Side Effects of Chemotherapy

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 makes the most visible 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. Why does hair loss appear to begin with? Well, chemotherapy consists of a treatment relying on chemicals that are meant either to inhibit or kill the cells that grow or replicate too fast.

The trouble is that the treatment is directed towards all the cells in the body that have this characteristic disregarding whether they are cancer cells or healthy cells. 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 of us know something about, we may not know that alopecia is only temporary. Alopecia stops once the treatment is over. Although there may be changes in color and texture, hair will grow back again normally.

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 carry less drug to the hair follicles and this means that ones 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.

Filed Under: Chemotherapy