Information of Cancer

People often dread receiving news of being diagnosed with cancer and because millions die each year it helps to become familiar with what cancer is so that you can take necessary steps to cancer prevention. There are various types of cancer and most of them have similar beginnings with different approaches for prevention and treatment once diagnosed. So exactly what is cancer?

Cancer is a group of cells in the body that has grown out of control and even though there are many types of cancer many of them are developed from abnormal cell growth. Normal cells in the body grow and mutate on their own and when cells die they are replaced or repaired. The younger you are the faster your cells grow, divide, and die and as an adult the process slows down and more cells are replaced and repaired.

Cancer involves abnormal cell growth meaning cells that should have died continue to mutate and divide. When they continue to do this they form a tumor or mass of cells in most cases and invade or grow onto other body tissues. The process describes what happens when DNA cells are damaged and because the cell didn't die off like it's supposed to there are additional cells present that the body doesn't need. Since it affects body cells and DNA this is how many types of cancer become genetic.

Most cancers that develop become a mass of cells which is referred to as a lump like breast cancer or a tumor like brain cancer but in a cancer such as leukemia the cells involve the blood and effect organs that create blood for the body. Since they affect blood cells the cancer is circulated in the tissues. When the cancer gets into the bloodstream and begins to grow and form new cells this is called metastasis which spreads the cancer to other areas of the body.

There is another kind of tumor that is not cancerous called a benign tumor and though they are not cancerous they can cause problems by growing large enough to press against healthy tissues yet they don't invade since they don't metastasize. As a result they are not life threatening but in many cases they need to be removed. Because there are so many types of cancer and the process of how cancer develops is so similar what makes one type of cancer differ from another?

Cancers differ by where they first started in their development. It is named due to where it started no matter where it spreads to. Often time's people can have cancer spread to the liver or lungs but in fact it is diagnosed as breast cancer or brain cancer because that is the area of the body where the cancer cells developed. Since cancer often develops in different areas of the body and effect how the body functions there are different types of treatments for that specific cancer. Many cancers are preventable by adopting a healthy lifestyle.