Just last week, I saw an Instagram reel that one of my friends had reposted, saying it was showing a “herbal cure” for cancer. I watched a little more of the video. When the narrator began saying that “cancer is a parasite that enters your system”, it instantly intrigued me. So, I commented on my friend’s repost asking her if she actually believed what this video was saying. To my surprise, she said that she believed the information in this video was true and hoped that her repost was able to reach someone who would need to see it. I then spent the next five to ten minutes ranting to her about how this was misinformation and what cancer actually is. Recently, however, I saw a video of a podcast where two aunties were saying how chai cures breast cancer.

We have all heard of cancer. But what is it? What is it composed of, at the cellular level? Our bodies are made up of individual cells, and inside each cell, there is a central structure known as a nucleus. The nucleus’ sole function is to protect the cell’s most basic instructions — the DNA — from the extranuclear environment. This environment is an amalgam of enzymes and proteins or structures, which are extracellular and intracellular, and might damage the DNA. The instructions are used by the cell to create proteins, which are the machinery of the cell, and some of these proteins may be used as checkpoints to give the cell the tools to detect when to divide.

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At times, the cell might make mistakes. External factors such as UV radiation or tobacco smoke may act on your DNA, causing mutations. Fortunately, the cell has mechanisms to either fix the mistakes or fix your DNA. However, at times, these mistakes go unnoticed. When mistakes occur in the instructions on how to divide your cells, you are likely to have cancer. Examples of this occurrence are what we call tumour suppressor proteins. These are a class of subcellular machinery that are responsible for telling your cell that “it is not time to divide”. An example of this protein is a protein that goes by the number 53, known as p53. When a mutation occurs at this level, the protein is permanently off. This is known as a loss-of-function mutation. When this happens, the cell no longer has a “no-go” signal; rather, it thinks that it is always time to divide. This is not what it is supposed to think. This causes it to divide in unfavourable conditions that could cause it to further damage its DNA.

The aforementioned protein, known as p53, plays such an important role that 60% of all colorectal cancer involves tumors that have an impaired p53 protein. On the flip side, there are oncogenes that are the “keep going” instructions for your cells. Occasionally, the instructions that are given by this protein may be impaired to the point that they are constantly “on” or even overproduced within your cells. All of these different impaired instructions have one end result: an abnormal cell division. This, again, is a somewhat simplified explanation of how a cancerous cell comes to be. Realistically, there are a great deal of things that are happening under the hood at even the most basic parts of your cells. Even with all of this happening, your body has an array of fail-safe mechanisms to protect your body against these impaired cells. For example, your cells will at times recognize that they have become impaired to the point that they will self-destruct. Unfortunately, there are a great number of factors that may cause even these mechanisms to fail. When these “mistake” cells begin to multiply, the process of tumours begins. Cancer happens when your cells start dividing a LOT when they are not supposed to.

Why has cancer been so difficult to cure? The basic nature of cancer is what has made it as hard to cure as it has been. When cancer initially forms, it has a similar makeup to your healthy cells, as well as some similar microscopic features. It has been more difficult to design targeted therapies because you do not wish to harm your healthy cells.

Another layer of complication is the phenomenon of tumour heterogeneity. Two tumours don’t always have the same “messed up” instructions. In some cases, you can even see the accumulation of different cells in the same tumour, where each cell type can have different “messed up” instructions. It is difficult to develop a “one size fits all” drug for cancer.

Even after these challenges, there are many cancer treatments that have been developed. Chemotherapy consists of a wide variety of drugs. However, at the core of it, they are all similar in that they target and destroy any cell that divides and makes more cells at a really fast rate. Unfortunately, this also includes healthy tissue that is growing at a fast rate, such as a patient’s hair, which is comprised of cells that are regrowing at a very fast rate. This is exactly the reason that chemotherapy causes a patient to lose their hair.

Another treatment method that is frequently used is radiotherapy, which involves bombarding cells with strong radiation until they die. This could potentially harm healthy cells as much as the cancer cells, but the use of precise beams of radiation helps to counteract this to a certain extent. Other treatment methods are available, but they are specific to unique cases of a particular type of cancer.

In other words, cancer is difficult to cure because cancer cells resemble our own cells and behave in an impostor-like manner in our own bodies, which is very difficult to distinguish from our own cells. While there are indeed ways to treat cancer, they tend to act in a general way to kill all cells or must be done on a very case-by-case basis.