Back in the early part of the 1990's a film called 'The Medicine Man' was released and the story revolved around a doctor working in South America who discovers the cure for cancer, only to lose it in a local disaster. Think about that for a moment. Research over the years has helped our understanding of cancer but not to the point where we are able to foretell exactly when it will happen.
If someone were to ask you what cancer was, would you be able to give them a definition like the one in this article? They invade and destroy adjacent tissues and may even spread to other anatomical sites through a process called metastasis.
There are rare occasions when a benign tumor changes to a malignant one. It causes more deaths per population than any other illness, a staggering thirteen percent and the older you get the more prone you are to contracting the disease. While smoking, chemicals and radiation for instance, can be the cancer trigger, it is the poison from these or other sources that transform body cells and create genetic abnormalities which grow and multiply.
The cause can also be the responsibility of faulty DNA replication or a genetic trait inherited from parents which means a person can be born with them. Complex relationships between carcinogens and a person's genetic makeup may explain why only some develop it after exposure to a known carcinogen.
Owing to this ongoing, worldwide research, we do actually know a considerable amount about cancer even if we are some way from finding a complete and consistent cure. Much of the world's research into diseases is to try and find the reason why some people do not contract certain diseases while others do. We all want to know more about the causes of cancer what we can do to help prevent this illness from striking.
Over recent years, concern has been made public over the possibility that our dietary habits may be partly to blame for the incidence of the condition. Other foodstuffs that could create problems are too much salt and saturated fat.
Cancer does not seem to have preferences as it is able to invade just about every part of the human body and organs. Sometimes the disease is only picked up through routine screening. For those people diagnosed with cancer, my heart goes out to them and their families.
