Chemotherapy Treatment with drugs that kill cancer cells or make them less active. Chemotherapy is a systemic therapy; this means it affects the whole body by going through the bloodstream.

The purpose of chemotherapy and other systemic treatments is to get rid of any cancer cells that may have spread from where the cancer started to another part of the body.

Chemotherapy is effective against cancer cells because the drugs love to interfere with rapidly dividing cells.

The side effects of chemotherapy come about because cancer cells aren't the only rapidly dividing cells in your body. The cells in your blood, mouth, intestinal tract, nose, nails, vagina, and hair are also undergoing constant, rapid division.

This means that the chemotherapy is going to affect them, too. Still, chemotherapy is much easier to tolerate today than even a few years ago. And for many women it's an important "insurance policy" against cancer re-ocurrence.

It's also important to remember that organs in which the cells do not divide rapidly, such as the liver and kidneys, are rarely affected by chemotherapy. And doctors and nurses will keep close track of side effects and can treat most of them to improve the way you feel.

From a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) perspective, TCM practitioners do not focus on treating the symptoms of chemotherapy, but rather, they work to restore balance and harmony within the body and key organs. They try and achieve this goal by encouraging healthy lifestyle changes like supporting a person’s body with diet modifications, herbal supplementation & stress reduction. In TCM, the goal is to provide maximum health support so that the body may better heal itself and maintain optimum health.*