When cancer starts to spread throughout the body, one course of treatment is chemotherapy?

Question

One very obvious effect of chemotherapy is that people generally lose all of their hair a few weeks after the drugs enter their system. Why do you think chemotherapy drugs cause a person's hair to fall out?

Answer 1

Not all people treated with chemo will lose their hair. It all depends on the patient, the drugs, and the doses.

Cancer is caused by your own cells becoming mutated and abnormal. Chemotherapy attempts to target cancerous cells, but it also harms many other healthy cells. Cancerous cells multiply rapidly, and chemotherapy affects that rapid growth. Unfortunately, the normal cells in your hair follicles also divide rapidly in their normal, healthy condition, and chemotherapy interrupts that process, sometimes leading to hair loss.

Answer 2

My wife was diagnosed with colon cancer about a year ago. She had surgery to remove it and after words she had 26 doses of radiation and chemo every other week for a total of 8 doses, but her hair never fell out. She was told by the oncologist that if you have very thick hair (which she does), it may thin but it is not likely all the hair will fall out. As mentioned above, it attacks not only the cancerous cells but also some healthy cells, like the hair follicles. Hope you get through your treatment okay...good luck. Oh, and also, my wife says to help get rid of the nausia, eat peppermints...not sure how that works, but she said it really helped.

Answer 3

Not all chemo drugs cause hair to fall out. The chemo drugs affect all cell growth, not just the malignant cells, therefore, hair folicles, will go into a dormant stage. Also nerves can be affected, as well as fingernails, digestive tract, etc.. That's why people undergoing chemo may also suffer from nausea, mouth sores, neurological pain and the newly diagnosed Chemo Brain.

Answer 4

the chemicals in chemotherapy kills cancer cells. unfortunately it also kills some healthy cells like the follicle cells that holds the hair therefore causing it to fall out. there are a lot of other side effects to chemo treatment besides hair falling out, like nausea, loss of appetite, etc.

Answer 5

Well chemotherapy not only kills cancerous cell but it also kill some other cells that are not altered. Wtihout good healthy cells then you can't make poteins, so I guess your body looses strength and can't maintain hair anymore.

Answer 6

http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page=320

http://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/Treatments/Chemotherapy/Sideeffects/General

hope these help!