Lung, stomach, intestine, brain, prostate, breast, colon, skin, mouth, liver, bladder, bone, colon, pancreas, thyroid, larynx, lymph and more… It may have caught your attention that it is rarely seen. The reason for this has to do with the way the heart works.
In order to understand why cancer is mostly tangential to the heart, we need to know exactly how the disease occurs and the functioning of our vital organ, the heart. Here is the explanation:
How does cancer occur?
Our body is exposed to various toxins, acids, enzymes, UV rays and many more harmful substances during the day. As our cells and tissues are damaged, stem or progenitor cells actively divide to replace those lost; that is, our cells are renewed.
In this repair process of our body, a cell copies its DNA every time it divides, and there are sometimes mistakes at this stage. In fact, cells do not easily allow these errors, error control mechanisms and DNA repair processes are robust. However, our skin, where cellular stress is high, contains about 37 trillion cells, so it is not surprising that genetic mutations occur because the number is so high.
When the number of cells is so high and the density of harmful substances is added to this, cells can accumulate genetic mutations and become cancerous. In other words, unfortunately, while the body wants to heal itself, it puts itself in the middle of greater danger by revealing cancerous tissues due to a mistake. Pretty ironic!
So why does the heart get cancer so rarely?
We mentioned that as the number of cells dividing and regenerating increases, the probability of developing cancer increases. The heart, unlike the rest of our body, does not have a lot of cell renewal. Healing of the tissues in the heart occurs not by cell division, but predominantly by a process called “fibrosis”.
The number of cell divisions that take place in the heart is so low that at the time of birth, half of the heart cells remain with us throughout our lives. That’s why cancer, which occurs due to the mistakes made by cells while dividing/renewing, is very rarely encountered in the heart. In addition, the heart is not exposed to carcinogenic substances as much as our skin, digestive system and lungs.
According to scientific research; heart cancer can be seen in about 34 out of 1 million people.
In the type of heart cancer called sarcoma, cancer originates from the heart’s own tissue. It is extremely rare, but the death rate is very high.
A secondary heart tumor starts elsewhere in the body and then metastasizes (spreads) to the heart. In other words, it can spread from other organs through lymph or veins. Metastatic forms of kidney, lung, breast cancers, lymphoma, melanoma and leukemia are common cancer types that can affect the heart. A cancer is unlikely to metastasize to the heart.
Sources: Prof. Dr. Mustafa Özdoğan, Doctor of Medicine Pedram Türkoğlu
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