Chemotherapy is a sort of treatment based on various combinations of drugs that are meant to reduce the growth of cancerous cells within a patient’s body. Many side effects of chemotherapy treatments are permanently reported by people undergoing a chemical intervention.
Hair loss or alopecia makes the most visible of the side effects of chemotherapy although we should not jump to the conclusion that any bald person has cancer. Why does hair loss appear to begin with? Well, chemotherapy is a treatment based on very powerful medication that inhibits and destroys cells with a rapid growth rate.
Even if only cancer should be eliminated, it has been impossible so far to target only the cancerous cells; in the present conditions all rapidly growing tissues will be destroyed. That is why, besides hair loss, many cancer patients may also have to cope with other side effects of chemotherapy related to their digestive system or skin.
long term side effects of chemotherapy
Even if this is one of the side effects of chemotherapy that most of us know something about, we may not know that alopecia is only temporary. Alopecia stops once the treatment is over. After a while, hair will start growing back but its texture and color may be a bit different from what you were used to having before.
There are a few side effects of chemotherapy to say the least, but their intensity could be reduced. You can prevent hair loss for instance by putting some cold compresses on the scalp and thus reduce the blood circulation in the area. As a result, the blood will carry less drug to the hair follicles and this means that one’s hair will be protected from the damage of the drug.
All in all, side effects of chemotherapy remain numerous and scientists do their best to discover ways to reduce them. Even if there may be solutions for a certain problem, lots of them still remain open to research. This means that you may be able to fight against alopecia because some drugs are more gentle with hair follicles, but this is not the case with all medications.