Alternative medicine

No alternative medicine treatments can cure breast cancer. Instead, complementary and alternative treatments are most helpful for coping with the side effects of cancer and cancer treatment, such as hot flashes.

Alternative treatments for hot flashes

Hot flashes — bouts of sudden, intense warmness that can leave you sweaty and uncomfortable — can be a symptom of natural menopause or a side effect of hormone therapy for breast cancer.

Women with breast cancers that use hormones to grow may receive hormone therapy to block the interaction between hormones and cancer cells. Most invasive lobular carcinomas are hormone receptor positive.

Talk to your doctor if you experience hot flashes. If hot flashes are mild, they're likely to subside over time. In most women, hot flashes eventually disappear. However, some women experience severe and bothersome hot flashes. Many conventional treatments are available for hot flashes, including medications.

If treatment for hot flashes won't work as well as you'd like, it might help to add complementary and alternative treatments to make you feel better.

Options might include:

• Acupuncture
• Hypnosis
• Meditation
• Relaxation techniques
• Tai chi
• Yoga

While none of these alternative treatments is proved to help control hot flashes, some preliminary evidence shows that some breast cancer survivors find them helpful.

If you're interested in trying alternative treatment for hot flashes, talk to your doctor about your options.