THE SLIM BOOK OF HEALTH PEARLS
Cancer:
Past, Present, and Future
SHELDON COHEN M.D. FACP
Copyright 2013 Sheldon Cohen M.D. FACP,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1888-9
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
A graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Sheldon Cohen has practiced internal medicine, served as a medical director of the Alexian Brother’s Medical Center in Northwest Suburban Chicago, and served as the medical director of two managed care organizations: Cigna Health Plan of Illinois and Humanicare Plus of Illinois. The author taught internal medicine and physical diagnosis to medical students from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine and the Chicago Medical School. Recognizing the fact that busy physicians are pressed for time and thus often fail to capture a thorough medical history, the author perfected one of the first computerized medical history systems for private practice and wrote a paper on his experience with 1500 patients who utilized the system. This was one of the early efforts in promoting electronic health records, a work in progress to this day. Serving as a consultant for Joint Commission Resources of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the author did quality consultations at hospitals in the United States, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Copenhagen, Denmark, and served as a consultant to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine, assisting them in the development of a hospital accrediting body. The author lectures to lay audiences on Risk Factor Analysis, Early Detection and Prevention, Symptoms Never to Ignore, The Prevention of Medical Errors, How to Take Charge of Your Own Healthcare, Hormones Nerves and stress, and other topics of a medical nature.
Dr. Cohen is the author of 22 books.
DEDICATED TO BUDDING PHYSICIANS
MEGAN
&
ALEXA
ALSO BY SHELDON COHEN
A Jewish Journey
A Jewish Story
The Twins
Brainstorm
Holy Warrior Trojan Horses
Revenge
Bad Blood (with James Baehler)
The Monster Within
The History of Physics from 2000BCE to 1945
World War IV: Militant Islam’s Struggle for World Control
Grandpa’s Story-Poems and Grandkids Illustrate It Yourself Book
The Coming Healthcare Revolution: Take Control of Your Health
The Making of a Physician
The Slim Book of health Pearls Series:
Am I at Risk? The patient’s Guide to Health Risk Factors
Hormones, Nerves and Stress
Man the Barricades: The Story of the Immune System
Symptoms Never to Ignore
The Complete Medical Examination
The Prevention of Medical Errors
The Perfect Prescription (with Megan Godwin)
Challenging Diagnoses
CHAPTER 1
Definition
I hate definitions.
Benjamin Disraeli
1804-1881
The definition of cancer evolves over time as knowledge increases. The 1963 World Book Encyclopedia defines cancer as “A very harmful growth in the body; malignant tumor. Certain types of cancer tend to spread to different parts of the body and destroy the healthy tissues and organs. Cancer is a change in the normal growth of cells, but the causes have not yet been fully determined.”
A more modern definition suggests that cancer is a group of over 100 different diseases characterized by uncontrolled cell growth with the possibility that the cancerous cells may migrate from the original site and spread to different distant body sites and cause death.
Since a cell is the basic underlying structure that “changes” from a normal functioning cell to a cancerous one, what is a cell?
All human beings—and for that matter all living things—have as a basic unit, a cell, microscopic in size, surrounded by a cell wall (membrane), and consisting internally of protoplasm, a substance made up of water in which is suspended proteins, fats, other molecules, and the nucleus. This nucleus, or cell brain, controls, through Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), basic functions necessary for life itself: movement, thoughts, digestion, breathing etc. DNA works by utilizing a portion of itself (genes) that makes proteins that direct the body to carry on these basic functions.
That is a brief description of a single cell; there are 100 trillion cells in each human body (100,000,000,000,000). Is it any wonder that some of that myriad of cells could undergo changes evolving into malignant degeneration (cancer)?
Each cell of the human body does not live forever (the life of its host). Rather, the cell grows, divides and replaces itself. Each cell has genes that also produce the proteins that control cell growth and division. If the DNA molecule sustains damage to a gene segment responsible for this cell growth, faulty proteins are produced that perpetuate themselves with each now altered cell division. Hence restraints on cell growth vanish and an abnormal cell results, and this daughter cell can also perpetuate itself with each cell division eventually resulting in a large number of abnormal cells (new growth or cancer).
There are a number of possible reasons for developing abnormal cells:
•Genetics: the abnormal cell may be inherited from a parent or both parents
•Adverse lifestyle factor exposure impacting cell division
•Environmental exposures including tobacco smoke, alcohol, asbestos, ultraviolet radiation from the sun and others
•Viral infections including hepatitis (viral infection of the liver), HIV (Human immunodeficiency virus), HPV (Human Papilloma Virus)
In general then, it is this repetitive irritation to body organs or parts that directly affects the DNA of cells causing the permanent changes that pass to future generations in the form of an abnormal growth (malignant tumors—cancer).
Three quick examples:
1.Cigarettes chronically irritate the trachea, bronchial tubes, lungs, kidneys, urinary bladder, and pancreas.
2.Barbequing meat at high temperature causes the formation of heterocyclic amines considered carcinogenic (cancer promoting).
3.Alcohol excess incriminated in cancer of the digestive tract, breast, liver.
It has been estimated that if people did not put those three things in their mouths, 75 percent of all cancers would never start. Think what that would do to mitigate our healthcare crisis.
Ordinarily, amongst other functions, our immune system is geared to prevent the formation of cancer. The immune system consists of a collaborative mechanism that protects