When someone is diagnosed with cancer, we often see comments like “keep fighting, you’ve got this!”. Is there any scientific basis behind this actually having an effect on the outcome / survival and remission rates? What exactly are they doing when they’re “fighting” that helps to beat the cancer?
In: Biology
Fighting is a real thing but not for any mystical mind over matter reason.
Being seriously ill is hard work. Basic things, like eating, hygiene, exercise, taking meds, and reporting issues to your doctor are hard when you are in pain, weak, fatigued, delirious, or depressed. Life-saving treatments, like surgery and chemo, can get delayed by a minor infection or a bad lab results, things that better self care would have prevented, and people sometimes die waiting for something minor to clear up.
It is not unusual for patients to become discouraged and not pursue their treatment and care as aggressively as they might. Given a choice between an aggressive treatment and an easier, but less effective one, they go with easy. Or sometimes they just give up and stop trying. If a patient has to be nagged into taking care of themselves, they are not fighting.
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