There is a very real cost to having Chemotherapy - it can cause more tumours to form, research has shown it helps tumours to return, it builds inflammation levels in the body, kills gut bacteria (thus destroying your immune system), while also destroying essential vitamin D levels. And people with cancer and low plasma vitamin D levels, survive least.
1. Chemo causes more tumours to form
Yet another research study provides more evidence that chemotherapy drugs may cause cancer. In this case chemo causes more cancer tumours to form.
Several cancer chemotherapy drugs actually cause cancer stem cells to start growing rapidly, say researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Amherst.
In a study led by molecular biologist Michele Markstein of Amherst, along with Norbert Perrimon of Harvard, they showed that several chemotherapy drugs had a very serious side-effect: They made matters worse in the longer-term!
While in the short-term the chemo drugs stopped the cancer tumour mass, "the same drug could have the opposite effect on stem cells in the same animal" said Markstein.
This particular research study used Fruit flies (Drosophila) and was reported in the March 2014 edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 14 different FDA chemotherapy drugs were used - half caused the same problem. Namely that non-tumour stem cells (the basic repair cells of the body) were encouraged to multiply. This resulted in new tumours in other locations. This overgrowth occured after triggering the JAK-STAT pathway.
2. Chemo helps cancers re-grow
This follows research in 2012 from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that showed chemotherapy could actually cause a cancer to return. Their research showed that chemo caused a cancer cell to produce a protein (WNT16B) which, in the cells that survived, made them stronger and more able to resist further attacks. Many articles were written at that time on how Chemo drugs ’backfired’. Peter Nelson M.D. who co-authored that study, talked of the results being completely unexpected. "WNT16B when secreted, would interact with nearby tumor cells and cause them to grow, invade, and importantly resist subsequent therapy", said Nelson. "Our results indicate that damage responses in benign cells ... may directly contribute to enhanced tumor growth kinetics". (To read more: Click Here)
Other studies with mice have shown that the cancer chemo drug doxorubicin caused nearby cells to start growing rapidly, through activation of the TNF-alpha pathway.
3. Chemo cannot kill the heart of a cancer - cancer stem cells
Also in 2012, a number of cancer centres proved beyond doubt that at the heart of cancers lay cancer stem cells, and while chemo drugs could ’knock a tumour back’ 30 to 70% no drug was currently available in the world that could kill cancer stem cells. "But at least now. we know what we are trying to do now", said lead researcher Luis Parada of the University of Texas, South Western Medical School.
But knocking a tumour back comes at a very clear cost. Cancer thrives on inflammation in the body, it is how it spreads. And having chemotherapy increases your levels of inflammation.
While you are knocking the tumour back, you are making your body more inflamed, you are destroying essential commensal gut bacteria, and you are destroying your vitamin D levels. And people with low levels of vitamin D, survive least.
Go To: Vitamin D. Are you getting enough?
Patients about to have chemotherapy should be given a very clear summary of the real risks they are about to take.