As organisms grow and change, they need to produce new cells in order to make more tissues, bones, and muscle tissues. Every minute your body needs to make around three hundred million new cells. However, sometimes these cells encounter outside stimuli that overrides the process of mitosis, in which cells reproduce by, causing cancer. (Mitosis and Cancer) Cancer specifically begins when one cell is converted from a normal cell to a cancer cell and is often due to a change in function or a DNA mutation that occurs in one of several genes that function to control growth.
(Mitosis and Cancer) This cell begins to reproduce forming an abnormal cell mass called a neoplasm or tumor. (Anatomy and Physiology pg. 102) As the tumor grows larger, it starts to release proteins from Cell Reproduction Unit to attract new blood vessels. This process is also known as angiogenesis. (Mitosis and Cancer) Most people automatically associate tumors with cancer, and rightfully so, but not all tumors are in fact cancerous. Tumors are either benign, or malignant. If a tumor is benign, that means that the tumor cells remain at the original site and can be removed surgically or by radiation.
Malignant tumors on the other hand, are cancerous. If a tumor is malignant, tumor cells send out signals that tell the body to produce a new blood vessel at the tumor site. These tumor cells have their own food and oxygen supply along with an escape route to a different area of the body. This escape method occurs through the new blood vessel and into the bloodstream. These cells break away from the tumor and spread to surrounding tissue causing new tumors to form, this is called metastasis.
(Mitosis and Cancer) The reason that cancer cells can reproduce so quickly and in large numbers is because compared to normal cells, they have unusual features. Cancer cells do not die. A normal cell would reproduce somewhere around fifty times and then die whereas cancer cells can go on dividing indefinitely. Along with immortality, cancer cells have an abnormal cell surface. As opposed to sticking together, they tend to “round up” and break attachments to other cells allowing for metastasis.
(Mitosis and Cancer) Although there isn’t a definite cure for cancer at the moment, scientists all over the country have been performing many different experiments, and obtaining various information to put into studies, in order to come closer to finding a cure. Some studies show that there are everyday things people can do just to prevent cancer from affecting them. Even though some people have weak genes and are prone to cancer, eating fruits and vegetables is said to help in the fight against this killer. Dr. Kay Judge and Dr.
Maxine Barish Wreden have proven that populations that consume less animal food and more plant food are at a lower risk of cancer. Therefore it is also said that in vegetarians, there is about a fifty percent less risk of cancer than in those who consume meat on a regular basis. (Enlist Fruit, Vegetables in Fight Against Cancer) Judge and Wreden have also said that having a diet that is high in animal foods, especially meat and dairy products, can even fuel cancer in numerous ways. The pesticides and hormones in the animal foods can be held responsible for fueling cancer growth.
Lack of fiber in your diet could also be a factor in getting cancer, and animal foods do not have enough fiber in them. (Enlist Fruit, Vegetables in Fight Against Cancer) Plant food does the exact opposite of animal food. Plant foods have high levels of antioxidants which can protect DNA from damage that would cause in a malignant tumor. Plants may also be able to impede the ability for cancer to grow through the process of angiogenesis, which again is the process of forming new blood vessels.
In people with healthy balanced diets, angiogenesis is pretty much regulated. Cancer is also looked at angiogenesis gone wild meaning that in order to multiply, cancer cells produce chemicals that initiate angiogenesis so they’re feeding themselves. If you cut off the blood supply to these cells and you stop the cancer. (Enlist Fruit, Vegetables in Fight Against Cancer) Scientists have followed up on this theory and began examining the power of certain foods to prevent angiogenesis.
Eating fruits such as apples, oranges, blackberries, and raspberries; vegetables like kale, bok choy, tomatoes, artichokes, pumpkins, and maitake mushrooms; legumes such as soybeans; spices and herbs like turmeric, nutmeg, garlic and parsley; tuna; and even red wine and chocolate all contribute positive effects to stopping the growth of cancer. The studies performed on these foods showed that the chemicals from plants that make up these foods is enough to avert angiogenesis so one cancer cell or many cancer cells cannot grow enough to do any harm.
(Enlist Fruit, Vegetables in Fight Against Cancer) A teacher at Harvard University, Dr. Judah Folkman, had a similar idea to that of the plant food inhibiting angiogenesis. Instead, he wanted to see if he could isolate chemicals from a primary tumor that also stopped the growth of the secondary ones. He later found two chemicals, angiostatin and endostatin, that in fact do kill the tumor by cutting off the blood supply, much like all of the fruits and vegetable chemicals. He thinks of this as starving the tumors to death. (Can Cancer Tumors Be Starved to Death?
) On a more scientific scale, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have been experimenting with T-Cells, a type of white blood cells that fight viruses and tumors, to somehow get them to search out and destroy cancer. In order to do this, they would have to program the T-Cells to recognize the cancer, attack it, multiply, and continue living inside the patient. The scientists have gotten the T-Cells to multiply enough to wipe out the cancer and then gradually disappear leaving memory cells that would be capable to quickly multiply when needed again.
This is an experimental treatment meaning that until it is fully regulated and safe to use on patients, it is not used outside of the study. (An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer) Although there are theories and scientific research being conducted on how to stop the spread of cancer, there are some treatments that already exist and are being used today. Chemotherapy and Radiation are the two most common courses of treatment. Radiation is used when the tumor is benign.
After the tumor is removed, you would undergo radiation to destroy any remaining cancer cells. However, if the tumor is malignant, chemotherapy would be the recommended treatment. Most chemotherapy drugs are known as anti-neoplastics which work by stopping the cell division in a stage of the cell cycle. They cause cell death in any dividing cell, including human cells that divide such as the cells in your gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and hair follicles. The desired outcome of this would be to kill off all the cancer cells.
Many people today are affected by cancer, whether it is directly or indirectly. Personally, I’ve had family members and a close friend battle with cancer, most of them coming out healthy. Knowing that my family has a history of breast cancer, it is extremely grateful to know that there are options out there, and that there are even simple ways that you can prevent cancer every day. Within the last ten years or so, cancer treatment and research has come such a long way, this can only mean that hopefully, within years to come we see the same progress.