Читать книгу DASH Diet For Dummies - Sarah Samaan - Страница 54

Cancer is a term fraught with dread. It makes people miserable, often requires horribly draining chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and may even be disfiguring. But what exactly is it? Cancer is really a catch-all term for a wide variety of diseases that happen when cells stray from their normal function, mutate, and begin to divide and grow out of control. Eventually, these growths can interfere with the body’s ability to carry out its day-to-day, life-sustaining processes.

There are more than 100 different types of cancers. Some you can live with for decades and never know they’re there. Others can be deadly within months or less. Often, doctors have no idea why a particular cancer strikes a particular individual. It’s possible to live an entirely pure way of life and still be struck down by the disease. Others engage in every possible vice and yet live well into their 90s. Be that as it may, some triggers are guaranteed to drastically raise your risk for one or many forms of cancer. Smoking is the obvious offender. So is long-term unprotected exposure to sunlight. But body weight and lifestyle can play a factor too, both positive and negative.