What is Breast Cancer?
CANCER IS UNCHECKED GROWTH OF ABNORMAL BREAST CELLS:
* What causes cells to become abnormal and match wildly? Damage to the DNA, the brain of the cell, which causes mutations and activation of oncogenes. Usually one mutation isn’t enough; most cells must bear several mutations before they become cancerous. (Sometimes the mutations must occur in sequence to create a cancer, sometimes random order will do it.) What causes DNA devastation? Radiation, free radicals, genetic defects, electrical fields, chemicals, drugs, viruses, and metabolic stresses.
INJURY TO THE DNA INITIATES ALL CANCER:
* When mutations accumulate and oncogenes turn on, the cell is initiated. It is abnormal, but not cancerous. Initiated cells are diagnosed as atypia, dysplasia, or hyperplasia.
* Damaged cells alone extend no threat to long life. To become threatening, the abnormal cells must be promoted. Promoters bring the cells nutrients so they can imitate. (One of the strongest promoters of breast cancer is estrogen.) Although promoted cells can disguise themselves so the immune system won’t recognize them, most of them are seen and eaten, or encapsulated by the solidity so they do no harm. Promoted cells are called carcinoma in situ.
According to Christiane Northrup, M.D., in situ cancer cells are ordinarily found in the breasts of women who die of causes other than cancer. And according to Susan Love, M.D., breast cancer specialist, in situ cells are reversible without invasive treatments and shouldn’t be cogitation of as cancers.
THE CANCER CASCADE: INITIATION, PROMOTION, GROWTH:
* Promoted breast cells, no issue how many of them there are, are not classified as invasive unless they spread out of the tissues of origin and into the surrounding tissues. This is the growth phase. When promoted cells tender the growth phase, they begin to form a tumor and to recruit blood vessels to help supply their giant need for nutrients. (The tumor may grow so quickly that cells in its center die from lack of nourishment.) The diagnosis now becomes infiltrating or invasive carcinoma.
THE CANCER CASCADE CAN BE HALTED OR REVERSED:
* Once a rally of abnormal, quickly-replicating cells has created a network of blood vessels, individual cancer cells can classify from the tumor and travel to other parts of the body. Because the breast is not vital to life, a breast cancer that stays in the heart is not life-threatening. But if breast cancer cells get to the liver, lungs, bone marrow, or the brain and at to grow, they can hinder the functioning of processes necessary for life. The body attempts to check this spread by locking titty cancer cells in lymph node prisons and by sending immune system cells out to eat traveling cancer cells. If cancer cells are found in the axillary lymph nodes, the diagnosis is pushy or metastasized carcinoma.
NINETY PERCENT OF CANCER DEATHS ARE FROM METASTASES:
* Not everyone whose cellular DNA is damaged will get cancer. Why not? All cells have the character to repair themselves or to shut down if they are mutated or damaged. Good lifestyle habits and ordinary foods such as lentils also back DNA damage.
SPECIAL IMMUNE CELLS EAT POTENTIAL CANCERS:
* The wear-and-tear of duration gives rise to so many mutated, abnormal, initiated cells (even in a healthy person) that the immune system forms a never-ending stream of specialized cells to seek out and consume them. So long as the immune system is strong, and well supplied with nutrients, initiated and promoted cells can be harmlessly eliminated, checking the potential of cancer.
CANCER CELLS ARE IMMATURE YET REPRODUCE WITHOUT LIMITS. LIVING LONG PAST THEIR SPAN, THEY APPEAR IMMORTAL:
* Building powerful immunity isn’t always enough, though. Cancer cells can trick the protected system into leaving them alone, and they can replicate so rapidly that they overwhelm the immune system with sheer force of numbers. One of the reasons breast cancer is so sensitive to treat is that cancer cells are full of life. They no longer have the inner signal that tells them to die after reproducing. Like the medicine man’s apprentice, the woman with breast cancer finds herself with cancer cells that replicate unceasingly. Cancer cells never fructify up and become productive members of their community. They simply take up space.
BREAST CANCER IS NOT ONE DISEASE, BUT MANY:
* Because there are assorted types of cells in the breasts (e.g., ducts and lobes) and a variety of ways that a cell can be abnormal, there are many kinds of knocker cancers and many possible treatments. Of the two dozen kinds of breast cancer known, the majority originate in the duct cells. (See depiction of duct cells, page 106 in my book, Breast Cancer? Breast Health!)
* Some boob cancers grow slowly, others quickly. Slow growing breast cancers double in size every 42-100 days or more. Quick-witted growing breast cancers can double every 21 days. Pre- and peri-menopausal women tend to have faster growing, more bellicose breast cancers (about 10-15 percent of all breast cancers).
* Post-menopausal women, who account for 60-80 percent of all core cancer cases, usually have slow-growing cancers, which rarely metastasize.
Microscopic grilling of cellular tissue is the only scientifically accepted way to diagnose cancer.
* The first breast surgery most women will have is a biopsy. When there is a disbelieving finding on a mammogram or a palpable lump, there is no way to rule out cancer unless a piece of breast tissue is removed and examined under a microscope by a pathologist. If there is a diagnosis of cancer and further surgery is done, the bosom tissues removed are also sent to the pathologist.
* The pathologist can see cancerous cells if they are present and can determine the fount and state of the cancer by a variety of signs. These findings are collected into a pathology report which will, to a great degree, decide the treatment options that you will be offered. Pathology reports are based on opinion as well as fact, so many women have two, three, or even four different pathologists look at their web samples and give an opinion.
* To judge the “stage” of a cancer (see page 137, Breast Cancer? Chest Health!), lymph glands are removed (excised) from the nearby armpit. Lymph gland excision always cuts some of the nerves to the arm. Displacement of the lymph glands does nothing to treat or cure breast cancer, and may hinder the body’s ability to behave with cancer. Lymph gland removal can cause numbness as well as pain, impaired circulation, swelling (sometimes savage and long-lasting), and a life-long risk of severe infection. The more lymph nodes removed, the more cruel these side effects.
* Lack of cancer cells in the lymph nodes doesn’t guarantee that the cancer hasn’t metastasized (one-third of all women with argumentative nodes nonetheless have metastasizing cancer), but a positive finding does indicate that the cancer has metastasized and may be growing elsewhere in the corps.
Link to this article: http://breasthealth.blogbuddy.ca/2009/breast-cancer/what-is-breast-cancer/
