Tag Archives: Advanced Cancer Treatment

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Living with Cancer

The Benefits of Exercise during Cancer Treatments

Two people running on a beach.
Exercising to Improve Quality of Life

Perhaps you’re curious about whether or not you should continue or begin an exercise regimen while you’re undergoing cancer treatments. Many patients wonder about this, and you’ll be happy to know that there are many benefits that go along with getting adequate exercise, even while you’re having chemotherapy or radiation or for that matter even the Issels Treatment.

Among those benefits, you can expect to experience:

* Improved quality of life

* More energy throughout the day

* Less fatigue

* Decreased anxiety

* Increased self-esteem

Exercise provides you with the tools you need to build a stronger body. When it’s paired with good nutrition, you’ll find that those two things alone help you feel better than you have in a long time. Check with Your Doctor Of course, before you begin any exercise routine, whether you’re currently having cancer treatments, or if you’re in remission, it’s important to check with your doctor. He or she will be able to provide you with some suggested exercises that will work well for you at the stage you’re in right now.

Workout Intensity

If you’ve been exercising for years, and you’ve been nervous about slowing down while you’re undergoing cancer treatments, don’t worry. Most likely, you’ll only have to decrease your intensity for a little while. Once you give your body an adequate amount of time to adjust to the changes, you’ll be able to build your intensity back up again. A solid exercise routine is a big part of the foundation to your good health. After all, you’re working to improve your health now, as well as in the future.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Targeted Cell Therapy Could End Need for Chemotherapy

New Artificial T Cells
New Artificial T-Cells

Immunotherapy is changing the cancer treatment landscape. Advancements in targeted cell therapy may make chemotherapy obsolete within our lifetime. The biggest problem with traditional cancer treatments — chemotherapy, radiation and surgery — is that they destroy healthy tissue along with diseased cancerous tissue. By shifting the battle field from the tissue level to the cellular level, targeted cell therapy aims to destroy only cancerous cells, leaving healthy cells whole and untouched.

Like other immunotherapy cancer treatments, targeted cell therapy makes use of the body’s own disease-fighting mechanism, the immune system. The immune system employs two methods of fighting cancer and other pathogens that attack the body:

  • The immune system floods the area under attack with antibodies, free-floating proteins that search out and lock onto invading pathogens.
  • T-cells generated by the immune system seek out and destroy invading pathogens.

While some immunotherapy treatments focus on boosting the effectiveness of the body’s immune system, targeted cell therapy concentrates on the immune system’s most lethal soldiers, T-cells. The cancer community is improving its ability to direct T-cell receptors to target, bind to and destroy very specific types of cells, including cancer cells.

As reported previously, the British company Immunocore has engineered an artificial T-cell receptor that readily binds cancer cells to T-cells without interfering with healthy cells. Immunocore’s artificial receptor differentiates cancerous from healthy cells by recognizing the unique patterns of small proteins that protrude from the surface of different types of cells.

Issels Integrated Oncology offers two Autologous Dendritic Cell Vaccines that harness the body’s immune system and its cancer-annihilating T-cells to fight cancer at the cellular level.