When somebody dies of cancer, what exactly is the actual reason the body stops working?
In: 1666
Every cell in your body has a job. Every one. And all your cells, doing their job well, is what keeps you alive and healthy. Cells don’t take time off. Every moment of their existence is either doing their job or recovering, to prepare for doing a job later.
What happens when cells stop doing their job? They die. Cells have built in self destruct code, and if something goes wrong, they break themselves down, to be harvested and used for more jobs by other cells. So, if a cell finds itself somewhere it shouldn’t be, or unable to work, they self destruct.
Cancer is often a twofold break. First, the cell’s DNA (its list of instructions) tells the cell to stop doing its job and do something else instead. Second, its self destruct breaks in the DNA. Cancer cells reproduce nonstop, passing on these traits to all their offspring. If the order to self destruct when it stops working, that’s early cancer. If the order also breaks when it’s in the wrong place, then that is metastasized cancer, which is much more dangerous.
But the reason the body stops working? Enough cells stop doing their job to stop something that really needs to happen from happening.
That’s the incredibly simplified low down.
Latest Answers