Alternative medicine refers to a form of treatment, which is very different from allopathic or the generally accepted medicine practice. There are various forms of alternative medicine. They go by the names of faith healing, magneto therapy, natural therapy, aroma therapy, reiki, gem therapy, ayurveda, herbal therapy and homeopathy.

Now, more and more people are turning towards alternative medicine by moving away from allopathic. This has often resulted in the medicine community taking up the issue against practitioners of alternative medicine. In many countries the forms of alternative medicine are not approved or recognized. Practitioners of alternative medicine cannot practice it on the general public. However, in private, they can practice alternative medicine.

However, there are instances of alternative medicine found to be useful to treat psychological and emotional problems. Nowadays, alternative medicine is suggested for people with various tendencies since it involves a lot of counseling.

Alternative medicine is also employed as a complementary exercise to cure people suffering from various forms of cancer. It has been proven that alternative medicine has positive effect on the human mind and can deliver results. Alternative medicine stands on the theory of spiritualism to cure the disease rather than addressing the physical properties and reasons. Alternative medicine is practiced in a number of traditional countries in the Orient region.

Treating cancer with drugs is known as chemotherapy. These anti-cancer drugs are used to kill the cancer cells. Currently cytotoxic drugs are generally referred as to ‘chemotherapy’, affecting the fast dividing cells. Basically the chemotherapy drugs start impeding the cell division. There are many ways this could be achieved, one would be by duplicating the DNA or separating the recently created chromosomes, etc.

Mostly chemotherapy targets all rapidly dividing cells. By doing this it also damages the normal cells, but then the normal cells can repair the DNA damage where as the cancer affected cell cannot. Therefore chemotherapy damages the healthy tissues like the intestinal lining which has a high replacing rate, but eventually they repair themselves. Sometimes certain drug works better in some combination with another drug rather than alone, this is known as combination chemotherapy.

Generally leukemia and lymphoma require a high dosage of chemotherapy with total body irradiation (TBI). The bone marrow is destroyed during this treatment and so is ability of the body to recover. Blood stem cell harvesting is done prior to this cancer treatment so as to allow recovery after the treatment is over. This process is commonly known as autologous stem cell transplantation.

Other than cytotoxic chemotherapy and targeted therapy, Hormonal therapy today is one of the most looked up treatments of cancer. This treatment works by changing the endocrine system by injecting specific hormones in it. These include specifically steroid hormones which hinder the productivity of cancer hormones. The reason for this is that the steroid hormones are strong drivers of gene expression in some cancer cells, thereby changing the specific genes using specific hormones could stop the growth of cancers.

Basically using this cancer treatment the growth of the cancer aimed to be blocked by inducing some hormones. Prostate cancer and breast cancer are examples of hormone sensitive tumors. Therefore estrogen or testosterone either blocked or removed could be an additional treatment to breast and prostate cancers. Cancers that arise from hormone responsive tissue e.g. breast or prostate could be easily treated using hormonal therapy.

Hormonal therapy is also used in certain types of chemotherapy. Oncology is another example where hormonal therapy is used. Here tamoxifen, an estrogen-responsive modulator is used for treating breast cancer. Aromatase inhibitors, a completely another class of hormonal agents are now being used extensively for the treatment of the disease.

Radiation therapy is often today used as a treatment for cancer. But how many of us know exactly how does it actually work? In radiation therapy, radiation is used for destroying the cancer cells and there by shriveling the tumor. This therapy could be administered either internally using brachytherapy or externally using an external beam radio-therapy (EBRT). The main aim of radiation is to impair the cancer cells in the targeted area by disrupting their genetics so that their growth is stopped. Radiation therapy is also known as radio-therapy, X-ray therapy or irradiation. In radio-therapy both the cancer cells as well as the normal cells are damaged, but the normal damaged cells recover and start functioning like normal.

Nowadays cancer radiation therapy is used for treating almost all types of solid tumors, from breast cancer to prostate or leukemia and lymphoma. The dose of radiation to be given is decided by the doctors after examining various important factors like the radio-sensitivity of the cancer type, the tissues and organs near the affected are that could be damaged by radiation. Therefore radiation therapy cancer treatment has its share of side-effects and the patient should be aware of it and should consult it with his/her doctor.

Theoretically if the tumor is removed completed from the affected body by surgery, then cancer could be cured, but unfortunately in reality this is not the case. For example if the cancer has spread to other parts of the body before the surgery then it becomes almost impossible to cure the disease by surgery. According to cancer progression in the Halstedian model, the tumor first grows locally, then metastasizes by spreading to the lymph nodes and then finally to the other parts of the body. Due to this surgery became popular for the small cancers, but these small tumors are being now recognized as metastatic.

Prostatectomy (Prostate cancer) and mastectomy (breast cancer) are some examples of surgery. The major aim during a surgical procedure is to eradicate either the entire organ or just the tumor. Being invisible to the human eye, even one cancer cell can multiply to grow into a tumor. This process is known as recurrence. Due to this reason doctors ask for a pathological report of the specimen to find out if there are some healthy tissues present, there by reducing the chances of the cancer cell being left behind in the patient’s body.

Targeted therapy treatment works on the basis of blocking the growth of the cancer. This is achieved by targeting specific molecules that are required for carcinogenesis and the growth of the tumor. Since this treatment affects specific targeted molecules instead of all the rapidly dividing cells, it is far more effective and the damaged caused to the normal cells unlike the current treatments is much lesser.

This cancer treatment was started in the late 90’s and ever since its first use it has undoubtedly made a substantial impact on cancer treatments. In one type of targeted therapy, small peptides are used. They cling onto the cell surface receptors or the affected area surrounding the tumor. These peptides act like “homing devices” and they have radio-nuclides attached to them. These radio-nuclides start decaying and eventually killing the cancer cell.

Another type of targeted therapy is the Photodynamic therapy (PDT). This is a ternary treatment having three important components a photosensitizer, tissue oxygen, and light (often using lasers). PDT is often used for basal cell carcinoma (BCC) or lung cancer treatment and they are also very helpful in eradicating traces of cancer tissues after a surgery is performed for removing a large tumor.

Cancer immunotherapy uses ones own immune system to help it fight cancer. Basically in this therapy the immune system is made to recognize and then to attack and destroy the tumor cells that cause the disease. This is can be achieved in two ways either by immunization where in the immune system is trained or by administrating therapeutic antibody where the antibodies are recruited to the immune system for destroying the tumor cells.

Basically cancer immunotherapy is a diversified set of therapeutic strategies devised to help our own immune system to fight against the tumor. Since our immune system is so complex and so effective that once trained many types of tumor cells are destroyed by our own immune system itself. Intravesical BCG immunotherapy is one of the modern methods of producing an immune response against cancer tumor for superficial bladder cancer.

There is an extensive research currently going on for creating vaccines to produce a specific immune response against tumors. Example Sipuleucel-T, it is something like a vaccine which strategizes in loading ‘prostatic acid phosphatase’ peptides in dendritic cells of the patient, so as to generate a specific immune response against prostate cancer cells.

Over 13% of the total worlds population die from cancer and yet many of us don’t know what exactly cancer is. Cancer is a collection of diseases where cells are constantly growing and dividing way beyond the limits which could be stated as normal (these cell are called aggressive cells), cells could also start destroying tissues next to them (known as invasive cells) or start spreading over to other parts of the body (know as metastatic cells).

Over the years after a lot of research, various treatments have been discovered by the scientists and many treatments are still on experimental basis. These treatments differ according to the cancer stage and the general state of the patient. To state a few treatments would be surgery, monoclonal antibody therapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, chemotherapy or other methods.

The aim of these cancer treatments is to remove the cancer from the affected part of the body without damaging the other parts. At time surgery could achieve this, but as we stated the properties of cancer cells earlier which are aggressive, invasive and metastatic often reduces the effectiveness of surgery. All treatments have their pros and cons, but the doctors always aim to eliminate this disease by choosing the appropriate treatment.

All across the world people are realizing the seriousness of this problem and are joining hands together to create various means of awareness among the masses. Cancer special centers and cancer hospitals have been setup by people all across the world to help the affected ones. They provide them help by supporting them in all means, financially, professionally and domestic help etc. As we know cancer treatment are very expensive, there are centers specifically to help financing the cancer patient.

Now the question comes to your mind how would you detect if someone is infected with cancer or not? Here are some common symptoms that one should look for to find out if someone is infected with cancer or not.

Tiredness (fatigue):
Feeling exhausted and finds it difficult to complete everyday chores, feeling a lot of weakness or cannot remember simple things and finds the memory decreasing.

Eating problems or Changes to your sense of taste:
Doesn’t feel like eating or even hates the sight and smell of food. One might feel change in their taste of food.

Feeling sick (nausea):
Sometimes Cancer causes nausea. Like feeling sick or feel like vomiting.

Anxiety and depression:
Anxiety and depression are two very common symptoms to cancer. Your concentration and sleep can be affected by feeling depressed, and in turn you start feeling lethargic and tired.

Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases that are caused by a result of unrestrained disambiguation of cells. The risk of being affected by cancer comes with the increase in age. There are various types of cancers of which some can be treated by chemotherapy and surgery. But the ones which are incurable often result in death of the patient. Medical and health practitioners have devised alternative means of curing cancer which includes: homeopathy, aromatherapy, ayurveda and yoga.

Homeopathic treatment involves the cessation of the rapid growth of cells by appropriate remedies. Inner peace and calm act as catalysts in the treatment. Aromatherapy is used as a regular diagnosis as well as a corresponding treatment. It includes curative use of oils extracted from plants. Under the ayurvedic treatment of cancer, the body’s immunity system is strengthened through various remedies. Yoga leads to rejuvenation of the body and helps in healing. Acupuncture is yet another remedy for cancer treatment. The alternative methods are being worked upon by the medical practitioners as they pose fewer side effects than the conventional methods that are available. These can also be combined with standard medicines. These treatments create a healthy inner self that further aids in the diagnosis of the disease.