Cancer in Terms of Biology - Coursework Example

Part Cancer Cancer is the abnormal production of the cells of an organism which are proliferated in an uncontrolled way and sometimes spread. Cancer is commonly used for all types of malignant tumors, which is the swelling of any tissue of the body caused by inflammation, which are studied in Oncology. Neoplasm is defined by a British oncologist Willis as “Abnormal mass of tissue, the growth of which exceeds and is uncoordinated with that of the normal tissue and persists in the same excessive manner after cessation of the stimuli which evoked the change.”(Willis 5). The types of cancer are more than 100 because there are more than 100 different types of cells in the body of an organism, for example skin cancer, lungs cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer etc (Robbins et al 2003). Under microscope, cancer cells show different structural characteristics because of which they can be differentiated from the normal cells. They are pleomorphic in nature, which means that they have a tendency to have a variable size and shape than the normal cells. The cancer cells have different size and different shapes. Most of the cancer cells have large nuclei from the surrounding normal tissue cells and the nuclei of the cancerous cells contain abnormal number of chromosomes, a condition known as aneuploidy. The aneuploidy may occur due to mutation or deletion of chromosome or any other reason. The cell membrane of the cancer cells produces some sort of surface enzymes which have the ability to damage the basement membrane of tissues, with the help of which the cancer spreads more easily to the surrounding non-cancerous cells and damages them too. The cancer cells show increased rate of mitosis, which is the process of the reproduction of the new cells and hence the cancer spreads to the surroundings. The cancer cells have differences in metabolism in comparison to normal cells, as their metabolism is more anaerobic and therefore they may even combat hypoxic conditions. The cancer cells have the propensity to spread from the primary cancer, where the tumor begins to grow, to the adjacent normal tissues, which is known as Invasion. The invasion is promoted by number of things like the formation of surface enzymes, the pressure exerted by the malignant cells, etc. The cancer cells produce destructive enzymes which break away the basement membrane and the cancer cells enter the nearby blood vessels or lymph vessels. The cancer cells that have entered the blood stream will circulate in the blood throughout the body until they get stuck at someplace. After the cancer cells attach somewhere mitosis starts in the cells and a new tumor is formed called secondary tumor (Trahan 2001 & Robbins et al 2003). The factors that elevate the danger of causing a disease are risk factors. The risk factors for cancer cannot be often explained by the physician but there are some factors which increase the chances of cancer in an individual. The most common of these factors are tobacco smoking, some viruses and bacteria, BRCA1 and BRCA2, etc. Smoking causes lung cancer, cancer of larynx, cancer of the mouth, cancer of esophagus, cancer of throat, cancer of stomach and much more. Group of the individuals who use smokeless tobacco have the danger of mouth cancer. Several viruses causes cancer like, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C virus can cause liver cancer after many years of infection. Numerous bacterial infections can also cause cancer like Helicobacter Pylori infection can often cause stomach cancer. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are human genes belonging to a group of tumor suppressors but mutation to these genes can cause hereditary breast cancer (Dollinger 2007 & Robbins et al 2003). People can protect themselves from exposure to the risk factors by avoiding tobacco usage such as cigarette smoking, snuff, chewing tobacco. People can protect themselves by doing more and more exercise to maintain a healthy weight. Food from plant sources should be taken excessively because the plants oil contains poly unsaturated fatty acids which are good because they give protection against diseases. People will have to decrease the intake of fatty food, alcoholic beverages such as alcohol which also causes cancer. The individuals will have to remain unexposed from radioactive radiations, radon and X-Rays. Women have to take the precautionary measures by avoiding contraceptive pills as consuming these pills can also cause different cancers (Robbins et al 2003 & Science Daily). Different researches have shown that exercise have profound effects on cancer survivors. Here we can see the example of breast cancer, researches done on the women having breast cancer shows that exercise improves the quality of life and the more the women are physically active the more they feel better. Exercise helps to maintain the condition of heart and lungs better which means that the heart and lung will function normally and the patient will feel good. Obesity elevates the risk factors for breast cancer and we know that exercise helps to keep the body weight normal. Exercise helps to withstand cancer related fatigue. The patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment improve but the chemotherapy still has some side effects like nausea, loss of appetite, fatigue. Fatigue is one of the most troublesome side-effect and researches have shown that exercise helps to diminish the fatigue. In last we can say that exercise can greatly increase the chances of survival of the cancer patients with improvement in their quality life (Hardy 2006 & Ohira 2006). Nowadays different therapies are used for the treatment of cancer like chemotherapy, thermotherapy, tomotherapy, etc. Thermotherapy is the treatment of tumors with the help of microwave energy which heat up the tumor cells and notably can minimize and kill the tumor cells. Thermotherapy combined with chemotherapy can both significantly decrease and destroy much of the cancer cells. Tomotherapy is new form of radiation therapy which is the delivery of radiations to the cancer cells and is more accurate which leaves the nearby normal tissue unaffected. In radiation therapy, high energy photon particles are emitted which penetrate the body and tumor cells with more ease and create low energy secondary electrons which destroy tumor cells by destroying the genetic material DNA of the cancer cells. Researchers have shown that exposing the gold particles to radiations produces a large amount of cell killing low energy electrons which kills the cancer cells and not the normal cells (Dollinger 2007 & Trahan 2001). Work Cited  Top of Form Kumar, Vinay, Ramzi S. Cotran, and Stanley L. Robbins.Robbins Basic Pathology. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. Bottom of Form Rieger, Paula Trahan. Biotherapy A Comprehensive Overview (Jones and Bartlett Series in Oncology). New York: Jones & Bartlett, 2001. Print. D., M., and Malin Dollinger. Everyones Guide to Cancer Therapy; Revised 5th Edition How Cancer Is Diagnosed, Treated, and Managed Day to Day (Everyones Guide to Cancer Therapy). Grand Rapids: Andrews McMeel, 2007. Print. Exercise." ScienceDaily 29 April 2004. 3 January 2010 . Multiple Benefits of Exercise for Breast Cancer Survivors by Mary Hardy. Alternative Therapies in Womens Health | May 01, 2006. 3 January 2010 Top of Form Ohira T, KH Schmitz, RL Ahmed, and D Yee. "Effects of Weight Training on Quality of Life in Recent Breast Cancer Survivors: the Weight Training for Breast Cancer Survivors (WTBS) Study." Cancer. 106. 9 (2006): 2076-83. Bottom of Form Part 2 Life Style Diseases Lifestyle diseases refer to the diseases caused by the way one lives his life. These diseases are related to environment of the man, if the environment is not a healthy one then the individual tends to have lifestyle diseases. If an individual smokes he will develop lung cancer, coronary diseases and other various diseases. If a person eats more than the needs of his body then he will be counted in the group of obese people. If a worker works in a place where his body is exposed to the radioactive radiations then he will get skin cancer and most probably mutation can occur in his genes which will affect his DNA. Life style diseases are Alzheimer’s disease, Cancer, Cirrhosis, Diabetes, Heart Diseases and Nephritis etc (Serfontein 2004). The diseases introduced above are lifestyle diseases which are different from other diseases because lifestyle diseases are caused by the way we live, for example, heart diseases are caused by smoking, obesity is caused by excessive calorie diet with no physical activity, cancer is caused by exposure to the radioactive emissions. The lifestyle diseases are not caused by foreign microorganisms like viruses, bacteria, fungi etc. Other types of diseases are caused by infectious agents are called infectious diseases. The infectious agents may be viruses, bacteria, protozoa and other microorganisms. The examples of infectious diseases are influenza, food poisoning, tuberculosis, fever, rubella, measles, polio, cholera and many more (Gluckman 2008). The major factors contributing to lifestyle diseases are smoking, dietary excesses, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, working at a place where the radioactive emissions are frequent, less sleep, air and water pollution and excess of alcohol, etc (Gluckman 2008). Obesity is one of the most frequently occurring lifestyle diseases, which is considered as a big trouble because it poses a warning to lives of people. Actually it is a carrier of different diseases that might develop secondarily to obesity in an individual. “Obesity is by definition an increase in fat” (Fletcher, Grundy and Hayman 1999). In medical terminology obesity is the excess accumulation of fats in the body of individual. Obesity is affecting the whole environment of the society by making the individuals more prone to health related problems like heart diseases, high blood pressure, thrombosis, stroke and diabetes etc. It is not only affecting health of the individuals but also the processes of physical properties in our daily lives. Life can come to a standstill if all the individuals in the world become obese this is because obese people do not tend to involve in physical processes. Further it can be said that it is of immense importance that this problem is curbed. Obesity occurs in individuals who do not properly churn out the calories that they intake. This means that they eat more but do not carry out any exercise to churn the calories that the food they have taken has (Robbins et al 2003). The factors that contribute to obesity are; The excess of fatty diet which means taking too many calories, Reduced energy expenditure which means that to burn more calories if not the surplus calories will be stored as fat, Family influences that is the parental behavioral pattern which maintain the youngster energy balance and their weight, Genes can also affect some processes in the body which are related directly or indirectly with weight and many more (Robbins et al 2003). Coronary Artery disease is also a lifestyle disease and is one of the most fatal diseases which can cause death in higher ratio. In coronary artery disease the heart is supplied by inadequate amount of oxygen because the coronary arteries which supply the heart muscle become narrow due to the accumulation of fats in coronary arteries known as atherosclerosis. Inadequate supply of blood will cause the heart to start contracting faster and with more power to eject more blood to supply the blood to all parts of the body, so the heart will need more and more blood to work hard but the coronary arteries are narrow and the required amount of blood cannot reach the heart. The heart muscle will then become fatigued which might then cause a heart attack. Heart attack also known as myocardial infarction refers to permanent damage or death of heart muscle due to lack of oxygen (Fletcher et al 2008 & Robbins et al 2003). The factors causing the heart diseases are; Smoking, Overweight as it increase burden on heart, High blood pressure also known as Hypertension, Increased fatty diet and etc (Robbins et al 2008). Cancer is also one of the lifestyle diseases, which means the uncontrolled growth of cells of any tissue forming tumors. The cancer cells are different than normal cells in many ways as they have variability in their size but the normal cells of the same tissue have almost the same size. The cancer cells have enlarged nucleus as compared to their cytoplasm and the number of chromosomes present in the cancer cells are abnormal showing aneuploidy but the normal cells have same number of chromosomes. The cell membranes of cancer cells produce destructive enzymes which break the basement membranes and aid in the metastasis which means that the destructive enzymes helps in the spreading of cancer from the primary tumor to the adjacent normal tissues (Robbins et al 2003). The most common risk factors for the cancer are; Tobacco smoking, Some viruses and bacteria, BRCA1 and BRCA2 (genes) (Robbins et al 2003). We need to take actions to prevent the lifestyle diseases from happening because the lifestyle diseases are lethal but preventable and any irresponsible behavior in our lives can lead to these diseases (Waldhäusl 2007). The lifestyle diseases can be prevented by; Regular exercise, Avoiding alcohol, Avoiding tobacco use, Decreasing pollution, Avoiding high fatty and high salty ingredients in diet, Using green vegetables and fruits excessively in diet (Waldhäusl 2007 & Kumar 2003). The lifestyle diseases are caused by a variety of factors in the environment. This basically means that they are caused by variation in our environment and the inappropriate treatment of the environment by the individuals. Environment is meant to be formed in such a way that it gives the best suitable means to a person for his survival but the individuals who tend to disturb these means are the ones who are prone to these diseases. By inappropriate treatment of the environment here it is meant that the individuals tend to do actions against the environment. Individuals who are smoking are doing something different which is disturbing the norms of the environment and thus it is affecting their body. Not only this, the harmful smoke by cigarette is harming the ozone layer too which is causing the ultra radiations to affect the body of an individual thus causing different cancers (Kumar et al 2003). Lifestyle diseases are increasingly posing a threat to the individuals residing in this world today. These individuals are harming themselves by their own will and set of actions. These diseases can be avoided once an awareness program has been developed which can enlighten these individuals about the diseases that are caused by their lifestyles (Gluckman 2008). BibliographyTop of Form Serfontein, Willem. Feel Better, Live Longer: Beating Lifestyle Diseases Before They Start. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2004. Bottom of FormGluckman, Peter D., and Mark A. Hanson. Mismatch: The Lifestyle Diseases Timebomb. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.Top of Form Waldhäusl W. "Motivation Needed to Cure Lifestyle Diseases." Nature. 450. 7172 (2007Top of Form Kumar, R., and Meenal Kumar. Guide to Prevention of Lifestyle Diseases: Live a Healthy Lifestyle to Fight Diseases. New Delhi: Deep & Deep Publications, 2003. Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Kumar, Vinay, Ramzi S. Cotran, and Stanley L. Robbins.Robbins Basic Pathology. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. Bottom of Form Fletcher, Gerald F., Scott M. Grundy, and Laura Lucia Hayman. Obesity: Impact on Cardiovascular Disease. American Heart Association Monograph series. Armonk, NY: Futura Pub, 1999.Top of Form Willis, Rupert Allan. The Spread of Tumors in the Human Body. London: Butterworths, 1952.Bottom of Form Read More