Feel Moments of Control

When we are told we have cancer, our body responds with fear. According to Northwestern University Medicine:

Fear is experienced in your mind, but it triggers a strong physical reaction in your body. As soon as you recognize fear, your amygdala (small organ in the middle of your brain) goes to work. It alerts your nervous system, which sets your body’s fear response into motion. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released. Your blood pressure and heart rate increase. You start breathing faster. Even your blood flow changes — blood actually flows away from your heart and into your limbs, making it easier for you to start throwing punches, or run for your life. Your body is preparing for fight-or-flight.

This fight-or-flight response is activated whenever our body recognizes a perceived threat.  While this is a natural reaction, lying on a flat hard surface for radiation treatment may intensify this response, causing distress, anxiety, and more fear.     

One way to maintain a sense of control and power is by sitting or standing upright, engaging in eye-to-eye contact with one’s clinicians. This type of “power pose” may, according to a research report in the Association for Psychological Science, help  

“an individual prepare his or her mental and physiological systems to endure difficult and stressful situations…”   

Shane Ikner, a former radiation therapist with MD Anderson, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the New York Proton Center, is a Training Manager at Leo Cancer Care.  He stated,

“Patients with head and neck cancer will benefit from the upright position by reducing the anxiety of having to lie down for treatment.”

Treating patients in an upright position will help give control back to patients. When stress and fear are reduced, confidence and conviction can prevail.  The patient is relaxed and in control, which may lead to a substantial impact on treatment outcomes.