What Are the Side Effects of Radiotherapy?
Executive Summary
- Radiotherapy has extremely serious side effects, many of which we cover in this article.
Introduction
The side effects of radiotherapy are severe, and it is essential to cover them.
Underestimation of Radiotherapy Side Effects
A significant part of establishment medicine is understating radiotherapy’s side effects, which is even more true of the long-term side effects. The side effects discussed in the video, produced by Cancer Research UK, are minor, whereas the actual side effects are much worse.
I found it interesting that Cancer Research UK did not allow comments on this video, but when I show you two comments on the following video, it becomes apparent.
This is a similar video — this time from MD Anderson, which provides a very minimal view of radiotherapy side effects. Radiotherapy is a big revenue generator for MD Anderson.
I found these two under this video on YouTube. The difference between what is presented in this video from the medical establishment and the first-hand experience of radiotherapy patients not controlled by the video producers is clear.
Comment #1: Radiotherapy Worse Than Cancer
Bitter Regret?
I had radiation ‘therapy’ for colorectal cancer and bitterly regret it. The side effects 18 months after have been a lot worse than the cancer.
Recall that neither of the two videos from the medical establishment above indicated anything like this. In the first video, previous patients discussed feeling the side effects disappear after only two months.
Don’t Believe Doctors on Radiotherapy?
Don’t believe anything these doctors tell you; it’s insane radiating people, utterly insane. Your body cannot deal with it. I was very suspicious of it but was told I would be part of a five-day trial course for stage 3 cancer. That turned out to be untrue, I was not part of a trial. It was standard procedure. I also had heart surgery but overcame that, which has proven successful.
What Worked?
After the heart operation, I took up a lot of daily exercise 40 minutes a day, and have not missed a single day since. I ate plain, good organic food, never buying anything from a supermarket, anything in plastic or anything in a tin. I eat locally produced, in-season food.
I noticed the difference in how that made me feel in a single week. I droped alcohol, walked, and still walk at least 4,000 paces a day. I kept active and am of a positive construct of mind anyway.
Could Not Overcome the Radiotherapy?
I refused to have surgery for the cancer, having had a nasty experience with it during heart surgery. I wasn’t going to do that again. I lost two stone in weight and now have no body fat. I never eat any grains of any sort, not even rice. I keep fit. I have overcome the cancer but not the radiotherapy. If you are faced with it, refuse it, and go the natural path rather than the poisoned route. Your chances of living and enjoying life will be a lot better. Be a lot cheaper too, and you feel on top of the world most of the time. If I hadn’t had the radiotherapy, I’d be fit as a fiddle. I’m 72 years old.
Comment #2: Oncologists Communicate Vaguely About Radiotherapy Side Effects?
When we went to see the various doctors about this, and we finally got to talk to oncology as well, the way they gave the information concerning radiation was “there is a chance”, rather than “there is a good chance” or “this often occurs”. Not to mention that they were often kind of vague as to how severe it could be, rather than just be up front. In fact, they often downplayed it.
Afterwards when we questioned those professionals, we often got “we discussed this” as a reply. When my spouse and I joined a support group, we found that this was common. I am of the opinion that some oncologists should be slapped. Slapped hard. Really hard.
I found further comments on the article Radiation therapy is just as bad as chemotherapy for me.
Comment #3: Constant Paint?
No one has ever told me about the side effects of radiation therapy. But what people told me was it’s not gonna be as bad as chemotherapy, and they’re so loud and wrong for that because it’s the worst, in my experience at least. I literally can’t eat for about a week now because of the cuts and sores inside my mouth that feel like there’s a thousand of them. My throat also hurts which also makes it hard for me to swallow food and drink water. I can’t even brush my teeth now because I literally can’t tolerate the pain. Every time I put something inside my mouth, it leaves me in tears because of the pain. My face is also burnt like a toast, my eyes have become puffy, itchy, and swollen, and I always have colds and nose bleeds almost every day. It sucks.
Comment #4: Losing 30 Pounds in 3 Weeks?
I went into the chemo/radiation knowing I was going to lose weight, but I dropped 30lbs in 3 weeks which was super unhealthy. I couldn’t eat because of nausea, and when I could keep food down it tasted like total shit and was very unappetizing.
With the NG tube the liquid food was terrible also – and the whole experience was really rough for me. Luckily I made it thru, and that was 2 years ago. Now I am dealing with Chemo/Immunotherapy, with the Chemo part coming to and end later in August. Just want things to go back to the before time.
Comment #5: Oncologist Was an Asshole?
Radiation is a lot fucking harder than chemo and whomever told you it was different is an asshole! I was so much worse when I did that. I didn’t react very well to it (nearly catatonic). Cancer hated it too, so at least there’s that.
Comment #6: Much Worse Than Chemo?
Radiation was much worse than chemo for me. There was no way for me to know at the time, but in hindsight I wish I hadn’t undergone radiation. It did nothing to my cancer, left me with permanent scars and damaged my bladder.
Comment #7: Lies About Radiation?
The two biggest lies about cancer treatment : radiation isn’t as bad and immunotherapy doesn’t have side effects. I say BS to both. Radiation was far more debilitating than chemo and the after effects are longer lasting.
I hated radiation with every fiber of my being. Immunotherapy absolutely had side effects, just not the same as chemo.
Comment #8: Lied to by Caregivers?
As someone with brain cancer i’ve made a point of speaking up about how awful radiation was for me because of my own experience with the radiation oncologist + radiation nurses + things i’ve read from caregivers and patients claiming it’s soooo rare to have miserable side effects and it’s not that bad. the nurse called my mother to accuse me of not taking my nausea meds.
Comment #9: Worst Pain Ever Experienced?
You are not alone. It’s awful. The worst pain I’ve ever experienced, radiation burns in my throat. Two days of lying in bed reciting mantra and counting minutes until the next Darvon — a couple weeks after radiation was over, and I thought I was done with the worst! Months of mouth pain and tissue damage that made it impossible to swallow or open my mouth wide enough to get a bite of food in. And no, they don’t really warn you — because everyone is different and there’s no way to predict what it will be like for you.
Comment #10: Constant Paint?
3 months after 33 rounds of radiation for vocal cord cancer, I still having choking spells throughout the day. Makes it impossible to sleep all night.
The Specific Side Effects of Radiotherapy
The following quotes are from the book The Cancer Industry: Crimes, Conspiracy and The Death of My Mother.
Impact on the Bones
Radiotherapy damages the spinal cord
Radiotherapy causes bone fractures
Radiotherapy causes bone and joint degeneration
Impact on the Brain
Radiotherapy lowers IQ
Radiotherapy impairs memory, attention, and executive function
Radiotherapy increases lifetime risk of having a stroke
Impact on Sleep
Radiotherapy causes sleep problems in nearly half of patients
Radiotherapy causes severe obstructive sleep apnea[
Impact on Quality of Life
Radiotherapy causes unpredictable taste and smell changes in 48% of patients; some had a stronger sweet taste, some had a stronger salt taste and some a weaker sense of smell
Radio-chemotherapy causes 64% of patients to rely on tube feeding as their primary means of food intake
Radiotherapy considerably impairs overall quality of life
Impact on the Eyes
Radiotherapy causes vision loss
Radiotherapy causes complete blindness
Impact on Healing Ability and the Immune System
Radiotherapy slows wound healing
Radiotherapy suppresses the immune system
Radiotherapy inhibits anti-tumor immunity
Radiotherapy significantly increases risk of infection “Immunity in young adult survivors of childhood leukemia [who received chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy] is similar to the elderly rather than age-matched controls”
Radiotherapy causes immediate inflammation
These all mean that radiotherapy treatment puts the patient at a very high risk of causing dormant tumors to become active. Radiotherapy MDs then blame “metastasis” for what is, in most cases, radiation-induced inflammatory tumor activation.
Impact on the Hearing
Radiotherapy causes immediate deafness in 45.71% of patients
Radiotherapy-induced hearing loss continues to worsen over time
Impact on the Heart
Radiotherapy causes micro-vascular damage to the heart
Radiotherapy weakens the heart, blood vessels surrounding the heart and narrows arteries
Radiotherapy significantly increases mortality from cardiovascular death more than 15 years later
Impact on the Urinary and Digestive Systems
Radiotherapy for rectal cancer causes long-term incontinence and major disturbances in bowel function
Radiotherapy causes involuntary urination in women and men
Impact on the Liver
Radiotherapy causes liver disease
Radiotherapy causes liver failure
Impact on the Muscles
Radiation-induced cachexia causes primates to lose as much as 50% of skeletal muscle
Impact on Mental Health
Radiotherapy causes mental disorders, anxiety, depression and distress
Radiotherapy causes “significantly worse mental health before, during and 1 year after RT [radiotherapy] compared to the normal population.”
Impact on the Mouth, Teeth, and Oral Cavity
Radiotherapy causes tooth decay Radiotherapy causes jaw bone death (osteoradionecrosis)
Radiotherapy causes permanent salivary gland dysfunction
Radiotherapy causes restricted mouth opening (trismus)
Radiotherapy causes oral discomfort, oral mucositis, changes in taste, increased oral infections and difficulty swallowing (dysphagia)
Impact on Tumor Environment
Radiotherapy increases free radicals
Radiotherapy increases cortisol
Radiotherapy increases adrenaline
Radiotherapy increases estrogen
Radiotherapy increases prolactin
Radiotherapy increases nitric oxide
Radiotherapy increases vascular endothelial growth factor
Radiotherapy increases epidermal growth factor
Radiotherapy increases tumor necrosis factor alpha
Radiotherapy increases interleukin-1 beta
Radiotherapy increases interleukin-4
Radiotherapy increases interleukin-6
Radiotherapy increases interleukin-8
Radiotherapy increases nuclear factor kappa b
Radiotherapy increases prostaglandins
Radiotherapy increases lactic acid
Radiotherapy increases stem cell production
Radiotherapy increases histamine
Radiotherapy increases serotonin
Radiotherapy increases high-mobility group box 1 protein
Looking at this extensive list of debilitating effects — it is a wonder that anyone informed of them would agree to undergo radiotherapy treatment.
The Side Effect of Death
One of the significant side effects of radiotherapy is death. However, when radiotherapy kills a patient, the medical establishment will blame cancer or other causes, never the radiotherapy. This is explained in the following quote.
The reduction in deaths attributed to mammographic screening in the 7 trials resulted from the use of flawed statistical data that had reclassified a number of breast cancer deaths “as deaths from other causes following ischaemic heart damage caused by radiotherapy.”
In other words, people who were killed by radiotherapy treatment following early detection with mammography were labeled dead for reasons other than breast cancer, creating the false appearance of reduced breast cancer deaths and thus, the false appearance of a mortality benefit from both treatment and screening.
Radiotherapy Side Effects in the Broader Context
The number of sources that cover the topic of radiotherapy that are not entirely promotional of radiotherapy is exceedingly low.
The following article Cancer Establishment Hides Radiation Side Effect is one of these rare sources.
Important Point #1: Results from Radiation Therapy on Head and Neck Tumors
Radiation therapy is an important part of treating certain head and neck tumors and is often used after surgery. But lethal radiation necrosis to the brain is one potential side effect.
Radiation therapy is routinely used to treat primary brain tumors.
The cure rate for the most common brain tumors is disturbingly low, but even in those fortunate enough to have their brain tumors destroyed by the radiation, a large percentage succumb shortly thereafter to radiation necrosis of the brain.
This sounds like a poor trade-off.
Important Point #2: Initiating Strokes at a 5x Rate Over Normal
The more prevalent and omitted cover-up relates to the long-term impact of radiation therapy.
For example, another danger of radiation therapy to the head is increased risk of stroke.
A study of head and neck cancer patients who received radiation therapy found that stroke rates were five times greater than expected. This elevated stroke risk was found many years after administration of radiation.
The average time between radiation treatment and stroke was 10.9 years, but the increased risk of stroke persisted for 15 years after radiation therapy.
For cancer patients treated with radiation therapy that later die from a stroke, the official cause of death is stroke, even though the radiation therapy often caused the stroke. This is an example of how cancer cure statistics are misleading. The government contends that radiation therapy is curing cancer patients, yet long-term radiation side effects cause many deaths that are not attributed to cancer.
That, I would say, is unknown generally. I would say an exceedingly small percentage of those accepting radiotherapy have any idea that side effects can persist for that long.
Important Point #3: Attacking the Cancer — But At What Long-Term Cost
But as Ralph Moss, PhD, graphically described in his Cancer Industry books, oncology researchers are motivated to achieve complete responses that they can later claim to be cancer “cures.” Overlooked from the statistics are horrific long-term side effects that leave patients permanently mutilated, in constant pain with loss of bodily functions, and under chronic medical care to deal with the damage inflicted by the “cancer cure.”
Patients suffering side effects from conventional treatments are often never the same again, yet the cancer establishment uses these cases to create statistical models to pretend their toxic therapies are a panacea.
Important Point #4: The Case of Suzanne Somers
In Suzanne Somers’ case, she has long regretted her submission to radiation therapy after her lumpectomy.
While she made the right choice in saying “no” to chemotherapy, she has suffered for ten years from the destructive effects caused by the intense amount of radiation delivered to her breast and surrounding tissues.
Effects on Noncancerous Cells
Radiation acts directly on the cell nucleus. Cancer cells grow rapidly compared to normal cells, so by radiating the cancerous area, cancer cells are damaged and many of them destroyed. Unfortunately, radiation also has a negative effect on normal cells. By mutating genes in the nucleus of healthy cells, these normal cells are more likely to later develop into cancer.
This damage to genes in the cells’ nucleus also causes the expression of pro-inflammatory factors that result in a constant bombardment (inflammatory fires) by one’s immune cytokines against the irradiated cells.
As the cells initially damaged by radiation are destroyed, the “inflammatory fires” spread to nearby healthy cells and create a chain reaction whereby more healthy cells come under chronic cytokine-inflammatory attack.
This Explains Why Suzanne Somers Stated The Following
“There should be a book written on the realities of radiation and all the things that are never mentioned beforehand. With radiation, the breast gradually gets flatter and flatter until it looks as though there has been a complete mastectomy.
When the swelling subsided it was considerably smaller than I had at first realized, and then it (Suzanne’s breast) began to degrade, gradually losing more and more volume until it became non-existent.”
The following quote is from the article Integrative Approaches For Cancer
Important Point #5: Cervical Cancer Radiotherapy: Frying One’s Bowels
Also, you sadly remind me of an older dear friend and roommate that I lived with in my 20’s who developed metastatic cervical cancer who, even then, I knew had been badly injured from radiation – essentially her bowels were fried and she lived out her days on intravenous nutrition and opiates. Sad stuff.
This means this patient lost the ability to process food with their digestive system.
Important Point #6: Changes to the Tissue in the Area
Until they experience it, patients really don’t appreciate the side effects of radiation therapy. One of the most common problems is that it changes the tissue in the area (e.g., creating adhesions) and those can create a lot of chronic issues for people (which are often too subtle for the doctor to recognize or believe was linked to the radiation).
Second, every now and then I hear a story of someone who was injured by radiation therapy that was accidentally dosed at too high of a setting.
Important Point #7: Generally Bad Outcomes of Radiotherapy for Glioblastoma and Radiotherapy
A lot of this came about because I was deeply intrigued by Travis’s knowledge base and the results of one protocol of repurposed medicines that had been studied in patients with one of the nastiest cancers, glioblastoma (which is also the one that killed Senator McCain a year after diagnosis).
To put it bluntly, glioblastoma, when treated with current “standard of care” (SOC) consisting of surgery, radiation, and oral temozolomide, has a horrific but well defined and reproducible median overall survival of about 15 months and a 2 year survival between 26-28%.
Furthermore, those are all very aggressive therapies which can be incredibly traumatic and harmful to the patient.
Conclusion
There are very few objective sources on the implications of the side effects of radiotherapy. This is why the quotes in this article are so important.
These side effects are horrific. However, these side effects are not discussed when researching the benefits of radiotherapy on the internet or inquiring with oncologists at cancer centers. You can find multiple quotations where the cancer patients are saying that they were not told what the radiotherapy side effects would be like, and they were much worse than what they had anticipated.
By constantly de-emphasizing the side effects, hiding the deaths from radiotherapy, and excluding side effects when presenting the benefits of radiotherapy. The medical establishment cancer industry presents a highly skewed interpretation of what the benefits versus the costs and the harms are from radiotherapy.