Let’s say someone is a cigarette smoker. Each time they light a cigarette, are they chancing the fact that it could contain the carcinogen that will start the cancer that will be an issue for them years later, or is it a gradual build up of carcinogens in the body eventually causing lung cancer? Like, could the hypothetical hot dog I’m eating right now be responsible for cancer years down the line?
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Every time a cell dies it is replaced. This happens million of times in our body.
When it is replaced the new cell can have an error. But first of al, a cell with an error may just not work and die. If the wrong cell survive it’s “first day”, your body will send antibodies to kill it.
You need a special combination in the error to make a cell that replicates faster than what your body can fight. We call it cancer. But not all the cancer are lethal the same way, some just grow a bit and stop.
The chances to get a cancer do increase if the cells have to be replaced too often, like getting a sunburn every day will force your skin to make new skin cells at a very very high rhythm.
Then there is how dirty is the copy of the cell. If the cell is exposed to toxic material or radiation during the copy, the chance of an error is increased.
To summarize, there is a big chunk of luck into surviving or not this mutation, but on average, smoking, drinking alcohol, getting sunburn, having a awful diet, all contribute to make this errors in the cells more likely.
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