Cancer is caused by genetic changes that leads to uncontrolled cell death or growth leading to tumor formation. Cancer is not a contagious disease. People have usually asked me questions like doctor why has cancer cases increased too much in recent years as compared to past years? One of the easiest answers to give is that cancer awareness and sensitization through media and other health outlets have made people understand the dangers and challenges posed by the disease. This makes them go for checkups especially if they have had discomfort like chronic pain or other for a long time. Majority of cancer diseases occur or attacks the body in a tricky fashion. Some manifest without pain or other discomfort in its early phases. This usually comes from it’s pathology or character or makeup or constitution. Due to lack of diagnostic tools in the past, people used not to detect or understand the source of deteriorating health to their beloved ones. They would then switch the attention to witch crafts or relatives they thought were not on good terms. Cancer diseases and challenges have been running through societies for many past decades. Traditionally people used not to understand how cancer attacks due to lack of adequate knowledge about the disease coupled with lack of diagnostic tools. On another hand increased environmental changes in recent decades also plays a big role in risk cancer exposure and occurrence. When scientists talk of environment means anything outside the body that interacts with the human life. This may include factors like air pollution especially with modern or increased industrialization, increased sunlight heat, lifestyle or behaviour factors like smoking, alcohol drinking among others. One of the commonest environmental factors that expose humans to high risk of cancer is tobacco smoking. Cigarette smoke cause cancer in two ways. One of them is that Poisons from cigarette smoke will accumulate the body system and weaken the immune system making it very difficult for the body to defend itself. Another way is that poisons from tobacco smoke can change the DNA of a cell. The DNA is the manual instruction or carries message of a body cell. The DNA controls the normal growth of a cell and its function. This is why once the DNA is damaged; the cell begins to grow out of order or control. This is how overgrowth of cells leads to clustering and formation of a tumor or cancer. Cigarette Smoke is also regarded as one of the most aggressive environment pollutants because smoke from other burnt materials or factories is easily dealt by the body defense mechanism. Most dangerous Poisons from cigarette smoke that cause cancer include carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. These chemical poisons also affect the lungs and the heart. Nicotine a chemical compound contained in cigarette smoke usually make people addictive to the smoke. It sweetens the smoke. However, it usually increases blood pressure and also narrow heart arteries. It is therefore a high risk to heart attack among others. Other commonest environmental causes of cancer are exposure to radiation. Radiation can be in form of ionizing or non-ionizing depending on the source of use. Prolonged exposure to radiation penetrates the DNA of body cell and inflict genetic changes or mutations that lead to cancer. People should not fear going through imaging tests like x-ray, CT-SCAN, MRI etc. The ions from such machines penetrating your body for lighter images. It’s only workers who keep in constant contact that are likely to have damage because of longer exposure and also comes with other associated circumstances. There is also radiation designed in form of therapy. The radiation therapy treatment for cancer is designed in such way that ions penetrate your body to target and destroy cancer cells inform of heat. It usually imposes high inflammatory side effects but doctors using this treatment are usually well trained to help patients with such side effect threats. We therefore do not categorize radiation therapy as a risk to cancer. It’s treatment for cancer. The heat from radiotherapy source usually stays in the body for months as cancer cells keep dying from this heat source. This is the reason why trained doctors in this field determine the specific period of time for the patient to receive the treatment. Another commonest causes of cancer that people should worry about are viruses; For example, long term exposure to HIV without adequate treatment breaks down the immune system. There are several types of HIV related cancers. HPV the Human papilloma virus is another silent killer responsible for several cancers. Hepatitis B and C once not well managed also pose high risk factor to the cancer of the liver. Most importantly to note from the technical perspective is that there are vast majority of cancer that occur from the hereditary form. Hereditary cancers are caused by inherited genetic effect. Inherited genetic cancers are sometimes referred to as family cancer syndrome. This is a genetic disorder in which inherited genetic mutations in one or more genes predisposes the affected individuals to the development of cancers. Sometimes these inherited cancers occur early in life. For some of individuals with inherited genetic disorders, sometimes cancer is not the primary disease. Sometimes comes as a rare consequence. This scenario constitutes the hardest part of cancer research studies. Continuous or persistent infections from some aggressive bacteria like the Helicobacter pylori among others are risk factors or can cause cancer. Diet and Obesity also considered a risk factor especially in occurrence of the cancer of digestive system or Gastro-intestinal tract but this is one of the minor or smallest risk factors to consider.. Therefore, individual dietary measures contribute to the overall health and prevention of many health hazards. Currently age is also being considered as a risk factor because many molecular and cellular changes involved in the development of cancer accumulate during the aging process that leads to occurrence of cancer. The writer is an Israeli trained cancer specialist with special focus on solid tumors. Email: josephkam29@gmail.com phone: 0798923143
