At the beginning of 2021, the World Health Organization’s National Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released global cancer-related data for the year 2020. The data show that in 2020, there will be 19.29 million new cases of cancer and 9.96 million deaths globally; in 2020, there will be 4.57 million new cases of cancer in China, accounting for 23.7% of the world, and 3 million deaths. The number of new cancer cases and deaths in China is the first in the world.
In recent years, the number of cancer diagnoses and deaths have risen year after year, why is this? What should we pay attention to prevent cancer? What should we pay attention to, especially for people over 50 years old? Let’s discuss together.
Causes of Cancer The causes of cancer are not fully understood and can be categorized into two main groups: exogenous and endogenous.
I. Endogenous factors
Endogenous factors include genetic factors, immunologic factors and endocrine factors.
Genetic factors
We often discuss that tumors have a certain degree of heredity; in fact, the only tumors that are truly hereditary are some very few uncommon tumors. Genetic factors only increase the body’s susceptibility to cancer-causing factors in the occurrence and development of most tumors, and are not the determining factors.
Immune factors
Everyone carries proto-oncogenes in their bodies, and many cells die and become cancerous every day, but thanks to our immune cells being able to remove cancerous cells in time, cancer does not occur. However, when our immune function is lowered, the ability of our immune cells to remove cancerous cells is lowered, and cancer occurs. An example of this is the HIV virus, which is highly susceptible to cancer due to the loss of function of their immune system.
Endocrine factors
The occurrence and development of some cancers are related to the hormone levels in the body, such as ovarian, breast and cervical cancers, and the increase of hormone levels can promote the occurrence and development of these tumors.
II. Exogenous factors
Exogenous factors include many aspects, such as biological factors, physical factors, chemical factors, psychological factors, personal behavior and lifestyle, and so on.
Biological factors
Certain viruses and parasites can lead to cancer, for example, Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) lead to liver cancer, Helicobacter pylori (HP) leads to stomach cancer, Treponema pallidum leads to cholangiocarcinoma, and Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) leads to cervical cancer.
Physical Factors
Physical factors are mainly rays, such as ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancer.
Chemical factors
There are many chemical factors, our diet, air pollution, etc. can be attributed to chemical factors. Human beings have evolved on this earth for millions of years, from primitive man to homo sapiens in just a few tens of thousands of years, but the environment of the earth has long been different from what it was at the beginning, from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present, a variety of synthetic chemical substances into the lives of human beings, the human body is too late to adapt to the evolution of these substances. Chemical additives, all kinds of aromatic materials, etc., these may have a carcinogenic effect on the human body.
Psychological factors
The functioning of one’s immune system is extremely related to the psychological state. People with optimistic mindset will have better immune function, certain patients diagnosed with cancer are psychologically optimistic and their prognosis is much better, while certain people with depressed mindset have low immune function and are more susceptible to tumors, and the prognosis is much worse after the occurrence of tumors.
Personal Behavior Lifestyle
Not only tumor, high blood pressure, high blood vessels, high blood fat, high uric acid, etc. are very closely related to behavioral lifestyle. For example, sedentary lifestyle, hobbies such as smoking and drinking.
Whether it is exogenous factors or endogenous factors will not promote the occurrence and development of tumors alone, but is the result of a variety of factors after the interaction of the combined effect. For example, some people smoke and drink but still live a long life, which may be related to their low genetic susceptibility.
Cancer Treatment At the present stage, there are conventional treatments about cancer such as surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and other conventional treatments, as well as new therapies such as proton therapy and targeted therapy. All these treatments kill tumor cells and prevent tumor cells from damaging normal tissues of the human body.
Although these treatments are commonly used nowadays, I personally think that these treatments may not be completely right, for example, chemotherapy, although chemotherapy can kill tumor cells, it will also kill normal cells in the human body, and the human body’s white blood cells are extremely sensitive to chemotherapy, and white blood cells account for the majority of dead normal cells, which leads to further damage to the immune system.
As we have analyzed above, the occurrence and development of tumor is the result of the interaction of many factors, so in terms of treatment, I think it is impossible to be treated by a single treatment method, it should be the integrated treatment of many methods.
Tumor cells will lead to premature death of the human body, and when the human body dies, the tumor cells also die, which is not in line with the law of biological evolution, so I think we should change our thinking and seek to “coexist” with tumor cells.
In my personal opinion, when diagnosed with cancer, in addition to conventional treatment, lifestyle changes, dietary therapy and other comprehensive treatment should also be adopted.
Cancer prevention of any disease, prevention is more important than treatment, the good thing is that now more and more people pay attention to the prevention of disease.
Tumor prevention needs to be carried out in multiple directions, such as avoiding harmful environment, adjusting one’s life routine and so on. Endogenous factors cannot be changed, then only exogenous factors can be changed.
For example, the famous movie star Angelina Jolie found out that she had a higher risk of breast cancer through genetic testing, so she took surgery to remove both mammary glands.
First and foremost, alcohol and tobacco should be avoided. Although there may be people around you who love to smoke and drink and live a long life, you should not take the risk because you don’t know whether you are genetically susceptible or not, and I believe that there are many more people around you who die prematurely from smoking and alcoholism than those who live a long life from smoking and drinking.
Secondly, have a good mindset. Nowadays, life is stressful in our society, this is the status quo that there is no way to change, we must adapt to it and face it with an optimistic and positive mindset, people who are positive and optimistic tend to have better health and live longer.
Third, we should actively exercise. Active sports can promote a number of human body functions, the immune system is no exception, we pay attention to the phenomenon around us, those who often exercise the body will be better.
Fourth, life and diet changes. This article is very important, many diseases are related to eating. We can discuss from the perspective of human evolution, before homo sapiens, human food are some tubers, raw meat and so on, the purpose is to eat enough. And nowadays, with the large amount of refined and processed food, genetically modified food, and so on, the human body has not yet evolved the system to adapt to these foods. Therefore, I personally believe that we should eat more roughage and less refined food, and not be over-nourished.
Fifthly, for biological cancer-causing factors, we should actively take vaccination or treatment. For example, for hepatitis B virus, the general public should be vaccinated against hepatitis B, and those infected with hepatitis B virus should undergo regular medical check-ups and active treatment, and so on.
Of course, apart from the above preventive measures, there are many more detailed preventive measures, which I am not going to enumerate, only that we should pay more attention to the prevention of cancer, and we need to start from various aspects and insist on them.
In the face of cancer, what are some things that people over 50 should be aware of? The single biggest factor associated with the occurrence of cancer is age. If a person lives long enough, cancer will eventually occur because a human being is born from a fertilized egg, which is a cell that divides and differentiates, and as the number of cell divisions increases, the mutability of genes increases and eventually becomes uncontrollable.
Therefore, the probability of developing tumors increases with age, so the most important thing to do at this time is to have a physical examination. When a disease occurs, we emphasize “three early” – early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment, and medical checkups are meant to detect lesions as early as possible and then take early treatment measures. The earlier the cancer is detected and treated, the better the prognosis will be.
In addition to medical checkups, some of the measures mentioned above need to be done. Although some people have taken enough preventive measures, cancer still occurs in the end, which may be related to the extremely high genetic susceptibility, but we should not give up preventive measures, but pay more attention to them.
There is an old Chinese saying that “life and death have their own destiny, wealth and riches are in the hands of heaven”, and many people think that they have to be happy in time and that everything is the best arrangement, thus leading to extremely unhealthy behaviors and lifestyles. For example, I have a friend who was infected with Hepatitis B virus and still smoked, drank heavily and stayed up late at night. He was diagnosed with liver cancer and died before he was 40 years old. It doesn’t matter if you live a few years less in a timely manner, or if you live a few years more in a boring way, it seems to be a matter of choice, there is no right or wrong, after all, life is all about experience. I personally believe that we should restrain our own behavior, healthier body, more in this world to stay, leaving their own traces.