TREATING CANCER
Corticosteroids are involved in regulating many bodily functions in a healthy body. These include reducing inflammation, regulating mood, and controlling the balance of water and nutrients from food. When suffering from cancer, both the tumour itself and the treatment can negatively impact these processes, causing harmful side effects such as nausea and fatigue. Synthetic steroids can help restore balance and combat certain cancers such as lymphoma in a number of ways. They can be administered before treatment to help bolster a patient’s appetite. During treatment they can be used to combat an allergic reaction to another drug, reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, or to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy. This latter aspect can be achieved in lymphoma patients by combining steroid treatment with chemotherapy treatment, as steroids can destroy lymphocytes. Sometimes the steroid treatment strategy can even be effective enough on its own to tackle specific types of cancers, meaning that chemotherapy isn’t required.