It is always an unfortunate event when someone has been diagnosed with cancer. But you are never alone, there are hundreds of treatments and factors that can lower or possibly eliminate your cancer cell count. In the past years there have been many improvements in the treatment of cancer. Many of my own family members in the past have been affected by cancer. But with the right precautionary measures many cancer types can possibly be prevented. Research has shown that a healthy lifestyle and diet can possibly help prevent many types of cancer.
The National cancer Institute contends that with exercise and a low calorie, high fiber diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables that is one of the best ways to prevent cancer. There are also many common risk factors that are wise to avoid when trying to prevent cancer such as: Tobacco use Alcohol consumption Obesity Sun exposure These risk factors could possibly lead to lung cancer, skin cancer, and breast cancer. One of the biggest risk factors is Obesity which can possibly cause your risk of cancer to rise. Obesity can cause cancers anywhere from colon cancer, to cancer of the esophagus.
Another one of the bigger risk factors is tobacco use. Tobacco use can lead to many types of cancer, but the biggest is lung cancer. Lung cancer kills about 1 out of every 5 people each year. Tobacco use which leads to lung cancer is the number one preventable cause of death in the country which is estimated to be around 438,000 deaths in the United States alone. But tobacco use can also lead to other cancers such as throat, mouth, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and cervical cancer. The biggest key when treating cancer is early detection. When detected in its earlier stages cancer can be easily removed or treated.
But more often than not when cancer is detected it has already caused serious damage to one or more major organs. This is why the American cancer Society advises the people of the ages 20 or older to have periodic cancer-related health exams done. To help to detect cancer before it causes irreversible damage to your body. The most common method for staging cancer is T/N/M method. This method looks at the different characteristics of the cancer and the severity of each characteristic to determine the overall severity of the cancer. Depending on the severity of the cancer it will be given one of the three stages, T, N, or M.
Once the cancer is assigned one of the three characteristic stages it is assigned a stage of I, II, III, or IV, once again depending on the severity of the cancer as well as the size of the tumor. Once the cancer is diagnosed it is very important to make sure or somehow prevent the cancer from spreading throughout the body. Cancer spread through the body by a process called Metastasis in which the cancer cells of an already existing cancerous tumor break away, leak, or spill. From there the cancer cells enter either lymphatic or blood vessels.
From there the cancer can spread throughout the body and deposit in other parts of the body. Cancer cells are an abnormal cell, which while being produced a DNA mutation occurs. Since there are many factors and things that can alter DNA or cause a DNA mutation, there is an equally large amount of things that can cause cancer. One important treatment to preventing or delaying cancer developing is Chemoprevention. Chemoprevention is a vitamin or drug regimen which has shown to help the progression of cancer. The first Chemoprevention drug to be approved by the FDA was Tamoxifen.
Tamoxifen is the most well known Chemoprevention agent; studies have shown that woman with a high risk of getting breast cancer who took this agent their chances dropped by one half. But Chemoprevention may not be right for every patient. It can have serious side effects on certain people, which is why it is so important that Chemoprevention is only given to people who have high risk factors of getting cancer. Risk factors such as hereditary family history of cancer, an inherited family mutation, and factors such as smoking, obesity, etc. Another very important step in preventing cancer is cancer screenings.
Cancer screenings are medical tests that are given to people who have no signs of illness. Cancer screenings help detect cancer in its earliest stage, which gives the patient a higher chance of getting rid of the cancer without causing irreversible damage. The screenings can be personalized to the patient depending on their age, gender, medical and hereditary history, as well as other factors will all be considered by the physician for each individual patient. All of this things and information can help to possibly prevent cancer or lower a person’s risks of getting cancer.
If a person lives a healthy lifestyle and has cancer screening performed regularly by their physician and listens and works together with their physician to make the right decisions for that person depending on their individual situation and cancer type there will always be hope. Hope that the patient can beat this disease and become a survivor of one of the world’s deadliest diseases.
Works Cited Http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Metastasis. Web. Http://www. cancerquest. org/index. cfm? page=3363&lang=english. Web. Http://www. cancer. gov/cancertopics/smoking.
Web. Http://www. cancerquest. org/index. cfm? page=238&lang=english. Web. Http://www. cancerquest. org/index. cfm? page=407&lang=english. Web. Http://www. mdanderson. org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/cancer-topics/prevention-and-screening/chemoprevention/index. html. Web. Http://www. mdanderson. org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/cancer-topics/prevention-and-screening/cancer-screening-guidelines/index. html. Web. Johnson, George B. , and Peter H. Raven. Holt Biology. New York: Harcourt School, 2005.