Different cancer treatments, and the disease itself, often cause side effects. These effects can adversely affect your health and impact your quality of life.
Preventing and/or addressing the side effects of the treatments holistically is critical. Controlling the side effects and promoting a positive outlook will make the treatments more successful all around.
Physical aspects
- Nutrition: Sometimes cancer causes weight loss and loss of appetite. This leads to malnutrition. Personalized and continued consultations with a nutritionist will help you adjust your diet to the nature and properties of your current and future treatments.
Eating the right foods before, during and after your cancer treatment improves your physical and psychological health.
- Physical exercise: Numerous studies show that physical activity decreases the risk of cancer. During the cancer process, maintaining physical activity helps prevent complications such as: circulatory problems, loss of muscle mass, respiratory problems, constipation, lack of appetite, etc.
A physical therapist or osteopath can help you find the type of activity adapted to your physical condition in order to keep you fit.
- Sexuality: Sex, sexuality and intimacy remain important for people with cancer. In fact, both sexuality and intimacy have been shown to be improve patients’ ability to cope. Sexuality and intimacy help combat feelings of distress and loneliness. Cancer treatments sometimes affect libido and can lead to sexual dysfunction. Sexologists can help recommend treatments.
- Ostomies: You might need an ostomy as part of your cancer treatment. An ostomy is a surgical procedure that consists of connecting a part of the inside of your intestines with the outside of your abdomen. This can be temporary or permanent.
Due to lack of social awareness, acceptance of ostomy is sometimes more difficult than coming to terms with the cancer itself. Seek care before surgery to get the information you need and to manage your anxiety. What’s more, finding a group of ostomized people can help you share, support one another, and engage in awareness-raising activities.
Emotional aspects
- Psychology: One major consideration when you have cancer is to try to maintain a positive outlook, which will help you be more optimistic. Staying positive is not easy. The most common psychological symptoms appearing in the process of adaptation to the disease include depression, anxiety and confusion. When these symptoms alter your daily life, assessment by a psychologist is necessary to find ways to manage your emotions and to handle your treatment with optimism.
- Mindfulness: We often live in the past or in the future and stop enjoying key moments in our present day. The purpose of mindfulness is to train your mind to be present.
Mindfulness helps you:
- Improve concentration
- Improve self-esteem
- Strengthen your immune system
- Improve sleep quality
- Reduce anxiety and stress
- Facilitate pain modulation
- Improve quality of life.
- Body image: Treatments and the disease itself change the way you look and can be hard on your self-esteem. An imaging consultant can help you with little tricks (colors, types of clothes or makeup) so you feel better about yourself.
Where to find support in all these areas
At OWings, you will find a multidisciplinary team of experts to guide you throughout the cancer process and help improve your quality of life.
Nurses, physical therapists, psychologists, osteopaths, sexologists, image consultants, dieticians and mindfulness coaches will be there for you in every step of your journey.
OWings is one of the first clinics in Barcelona focused on holistic care for people with abdominopelvic needs. The clinic was founded in 2017 by two stomatherapy nurses who found that people with ostomies and/or incontinence had to go through so many different parts of the National Health System to get the help they needed.
OWings cares for, helps and accompanies people with abdominopelvic needs.It also encourages and helps patients lead a healthy lifestyle in a healthy environment. These factors, and more, make OWings the right choice for you.
The staff at Owings is excited to listen to you and give you the support, guidance and care you need.
Committed to your care.https://owings.es/
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