What is Cancer and What Causes it
What is cancer and what causes it? A questions that’s on many people’s minds. We hear about cancer every day, most of us know someone who suffers from cancer and as you’re reading this article – there are millions of people around the world who are dealing with this terrible disease as we speak. Understanding cancer is an important step in healing or preventing it. If you are looking for answers on what cancer is and what causes it, but you’re not a doctor and need it explained in simple terms that are easy to understand by ordinary people, this is the place. Read on:
What is Cancer?
There is a group of about 100 diseases that medical community refers to as “cancer”. They all have one thing in common – abnormal cells that grow out of control and spread on to other cells. Our bodies are made of billions of cells of different types. The growth and lifespan of our cells is regulated by genes that we are born with. If any of the cells start growing in an uncontrolled way, it can cause cancer.
The cells our bodies are made of don’t live forever. They don’t even live for as long as we are alive. Cells age and die and are replaced by new cells. Some cells live only for a very short time, some live for years, but after a few years, every single cell in our body will have been replaced with a brand new cell. This is normal and preprogrammed by our genes. For as long as our cells die out and get replaced, we don’t have to worry about cancer as growth of new cells and dying of old ones is kept in balance.
If genes that regulate development and behavior of our cells get damaged, affected cells may fail to die when they are supposed to. Those damaged cells will remain in your body while new cells with continue to grow really fast. Overtime this growth of abnormal cells forms a tumor.
Types of Tumors
There are two types of tumors – “malignant” and “benign”. The type of tumor is classified based on whether it spreads or not:
Malignant Tumors have the ability to spread to other parts of the body and as such are considered cancerous. Malignant Tumors are “cancer”.
Benign Tumors do not spread to other body parts and as such are NOT considered cancerous. Benign Tumors are not cancer.
If you have a malignant tumor, you have cancer. As explained above, malignant tumors have the ability to spread to other body parts. There are two ways cancer spreads – invasion or metastasis:
Invasion: cancerous cells spread to adjacent tissues within the same area
Metastasis: cancerous cells enter the bloodstream and lymph system and spread to other parts of the body. These metastasized cells then start growing at the new location and continue spreading to more locations.
What Causes Cancer?
There are several factors that can cause cancer. Medical professionals divide them into two groups – internal factors and external factors:
Internal Factors that Cause Cancer:
- Hereditary Factors
- Weakened Immunity
- High Hormone Levels
- Metabolism Mutations
External Factors that Cause Cancer:
- Tobacco Use
- Alcohol Use
- Bad Diet
- Radiation Exposure
- Chemical Substances
- Cell Phone Use
- Asbestos Exposure
- Sunlight
- Viruses
The above list is not necessarily exhaustive. We may not know all factors that cause cancer. The most likely scenario leading to development of cancer is a combination of several factors – for example if a person who inherited a particular type of gene that predisposes them to developing that type of cancer makes poor lifestyle choices and lives in a bad environment would be exposed to a complex set of interactions between carcinogenic factors which could lead to development of cancer, because they are exposed to several risk factors we do know cause cancer. The more cancer causing factors you are exposed to, the bigger a risk of developing cancer exists.
It is however important to notice that different risk factors affect different body parts hence may not directly complement each other. For example, consumption of alcohol is a risk factor, but if you are at risk of developing skin cancer, cutting down on alcohol will not lower your chances of skin cancer. It may lower your chances of developing liver cancer, but it will have insignificant impact on condition of your skin cells.
Furthermore, while above listed agents are known as potential causes of cancer, exposure to these factors does not mean that a person would automatically develop cancer. Many aspects affect your body’s ability to deal with exposure to these agents. For example your age, whether you have inherited any genetic mutations, what you eat and drink, etc. – all of those factors can contribute to lowering or increasing your chances of developing cancer.
How long and how often you’re being exposed also matters and of course one of the most crucial factors is whether you’re also exposed to other agents. This is why it’s not uncommon to have cases of several people who were all exposed to an agent known to initiate or promote carcinogenesis, yet only some will get cancer.