What Is Cancer? How do we fight it?

Cancer is a complicated disease. There are many different types of cancer, and each presents itself in different ways. Blood cancers present differently than cervical cancer. However the basic premise of how the body develops cancer is fairly universal.

As I am not a doctor, I’m going to break this down in fairly simple terms. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells. These cells have a natural life cycle, and over time the cells grow old and die off, allowing newer, healthy cells to take their place. Cancer occurs when the old cells don’t die off, newer cells form when they aren’t needed, and the excessive cells clump together to form tumors. There is a breakdown in communication between healthy cells and cancerous cells that don’t inform the cancerous cells to stop growing.

There are many different ways of treating cancer, depending on what type of cancer you have, and how far along the cancer is. Most people have surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, or a combination of any of those three. There are also the options of immunotherapy (A type of biological therapy that uses substances to stimulate or suppress the immune system to help the body fight cancer, infection, and other diseases. Some types of immunotherapy only target certain cells of the immune system. Others affect the immune system in a general way. Types of immunotherapy include cytokines, vaccines, bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), and some monoclonal antibodies.), targeted therapy (A type of treatment that uses drugs or other substances to identify and attack specific types of cancer cells with less harm to normal cells. Some targeted therapies block the action of certain enzymes, proteins, or other molecules involved in the growth and spread of cancer cells. Other types of targeted therapies help the immune system kill cancer cells or deliver toxic substances directly to cancer cells and kill them. Targeted therapy may have fewer side effects than other types of cancer treatment. Most targeted therapies are either small molecule drugs or monoclonal antibodies.), or hormone therapy (Treatment that adds, blocks, or removes hormones. For certain conditions (such as diabetes or menopause), hormones are given to adjust low hormone levels. To slow or stop the growth of certain cancers (such as prostate and breast cancer), synthetic hormones or other drugs may be given to block the body’s natural hormones. Sometimes surgery is needed to remove the gland that makes a certain hormone. Also called endocrine therapy, hormonal therapy, and hormone treatment.). Every person is different, and every case is different, so it is important to talk to your oncologist about their recommendation, and then to decide what is right for you.

Clinical trials are another option, which test how well new medical approaches work in people. These studies test new methods of screening, prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of a disease.

Source information credit goes to NIH National Cancer Institute.