Cancer is a devastating disease, even when it's caught early. Treatment can involve surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. While newer chemo drugs are being developed all the time, the chemicals that kill cancer also do a number on the body. The drugs are actually toxic, literally poisonous, but some work. At what cost though?
The ingredients in chemo drugs target cells that are dividing fast, usually these are the cancerous cells. They also kill other cells in the body, which leads to side effects like nausea and fatigue. Newer treatments for cancer involve precision medicines that target cancer cells at the molecular level and immunotherapy drugs that treat cancer cells like an invading virus and cause cell death. Check out this video for more information on what chemotherapy really does to the body.