So today I found out that Kelly Preston die of breast cancer, also today I found out that I have no idea how cancer works.
What I knew:
>>cancer = tumor (cells divided uncontrollably and no longer perform their roles)
>>sometime tumors can not be removed (which I understand when it comes to organs like the brain, you can’t get to it without breaking some other part BUT I don’t get it why you can easily cut out breast tumors or skin ones???)
>>sometimes cells from those tumors will travel through blood and that leads to tumors in other places, why is that possible??
And those are my main question, why can’t you just go in and cut the tumor out in those non-essential organs?
In: Biology
Cancer is what happens if certain cellular control mechanisms fail, most often because of a spontaneous mutation in a gene responsible for regulating cell growth. Cells in animals actually have a kind of suicide switch which prompts the cell to kill itself under certain conditions that indicate the cell’s DNA could be irreparibly damaged, this process is called “apoptosis”.If this doesn’t happen, the cell may start dividing indiscriminately, whereas in healthy cells, there are a multitude of factors controlling cell division, for example cells stop growing if the cell senses that a certain density of sister cells in it’s spatial proximity has been reached, and they will not divide into new cells until the cell itself has reached a certain size.Because cancer cells divide no matter what, not only do they not care about being surrounded by other cells, they also divide so fast, they don’t have time to grow to the size of a healthy cell, so the dividing cells get smaller, which is why they can actually peel away from their respective tissue, get carried off in the bloodstream and anchor themselves between the cells of some other tissue, they are squeezing through the gaps because they are so small.
Cancer cells’ proclivity to grow faster than healthy tissue is actually used in chemotherapy – the drugs you get during chemotherapy are often chemicals that look very similar to the DNA building blocks, which is why they get build into the DNA if it gets replicated – a necessary step for cell division. The chemicals don’t actually work like DNA, though, so the copied DNA just becomes dysfunctional and the cell dies. This kills all cells which take in the drugs, but since cancer cells divide so much faster, they die quicker than healthy cells. It’s a bit like injecting a kind of poison to which your healthy cells have some resistance, but the cancer cells don’t. This is also why hair falls out in someone undergoing chemotherapy, hair follice cells divide relatively fast and are thus more easily damaged than many other types of cells in the body.
edit: I actually forgot to explain the most important question, how does cancer in a non-essential organ kill you? Not only do the cancer cells, like little parasites, eat the food that’s meant for your healthy cells without benefiting the body in any way, if they grow into essential organs they can disrupt their function. Imagine your heart trying to pump blood with breast tissue growing inside it, imagine your lungs trying to expand, but there are little lumps of tissue fusing parts of the lungs that shouldn’t be mechanically connected…
Another way certain kinds of cancer cells can screw with your body is producing chemical signals that influence with it’s biochemical balance. The healthy cells are going to try and compensate, but at some point, it’s just no longer possible and you die because your body can’t regulate it’s functions adequately anymore.
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