A current study at the BC Cancer Agency focuses on women who have breast cancer with the NExT program (Nutrition and Exercise during treatment). Marita Luk is a breast cancer survivor who participates in this program, and is facilitated by Kelcey Bland who makes sure the fitness routines are done properly.

Photograph by: Kim Stallknecht , Vancouver Sun

Partway through her treatment for breast cancer, Marita Luk noticed she was starting to forget things.

“I had to write down almost everything I was doing … things like ‘Don’t forget your pills’,” she said.

“At first I thought, maybe it’s because I’m getting old.”

But when Luk, who is in her mid-40s, spoke with other women undergoing chemotherapy, she learned that what she was experiencing is a common phenomenon nicknamed “chemo brain.”

New research out of UBC confirms that breast cancer patients who have undergone chemotherapy have more trouble focusing their minds on the tasks in front of them than healthy women do.

“You don’t even know when it’s coming on. It really feels like a fog in your head,” Luk said.

The UBC researchers, whose work was published recently in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology, used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to monitor the brain activity of breast cancer patients while they completed a series of tasks.

“A healthy brain spends some time wandering and some time engaged,” UBC psychology professor Todd Handy said in a news release. “We found that ‘chemo brain’ is a chronically wandering brain. They’re essentially stuck in a shut-out mode.”

According to Handy, healthy brains tend to engage completely with a task for a few seconds before wandering for a bit. People with chemo brain tend to stay in that state of wandering.

Even when the women who participated in the study thought they were totally focused on a task, readouts from an electroencephalogram (EEG) showed that a large part of their brains were turned off and their minds were wandering.

The research also showed that when the cancer patients were asked to relax, their brains were more active than those of healthy women.

The psychologists suggest that this research could help doctors measure the impact of chemotherapy on the brain and monitor whether patients are improving over time.

“Physicians now recognize that the effects of cancer treatment persist long after it is over and these effects can really impact a person’s life,” said co-author Kristin Campbell.

As for Luk, she has felt her mind gradually growing sharper since her treatment ended about a year ago and she is beginning to feel more confident in her job as the business development manager for BCIT’s School of Construction and the Environment.

Her experience with chemo brain has taught her the importance of memory and keeping records for the future.

“Now I tend to be the person taking photos all the time,” she said.

The UBC research received funding from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation for BC/Yukon.

blindsay@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/bethanylindsay