Forum Discussion
Beta Blockers may have additional benefit
I’ll try and find more on this but from this morning’s news:
Australian researchers have made a major medical breakthrough that could extend the lives of people battling breast cancer.
Australian researchers have made a major medical breakthrough that could extend the lives of people battling breast cancer.
Scientists at Monash University have found that everyday anti-stress drugs, called beta blockers, could slow the spread of the deadly disease in the body
13 Replies
- That’s great @MicheleR, those are good changes. I really like the part about being in tune with your own needs, cos that’s where we seem to lack. And that’s when we burn out. A burn out is pretty bad. It means we’ve totally neglected ourselves.My hormones were also all over the place. I got terrible, measle-like acne right after my traumatic trip. Nothing I did helped. It was there for almost 2 years. It started disappearing after my diagnosis. 3 months in my face was clear. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Disappeared, just like that. That’s another thing that makes me think the first tumour started growing then. I can’t know for sure, but I’m trying to avoid all the bad things I was going through then, just bc they were bad and unpleasant and no one should have to go through hard times.I hope we figure it out 🤞
- When i was first diagnosed. I looked up all these articles on how long it takes for cancers to grow. The best i could come up with is that it takes about a month for the cancer to double in size. Cancer starts off like a speck so depending on the grade it can be growing for a long time. My cancer was largish.
I suppose I wanted to pinpoint when it started and certainly my health was declining and my stress levels were high in the years leading up to diagnosis. My hormones were all over the place.
I wanted to know why and how to stop it happening again. Other people worked in the same environment and had similar family lives and did not get cancer and hopefully wont. Also important for how i lead my life going forward.
I was burnt out i believe. A combination of many things.
But maybe there is no real reason and though ive had a massive wakeup call and will make changes i just cant at this point believe there is a pill which will take it all away. I hope there is.
In the meantime what seems important is to live life more in tune with my needs and not be sucked into walking a treadmill everyday. I put exercise higher up on my priorities, work lower and family near the top but in less servant fashion. - @sister @Locksley exactly the same. Almost a decade of constant stress prior to diagnosis, being a single mum for most of those, going through terrible bosses and always worried about financial security, no holidays, an idiot narcissist ex, and 2.5 years ago going overseas with my daughter. For every second of the 21 hour flight both there and back, I was trembling, as I’m terrified of flying. At one point I went to the flight attendant room and asked for medication as I wasn’t handling it well at all and was pretty desperate. I remember thinking to myself this is not good, I hope it doesn’t lead to some bad disease. When I got back I started having panic attacks every day for about 3 months, until I got help. I believe that’s when my first tumour started growing. It was grade 1 and so growing quite slowly.So many women I’ve spoken to or read about, have also experienced something traumatic, or have worked themselves to the bone. Panic attacks and anxiety seem to be a running theme. There can’t not be a link.Anyway, I hope we learn to destress and relax more, so if nothing else, we can enjoy our lives more than we did before. I’m aware some women’s situations are quite difficult, but it’s still important that we try, and to also deal with our trauma, so it stops doing damage internally.
- I have PTSD which I'm only now just getting under control. I believe stress has a lot to do with my BC, I try not to let myself gets stressed but it's hard.
- I have often wondered about if stress caused or contributed to my bc. Also prior to diagnosis I was under a huge amount of stress and micro management at work. I would shake and be on eggshells constantly and I would wonder what hell was waiting for me for the day.
- Since diagnosis, I have been interested in the role of stress in the disease as I had gone through a number of years prior to it with very high stress levels. During that previous life I often wondered what it might be doing to my body as I felt physical reactions to the stress. Over the last few years I have heard differing medical opinions but most seem to think that if not a cause of bc, stress is likely to be a significant contributing factor.
- Most people diagnosed with cancer of any description will experience a degree of stress as a result - life threatening disease can do that very efficiently. So I can easily imagine that stress as a secondary, contributing factor to the spread of the disease. It is also quite possible that stress may be a contributing factor to getting cancer in the first place but these seem to be two distinct and differing circumstances. It will certainly be interesting to see if and how this research develops.
- @Piccme Almost every sane person I have spoken to about diseases agrees that stress is probably the number one cause, as the body cannot heal while it is in ‘fight’ mode. Stress causes serious damage. I don’t understand why this isn’t provided as a very valid cause by specialists 🤔
- The study is quite limited at just 64 patients but nevertheless very interesting. A few months prior to my diagnosis I was prescribed propranolol for tachycardia which I took up until a week after my axillary clearance. At the time my GP thought this was the best treatment for my heart palpitations and elevated heart rate. @Afraser, @arpie and @patdug I too hope that there may have been an added benefit for taking it, even though it was for a limited time in my case. As it turned out the tachycardia and heart palpitations were probably more related to anxiety I was suffering from a combination of significant stressful events.On diagnosis, I questioned my GP, breast surgeon, Oncologist, Radiologist and pretty much anybody I could, enquiring if stress might have been a contributing factor. While it was reiterated that lifestyle factors, genes (in about 5% of cases) and even just ‘bad luck’ can play a role in a cancer diagnosis, my thoughts on the role stress plays were quickly dismissed.
It seems significant to me that:
“research discovered that the ‘fight-or-flight response’ can increase metastasis, helping cancer spread through the body. We harnessed that knowledge by repurposing existing drugs. Our goal was to see if we could stop cancer cells spreading in the body. We found that beta-blockers – which halt the stress response – stopped the cancer invading”.
It will be interesting to see what results future, perhaps larger studies of this nature might reveal. Perhaps stress may be included in ‘lifestyle’ factors? It would be an exciting prospect if there was a supplementary and or alternative to prevent/slow metastasis, particularly for hormone negative sufferers and for those who cannot tolerate tamoxifen/Al’s. It may also provide a little peace of mind for some against reoccurrence? I shall watch this space with interest. - I think there’s research papers supporting it but there’s also papers saying no effect or it actually makes things worst . Something to n0te and see what else becomes evident .I’m on beta blockers because of side effects of herceptin so I’ll be watching with interest
