Cancer is a condition where abnormal cells grow and divide or normal cells divide at an accelerated pace more times than they should. Cancer.gov describes cancer as follows “Cancer is the name given to a collection of related diseases. In all types of cancer, some of the body’s cells begin to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues.” The human body is a marvelous machine. It is designed from top to bottom to operate at optimum efficiency and this requires the periodic and orderly replacement of old cells with new ones.
Just as your car tires wear out when you have driven on them for a certain number of miles so your cells wear out after they have divided so many times. Depending on the type of cell it will either …show more content…
Some of them revolve around poorly researched or studied methodologies and practices and others that are more centered on traditional or more familiar medical treatments. Surgery is the oldest and most practiced method. Here the surgeon will use small sharp knives and scalpels to cut into you and remove the cancerous cells. This treatment has a large chance of “curing” the cancer, if the surgeon can remove all of the cancerous cells. However if even a few cells remain there is a good chance that the cancer will regrow perhaps larger and worse than before. If the cancer is in a part of the body that would be too difficult to reach through surgery, the brain, this might not be an option. Radiation therapy is another option that can be used to fight the tumor or cancer. This is a procedure where high energy beams are fired at the area of the body that has the cancer. The beams are rotated in accordance with a preset pattern determined by your doctor. The aim of the radiation pattern is to focus the beam and exposure time as much as possible on the cancer and reduce the time that healthy cells and organs are exposed. However you cannot completely reduce the exposure of healthy cells to the radiation and so this is a consideration that must be taken before choosing this option. Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill or fight the cancer. What this method does is target the growth of fast growing or moving cells aiming at either slowing the growth down or stopping it completely. Chemotherapy can be used alone to fight the cancer or it can used before surgery to reduce the size of a tumor and after other treatments to prevent the growth of any cells that were missed. However the drugs do not just affect the cancer cells. They also target other fast growing cells such as those that line the mouth and intestines and also the ones that are responsible for hair
Just as your car tires wear out when you have driven on them for a certain number of miles so your cells wear out after they have divided so many times. Depending on the type of cell it will either …show more content…
Some of them revolve around poorly researched or studied methodologies and practices and others that are more centered on traditional or more familiar medical treatments. Surgery is the oldest and most practiced method. Here the surgeon will use small sharp knives and scalpels to cut into you and remove the cancerous cells. This treatment has a large chance of “curing” the cancer, if the surgeon can remove all of the cancerous cells. However if even a few cells remain there is a good chance that the cancer will regrow perhaps larger and worse than before. If the cancer is in a part of the body that would be too difficult to reach through surgery, the brain, this might not be an option. Radiation therapy is another option that can be used to fight the tumor or cancer. This is a procedure where high energy beams are fired at the area of the body that has the cancer. The beams are rotated in accordance with a preset pattern determined by your doctor. The aim of the radiation pattern is to focus the beam and exposure time as much as possible on the cancer and reduce the time that healthy cells and organs are exposed. However you cannot completely reduce the exposure of healthy cells to the radiation and so this is a consideration that must be taken before choosing this option. Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill or fight the cancer. What this method does is target the growth of fast growing or moving cells aiming at either slowing the growth down or stopping it completely. Chemotherapy can be used alone to fight the cancer or it can used before surgery to reduce the size of a tumor and after other treatments to prevent the growth of any cells that were missed. However the drugs do not just affect the cancer cells. They also target other fast growing cells such as those that line the mouth and intestines and also the ones that are responsible for hair