Lung, stomach, intestine, brain, prostate, breast, colon, skin, mouth, liver, bladder, bone, colon, pancreas, thyroid, larynx, lymph and more… While there are so many types of cancer, the heart is not cancerous. It may have caught your attention. The reason for this has to do with the way the heart works.
In order to understand why cancer is 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 elements 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, every time a cell divides, it copies its DNA, and sometimes mistakes happen at this stage. In fact, cells do not allow these defects easily, and error control mechanisms and DNA repair processes are intact. But there are about 37 trillion cells in our skin, where cellular tension is high, 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 intensity of wasteful issues is added to this, cells can accumulate genetic mutations and become cancerous. In other words, unfortunately, while the body wants to adapt itself, it puts itself in the middle of greater danger by revealing cancerous tissues due to a mistake. Pretty ironic!
So why doesn’t the heart get cancer?
We talked about the fact that as the number of cells dividing and regenerating increases, the probability of cancer formation increases. The heart, unlike the rest of our body, does not have as much cell renewal. The beautification of the tissues in the heart takes place not by cell division, but 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 for our entire life. This is why cancer, which occurs due to the mistake made by cells while dividing/renewing, is very rarely encountered in the heart. In addition, the heart is not exposed to carcinogenic elements as much as our skin, digestive system and lungs.
However, there is a possibility that heart cancer may occur.
According to scientific research; heart cancer can be seen in 34 out of 1 million people. In the type of heart cancer called sarcoma, cancer begins in the bones or soft tissue. It is extremely rare, but the death rate is very high.
It is common for the heart to be affected by cancer through metastasis. In other words, it can spread from other organs through lymph or vein. Metastatic forms of kidney, lung, breast cancers, lymphoma, melanoma and leukemia are common types of cancer that can affect the heart.