Cancer Physical Side Effects How to deal with them?
- Admin
- May 21, 2017
- 2 min read
To keep it short and simple, in this post I’m going to talk only about the physical side effects after the treatment.
Cancer treatments have several side effects. They can be for:
Short-term: usually during the treatment and few months after the end of the treatment.
Long-term: some of the side effect lasts 10 years after the treatment.
Persistent: In few cases mostly with survivors treated with radiation, side effects can manifest 5 to 10 years after the end of treatment
Here is a short list of the most common side effects:
70% of cancer patient deal with fatigue (can be extreme to mild) moths to years after treatment.
30% have sleep disturbance up to 10 years.
49% of cancer colon survivors suffer from chronic diarrhea up to 5 years.
47% have a chronic pain in the small joints and 44% have joint stiffness.
20% of cancer testicul survivors lose their hearing in some point.
50% have shortness in breath and long-term high risk of pulmonary fibrosis.
And the list is really long and not fun. With no doubt survivors life are strongly affected by these conditions:
Limited mobility.
Decrease in physical strength and productivity.
In some cases, the survivor loose his independence to be able to perform everyday activities.
Motivation and self-confidence can be low.
And an overall quality of life change.
Many cancer survivors suffer these problems and are unaware of no pharmacologic[1] practices that may help.[2]
Healthy diet adjusted to some specific conditions, fitness program specially designed, special yoga practices, acupuncture, physiotherapy, cognitive techniques for pain management can help the survivor to deal with the side effects, if not heal them.
In the next posts will detail each of palliative treatments. To not miss any of those posts, please add your email address to our email list and will send you the update on this subject.
[1] Also called palliative treatment
[2] For clarification, I’m talking about treating the side effects and not the cancer.
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