When diagnosed with cancer, many people turn towards a costly yet effective treatment known as chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is the use of surgery and radiation to shrink and stop the cancer from growing and spreading to other cells. Though chemo can also metastasize to other parts of the body, away from the original tumor. This can cause very harsh side effects such as nausea and pain to occur. It is difficult to treat this illnesses because many drugs can not be taken along with chemotherapy. Although chemotherapy is the most renowned cancer treatment, there are alternative cancer treatments being researched that could be more effective.
Precision medicine is a new approach to patient care, this up and coming practice allows doctors to treat
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Standard medical care is medicine that is commonly practiced by health professionals who hold a medical doctor or a doctor of osteopathy. Examples of complementary and alternative medicine include but are not limited to; acupuncture which would be used with a treatment, and an anticancer diet that would be used instead of treatment. Acupuncture is used to help cancer patients manage their symptoms, treat the side effects left by chemo or radiation therapy, boost red blood cell count, and enhance lymphocyte and natural killer cell activity (“Acupuncture”). This means acupuncture assists the body’s function in stimulating cell activity that provokes lymphocytes to bind to infected/tumorous cells to be able to inject cell killing proteins into them. In the article “Complementary and Alternative Medicine,” it states,
CAM [complementary and alternative medicine] therapies include a wide variety of botanicals and nutritional products, such as dietary supplements, herbal supplements, and vitamins. Many of these "natural" products are considered to be safe because they are present in, or produced by, nature. However, that is not true in all cases. In addition, some may affect how well other medicines work in your body. For example, the herb St. John 's wort, which some people use for depression, may cause certain anticancer drugs not to work as well as they