What is cancer? The wound that won’t heal?

So what exactly is cancer?
This is a simplified version of ONE aspect of cancer, this information has been gathered from the book AntiCancer by Dr Servan-Schreiber. He was a Dr who was a medical researcher and was diagnosed with a brain tumour and survived 20+ years longer than he was meant to.

If you want a detailed version, from The American Institute for Cancer Research, please click here.

We Servan-Schreiber writes that we all carry cancer cells in our bodies all the time.
Below is an excerpt from his book, combined with my own comments.

Cancer cells are like outlaws (no, not cool outlaws like Ned Kelly fighting a corrupt and oppressive system, these guys are all for destruction of a healthy system, but like Darth Vader they can’t see that in the end it’s their own destruction too), they ignore all the rules and rhythms of the body’s system. A healthy body has boundaries and discipline in how it functions (pretty much like us, if we exercise and eat well, with discipline, we function pretty well!). Cancer cells lose the obligation to die, unlike normal cells which accept death  and maturity (ah there’s that acceptance thing again).
The poisons that cancer cells create are of an inflammatory nature (btw sugar/meats/dairy/processed foods are inflammatory in their nature) which stimulate cancerous cells. They steal the blood vessels and have nothing to hold them in place, and so they travel further a field to other parts of the body. And voila! We have stage 4 cancer.

The circumstances that can break these outlawed cells?

1. An immune system that immobilizes them (go the White Blood Cells!).
2. When the body refuses to create inflammation so that the cancer cells can neither grow nor invade other territories (ie eating foods that are not inflammatory).
3. When blood vessels refuse to reproduce and provide supplies they need to grow.

WOUNDS THAT WON’T HEAL

Rudolf Virchow, MD, founder of modern pathology in 1863, he observed that patients had developed cancer in the same spot they had received a hit, or where something had rubbed repeatedly. But you know how these things go, nobody listened and it took 130 years later and a Harold Dvorak to note that one in six cancers is linked to a chronic inflammatory state. Eg. Cervical cancer follows chronic inflammation of the papilloma virus; colon cancer is often found in subjects with chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine; stomach cancer is linked with a bacteria that causes ulcers; liver cancer related to hepatitis B or C; lung cancer linked to bronchial inflammation from the many additives in cigarettes and breathing in asbestos; and so on… (from Balkwill & Mantovani, Lancet 2001).

IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-help/about-cancer/what-is-cancer/cells/the-cancer-cell
FURTHER READING: AntiCancer (2011) by Dr Servan Shreibner, Chapter 4, Cancer’s Weaknesses