First of all, you should know that cancer is actually a cell mutation, but why is it mutated? Except for some special cases (such as radiation), the main factor of mutation is cell aging. Studies show that the natural life span of human beings is a multiple of the number and period of cell distribution. Scientist Halfrey put fetal cells into culture medium to divide and reproduce again and again. When the cell divides into 50 generations, the cell dies. On the basis of a large number of experimental data, he proposed to calculate the life span of people according to the number of cell divisions. The cell division cycle is 2.4 years. According to this calculation, people's life span is 120 years.
But in many cases, human cells will die prematurely or mutate before 50 generations because of external factors such as environment, such as inflammation and injury.
For cancer patients, the vast majority of people eventually die from the metastasis of cancer cells. Why is there a transfer phenomenon? Just like human beings, they don't want to live in one place for a long time, and the world is so big that they want to go out and have a look, so they will "move" from one place to another and settle down in that new place, forming a well-known transfer.
But in most cases, these cells are not so eager to migrate. Even if they enter the blood or lymphatic circulation, most cells will die on the road, and only a few cells will successfully reach new organs and settle down.
Many people may have read similar reports. After testing the cells of many long-lived elderly people, they found that they had cancer cells in their bodies, but they didn't know it themselves, so they came to a conclusion that physical examination was useless.
In fact, this is a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of this fact. It is found that about 30% of men in their thirties have cancer cells in their prostate, and 70% of those over 60, but only 14% will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. This is because the human body and cancer cells can be preserved most of the time, even for life.
Since cancer cells can coexist with the human body, why kill each other?
In fact, the ability of simple cancer cells is very fragile, and he must have a suitable environment for his growth. So he needs to wait for a new gene mutation, which can make cancer cells grow faster and not die easily. At the same time, cancer cells can transform the surrounding environment to serve themselves and escape the supervision of the immune system.
Therefore, although cancer cells can exist with the human body for a long time, once new changes occur, this relationship will break down and form a killing situation.
200,000 years ago, the relationship between human beings and nature seemed to be the same. At that time, people lived in the natural environment, but with the advent of the industrial age, people began to become powerful and even wanted to dominate nature.
And is this behavior very similar to cancer cells?
So, are humans cancer cells on the earth? If we think that human beings are the cancer of the earth, will the earth live with cancer for a long time or die soon? Is human being the cancer of the earth or the cancer of the universe? If the earth is just an organ, not a whole, is it a new "cancer metastasis" if we emigrate to other planets?
Simply put, the product of cancer is actually the natural aging of cells and the decline of immune system, which eventually leads to the variation of cells and eventually forms cancer cells. But it seems that it can't stop the aging of cells, just as the ancient kings always wanted to pursue immortality and eventually died faster.
Therefore, as an endogenous disease, cancer cannot disappear. The task of conquering cancer is not to completely eliminate it, but to turn it into a controllable chronic disease.
Since we can't stop the aging of cells, what we can do seems to be that only by constantly improving or maintaining the level of human immune system can we effectively stop the variation of cells. Therefore, to live a long and healthy life is king. Take active exercise, eat less salty barbecue food, quit smoking and drinking, and so on.
Even though we know that cancer is the "inevitable result", some people still want to kill all cancer cells. Since he will become a bad person, kill him before he becomes a bad person, or kill all the bad people.
Having said that, I have to mention the immune system in the human body. The immune system is like the police and the law in human society. The rising crime rate is mostly caused by low crime cost and lax legal supervision. The reason why cells become cancer cells is also because the immune system does not perform its duties well, which leads to the "good guys" becoming "bad guys".
From a medical point of view, the drama of cancer cells fighting against the immune system is called "immune editing". The whole process usually spans more than ten years, even decades. Part I: Immune clearance. The immune system is strong. If cancer cells come out, they will kill one. Part II: Immune balance. Social unrest, cancer cells keep popping up, and the immune system is busy, killing people, but it cannot be eradicated. Part III: Immune escape. Immune system failure, cancer cells escape supervision, and even help others' immune system in turn. That's when we saw cancer.
From this point of view, what people should do more is to make the immune system better, not to eliminate cancer cells. Moreover, no matter how expensive the tonic to enhance immunity is, it can't compare with the twelve words of "regular exercise, balanced diet, quitting smoking and drinking" for free. Studies have found that people who exercise for 4-6 hours a week have a significantly lower incidence of most cancers than those who do not exercise.
There is no denying that the number of cancer patients in China is increasing every year. Among many kinds of cancers, gastric cancer, liver cancer and esophageal cancer are high in China, but few in the United States. In fact, these three cancers are also called "cancers of the poor" because they are high in developing countries, such as China, but less in developed countries. More than 50% of the world's liver cancer patients are in China!
So why is the incidence of these diseases so high in China?
There are at least two main reasons:
First, because of the characteristics of cancer itself, such as the complex biological characteristics of tumors, rapid progress, late discovery, many of them are insensitive to chemotherapy, and there are no mutant genes suitable for targeted drugs.
Second, because of the low incidence rate and insufficient research in developed countries. Because there are few patients with "poor cancer" in Europe and America, it is not easy to sample and study, and it is not easy to make money, so the interest of pharmaceutical companies has been limited for a long time, and there are few new drugs.
Moreover, these diseases are closely related to infection and living habits.
This sounds bad, but there is actually good news: because there are few "poor cancers" in Europe and the United States, it means that they do not necessarily appear with age, but can be avoided to a great extent.
I hope that after you know the cause, you can adjust your living habits as much as possible according to your own and your family's situation, and prevent it as soon as possible, which will greatly reduce the risk.
As we all know, exercise can improve human immunity, thus achieving a certain anti-cancer effect. The American Cancer Center also published research papers. Through the data analysis of 6.5438+0.44 million people in the United States and Europe, it is found that exercise can significantly reduce the incidence of 654.38+0.3 kinds of cancer. Although there have been many articles before, this is the largest and most comprehensive study so far.
Through research, it is found that to reduce the risk, the amount of exercise is very important, what kind of exercise is not so important, and there is no need for strenuous exercise. Run, play ball, tai chi and square dance, as long as you like.
After studying 26 kinds of cancer, it is found that exercise can significantly reduce the incidence of 13 kinds.
They are (percent reduction in brackets):
Of the top 10 cancers in China, 8 can reduce the risk through exercise. Look again, esophageal adenocarcinoma decreased by 42%! Liver cancer 27%! Lung cancer 26%!
When it comes to lung cancer, the number one reason may be smoking. In this study, we found an interesting phenomenon. If you smoke, or have smoked, exercise can be reduced >; 30% incidence of lung cancer! But for non-smokers, exercise can prevent many kinds of cancers, but it has no effect on lung cancer. Does this also mean that the pathogenesis of lung cancer between smokers and non-smokers is completely different? I think this is for scientists to study.
In China, more than 700 million women and children have long been victims of second-hand smoke at home and in public places. The World Health Organization estimates that secondhand smoke alone causes 654.38 million deaths in China every year, which is equivalent to a Wenchuan earthquake once a year! Among the 65438+ ten thousand people, there are many female lung cancer patients who do not smoke. Research shows that if a husband smokes, the probability of his wife suffering from lung cancer is more than 200% of the general population. So, before you want to light a cigarette, you can not think about yourself, but please think about the people around you.
Quitting smoking can't have an immediate effect on everyone or the whole society, but it doesn't mean that we should sit idly by. When the number of smokers begins to decrease, we can expect that the world will be better in 25 years.
Conceptually, modern medical anti-cancer has experienced at least four revolutions, the first is surgery, the second is radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the third is genetic testing and targeted drugs, and the fourth is immunotherapy.
As for targeted drugs, it is well known that the targeted drug "Gleevec" is used to treat leukemia in the movie "Dying". It is an early developed targeted drug for the treatment of leukemia.
Targeted drugs, as the name implies, are aimed at specific targets on cancer cells, such as a specific gene mutation. The purpose of targeted drugs and chemotherapy is to directly kill as many cancer cells as possible. Compared with chemotherapy, targeted drugs are more selective. It can effectively inhibit cancer cells, but it will not cause obvious damage to normal cells, so the side effects are much less.
However, immunotherapy is very different. Its target is not cancer cells, but immune cells. These drugs themselves can't directly kill cancer cells, but activate the immune system to fight cancer cells, and then make a large number of active immune cells become real anti-cancer weapons to complete their mission.
Targeted drugs are often targeted at protein, which is very important for tumor growth, and can be said to be an important food for cancer cell growth. Targeted drugs can "starve" cancer cells by inhibiting the activity of these protein. However, due to various reasons, drugs will also "starve" some normal cells, resulting in side effects, somewhat similar to chemotherapy. The function of immune drugs is to activate immune cells to fight cancer cells. But it also has side effects, not without risks. Activated immune cells can not only attack cancer cells, but also attack their own normal cells, resulting in a temporary "autoimmune disease", which may be fatal in severe cases.
It seems that immunotherapy is more advanced. However, the biggest problem of immunotherapy at present is its low efficiency, which is only 10% ~ 20% (except for individual tumor types), so it is ineffective for many people. Coupled with the phenomenon of "false progress", most people's tumors will not shrink at first. However, the advantage of immunotherapy is that patients may benefit for a long time if they respond, which is the so-called "tailing phenomenon" of survival curve: a few patients will survive for a long time or even be cured.
The disease will not only bring pain to patients, but also bring "double victims" to their families. On the one hand, they bear the economic, physical and mental "burden" of taking care of patients; On the other hand, they are also facing the grief of losing their loved ones.
Caring for the families of cancer patients has obvious mental health problems, and some of them are even more serious than the psychological problems of the patients themselves. All the emotional ups and downs experienced by patients will be felt by their families.
The book gives the following suggestions, as follows:
Whether it is necessary to tell the patient the truth should be a matter of opinion. When the family members know the illness, the first decision they may face is "Do you want to tell the patient the truth?"
The author of this book does not simply explain that "patients have the right to know" from the regulation or morality, but from the patient's subjective will.
A wise man once said, "The meaning of living is to learn to face death." However, this topic is very taboo for China, especially for those older people. As a result, young people are far from death and don't think and discuss, while old people are closer, but they avoid talking about it. This seems easy, but it leaves hidden dangers for the family. It is difficult for even the closest relatives to make a decision on such a key issue as life and death. Moreover, if the choice of family members is slightly biased or disappointed, family members may also leave an indelible psychological burden. On the other hand, returning the decision-making power to the patients themselves (patients who have independent thinking ability and are willing to control their own lives) can not only strengthen the treatment of patients, but also reduce the burden of family members in making decisions.
When the pain comes, as long as patients have the ability to think independently, they will actually feel that the situation is not good. Therefore, in this case, it is even more meaningless to hide family members. (If patients don't want to know the result, they should respect it. )
In the previous drug research and development process, researchers need to constantly try combinations of different doses and different dosage forms, and then enter a long phase I, II and III clinical trial, which is not only time-consuming, but also costly. The research and development cost of an anticancer drug that can be successfully listed may be as high as hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, which is the main reason why anticancer drugs are so expensive.
In the United States, many companies go bankrupt every year because of researching an anticancer drug, and finally fail to go public, which seems to be a casino for capitalists in the capital market.
However, with the continuous evolution of artificial intelligence, this long and expensive process may be shortened a lot. Machines can help people find more suitable formulas, and even find more suitable clinical patients according to patients' genetic data.
With the development of precision medicine, both cancer and other diseases will pay more attention to gene therapy, which requires a lot of data and a lot of calculation results.
Doctors and patients will encounter two or more sets of treatment methods. In the past, when we encountered difficulties in choosing, we would rely on doctors, believing that they could make the best choice, because doctors had at least two magic weapons: authoritative clinical guidelines (such as NCCN guidelines) and their own experience.
But in the era of precision medicine, these two magic weapons have been challenged.
First of all, the guidelines generally recommend the mainstream treatment scheme of "a class of patients" according to the results of clinical trials, but this is not the optimal treatment scheme for all patients. It's like a middle school teacher who often focuses on "ordinary students" in class. The result is that top students are bored, poor students don't understand, and half of them are wasting their time.
Therefore, to give each patient the best treatment, we have to rely on the experience of doctors to adjust.
But is this experience reliable? Because of the recent rapid changes in treatment plans, the emergence of new drugs too quickly and the explosion of information, doctors can't have enough time to digest and practice. When practice is enough, completely different new drugs come again and the policy changes. The chief physician with 20 years of rich experience in chemotherapy must learn from the beginning when encountering targeted drugs and immune drugs. Although the past experience is still valuable, it is greatly reduced.
This is not China's problem. Even in the United States, if cancer patients see three doctors with the same authority, they are likely to get three different treatment schemes. Who should I trust?
Therefore, the use of artificial intelligence can not only reduce the cost of drug research and development, but also make a clearer plan for the future treatment direction.
This is a popular book about cancer. When you finish reading this book, you will have a brand-new understanding of cancer.
Many people's understanding of cancer still stays in the knowledge of 10 years ago or even the last century. However, the nomenclature, diagnosis and treatment of different cancers have been developed for several generations. For many cancers, the initial treatment plan is very mature. Although it may not be completely cured, the survival rate of 5 years or even 10 years is already very high. (Note: Why is it 5 years or 10 years instead of longer? This is because the longer the time, the greater the change, because patients are likely to die of traffic accidents in the sixth year, not cancer. )
The way to treat cancer should be gradually changed to reasonable control rather than complete cure, just like many people in modern society have high blood pressure or diabetes, but few or even no one will think it is a dying disease. In many cases, the attitude towards diseases is far more important than a set of treatment programs.