Extra: chemotherapy and heart problems- my view

Last week it was reported in the UK press, including BBC Radio 4, that cancer survivors that have received chemotherapy now have a high incidence of heart problems.
Having looked at the details I feel there is one important element that hasn’t been taken into account, the emotional or spiritual response to the chemotherapy. I’ll explain in a while, but first what damage is the chemotherapy doing?
The heart can be affected in many ways by different chemotherapy drugs. The ones being reported on in this work were those that cause cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopathy is where the heart muscle cells are weakened (so called reversible) or where muscle cells die (so called irreversible). This leads to little or no symptoms for most people although if it is severe, symptoms of heart failure such as breathlessness, swelling of the ankles and belly can occur.
The drugs involved include doxorubicin, daunorubicin, idarubicin, epirubicin and mitoxantrone. These are drugs given in combination with many other drugs in treating lots of different cancers.
Another group of anticancer medicines, known as Mabs, such as Herceptin used in the treatment of breast cancer are also been shown to have this effect on the heart muscle.
So why is the heart muscle responding in this way? From a META Health point of view, the cells of the heart muscle react to a life event if the person experiences that event together a response of “being overwhelmed”.
If someone feels, either consciously or unconsciously, that the chemotherapy is overwhelming them. This means that the body automatically responds by placing the heart muscle cells in stress. Placing the heart muscle in stress causes it to lose cells. If this is severe and prolonged this can led to a weakening of the heart muscle, leading to the symptoms of heart failure.
This response either the drug itself or the process of having chemotherapy. It is a normal and natural response, however I strongly suspect that those people who experience cardiomyopathy after having these drugs have not fully processed this response and  have not been able to let it go. I would love to talk to them, to help them change their perception of that event and help them to heal.

So what can’t medicines do?

So what can’t medicines do?
To be honest, lots and lots….. They are brilliant at what they DO do but they only take symptoms away.  That’s all that medicines are designed to do.
They can’t get to any emotional, perception of life or psychological aspects of the disease. With the exception of some antibiotics, antivirals and antifungals medicines don’t remove the underlying cause of the disease being treated. Many medicines are used to try and halt the disease where it is and take away the symptoms.
Our understanding of how medicines work is on a chemical basis in the body. The medicines acts like a “key” and looks for a “lock” in the body’s tissue to interact with to have an effect on the body. However these “locks” are found in many different places in the body, doing different jobs. If the medicine has an effect in a tissue that is unwanted, these get called side effects.This is one reason why it is so difficult to develop medicines that are side effect free.
Medicines are good at what they do, but you can’t use a hammer to tight a loose screw though- can you? (Or if you can let me know as I am hopeless with a screwdriver!)

What do medicines do?

Well here’s my take on it….
Medicines only treat a symptom – that is all that medicines are designed to do.

Symptoms are generally bothersome, troublesome, painful, something we don’t want to go through.
A symptom is pain, it is swelling, it’s cough, it’s fever, it’s a skin allergy, it can be anything at all uncomfortable.
The kind of thing you complain to the doctor about.

Medicines are designed to take those symptoms away they are not designed to get to the root cause in the same way EFT and other energy psychology techniques can. Medicines are very, very good at what they do but they are not the answer to everything.

Each time a medicine is prescribed the benefits of reducing the symptoms, making the patient feel better, prolonging life or getting the body out of a dangerous situation has to be balanced against the risks associated