment you decide upon and then regain your health. As a friend or loved one, your roles and responsibilities are less clear.

Staggeringly high cancer statistics -- The Canadian Cancer Society's report, Canadian Cancer Stats 2009, states that 40 per cent of Canadian women and 45 per cent of Canadian men will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime -- makes figuring out how to help our family and friends after their cancer diagnosis more important than ever. Doing one or all of the following seven steps will decrease some of the stress of a cancer diagnosis.

1. Ask the cancer patient what you can do to help. Different patients have different needs. Some will appreciate having meals delivered, others having childcare arranged.
2. If your friend or loved one seems hesitant to ask, consider your schedule, your special talents and abilities and make them an offer they can't refuse.
3. Let the cancer patient set the agenda for your conversations. Some will want to vent and need you to listen, while others may want a respite from their reality and want to hear about your life.
4. Offer to accompany your friend or relative to their doctor's appointments. Many medical associations encourage this because they realize that patients aren't always in the best head space to ask what needs to be asked, or for that matter to be relied upon to interpret what's just been said.
5. Stay available; don't disappear because of your discomfort with cancer. Many people reach out at the time of diagnosis and then disappear. When a friend or relative is diagnosed with cancer it's our opportunity to become our best selves so that we can help them in their hour of need. By paying it forward, some day someone will help you when you need it most.
6. Offer to be the point person for communicating the cancer patient's status and progress. People facing a life threatening illness need to put their precious resources into their treatment, and might not have the energy to keep their network in the loop.
7. Don't be a Pollyanna about the patient's situation and conversely, don't repeat many people's mistaken premise that people cause their illness. A cancer patient has enough to deal with without adding guilt into the mix.

Every person with cancer has unique needs and requirements for assistance. How much help is needed, and when, will vary from person to person. But the thing that is constant is the need for community, for people who can help the patient feel that they are more than their diagnosis and that they'll get through this.

Kathy Santini is a 10-year cancer survivor, a life, business and results coach, the owner of Arbutus Coaching and the author of the e-book, Live Your Best Life Now! The Cancer Survivors Guide to Creating a Happy and Meaningful Life, available at http://arbutuscoaching.com/products.php One reviewer wrote, "Thank you for such an AWESOME book and workshop (but especially the book since it goes more in-depth than what you could get into given the time constraints of the workshop.) This is EXACTLY what I needed at this time. EXACTLY!"

Kathy's happy and meaningful life after cancer has involved: spending four months sailing through the Caribbean and Bahamas, doing humanitarian work in Sierra Leone, nursing her dying mother at her sister's home, working as an editor for NATO in a war-torn Kabul Afghanistan and running a successful coaching and speaking business.



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There is a strong move within the medical communities and government bodies such as the US FDA to make sure that people who are ill are not subject to scam claims about alternative cancer remedies and natural cancer treatments.

This would be fair enough if the medical community was actually offering treatments that worked. Unfortunately some of them have been shown to be medically ineffective. An important medical paper in 2004 showed that chemotherapy only increased the average 5 year survival rates by just over 2% (reference below).

Chemotherapy for breast cancer, for example, has an average increased 5-year survival rate of only 1.5%. A number of cancers (soft tissue sarcoma, melanoma of skin, uterus, prostate, bladder, kidney and multiple myeloma) were shown to have no increase in survival due to chemotherapy at all.

Doctors often talk about patients having unrealistic expectations about the efficacy of drugs, but to my way of thinking they only have themselves to blame. None of the doctors I work closely with in our medical school had ever spoken to patients about the low effectiveness of chemotherapy. In fact only one of them knew exactly how ineffective the drugs actually were.

If we take the breast cancer example again - women with breast cancer have a 78-85% 5-year survival rate in Australia, of which only 1.5% was due to chemotherapy. None of my friends who have had breast cancer were told that the average length of survival for breast cancer is 20 years nor about the high survival rate, nor about the low impact of chemotherapy. All believed that they needed chemotherapy to have any hope of survival.

The flip side of this terrible situation is that if only 1.5% of survivors are due to chemotherapy, then 76.5-83.5% is due to other things. Surgery and radiotherapy will play some part. But so too, does the body's natural ability to heal. If you really want to keep on living it makes sense to spend a little time exploring those aspects of healing, known to science and to our cultural traditions which will improve our quality of life, and hopefully, our longevity.

There is much known to science but a lot of this is tucked away in health psychology text books and journals. Some of this is known through pop psychology but may not be accurate. For example, it is often believed that to survive you have to be positive all the time. My own research has shown that this is not the case, however being positive most of the time is one of the characteristics of survivors.

Governmental bodies and anti-scam scientists are particularly hard on those who promote supplements suggesting that all people are after is making money out of the sick. No doubt this is sometimes the case. But what excuse is there for promoting chemotherapy as THE answer to cancer when it only increases survival by an average of just over 2% and in some cases, is not of benefit at all. Who benefits from this? Who is paid the big money?

As a researcher I have to say that it is highly unlikely that just one supplement, herb, fancy berry from the highlands of somewhere will be sufficient to make the difference of life or death. However there are some good scientific pointers to suggest that avoiding sugar and flour which feed cancers, adding anti cancer foods of brightly colored vegetables and fruit, adding some supplements proven to be advantageous, taking regular exercise, and undertaking certain self care activities would definitely be positive to health. And many regions around the world have their traditional cancer remedies, their natural cancer treatments which might be good to add to your overall regimen. Check out all of your options and don't let yourself be bullied by anyone.

Reference: Morgan G, Ward R, Barton M. The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies. Clinical Oncology 2004;16:549-560. This is reasonably readable and anyone with cancer should get a copy (try your university medical library - they can download it for you). It isn't very chatty, mostly just how they came to the figures for each of the main cancers.



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Chemotherapy is the procedure to treat cancer cells by using chemicals. Cancer cells have the ability to divide rapidly. But in this procedure, both the good and bad cells are being killed although it is really aimed at killing the cancerous ones. There are a number of ways chemotherapy drugs are taken. It may be by mouth, by injection on the muscle or vein, by catheter inserted into our bladder, abdomen, chest cavity, spinal cord, liver and brain.

When oral chemotherapy is done, a patient is given a certain dosage to take. It may be daily, weekly or monthly. Most medications are advised to be taken on an empty stomach. There are times drinking juice is also recommended after taking in a medicine. The downside of an oral therapy is the possibility of a patient not to follow the prescribed dosage and time of medication. If done so, it may result to a less effective treatment or more severe consequences.

Intravenous chemotherapy is done through inserting a catheter. It may be inserted on any one of his body parts such as bladder, abdomen or chest. Every time a patient visits the clinic/hospital for treatment, the device where the medicine is placed is just inserted into the opening of the catheter. This enables the medicine to efficiently flow to the bloodstream of the body.

Injection chemotherapy is done usually after doing the intravenous chemotherapy. The patient undergoes a series of injection of medicines. Depending on the dosing cycle instructions, it is done a number of times in a day. The patient can do this procedure either at home or in a clinic.

Topical chemotherapy is done when a patient has skin cancer. The patient is advised to apply cream chemotherapy drugs on a cancerous area. Again, the frequency and dosage is determined by the oncologist. The patient is also advised not to be in direct contact with anybody/anything within the first hour of application. Some cream dries up faster but others take around an hour.

Doctors usually recommend full cycle chemotherapy. A full cycle is taken six times. But this is still dependent on the advice of the oncologist. Some of them may only recommend that some patients may only have three. Though this only happens when the patient's cancer cell isn't that fast-growing. The most common side effect of chemotherapy known to us is hair loss. There are other side effects of chemo. This includes nausea or vomiting, appetite loss, anemia, weakened immune system, easy bruising or bleeding, kidney and heart muscle damage, infertility and stop of menstrual cycle. The number of these after-effects is the reason why cancer patients sometimes want a partial chemo instead. Some of them think that the reaction of their body to the treatment is just unbearable.


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Cancer is a villain that is the second leading cause of death in our world amounting to one in four deaths. It is a frightening disease and with it being so prevalent each of us cannot help but wonder if we could be a victim at some stage of our life.

The normal treatment options which include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are now being joined by something very simple and effective in the war against cancer. And that something is proper exercise that works the muscular system of the human body.

Everybody is aware that our muscles are necessary for our all over body strength But not many people are aware that our muscle tissue also has the important role of being the body's armor and defense system against sickness and disease.

Researchers are working to understand how physical activity helps fight cancer and also helps the body recover after harsh cancer treatment. Their findings so far suggest that a proper exercise program offers many benefits either during treatment or afterwards.
Here are some of the benefits:

- Conventional cancer treatments cause extreme fatigue. Exercise helps fight this, calms anxiety and makes people feel better about themselves and their bodies.

- Exercise reduces blood levels of insulin a hormone that causes cells to divide and grow more quickly. High levels of this hormone create a higher risk of cancer and a much higher rate of recurrence and death.

To further fight cancer the immune system must be strengthened and this is done by strengthening the muscular system. A proper exercise program made up mostly of strength training exercise will protect and preserve muscle tissue which is crucially important for optimal immune function in two major ways:

- The cells of the immune system use the amino acid glutamine as a fuel source. The storage sites are muscle tissue so, the more toned muscle tissue you have the more glutamine you can store and the better your immune system works.

- Muscle tissue is where our body stores protein which is essential to produce new antibodies and white blood cells to fight off infections and find and destroy cancer cells. This protein store is important when fighting illness as the body uses it at a much faster rate. More toned muscle tissue means more stored protein is kept as a reserve to draw on when needed.

When the correct level of intensity (degree of effort) is used when exercising, the heart rate is raised speeding the circulation of antibodies and killer 'T' cells through the body to help destroy the cancer cells.
After an exercise session white blood cell counts can be raised anywhere from 50-300% triggering a repair mechanism to help restore the immune system after it has been damaged by chemotherapy.

Proper exercise is now considered so beneficial that cancer experts are even encouraging patients to begin or resume a program under supervision of a fitness professional while treatment is under way.

So, forget the notion that your muscles are just for looks. They are essential for the healthy functioning of the immune system and the ability to withstand and recover from disease. By putting them to work you just might emerge from a battle with cancer stronger, healthier and with a better quality of life than when you started it.

Do you want to discover the secret to rejuvenating your body, regaining lost vitality and improving the quality of your life? Download my free ebook "I've Found the Fountain of Youth - Let Me Show You Too!" Ways to Look Younger. If you are looking to lose weight permanently go to Fitness Weight Loss for a free ebook and check out the new Hot Metabolism Fitness System.



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