Do you know that last year around 9.6 million people died due to cancer?
According to WHO cancer stands in the second position in terms of causes of death worldwide.
One more thing, do you know that in all our body the cancer cell is already present. Then why we all do not suffer from cancer? As we hear a lot of things about cancer so many times around us naturally, we tent to have a lot of questions about cancer like what disease is cancer? How it occurs and how we can prevent ourselves from it?
So if you also wanted to increase your knowledge about cancer, then… just read this post!
What is Cancer
Okay, before knowing cancer, let us know something about our body. Our whole body is made up of different organs like- heart, liver, kidney, etc. and all these organs are made up of small cells. So these cells keep on increasing by dividing themselves and take the vacant space left out by the dead cells.
So because of this continuous multiplication of these cells that we have grown up and become a fit and healthy individual.
The DNA present inside these cells, guide our cells about what to do and how to do? DNA is a kind of software of our cells that contains the whole bunch of information and when to have a division or no division of our cells. These all are determined by DNA.
But sometimes due to some mutation or error occurring in DNA, a bad/rogue cell is created which we also call cancer cells. These cancer cells don’t do their work properly and without any necessity, they multiply. Many such errors happen daily in our body and these rogue cells are created. Therefore we say that inside all of us these cancer cells are present. But these rogue cells don’t get convert into cancer because our body recognizes these errors and these errors are fixed in their initial phase.
How Cancer grows
But when our body could not stop the growth of these rogue cells then these gather and becomes cancer. As these cancer cells do not do their work and keep growing unnecessarily. And the organs over which it starts to develop, the activities of that organ get stalled. Due to the stoppage of the activity of a single organ, our whole body comes under tremendous pressure.
In the initial phase, these cancer cells form a cluster by gathering in one place. Which we also call Tumour. Cancer at this stage is called cancer of the primary stage. But when these cancer cells spread in the whole body via the blood then this stage is called the cancer of the secondary stage. It becomes more difficult to cure a patient at this stage.
Cancer can happen in any part of our body. Globally the most cases of cancer are of Lung cancer and breast cancer. It is true that defect(Mutation) in DNA can come at any time. But if we do not keep our body healthy then these defects can become more enhanced. Like we can take the example of typing whenever we type with a keyboard the chances of committing a mistake is always there but if we are tired or sleepy or ill then these mistakes become more frequent. Likewise, there are many factors because of which changes in our DNA can come and we can suffer from cancer.
Causes of Cancer
On the top, comes the use of tobacco. According to WHO, 22% of the people dying of cancer, due to the use of tobacco. Consumption of tobacco, alcohol, bad eating habits with low fruit and vegetable intake and lack of physical activity are counted as the four big causes of cancer.
Along with that due to some infection caused by bacteria and viruses one may develop cancer. Like HPV or Hepatitis B Virus.
Some radiations can be so strong that can cause changes in the DNA of our cells. And because of this, we can get cancer. One of its biggest examples is UV rays.
As we grow old the chances of having cancer are also increased. Because it has been observed that as we grow old the ability to correct the problems inside us decreases.
According to data, in the world around 30-50% of cancer cases can be prevented by rectifying our habits. By the way, more than half of the diseases occur because of our unhealthy lifestyle.
