| What is Cancer?
by: Simon Mitchell
Article Word Count: 1225
Cancer is a process that has always effected animals, it
is just as common in domestic and farm animals, birds and
fishes as it is in humans. Western scientific medicine has
been effective in minimising infectious diseases. Many of
us are living longer and cancer has almost been accepted as
a normal feature of the ageing process. But statistics do
not bear this out. The incidence of cancer is increasing in
all age groups.
Because cancer cells take some time to grow to a stage where
they are a large enough mass to be identifiable, it might
be 18 months to 3 years, even 30 years before the disease
is diagnosed by a doctor. By then we can be more than half-way
down the path to a terminal illness. Due to our psychological
make-up we are often immobilised by the news.
We tend to minimise it or deny that it has happened to us.
We get depressed. ‘Why me?’ A cycle of immobilisation
- minimisation - depression often occurs. Those who do break
out of it and manage to accept the reality start testing for
options, often ‘against the clock’ find out that
cancer is an awesome and complex subject providing a great
example of opening a ‘whole can of worms’. Information
overload, specialist language, ignorance of alternatives,
vested interest, lack of co-operation, paradigm gaps, lack
of access to specific information or treatment and a host
of barriers such as language translation exist that prevent
understanding the problem let alone the latest research.
Since an allopathic doctor (Western surgical doctor) is generally
the first point of contact for this dis-ease, cancer is mostly
treated only with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery and
more recent biological breakthroughs in hormone treatment.
Despite billions spent on research these are basically the
same options we had fifty years ago. Essentially the basic
treatment of cancer has not changed for many years.
Orthodox treatments for cancer can be brutal and expensive
but in the face of scientific medical evidence are the best
we have. Solid information on alternatives is confusing, contradictory,
unproved and unsupported by current medical models. Many medical
doctors view alternatives or complementary approaches with
doubt. Those that do endorse them do so mainly because they
might enhance the patients quality of life or contribute to
palliative care (palliative: ‘relieving pain or alleviating
a problem without dealing with the cause’).
Many complementary and alternative practitioners point out
that allopathic cancer treatments are only palliative because
they treat effects without looking at causes. An example is
using pain killers to take away a headache. Although it is
highly useful and very convenient it is no guarantee that
the headache won’t re-occur. Similarly the orthodox
treatment of cancer is more concerned with treating the dis-ease
than the patient.
How does it start?
In cancer, a cell, or group of cells, loses touch with where
it is in the scheme of things, its ‘synergy’,
and starts replicating for itself. The word synergy comes
from the Greek ‘sunergos’, meaning ‘working
together’. Synergy is the interaction of two or more
agents, that produces an combined effect greater than the
sum of their separate effects, in this case - us. All the
cells in a healthy body work together to give us life. They
exist as unique individual cells in their own right but also
have a higher function, contributing to the life-form of which
they are part. Every one of the two thousand billion cells
in our bodies has as many working parts as a passenger airliner
so it is quite usual for some of these cells to suffer damage.
We all have the potential for cancer. Even a healthy body
carries about 10,000 malignant cells and a fully functioning
immune system will remove them. But what do cells ‘get’
that change them, click them out of the whole system of our
body to become selfish and self-replicating?
Some doctors refer to this simply as ‘insult’.
What happens when you insult a cell so often it gets upset?
Just like you or I might do - it gives up on the host and
sets out for itself. Our consumer culture is presently rich
in ways for us to insult our cells and stress them without
us even realising.
The growth begins when oncogenes (controlling cell growth
and multiplication) in a cell or group of cells are ‘transformed’
by carcinogens. Cell insult often starts with ‘free
radicals’, which are unstable atoms or molecules produced
by the body as part of its natural defence against disease.
Sometimes the body over-reacts in its production of these
and produces more than it needs. Recognised stressors that
can spark overproduction include cigarette smoke, smog or
pollution, too much ultraviolet light, illness or even too
much exercise!
Free radicals contain a negative charge that makes them highly
reactive. As soon as they are produced they start looking
for other molecules with positively charged particles. The
reaction they have on meeting is called oxidisation, and this
reaction can have a harmful effect, damaging the D.N.A. inside
cells or cell membranes and opening the door for cancer.
When a cell is changed into a tumour-forming type, the change
in its oncogenes is passed onto all offspring cells. Hence
a small group can become established and then start dividing
rapidly. Usually these cells ‘give up’ on their
normal specialised task in the body and escape from normal
controls such as bodily hormones and nerves.
Cancer has no regard for the condition of its host only the
success of its own growth, it is ‘anti-synergistic’
and a parasite to the body, consuming nutrients and contributing
nothing. It converts the energies around it to its own use
and blocks any attacks by suppressing the body’s own
immunity. This immunity self-attack is an emerging pattern
in modern diseases.
Cancer cells interact with each other and cells around them.
They affect the growth of cells nearby and elsewhere in the
body, they change the immune system to benefit themselves,
they can avoid or destroy normal body defences such as lymphocytes.
They can even persuade the body to grow new blood vessels
to feed a tumour.
Cancer cells move seemingly ‘at will’ around
the body, dissolving the glue of healthy cell walls to pass
through and set-up camp elsewhere, creating metastases (secondary
growths) seemingly anywhere. It is a highly complex disease
with over a hundred definable types and many variables within
each.
Cancer is a form of chaos that grows inside us. It is no
wonder this most frightening and mysterious of diseases is
immortalised in the ‘dreaming mechanisms’ of our
media. Movies such as the Alien series capitalise on our fears
of something unknown and unwanted growing inside us.
Cell insult happens in a number of ways and if the right
conditions for cancer exist it will start to grow through
cell multiplication. Once the cancer growth gets going, and
the conditions that engendered it are still present, the growth
continues at various rates, depending on the host and what
they provide. Cancer grows best in an P.H. acid body with
lots of glucose, oxygen and easily accessible nutrients.
Even with immortal cell replication it can take many years
before a cancer becomes noticeable. A million cells together
create only a small growth. Diagnosis is still difficult at
this stage as there may not be any visible evidence of cancer.
About The Author
This is an extract from 'Don't Get Cancer'a new ebook available
only at: http://www.simonthescribe.co.uk/don'tget1.html
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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