Cancer Radiation Therapy - Its Principles and Benefits

Cancer Radiation Therapy - Its Principles and Benefits

Radiation therapy is considered one of vital methods in treating cancer, along with chemotherapy and surgery. It is presently utilized to localized hard tumors like cancer s of skin, breast, brain or cervix and can be used also to treat lymphoma and leukemia.Radiation therapy works for damaging DNA within the cancer cells, it makes them incapable to multiply and grow. The radiation is usually given with the intention of demolishing the tumor and then cures the disease. Though radiation is intended for the cancer cells, it is unavoidable that the non-cancerous or normal cells that are nearby the tumor are also affected of the radiation that causes the damage of normal cells. The objective of the radiation therapy is for maximizing tumor cells as minimizing the coverage to the normal and healthy cells.

Majority of the forms of radiation are not capable of attacking cancer cells purposely and therefore they cause harm to normal tissues around the tumor. The unfavorable effects are the main factors limiting the progress of radiation treatment. On the other hand, Cyber Knife therapy and proton therapy are technically advanced types of radiotherapy, which cause small harm to normal tissues since they extremely focus in the cancer.


The efficiency of radiotherapy may be improved by both radio protectors like ginseng, whey protein, glutathione, and shark oil and radio sensitizers like genistein, green tea, curcumin and hyperthermia. Overall, the utilization of particular drugs,nutritional supplements and other techniques can avoid and assist to improve and cure side effects that are caused by radiation, therefore, develop the efficiency of radiotherapy

• For the reason that there is no solo therapy that can give a perfect and complete treatment for the patient who acquires solid tumors, the radiation is usually utilized with the combination of surgery and chemotherapy for the improvement of the success of the treatment. Ionizing Radiation is a radiation utilized for the cancer treatment because it is forming ions as the radiation passes by the tissue. The ions are atoms which acquires the electrical charges during the gaining or loosing of the electron. Ions may cause the diminishing of cells or the genetic changes either indirectly or directly. The direct result can cause the changes in molecular structures of the biological important molecules, just like the DNA.

• ‡Indirect actions of the radiation may occur if it happens to interact with the water molecules within the cells that result with the making of high reactive and not stable free radicals that instantly reacts with bimolecular within the nearby areas. This damage will lead to diminish cell by means of two processes; the 1st process is known to be the apoptosis, it can result to diminish the cell in just a small number of radiation hours. The 2nd process is the radiation-induced breakout of the cell division and it inhibits the cellular proliferation that leads to a cell death. There are numerous enzymatic along with non-enzymatic antioxidant defensive mechanisms that are existing in the cells and they stop the excessive damaging by scavenging the reactive species of oxygen.