"It’s All in Your Cells:" A Simplified Overview of Cancer and Chemotherapy

The cell is the basic unit of life. From the moment we are conceived, cells are formed and begin the life-long process of dividing and also dying. It’s an amazing process: our unique code, or DNA, tells cells what to do—how to make fingers, toes, organs, and brain cells and in what sequence. Cells take this information and produce energy that enables them to live and form other new cells and those cells form new cells. This is called cellular replication and has been happening to you from the time that you were just a single cell."  Not one of the cells in your body right now existed when you were born: they are all descendants of your initial cellular makeup.

Sometimes, however, instead of replicating, cells must die."  Cell death occurs when a process called apoptosis is initiated. This is a naturally occurring, pre-programmed process. Between 50 and 70 billion cells die every day in the normal human adult. But not all cells die when they should. "Rogue" cells develop that are mutations of original cells and they do not perform functions to sustain the life of the organism. Instead, they may begin a process of uncontrolled, rapid replication and growth.

Cancer is characterized as a regular process gone awry.

In cellular replication, cells that mutate with unrestricted growth must be taken care of by our bodies. The body’s defense system, called the immune system, is supposed to detect and destroy mutated cells. Potentially cancerous cells are produced in everyone’s' bodies, but they are normally identified and destroyed. However, if the immune system fails, cancer cells replicate to form tumors. A primary characteristic of cancer cells is that they divide and replicate faster than normal, healthy cells. Another property of cancer cells is that they feed on the body’s glucose (sugar) to continue their rapid growth. Sometimes they even create new blood vessels in a process called angiogenesis to hijack the body’s nutrients and oxygen. Another important point to note is that not all cancers are the same: they differentiate from other types based on where cancers originated. For example, breast cancer cells that have spread to the lung or bone, but they are still breast cancer cells. " 

Chemotherapy, designed to halt the rapid growth of cancer, attacks ALL rapidly dividing cells

Chemotherapy has been used for more than 40 years to attack these rapidly growing cells. Different therapies represent separate chemical formulas that use a variety of means to attack different types of cancer cells. Unfortunately, chemotherapies don’t differentiate between cancer cells and other cells that are in the process of dividing. Chemotherapy drugs attack all dividing cells. Cells that comprise hair, skin, blood/immune system, mouth, and digestive also divide quickly. This is why the side effects of many chemotherapy drugs includes hair loss, skin changes, reduced immunity, mouth sores, reduced white blood cell count, and digestive disturbances.

" " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "  Table 1.

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" " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 

Important points about interpreting the table:

•If your chemotherapy is not listed above, it doesn’t mean that you won’t experience some cognitive problem; nor does it mean that you will. It just means that it research evidence on its affect on the brain or nervous system has not been available.

•If your chemotherapy is listed above, it doesn’t mean that you will experience cognitive problems. Everyone’s biochemistry is different.

Evidence continues to mount that chemotherapy can severely affect the brain. A recent study published in the" Journal of Biology on a commonly used chemotherapy drug showed that healthy brain cells continued to die even long after the end of treatment. . .

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