Chemotherapy Has Long Term Impact

Chemotherapy is poison that is pumped into a patient in an attempt to kill cancer cells. However, the poison is indiscriminate and kills cells in organs that it is not intented to kill… like the brain. Researchers have found that chemotherapy can affect brain function for ten years after the chemotherapy treatments are completed!

Chemo has long-term impact on brain function

“Chemotherapy causes changes in the brain’s metabolism and blood flow that can last as long as 10 years, a discovery that may explain the mental fog and confusion that affect many cancer survivors, researchers said on Thursday. The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that women who had undergone chemotherapy five to 10 years earlier had lower metabolism in a key region of the frontal cortex. Women treated with chemotherapy also showed a spike in blood flow to the frontal cortex and cerebellum while performing memory tests, indicating a rapid jump in activity level, the researchers said in a statement about their study. ‘The same area of the frontal lobe that showed lower resting metabolism displayed a substantial leap in activity when the patients were performing the memory exercise,’ said Daniel Silverman, the UCLA associate professor who led the study. ‘In effect, these women’s brains were working harder than the control subjects’ to recall the same information,’ he said in a statement.”