Cancer, is a disease that many people fear. Fear of cancer can worsen the condition and even hasten the patient’s death. Learn to use scientific methods to analyze this disease, you will find its ins and outs, the fear of the disease can be completely dissolved with science. Cancer cells, a “rebel” An adult body has about 1,000 trillion cells. This number is larger than we can imagine. To put it another way, a tumor the size of a match head contains 30 million cancer cells, which are so large that a clinician can just detect them, a process that can take more than a decade, which is why cancer is so difficult to detect at an early stage. We categorize cells into two groups: normal cells and “rebel” cells. What both types of cells have in common is that each cell carries its own set of programs. This program directs when the cell grows, when it divides, and how it joins with other cells to form body tissues and organs. By way of analogy, each cell is a highly autonomous individual that, when combined, forms an extremely complex “nation”, i.e., the human body. The difference between the two types of cells is that normal cells are all aware of the overall situation, there is a division of labor, there is cooperation, they work in accordance with the rules; cancer cells are the “cell country” of the rebels, they are abnormal, reckless. They grow in a disorderly manner, invade the surrounding tissues, take over the body’s nutrients, start to grow rapidly again, and move to other tissues, interfering with the normal functioning of the organs, which can be life-threatening. Cancer cells can metastasize, which makes it possible for cancer to wreak havoc in any part of the body: the brain, internal organs, muscles and bones. How to deal with cancer cells “Rebel” cells (i.e. cancer cells) are changes from normal cells. Cancer cells multiply, from one to two, from two to four, and so on. It takes only a few seconds or hours for a normal cell to become a cancer cell. A cancer cell, which proliferates and slowly develops into a cancer cell group, however, takes a long time. After a long time of development and growth, when the number of cancerous cells reaches 109, the tumor tissue only weighs about 1 gram. When it becomes a clinically visible cancer, it is only the size of a match head, which contains 30 million cancer cells. This process, takes about 15 to 30 years. Because of the long latent period of cancer, cancer patients are mostly elderly people. It can be seen that the development of cancer is a long-term process. When the cancerous tissue is still in the single cell stage or very small, it cannot be detected by medical means. The development process of a cancerous lesion that is visible to the naked eye may have taken years or even decades. With cancer cells lurking in the body for so long, it has every chance to metastasize to other parts of the body. The vast majority of cancer patients die from extensive metastasis of cancer. Currently, comprehensive treatment is conducted with the aim of reducing the occurrence of metastasis, which is of great practical significance in prolonging the survival time of patients and minimizing deaths. Therefore, many cancer patients are treated with chemotherapy after surgical removal of the lesion. Because, although the primary lesion has been removed, it is difficult to exclude that the cancer cells have already spread through the bloodstream or other channels in the body before the surgery. The purpose of chemotherapy is to use drugs to kill certain proliferating and active cells in the whole body (active proliferation is often a characteristic of cancer cells), so as to achieve the purpose of removing or even curing the cancer. Of course, this kind of killing often injures normal cells in the body by mistake, so the means of chemotherapy is constantly being improved. Scientific understanding of cancer-causing factors The occurrence of cancer is a long process. When carcinogens enter the body and reach certain organs, they damage the cells and promote their mutation to form latent cancer cells, which must be promoted by cancer-promoting factors to multiply and finally develop into cancer. This process takes several years to decades. During this process, the body’s own immune function can also repair and kill cancer cells, therefore, “cancer is not just a matter of getting it”. Many carcinogens have mostly mixed benefits and drawbacks, and the key lies in the amount and balance. Carcinogens must reach a certain dose in order to have a carcinogenic effect, and at the same time must maintain a certain exposure time. Without these two conditions, it is not necessarily carcinogenic. Therefore, brief exposure to carcinogenic factors does not constitute a safety threat. Cancer is preventable. Humans are inevitably exposed to cancer-causing factors, but at the same time, there are natural anti-cancer substances in some foods consumed on a daily basis. For example, dietary fiber, vitamin C, carotene and lycopene in grains, vegetables and fruits. Therefore, although environmental pollution in modern society has added many more cancer-causing factors around us, as far as current research is concerned, these unavoidable environmental factors do not cause a significant increase in the prevalence of cancer. In contrast, lifestyle has a greater impact, such as smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, obesity caused by excessive calorie intake, and so on. The words of a popular science writer are interesting: “Instead of laying all the blame on the industrialization of society, it is better to change one’s habits. After all, you have a better chance of living to be gray-haired than the ancient Egyptians.”