What is Cancer?

What is Cancer?

There are lots of varieties of malignant tumors - Bronchial Carcinoid and Liver Cancer and Hairy Cell Leukemia - just to list a couple of examples. But, all of these malignancies have a few things in common.

Loss of Control

Every individual cell in your body is controlled by hormones like Norepinephrine and Growth hormone from outside the cell and some other chemical regulators in the cells. These regulators will control the actions of the cell. They will instruct the cells when to grow and how much, how active they should be and how they should interact with other cells.

Cancer cells have those controls shut off. They act without limit. They are reliably active at the maximum level. Those same cancer cells also lose their control of interacting with their neighbors and then can mobilize and go to other parts of the body.

Changes in DNA

All cancers have lost their controls because the DNA in the cell has been damaged. DNA is the chemical programming in the cell that controls all of its activities. That DNA is damaged by mechanical means, nuclear radiation or free radicals. It will start to act randomly. Viruses have also been shown to cause the DNA damage that can lead to cancer.

Damaged DNA can also come from your parents. That DNA is set up to start producing cancer cells if there is either some trigger that the cell contacts or another spot on the DNA that receives damage.

Immortal Cells

Your cells normally will only live a certain amount of time and then die (with a few exceptions). They will then be replaced by new healthy cells. Cancer cells don't usually die. Even when they are extremely abnormal, they just keep growing. Finally, those cells produce tumors and spread.

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Meredith (voiceover): Disappearances happen in science. Disease can suddenly fade away, tumors go missing, and we open someone up to discover the cancer is gone. Its unexplained It’s rare, but it happens. We call it mis-diagnosis say we never saw it in the first place, any explanation but the truth. That life is full of vanishing acts. If something that we didn’t know we had disappears, do we miss it? - Grey's Anatomy

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Types of Cancer

The many cancers can be grouped into five basic types. Those are Central nervous system cancers, Leukemia, Carcinoma, Sarcoma as well as Lymphoma and Myeloma.

Central nervous system cancers - these are cancer tumors that start in the brain and spinal cord. Leukemia - these cancers start in the tissues that produce blood - such as the bone marrow - and then release the cells into the blood. Carcinoma - these are cancers that start in the skin or the tissues that line internal organs. Sarcoma - Sarcomas are cancer tumors that start in connective tissue. Connective tissue is the tissue between the organs and other structures. Those tissues include things like fat, bone, muscle, blood vessels and cartilage. Lymphoma and myeloma - these cancers start in the cells that normally protect the body - the immune system.

Now that you know what a cancer is, you can learn how to possibly prevent it, or if needed how to treat it.