Cancer, definitely not a nice word, not something you would like to go to the hospital about, reported to be the second leading cause of death in the world, many has been worried as it is a major killer disease that tends to have no efficient cure and it's treatment tend to be very expensive, thereby making most people especially the poor not to be able to survive it as they lack the financial ability to foot the bills, quite sad though, as this makes it look like an automatic death sentence for the not-too-well-to-do. Seeing the damaging effect it could cause, we(Healthvim) know that the most effective fight against cancer is that of information, that is why we took out time to make severe research to provide you with accurate information about the mechanism of cancer. We hope you learn alot from this.
WHAT IS CANCER???
Cancer is a genetic disease that results in the body cells acting abnormally by continuous cell division without stopping. The human body has trillions of cells, and when these cells get old or damaged, they are replaced by new cells that came about by the division of previous cells and there is balance as the system of cell division is one which is regulated by genes called proto-oncogenes found in the chromosome of the cell, it helps to Co-ordinate the activities of the cell as it regulates cell division stopping it when it ought to. But there comes cancer, a situation whereby these proto-oncogenes undergoes some changes or mutation into a new type of cancer-promoting genes called oncogenes, these oncogenes cause the cell to constantly undergo cell division without halting,these lead to the production of numerous cells thereby causing imbalance, initially old or damaged cells get replaced as they are done away with, but these oncogenes enables these old cells to survive and keep on dividing into more cells,thereby halting apoptosis(programmed cell death) and this is harzadous, now you know why cancer is termed a genetic disease as it is a result of mutation of the genes in the chromosome into oncogenes.
ABOUT THE CANCEROUS SYSTEM
With the non-stop division of these cancer cells, numerous new cancerous cells are formed which may aggregate together to form growths called tumors which are solid, but some types of cancer do not form these solid tumors e.g leukemia.
There are two types of tumors formed, these are;
Malignant tumor and benign tumor.
Definitely you must have heard that cancer spreads in the body, this is so true and it is as a result of the malignant tumor, this tumor is the type in which fragment of cells break away from the primary tumor and travel through the blood or lymph system to other parts of the body where they form new tumors, this process is called metastasis and the new tumor formed is called metastatic tumor, so for example a cancer tumor in the brain that fragments and goes to the lungs does not form a new lung cancer there but rather the tumour there is know as metastatic brain cancer, the metastatic tumor is similar to the primary tumor, and when these malignant tumors are removed by surgery, they may grow back but for the benign tumor, these ones do not travel to other tissues or parts of the body but could be quite big in size but when removed by surgery, they do not grow back.
Cancer cells are less specialized than normal cells, these cancer cells could cause normal cells to form blood vessels that helps to supply the tumors with oxygen and nutrient and as well remove the waste products of the tumors.
The immune system actually helps to destroy abnormal and old cells from the body, so why don't they destroy these cancerous cells??, this is because some of these cancerous cells could hide from the immune system without being detected and they make damages to the immune system, but some cancer treatment is geared at enabling the immune system to be able to detect these cancerous cells and eliminate them.
CAUSES
What could probably cause this harzadous genetic disorder??, some are actually inherited from parents, and as well as environmental exposures, there are cancer-hastening chemicals called carcinogens, and if one is exposed to these for long, cancer might show it's ugly head, these include substances like tobacco,smoke,asbestos,benzene e.t.c, cancer is also caused by ultraviolet rays from the sun, excess body weight, lack of exercise.
PREVENTION
Avoiding the above causes except that of inheritance(as it is out of your control) could increase your chances of not getting cancer, so you should reduce your exposure to the sun for too long, avoid those carcinogens, exercise more and monitor your weight.
TYPES
some types of cancer includes; leukemia, carcinoma, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, melanoma.
SYMPTOMS
Some symptoms you should watch out are; fatigue, persistent cough, difficulty swallowing, discomfort after a meal, fever, unexpected bleeding, hoarseness, lump, night sweat, joint pain e.t.c
#HEALTHVIM
hope you found this helpful. Remember that at healthvim your health is our pride!!!!