“*A carcinogen is a substance, organism or agent capable of causing cancer*”.
“*Cancer* is *a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body*”.
How does something like alcohol or tobacco cause cancer?
In: Biology
ELI5 – when something is a *carcinogen* it’s like a gun that fires at your DNA. The chemical can hit the extra “junk” DNA that doesn’t do anything**, hit a part of your cells (e.g. the mitochondria) or your DNA. Even then one hit could make a harmless change or the cell just up and dies because the DNA can’t function anymore.
That’s one “shot” from something that can cause cancer. The less your exposure, the more the odds are in your favor.
Smoking or drinking is repeatedly exposing yourself to that “gun”. Now the odds are NOT in your favor. The more you’re exposed, the more at risk you are of a harmful change to your DNA turning cells into cancer cells.
What do I mean by a “harmful change”?
DNA is the instructions on how to make proteins and governs how cells divide.
But in ELI5 terms – the sentence “The fat cat ate the rat” has meaning right?
Now let me replace and remove some letters: “The bt caa ale the raq” – that’s nonsense.
And if I do it again “The fat bat are the rat” it’s nonsense but it you can read it.
Just as inserting nonsense lines in a paragraph or sentence can confuse you, if sequences of your DNA are damaged or changed, your cells can go haywire as the regulator systems are broken because the “sentence” that controlled them is now nonsense.
No imagine this change happening all over your body’s DNA – in effect the “gun changes the words” all over your DNA when you’re exposed over and over again to cancer causing chemicals. Sooner or later your luck runs out and what was a healthy cell now becomes a cancerous mass as it goes haywire and won’t stop growing.
**=that’s another ELI5
cancer sounds wild bro. like cells just going rogue and partying too hard. toxins in stuff like alcohol and tobacco mess with dna making cells forget how to behave
It has nothing to do with DNA. genetic theory of cancer is dead, it’s metabolic. Cancer is basically extreme diabetes. Anything can cause cancer by knocking out a cells ability to burn sugar. Any kind of chronic stress on a cell can do it, as well as nutritional deficiencies (can’t burn sugar without enough B vitamins, for instance). The efficient burning of sugar is broken somehow, and so the cells switch to burning fat, leaving the sugars to ferment (an inefficient way of burning sugar). This is a self propelling process but it can be reversed.
Even more basic explanation: The cell is wounded and is trying to heal. Keep wounding your cells and this can happen, especially if the insults chronically add up. You have two engines for making energy from sugars and fats, a clean burning fusion engine that can burn sugar and fats (mitochondria), and an ancient dirty coal engine than can burn sugar (fermenting). If the fusion engine is broken, you use the coal engine, and it pollutes the cells with fumes (lactate). This pollution is itself a stress. If you clear the lactate and restore the mitochondria, the cells can heal or simply die off.
Georgi Dinkov explains this in more detail, and how he’s curing cancer (in mice) with aspirin and B vitamins: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXq4S2Dx_b8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXq4S2Dx_b8)
Dear Diary:
Today was rough. Working in the gall bladder is never easy, of course, but we take pride in our work. “If you’re gonna store bile, do it in style,” we always say. But a few days ago, this smoke got into our work area – not even sure how. I was lucky and managed to stay away, but my buddy? He got caught up in it, and he got hurt. Hurt bad. I hope he recovers.
***
Dear Diary:
It’s been a few days, and I’m still worried about him. Fortunately he seems to have survived, but… he’s different now. He’s dividing constantly. Bile work is always dangerous, of course – cells get hurt all the time, and when the worst happens and we need extra help, we divide. But now, it’s like division is all he can think of. He doesn’t help break up stones, he doesn’t help move the bile into the duodenum on schedule, it’s just all division, all the time. And when we tell him to stop it’s like he can’t even hear us. All his duplicates are the same way, too.
It’s getting crowded in here. I hope they come to their senses soon.
***
Dear Diary
This has been the most terrifying week of my life! Food was already getting scarce, as all the duplicates ate everything and care that we were hungry. But that’s not the worst of it, oh no. Days ago, a giant knife stabbed in through the walls! Then a massive section of the walls themselves just disappeared, like they’d been pulled away into a great void. And so many cells went with them. I was terrified. My buddy is… gone. Most of his duplicates, too. Afterwards, we all got sick, like we’d been exposed to some kind of poison. A lot of the workers didn’t make it, but the remaining duplicates of my buddy were so busy trying to duplicate – yes, even after all that! – that they refused to protect themselves, and they didn’t stand a chance. Most of the ones that didn’t disappear into the void perished to the poison.
Call me a bad cell, but I can’t seem to make myself feel bad about that.
***
Dear Diary:
I don’t know why, but I find myself oddly optimistic today, despite the poison which has periodically ravaged our community for the few weeks. The copies my buddy left behind are all gone now – succumbed to the poison to the last – and food supplies are back to normal. And even while I was wracked by pain from the most recent wave of poison, I thought I heard a ringing sound. I don’t know; maybe it was some kind of hallucination, but it felt real. It gave me hope for the future. Like maybe the poison will stop.
I guess it doesn’t matter. Maybe it will end, and maybe it won’t. But come what may, I’ve got a job to do. After all:
If you’re gonna store bile, do it in style!
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