I understand that cancer is uncontrolled reproduction of cells but why is that so harmful? How do extra cells make is so sick?
In: Biology
Cancer is not a single thing – it is several things that are related but not the same. There are some cancers that are fairly benign and the treatment for them just consists of cutting them out and going on with life. Other kinds result in a quick passing.
Tumors not just replicate, they actively siphon off the body’s resources by causing blood vessels to grow into them and provide them with nutrients. These blood vessels are what makes tumors look vaguely like crabs with veins protruding all around as if a lot of limbs, giving cancer its Latin name. With tumors spreading and growing everywhere the body eventually runs out of resources and dies.
The cells still need food and they still take up space. Food and space that’s supposed to go to something important.
Eventually the growing tumors get so large and energy hungry that they’re crushing or starving nearby organs and disabling them.
In some cases the tumors grow so large that they starve themselves as well, and start to fill with necrotic tissue.
Cancers also [metastasize](https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/metastasis). They start in one place, circulate via blood or other systems, and now your entire body is filled with parasite called cancer.
(I am **not** a doctor.)
Think about cellular reproduction with no plan or structure. Imagine you were building a 1000 piece lego batmobile set and your kid sister starts randomly pink 1by1 bricks to your creation… in the beginning it’s a batmobile with pops of pink. But eventually it’s not going to look like the box. We have a small amount of cancer at all times. But our body (immune system) seeks out these cells and plucks them out like the pink legos.
Most times it isn’t they are just cells which grow and reproduce rapidly. Instead it is when the cells migrate to a new location when they settle in a new location and interfere with the processes going on in the new location. This stage 4 process is when cancers in general become lethal – https://youtu.be/Q5–K1nUOM4
I believe it’s not just a matter of what the cells take, as others have mentioned, but what they produce. I looked into this a while ago because I had the same question, “why couldn’t I just, like, eat a little more food? I could eat a whole baby’s diet worth of extra food, most tumors aren’t *that* big”. But tumors grow in uncoordinated ways and produce waste that your body can’t efficiently remove so they can poison surrounding tissues as well as compete with and crowd out good tissue. sorry I don’t have sources, this is just something I read a long time ago.
There is limited resource in the human body. Checkpoints exist in regular cells that prevent a cell from the overconsumprion of resources. Regular cells evenetually die whenever it is “corrupted” or when it no longers function as it is suppose to. Cancer cells bypass these checks and destroy the body equilibrium. This is oversimplified, but should should explain the basics.
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