Cancer is made of cells, just like anything.
A cancerous tumor is simply a collection of cells, that are rebelling.
There are trillions of cells in the human body (estimates range from about 15 to 70
trillion, it’s hard to say for sure).
All these cells are making copies of themselves, replicating and copying their own DNA all
the time.
And as much as we want it to be, nothing is perfect.
Sometimes, they just naturally rebel and become cancer.
Let’s break this down so we all are on the same page.
Different cells replicate at different rates -- a red blood cell lives about four months,
a skin cell lives a few weeks, and cells in the colon only live a few days.
By the time you’re 50, you’ve gone through about 4600 generations of colon cells!
That’s insane!
By the time you’re 70, you’ve almost had six and a half thousand new colons… many
millions of cells in the colon dividing six and a half thousand times with tiny errors
popping up here and there…
it’s no wonder cells become abnormal.
Most of the time in talk about avoiding cancer you’ll hear, like… don’t eat processed
meat, it’s a carcinogen!
Don’t smoke, the crap in the cigarettes will give you lung cancer!
Stay out of the sun because UV light will give you skin cancer!
And that is all true!
But, all those cancers happen for the same reason.
Simply put, compounds in the smoke, or meat from the processing, or UV radiation from
the sun -- all mess with DNA in your cells.
When your DNA is screwed with it can sometimes mutate in such a way that it becomes cancer…
And this can happen even without outside influences.
Mutations happen naturally!
So, two years ago, a paper was published that said most cancers in the U.S. weren’t caused
by smoking or UV exposure, or lifestyle factors --
but by regular ol’ DNA replication.
Sometimes cancer just... happens.
The paper says that while 40 percent of cancers can be prevented with healthy lifestyle choices,
the remainder of cancer causes were inherited traits or just dumb luck.
Just problems in cell replication.
Skeptical scientists were quick to jump on this original paper -- in part, because it
was only done in the U.S..
The lives of people in the United States are not the same as people everywhere -- it’s
not easily generalizable to all the humans in the world, right?
Right.
So, the scientists heard the critique and did the whole study again.
It took them two years.
This time they included data from 69 countries, and added more cancer types!
They found the same thing.
66 percent of cancers just, happen.
And the rest were environmental factors, lifestyle choices and genetics.
For example: most brain and prostate cancers, as well as cancers in children are caused
by DNA copy errors -- while some lung cancers are mostly due to environmental factors!
So, DON’T SMOKE.
But also, yikes for kids.
It’s probably not a surprise, but many doctors aren’t happy with this paper.
How can we “cure cancer” if cancer is a normal part of a healthy DNA replication
cycle?
I mean, you can still cut your risk by nearly half by living healthily, but overall -- cancer
may be just… inevitable, for some.
This is why we need to focus on UNDERSTANDING cancer on top of the talk of CURING it.
You can cure a cancer as a symptom, but you can’t cure cancer the mutation without a
lot more science.
If we just think of cancer as this infection, that happens to people who don’t live right
or who are unlucky, then we’re ignoring the pure mathematics of DNA replication.
We’re not being honest with ourselves.
Cancer sucks.
But it’s also a normal part of life on this planet, and just like anything else -- the
sooner we accept it, and understand it, the better off we’ll all be at figuring out
how we can all just live.
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If cancer is just cells, and lots of animals get cancer, I wonder if I’ve ever eaten
cancer?
Have you thought about that?
So gross.
Also gross things I’ve never thought about, our producer Matt asked “what does human
flesh taste like, and which bit of us is most nutritious.”
Find out here.
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