Cancer
It is not uncommon to hear about many new, and different, types of diseases spreading in today’s world. AIDS was unheard of until around 20 years ago, and now suddenly it is the biggest epidemic to hit humans in today’s world. Similarly, another disease to become widespread recently is cancer. Although also a daunting disease to be affected with, researchers have been trying to find cures for many different kinds of cancers and have had many a great breakthrough. To this day the actual reasons behind cancer have been hard to find. Research has found many risk factors that increase a person’s chance of getting cancer, but these are not exact causes for it either. It all seems to be left to chance.
What is cancer? All living cells in our body go through a repeated process of being made (born), life and then finally death. Cells that die are then released as waste material in the body. For some people however, for no known reasons as yet, the ‘reproduction’ of these new cells takes place at a faster rate. Because of the irregularity, more and more healthy cells are formed when they are not needed. when there are too many of the cells formed, they become a collection which serve no purpose. This collection of cells is the tumor, which if turns out to be harmful, is termed to be a cancer. Depending on which area of the body these tumors form, the cancer is named differently. For example, if found in lungs it is called lung cancer, and if in the bone, then bone cancer. Cancer can remain in the same area it formed, but there are malignant tumors that can spread to other parts of the body. For spreading to occur, some cancer cells should break free from the tumor and move to other regions in the body.
There are various types of treatments used to cure cancer. Removing a tumor by surgery usually means it can be fully taken out, but for those that cannot be operated on, alternate therapy methods like radiation and chemotherapy are used.
More than with any other disease, knowing you have cancer can be one of the hardest things to deal with for anyone, but the worst thing to do would be to lose hope. Getting proper treatment, eating the right kinds of food, making small changes in your lifestyle, and most importantly, ALWAYS being positive are the best ways to make sure you enjoy life for many more years to come!