It’s almost unthinkable. Disturbing new research has found the chemotherapy so many women rely on to kill breast cancer could instead be causing them more harm.
Imagine this…
You’re being treated for cancer. It looks like the treatment is working. You and your doctor are thrilled with the results. The chemotherapy shrinks the tumor and appears to be killing off the cancer cells.
Sure, you’re battling the drug’s energy-sapping side effects along with brain fog, nausea, and vomiting. But you figure it will all be worth it in the end because the chemotherapy is WORKING.
Meanwhile, deep inside your body, in a place you can’t see and your doctor will likely never check, the treatment may actually be sabotaging your recovery. The chemotherapy could, in fact, be giving the cancer a new place to hide and a second chance to spread.
In other words, the treatment meant to save your life could instead be helping the cancer gain an upper hand.
Chemo led to leaky blood vessels
If you’ve survived a fight with cancer, you know how it feels to be waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Your doctor says the cancer is gone. Everyone insists it’s time to get back to living your life. Except you can’t. Not quite.
Because you can’t escape the nagging feeling that the cancer isn’t really gone. You worry that it’s still there… hiding… and waiting for a chance to strike again.
And you aren’t just being paranoid, either. You have reason to worry. Because cancer does come back in up to one in three survivors.
Now a new animal study has uncovered one way the disease could get that chance. And it turns out it’s the chemotherapy treatment you used to cure it in the first place.
Here’s how that can happen…
Your blood vessel walls are tightly packed with cells. And they’re dense like that for a reason. It helps stop anything that doesn’t belong from passing through.
But, as you probably already know, chemotherapy doesn’t just kill cancer cells. The drugs can damage healthy cells too.
And the new study found that chemo can weaken your blood vessel walls leaving them a little less tightly packed. This allows some space to open up between those cells leading to “leaky” blood vessels.
And I bet you can see where this is going next. The chemotherapy-weakened blood vessels are vulnerable to all kinds of cells slipping through now. Which includes, of course, cancer cells.
Can chemotherapy spread cancer?
In the experiments on mice, breast cancer cells were able to squeeze through those weakened walls. In fact, they “leaked” right into the lungs after treatment with chemotherapy.
If you didn’t know to look for them there, that hiding spot provides the cancer cells with a safe place to form new tumors. And those new tumors could potentially be much tougher to treat and harder to survive than the breast cancer itself.
Now, of course, this doesn’t mean you should refuse chemotherapy. Every cancer is different, and every person is unique. There’s no single solution that works best for everyone. Chemo could turn out to be a vital part of YOUR recovery.
But it is important you understand this newly confirmed chemotherapy risk when you’re making decisions about your treatment. And you should speak with your doctor about ALL the risks and benefits of any drug or treatment you elect to use to fight your own cancer.
Do some research on your own. Always get a second opinion, so you’re aware of all your options. (Click here to discover what they WON’T tell you about your cancer.)
Then, with your doctor’s help, you can decide what treatment is best for YOU.
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