Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.
- You are here:
- Home »
- Blog »
- Multiple Myeloma »
- Myeloma- ASCT = Chemo Fatigue not MM
Myeloma- ASCT = Chemo Fatigue not MM
“Fatigue ranks as perhaps the most prevalent of cancer complaints — studies over the past two decades have confirmed it as a significant problem during and for some years after treatment ends…”
In other words, the fatigue that comes from cancer is caused by chemotherapy and radiation, not by the cancer itself. The fatigue is a multiple myeloma side effect. Or in my case, the fatigue resulted from high-dose chemotherapy, not my multiple myeloma (MM). More specifically, chemotherapy prescribed at its maximum tolerated dose (MTD).
I think it is disigenuous at best, lying at worst for the study linked below to say that the cause of fatigue are unknown.
Clinical trials begin with phase 1 testing for maximum tolerated dose (MTD). Oncologists give their patients as much chemotherapy as the patient can handle and hopefully not die. Some patients do anyway (but very small numbers of patients actually die).
But larger percentages of cancer patients do experience short, long-term and late stage side effects. I lost my hair and it grew back. No big deal. But I did develop chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). Large numbers of multiple myeloma patients undergoing velcade develop this painful side effect.
To get back to the reason for this post, the fatigue that develops as a result of toxic therapies. In my experience as a MM cancer coach, the MM specialist who delivers the longest average five year survival is a guy named James Berenson M.D.
I mention Dr. Berenson for several reasons relative to the issue of fatigue. First and foremost, Dr. Berenson is a board certified oncologist. Dr. Berenson is a MM specialist. Dr. Berenson will tell you that the standard-of-care autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) is way too much chemotherapy. Dr. Berenson balances toxic therapy with quality of life.
Don’t take my word for it. Call Dr. Berenson and ask him yourself. Newly diagnosed MM patients don’t need to visit his clinic in California. Your local oncologist can work with him. Dr. Berenson prescribes small amounts of chemotherapy depending on your situation. Less toxicity, less fatigue.
At the same time, consider evidence-based complementary and integrative MM therapies such as anti-MM nutrition, supplementation, exercise and lifestyle therapies shown to fight your MM.
To Learn More about Cancer-related Fatigue- click now
Have you been diagnosed with multiple myeloma? To learn more about the full spectrum of treating your blood cancer, scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP.
Thank you,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Recommended Reading:
- Cancer Prehabilitation-
- A Long-term Multiple Myeloma Survivor’s Diet, Nutrition Plan-
- Exercise Oncology for Myeloma Patients
Maximum tolerated dose: clinical endpoint for a bygone era?
“The maximum tolerated dose (MTD) has been the classically recommended phase II dose for cytotoxic chemotherapy anticancer agents. However, the development of molecular targeted therapies with highly specific mechanisms of action has raised questions about the paradigm of dosing at the MTD.
Inhibition of the molecular target may occur at dose levels substantially below those producing dose limiting toxicities. The impact of targeted therapies on our dose selection strategies has been immense; however, defining the MTD in phase I oncology trials still provides valuable information for future drug development.
But, the MTD should not be selected blindly as the recommended phase II dose for efficacy testing. Optimal dose selection for targeted cancer agents needs to be evaluated using all available information collected during the early stages of drug development. Definition of the optimal dose may need to be deferred until randomized phase II trials can be conducted. Future clinical trail designs in oncology drug development need to reflect this paradigm shift.”
Post-Cancer Fatigue: The Invisible Wound
“Fatigue ranks as perhaps the most prevalent of cancer complaints — studies over the past two decades have confirmed it as a significant problem during and for some years after treatment ends for 75 to 100 percent of survivors — yet its physiologic causes remain unknown.
Researchers now focus on confirming its prevalence and identifying ways to improve quality of life for those battling fatigue.
For example, researchers found that survivors over 65 — some of whom had been treated decades earlier — reported more fatigue after treadmill tests and walked slower than participants who had never had cancer. The findings, recently published in the journal Cancer, come from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, a project that has enrolled thousands since 1958. Researchers have included measurements of endurance and fatigability since 2007.
Although cancer treatment aims at survival, the longterm effects of fatigue on health and quality of life must be examined more fully, says the study’s senior researcher, Jennifer A. Schrack, Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins School of Bloomberg Health in Baltimore.