I hope this question makes sense. I read where high levels of radiation exposure can cause cancer, but if that is the case, how does radiation treatments cure cancer? Thank you for reading.
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Radiation damages cells. It’s like a bunch of little molecule-scale bullets that shoot holes through your cells and the molecules inside. When this cellular damage includes DNA (the instructions your cells use to operate and build stuff), your cells start to malfunction. With their instruction manual in tatters, they can start growing and producing out of control. That’s cancer.
The radiation treatment for cancer is just an even higher dose of the same damaging bullets. It’s not “curing” cancer cells, it’s just completely shredding and killing them. The beam of radiation is carefully targeted to try and destroy all the cancer cells while doing minimal damage to the surrounding tissue.
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