According to the statistics in January 2013, 6 people are diagnosed with malignant tumor every minute nationwide, and everyone with cancer is at risk, “Cancer is an incurable disease!” This is what most people know about cancer nowadays. Having cancer is equivalent to a life sentence, and it is even more terrible than death. After cancer is diagnosed, every inch of time is like a countdown to life, and this period is full of fear and despair. The high cost of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery and all kinds of treatment makes many families poor because of the disease and return to poverty because of the disease, and people are empty. This kind of awareness has a wide and deep impact, which seriously affects the emotions and confidence of patients and their families to overcome the disease. However, if someone tells you that cancer is not scary, like high blood pressure and diabetes, it is only a chronic disease; cancer is not incurable, some cancers can be cured, and many cancers can live peacefully with you; and the key to prevent cancer is actually in your own hands – will you believe it? -Will you believe it? It is important to dispel the fear and misconceptions about cancer. Due to the limited treatment and treatment effect, and the lack of awareness of cancer, this physical disease has turned into a mental disease: fear, loneliness and despair. In addition, China’s social psychology of “keeping disease a secret” for thousands of years has intensified the spiritual damage of this physical disease. When one thinks of cancer, almost everyone can’t help but associate it with a bleak picture. So much so that many cancer patients do not die from the disease, but are crushed by this great fear. Fear of cancer has become a kind of social public psychology. Many family members conceal their illness from patients out of protection, so that patients cannot cooperate well with doctors and also affect the process and effect of treatment. In fact, these deep-rooted perceptions about cancer are actually incorrect! Chinese people’s fear and misunderstanding of cancer are too deep and too long, and it is time to free people from the fear of cancer. China needs a revolution in cancer awareness. Let the following 4 new and subversive understandings about cancer clear your gloom! Cancer is a commonly occurring disease, a common disease that comes with aging, – Cancer is also a part of life “How come I am so unlucky? How can fate be so unfair to me!” Once one has cancer, one would first feel that one is a particularly unlucky person. Thousands of people in life have nothing to do with cancer, but why is one “favored” by cancer? In fact, the occurrence of tumor is much more common than people think. As early as the late 1980s, medical experts in the United States reported that among the autopsies of elderly people aged 80 or above, about 1/4 of them had tumors in their bodies, but none of them had any symptoms related to cancer before they died. Their death was also due to other diseases or causes. In other words, it is very natural for tumors to appear in the bodies of elderly people. Prof. Huang Huapeng, a returnee scholar, complained that he had autopsied nearly 200 cadavers every year, in which all the elderly people around 80 years old had hidden tumors without any symptoms in their bodies without exception. He also predicted that if the average life expectancy of a person reaches 100-120 years, there will be 3-4 tumors in each person’s body! Experts from the National Center for Disease Control predict that 47% of men and 32% of women will develop cancer, assuming a life expectancy of 90 years for U.S. citizens. The proportion of new cancer patients in both the Shanghai area and the United States is about 3 per 1,000 of the total population each year. With such a high incidence of tumors, however, in most cases these tumors do not threaten the quality of life of the elderly, or even under certain conditions, do not affect their survival period. This could not be clearer than to show that cancer is in fact a common disease, a common disease that comes with aging. In this regard, my teacher, Professor He Yumin of Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, president of the Chinese Medical Association’s Society of Mind and Body, told the reporter that, in essence, the tumor that occurs in most elderly people is a physiological deviation that is unavoidable along with the aging process of the body, just like the elderly will have osteoporosis and brain tissue will degenerate (progeria). The older we get, the more cells replicate and the higher the probability of deviations. In addition, the functions of the immune surveillance, recognition and cleaning system of the elderly are weakened with aging, and the deviations increase. Therefore, the abnormal differentiation of cancer cells is difficult to be recognized and removed in time, which also contributes to this consequence. Since cancer is so common, we can even consider cancer as an important mechanism for nature to regulate human life and keep it in balance without serious imbalance, said Prof. Yu-Min Ho. Cancer, like other diseases, is a part of life. In fact, this is very similar to the American attitude towards diseases. Many Americans believe that getting a disease, whether it is the usual cold or cancer, is part of a person’s life and should be treated with a normal mindset. Just like hypertension and diabetes – cancer is only a chronic disease On the issue of how to view cancer, Professor He recalls a memorable conversation with his Taiwanese counterpart. Around 2000, when Professor He was the director of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a Taiwanese oncology colleague visited us and we had a good conversation. When the conversation was in high spirits, the doctor from Taiwan said, “Cancer is just a chronic disease,” “a chronic disease that can be cured.” Such an assertion made Professor Ho stare at that moment. He continued, “Isn’t it? I have many patients on hand who have lived past five years and are doing well!” Professor He quickly responded: Yes, at least 70% of my patients have lived beyond 5 years, and the total number of patients is in the thousands! This is not a chronic disease and what is it? Moreover, these patients were all “death row” patients who were sentenced to live only a few months to a year, but now they are all alive and well! After that, the two of them came up with a lot of energy and exchanged many examples together. They agreed that for most tumor patients, what they suffer from is just a chronic disease like coronary heart disease and hypertension, which is tricky and difficult to treat, but by no means incurable. This colleague even determined that malignant tumors are sometimes much better than coronary heart disease and diabetes. Many tumor patients can be completely stable or even cured after 5 years, and no longer need regular medication. In contrast, coronary heart disease, diabetes and hypertension can only be treated with lifelong medication. As a result of such a pleasant exchange and the new understanding of cancer constantly expressed by some important medical figures or organizations, Professor He Yumin expressed such a subversive new view on different occasions: “For the elderly, cancer is nothing but a chronic disease.” Professor Ho pointed out that cancer is a physiological abnormality, or physiological process, that is unavoidable in the aging process, just like aging. This is because there were overseas autopsy reports at that time suggesting that the chance of malignant tumors among the elderly over 80 years old was high, and that 1/4 of the elderly had cancer without any discomfort and died from factors other than cancer. Moreover, since the older a person is, the slower the natural development of tumor and the less threatening and harmful it is, it is not only a chronic disease for elderly tumor patients, but also the risk is lower the older they get. The occurrence of cancer is a chronic process Modern research confirms that the occurrence of cancer is a long-term and gradual process that goes through multiple stages. It usually takes 10 to 20 years, or even longer, to evolve from normal cells to cancer cells and then to form tumors. Cancer only occurs when risk factors severely damage the body’s defense system, repair capacity is reduced, and intracellular genetic variants accumulate to a certain level. Therefore, although the majority of cancer patients will have progressive development, like most chronic diseases, there is a long latent period where no attack will occur in a short period of time, and there is a long developmental process from attack to death. And with early detection and early treatment, cancer patients do not go to death rapidly. We have every reason to believe that treating cancer as a chronic disease is theoretically justified and clinically feasible. Moreover, the term “cancer” as we know it does not represent a single disease, but is actually a collective term for more than 200 diseases. Not all cancers are life-threatening; some of them are serious, but some (or most) are not life-threatening. In the case of prostate cancer, for example, the vast majority of patients survive for more than 20 years, even without treatment, according to research by Peter Albertson, a professor at the University of Connecticut Medical Center. The World Health Organization’s new definition of “cancer as a chronic disease” has also gained international recognition. Since 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international authorities have changed their minds and redefined cancer as an incurable disease as a chronic disease that can be treated, controlled and even cured. Academician Sun Yan, a senior medical oncology authority of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, has clearly pointed out that “in fact, for the general public, more and more cancers will be seen in the future, perhaps just like diabetes, which is just a common chronic disease. As long as prevention is strengthened, early detection and early treatment, coupled with new drugs that are more and more ‘on target’, cancer is not that scary.” Cancer is just a chronic disease! This is a complete reversal of the old understanding that “cancer is an incurable disease” and “cancer is equal to death”. In the past, a large proportion of patients died due to mental breakdown or pursuing excessive treatment due to misleading views. Today, we should accept and disseminate this correct concept with integrity, and get rid of the psychological burden of cancer fear! Cancer treatment is not a duel of “either you die or I die”, and long-term coexistence with cancer is also a strategy – the battle against cancer needs a new thinking. We need a general’s perspective, not a soldier’s courage. While we are driving away and killing cancer cells, we are often creating new and heavier pain. We are driving away death, but we are also driving away the peace and tranquility at the end of life, making the way to heaven and hell full of fear. Such a treatment concept is similar to the front-line fighters’ brave and deadly struggle in war, but it is not the best way to fight, not the result we want. In the battle against cancer, we need to give up some “warrior thinking” and absorb more “general thinking”. In other words, we need to move away from the “zero-sum” game of “you die, I live” and pursue the idea that you are under effective control and I am still alive and well! As long as the cancer cells in the body do not develop further, we can “live in peace” with it and “live with cancer”. It is not necessary to kill all of them. Imagine an 80-year-old man with advanced cancer, who has little hope of cure, but has to undergo high-dose chemotherapy, which often results in money spent, suffering and loss of life. Instead of this, it is better to combine Chinese and Western medicine for conservative treatment to reduce the pain and improve the quality of life. There are thousands of clinical cases of cancer patients who cannot be said to have no more cancer in their bodies, maybe the examination indicates that cancer still exists in their bodies, but it is very stable and has not developed over the years. At the same time, their lives and quality of life are very good and they are living in a good way! Can we say that this is not a great success? At least these patients themselves consider themselves as lucky and successful in the process of fighting cancer. In recent years, the starting point of developing oncology drugs has also undergone an obvious change, from the previous enthusiasm of reducing cancer cells to inhibiting the growth of cancer cells, among which the targeted drugs in medical oncology have emerged even more, acting accurately on cancer cells through precise targeted therapy, blocking tumor growth channels, inhibiting cancer cell proliferation, reducing the damage to the organism, so that patients will have no adverse effects on the overall quality of life and will The disease can be stabilized for a longer period of time without any adverse effect on the overall quality of life, and the patients can live as happily as many patients with chronic diseases. In conclusion, the treatment of middle and late stage elderly cancer patients should focus on mobilizing the positive factors of patients themselves, inhibiting tumor development, reducing pain and improving quality of life. To let cancer patients have the same diet and living as normal people, stabilize their condition, survive for 5 or 10 years, and “peacefully coexist” with cancer, or even gradually recover, is not only the maximum long-term benefit for patients. “The key to cancer prevention lies in your own hands. Recently, the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) announced the results of a worldwide survey at the International Congress of Oncology held in Geneva. The results show that people have many misconceptions about cancer. Myth 1: Underestimating the carcinogenic effect of alcohol. The international survey, which included 29,925 adult participants in 29 countries, showed that people tend to underestimate the carcinogenic effects of alcohol, with 42 percent believing that drinking alcohol does not increase the risk of cancer. In high-income countries, 59% of people believe that inadequate intake of fruits and vegetables is more dangerous than excessive alcohol consumption. In fact, research results show that the protective effect of vegetables and fruits is less than the harmful effect of alcohol. Myth 2: The harmful effects of mental stress and air pollution are exaggerated. The survey also shows that 57% of people believe that the cancer-causing effect of mental stress is stronger than that of alcohol, and 78% believe that air pollution is a stronger cancer-causing risk factor than alcohol. In fact, there is no evidence that mental stress is a risk factor for cancer; air pollution is only a weaker risk factor compared to excessive alcohol consumption. These two seemingly common findings reflect a huge misunderstanding of cancer. According to Hill, the President-elect of the International Union Against Cancer, people generally attribute the cause of cancer to factors beyond their control, exaggerating the carcinogenic effect of environmental factors (life stress, air pollution, etc.) and underestimating the risk of cancer caused by behavioral factors (excessive alcohol consumption, obesity). Through the health education in these years, people have generally recognized the hazards of alcohol and tobacco. However, there are still a considerable proportion of people who take drinking as a kind of spontaneity and smoking as a kind of grandeur, and even put forward the fallacy that drinking and smoking are still long-lived. Most people ignore the fact that cancer is not unpreventable. Your daily behavior is an important determinant of whether you will get cancer or not. A healthy lifestyle is the golden key to prevent cancer! One less cigarette, one less drink, a balanced diet and proper exercise – cancer prevention is as simple as that.