Hi I am Josh, Medical Correspondant and today we will be discussing cancer. Cancers are disease that we see all over the press, all over the media and everywhere but, the thing is majority of society doesn't understand what cancer actually is. So today what I am going to do is explain what actually happens to people who have cancer.
Cancer happens when a cell in the body, it could be anywhere in the body, in any tissue, any organ, it can happen to people of any age, race, sex whatever. Everyone is susceptible to it, but what happens is, a cell will start to divide rapidly, it could be due to an environmental factor, due to carcinogen, smoking, for example, and so the cell will start dividing and it will divide and divide and divide until you have massive cells in the affected area and this massive cell is called the Tumor.
So with the tumor what often happens is it will affect the organ by increasing it's susceptibility to infection, it will also put pressure on neighboring tissues and organs thereby compromising their ability to perform their task physiologically. And also it can act to destroy the organ in which it's situated. And so this is what's called the primary Tumor and that's how it affects the body.
Now there is a term called metastasis that some people are familiar with and what metastasis is, is when cells from the primary tumor actually break off and flow to the blood stream and then end up at a different part of the body and implant themselves there. And so now what you have is you have a secondary Tumor at this tissue, it could be anywhere and you get the same effect going on, not only the primary site but at the secondary site as well and this is how cancer spreads, and this is how cancer becomes exceptionally deadly.
Now it's important to know too that the cancers in which there's a lot of blood flow involved, such as lung cancer which has a ton of blood flowing through it at all times, this is especially harmful because the blood will carry these cells off the tumor and bring them to more parts of the body, thereby increasing it's potency. So it's the spreading that really ultimately leads to decline of the cancer patients health, because once you start having systems of organs, as supposed to individual organs shutting down, it makes it really difficult to treat everything in the body and as a result, often unfortunately the patient dies.
But in order to prevent this, the best thing to do is to maintain a healthy lifestyle with active, regular and active eating and exercise habits, minimize alcohol consumption, quit smoking and in doing so you will significantly decrease your chances of obtaining cancer.
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