05:51 PM PDT on Sunday, June 20, 2004
Michele Voso looks like she's having a
relaxing spa treatment, and if anyone
deserves some pampering, it's this four
time cancer survivor. "I had Hodgkin's disease, lung
cancer and twice I had breast
cancer," she said. A keystone of most cancer treatment is
chemotherapy, which has well known side
effects, including hair loss, nausea and
sever anemia, what's not well known is
what chemo does to your energy. "Fatigue really doesn't say it.
There's a heaviness about you and a
discomfort that is very hard to deal with.
You don't have a zest in your life. It's
hard to get yourself motivated," said
Michelle. Almost every single patient undergoing
chemotherapy experiences fatigue,"
said Dr. Andrew Vickers of Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Exercise can help. So can stimulant
drugs but not for every patient. "A small minority, maybe 8 to 12
percent, really never get their energy
levels back again," said Dr. Vickers. That's where acupuncture comes in. It's
now being tried as a relief for
chemo-fatigue. A small study of 30 cancer
patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering used
acupuncture for 6 to 8 weeks. "On average their fatigue scores
fell by 30 or 40 percent and that's what
we targeted to be a promising
improvement," said Dr. Vickers. While it didn't immediately restore
Michelle's energy, the treatment has
helped. "A little more lighter in your
mental attitude and when your mental
attitude feels better you tend to want to
explore more and do more and that
translates into energy," she said. The next step is to do what's called a
placebo-controlled study, meaning some
cancer survivors get real acupuncture and
others get needles inserted in places that
are not true acupuncture sites for
comparison.
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