Health Quarter Project

Cancer Is there and will there ever be a cure or remedy for cancer? Cancer is a type of disease where a group of cells show uncontrollable growth, destruction of nearby tissue and sometimes can spread throughout the body through the bloodstream or other ways. It is a known fact that cancer causes about 13% of all human deaths. Cancer can be a result of various cancer producing agents, such as tobacco smoke, radiation, chemicals or infecting agents. Other cancer causing abnormalities can be from errors in DNA replication or inherited from someone else. There are various types of cancers but cancer can happen almost on any part of the body. Cancer has many ways of showing that it is in or is happening in your body systems. There are some signs that can be hard to detect as cancer symptoms because just having a few symptoms may not be enough to figure out what’s causing it. For example, a rash can be thought of as a symptom for poison ivy, an allergic reaction or other things. If that person has a certain symptom along with other symptoms, then the person could be able to get a better idea of the illness they might have. Although it would be much better if the person went to see a doctor, nurse or other professional to be able to detect the cancer. Many times, a patient’s signs and symptoms alone do not provide enough information for a doctor to tell the cause of the infection or disease. When this happens, then it might be necessary to run tests on the patient, such as x-rays, blood tests or a biopsy or the removing of body tissue to be examined. As a cancer grows, it can begin to push on nearby organs, blood vessels and nerves. This pressure creates some of the signs and symptoms of cancer. But sometimes cancer starts in places where it will not cause any symptoms until it has grown a lot. Some general symptoms of cancer include strange weight loss, changes in skin and bladder functions, sores, white patches in the mouth and unusual bleeding. There are many ways of being able to detect cancer through numerous ways, such as having various symptoms that let you know there is something wrong, having a doctor check and different kinds of tests that can be made to the body or by taking a sample of tissue or blood from the body. Each test has its own way of detecting cancer but it’s important to know what each one does so you have a reliable result. There are many types of cancer but most of them begin when abnormal cells grow uncontrollably and form a lump or a tumor. The tumor continues to grow and eventually the cancer will spread to other parts of the body. If the tumor can be found while it’s still small, treating will be less difficult. However, the longer the tumor goes unnoticed, the greater the chance that it has already spread which means it will be more difficult to treat it. There are a few things that can help you know if you are at risk for cancer, like knowing if there is a family member that has had cancer, using or have been using tobacco, drinking alcohol, having a diet that is high in fat and being exposed to chemicals. Depending on the age of the person, the doctor may begin screening for certain cancers. For many years the treatment of cancer was focused mainly on surgery, chemotherapy or the treatment of disease using chemicals and radiation. As researchers began to learn more about how the body fights cancer, new ways of treating cancer were being discovered. There are three common methods of treating cancer: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Because each person is different, their treatment plan will individually be designed. A doctor that specializes in treating cancer is called an oncologist. Surgery removes cancerous tissue, depending on the area where the cancer is, the surgery can be simple or difficult. The surgeon will remove the infected tissue along with a little bit of healthy tissue surrounding it to make sure that it is completely removed and so that it doesn’t spread anymore. Chemotherapy is a treatment that uses medicines. When a person is under chemotherapy they might experience side effects, such as nausea, fatigue, hair loss and others. Some of these effects might happen because chemotherapy medicines may kill some healthy cells in order to get rid of the cancerous cells. In time these cells will grow back and the side effects will go away. Radiation or radiotherapy is another method of treating cancer. Radiotherapy machines give powerful x-rays to the part of the body that is infected by cancer. After repeating this process many times the tumors will shrink or disappear. Cancer is one of the most preventable life-threatening diseases that everyone faces now in these days. There are several things that can be done to reduce the risk of cancer. One of them is improving the diet you have by eating healthy foods that have the necessary nutrients that everyone needs and eating less of foods that are high on fat. Another is doing more exercise to get rid of fat that is not necessary. Quit smoking to reduce the risk enormously. Finally, going to the doctor more frequently to get tested and screened. Except in the case where a person might have cancer due to the fact that it’s because of genetic reasons then the only thing to do is to go under treatments. Today, more than ever, people all over the world are researching to help prevent or beat cancer. Up to this point there has been no known remedy that will cure cancer. Although it’s true that there hasn’t been a cure for cancer found yet, there are still various ways of preventing it from happening and treating it. By having options to be able use to prevent it and treat it we can help raise the number of survivors ad lower the number of deaths caused by cancer. There has been a lot of money funded to research and try to find a cure for cancer. The cure will happen when the disease has gone away completely and it's not likely to come back, and the person is likely to grow old and die from something totally unrelated. There are many signs and symptoms that let you know when there is something wrong internally and if you don’t realize something is wrong then the doctors will find something when you go to get a checkup. Once the cancer has been found there are various ways of treating it to make sure it is gone for good and that it doesn’t spread anymore. Cancer can also be reduced by doing some adjustments to the choices you make. Although there is no known cure for cancer yet, a lot of research has been done to try and find a solution to this problem. Will there ever be a cure that will beat cancer? Resources ,[object Object],National Cancer Institute & National Institutes of Health. Dec. 21, 2009. http://www.nci.nih.gov/clinicaltrials/learning/cancervaccines/page1 ,[object Object],Cancer. Dec. 21, 2009. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/cri/content/cri_2_4_3x_what_are_the_signs_and_symptoms_of_cancer.asp ,[object Object],Family Doctor. Dec. 21, 2009. http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/cancer/basics/725.html ,[object Object],Kids Health. Dec. 21, 2009. http://kidshealth.org/teen/diseases_conditions/cancer/cancer.html#

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