“As we follow the seven key principles, the non-toxic cancer therapies, oxygenation, detoxification, strengthening the immune system, the emotional spiritual,” says Dr. Antonio Jimenez, “let's not forget about nutrition and of course, the microbiome. The infamous microbiome that starts in the gut but in reality, our body is a microbiome.

“It's an environment where we have to control our healthy and pathogenic viruses, bacteria and live in what's called a symbiosis or a state of health and regulation.

“I've seen tens of thousands of patients not only in Mexico but around the world, and I truly believe that only through these seven key principles can we give the patient the best opportunity of having a favorable outcome.”

You can learn more in Dr. Tony's new book, Hope for Cancer: 7 Principles to Remove Fear and Empower Your Healing Journey:

• Practical ways to fight cancer while maintaining your health.
• The latest non-toxic therapies that are having remarkable results.
• Patients who have overcome the odds using the methods in this book.
• The emotional and spiritual aspects of cancer and how it can unlock your healing journey.

Consider this your guidebook for removing the fear so often associated with a cancer diagnosis, and become empowered with knowledge!

Learn more about Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers.

The post ‘Hope for Cancer:’ How 7 Principles apply to microbiome appeared first on Cancer Tutor.

The culmination of Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers’ Founder and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Antonio “Tony” Jimenez’s 30+ years of clinical experience with advanced-stage cancer patients, Hope for Cancer offers scientific insight and emotional empowerment to anyone suffering from the disease.

Based on Hope4Cancer’s unique healing program, The 7 Key Principles of Cancer Therapy, Hope for Cancer puts the exact method used to successfully treat thousands of cancer patients from all walks of life inside their two international clinics right into the reader’s hands. This groundbreaking, full-color manual breaks down complex therapies and clarifies ambiguous concepts with vivid imagery, easy-to-understand graphics, and practical action steps.

For anyone who understands the importance of creating and sustaining a healthy life physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, Hope for Cancer is a must-read — the ultimate guide for cancer prevention and treatment.

You can learn more in Dr. Tony's new book, Hope for Cancer: 7 Principles to Remove Fear and Empower Your Healing Journey:

• Practical ways to fight cancer while maintaining your health.
• The latest non-toxic therapies that are having remarkable results.
• Patients who have overcome the odds using the methods in this book.
• The emotional and spiritual aspects of cancer and how it can unlock your healing journey.

Consider this your guidebook for removing the fear so often associated with a cancer diagnosis, and become empowered with knowledge!

Learn more about Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers.

The post Hope4Cancer’s integrative approach to treatment appeared first on Cancer Tutor.

In his new book, Hope for Cancer: 7 Principles to Remove Fear and Empower Your Healing Journey, Dr. Tony offers the guiding principles of his Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers:

NON-TOXIC CANCER THERAPIES

• Treatment plans designed to substitute traditional methods with non-toxic therapies

IMMUNOMODULATION

• Biological vaccines to strengthen and stimulate the immune system, restoring its natural ability

FULL SPECTRUM NUTRITION

• A personalized meal plan developed by our in-house nutritionist, assuring balanced caloric intake

DETOXIFICATION

• Therapies to complement your personal treatment plan, removing harmful metals and minerals, and enhancing your overall recovery

OXYGENATION

• To simultaneously support the healing of healthy cells and prevent toxic buildup

RESTORE MICROBIOME

• Ensure bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protozoa ecosystem is healthy and balanced

EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALING

• Therapies focusing on healing both the mind and spirit play an integral part in every Hope4Cancer treatment plan

Dr. Tony's 7 Principles of cancer therapy is the culmination of 25 years of real clinical experience with advanced-stage cancer patients from all over the world. Learn how treating cancer is not just about treating the symptoms of cancer, but going deeper into the core characteristics of all cancer and addressing the root cause of the disease.

The post Doctor’s ‘Hope for Cancer’ details personal quest appeared first on Cancer Tutor.

Dr. Antonio Jimenez explains that Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers “treat the person with cancer — not cancer in the person.

“Simply speaking is that we want to take a holistic approach to that disease process. Of course, that includes the physical, the emotional-spiritual, and the mental.

“That's when you truly are going to have sustaining, long-term benefits instead of just addressing the tumor in the person and not taking into account the person's emotional, spiritual, personality, thought processes, social environment and so forth.”

Dr. Tony's new book, Hope for Cancer: 7 Principles to Remove Fear and Empower Your Healing Journey, offers:

• Practical ways to fight cancer while maintaining your health.
• The latest non-toxic therapies that are having remarkable results.
• Patients who have overcome the odds using the methods in this book.
• The emotional and spiritual aspects of cancer and how it can unlock your healing journey.

Consider this your guidebook for removing the fear so often associated with a cancer diagnosis, and become empowered with knowledge!

Learn more about Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers.

The post Hope4Cancer’s individual treatment approach appeared first on Cancer Tutor.

Dr. Antonio Jimenez has written a book, Hope for Cancer: 7 Principles to Remove Fear and Empower Your Healing Journey.

These seven principles are the guiding philosophy to the treatments that Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers adhere to while they personalize regimens for patients.

Dr. Tony notes, “You have the right to choose. Once you know your options, you know what's out there, you know other possibilities of treatment.

“If you're with a doctor that says, ‘This is all I can give you,' or a doctor that says, ‘That's it. I gave you everything. There's nothing more,' — absolutely not. There are always tools in the toolbox.”

In Hope for Cancer you'll find:

• Practical ways to fight cancer while maintaining your health.
• The latest non-toxic therapies that are having remarkable results.
• Patients who have overcome the odds using the methods in this book.
• The emotional and spiritual aspects of cancer and how it can unlock your healing journey.

Consider this your guidebook for removing the fear so often associated with a cancer diagnosis, and become empowered with knowledge!

Learn more about Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers.

The post Dr. Antonio Jimenez offers ‘Hope for Cancer’ appeared first on Cancer Tutor.

The post 7 Key Principles: Emotional & Spiritual Healing appeared first on Cancer Tutor.

Cancer Tutor: Start off by telling your story, how you discovered Wholetones?

Michael: That was kind of one of those amazing things that you don't put A and B together. I was asked to go on a trip with a friend, a pastor of a church in Nashville, to proofread a book of his. I wanted to go anyway and spend time with him.

When we finally landed at Ben Gurion Airport (Israel), I asked Don do we need to get a GPS. He said, “Heavens no, we already have GPS. We have God Positioning Satellite and, you know, He'll take us where we need to go.” I thought man, I love this guy … I love the way he thinks — like it's not in his head, it's in his heart.  I don't have a good sense of direction but he wanted me to drive, so I drove the car and we're driving into Jerusalem and I said well, where to now, and he said, “There's a coffee house, we're going to go there and a friend of mine that has no idea that we’re in Israel is going to show up there and meet us.”

“When you hear ‘frequency' or ‘vibe,' then people immediately go frou-frou on you and they think of all kinds of new age attraction or they think that it's fringe or weird.”

Michael S. Tyrrell

I said, what? Don's like, “Yeah, he lives in Tel Aviv, but God’s going to speak to him, he's going to meet us there, it's going to be awesome.” I'm just thinking I gotta live like this, this is the way to go. So, we went to this little coffee house and there was a guy playing music, playing the piano. He was staring a hole through my head the minute I walked through the room.  I sat down, it was really getting awkward, so eventually, I just closed my eyes and listened to the music. It was popular worship songs from the U.S., but obviously seeing as how it was instrumental music, even though it was a Hasidic coffee house, he was still playing Christian songs and they would never have known and I just thought that was funny.

Anyway, at the end of his set, he came over to the table and said, “I have to apologize for staring at you but I think you are a believer and I saw you and I'm supposed to give you all of my life's work.” And I said, what? I think I said what more times on this trip than any (other) combined. He said, “I’ve decoded the songs of King David and I basically rediscovered some proper tunings for instruments from thousands of years ago.” I'm just sitting there going how does this guy know I'm a musician? So anyway, he said, “If you can stay around until my next set, I've got everything in a backpack and I want to bring it in to you, I've taken it as far as I can go and I just feel God says that it's up to you now.”

So I said, OK. Sure enough, while we were waiting for his next set to be over, my friend’s friend that lives in Tel Aviv comes walking through the door of the coffee house and they hug each other and he said, “Yeah, I woke up this morning and God said go to this coffee house, that someone was waiting for me.” So they're like best friends and it was just too much. I mean,  I'm watching them hugging each other thinking this guy knew to come here, like, my pastor knew how to come here and … so then next thing I know David the guy who was playing piano, is done and he goes and gets all this stuff for me. He came back with two sets of manuscripts. One was obvious, it was tablature and the other one was what we call avant-garde notation, or just a bunch of scaler lines on a piece of paper with a melodic, no concordance obviously, no structure like that of any kind. By the time I got back from Israel, I had what was pretty much Wholetones there, but I couldn't decipher it and I gave up and I put it in my office filing cabinet for about two years.

After that point, about two years later, there was just a day where I just couldn't get it out of my mind. I said OK, I'll look at it again and … I'm very much truncating this story, so for time’s sake, but the long story short is that I had a revelation when I took out the avant-garde notation. And then I realized why I never cared for the tablature because the tablature was written in our U.S. key. It's not a standard tuning internationally, even though people would want you to believe that which is the note A equals 440 vibrations per second or hertz. So it was written in A 4-4 and that's why it didn't move any market, but when I looked at the avant-garde notation, I realized something — that it was what you do for teaching if you're a father teaching your children how to sing particular melodies that are passed on for generations and in sight singing, there's no actual … it's not a musical interlude and it's not polyphonic.

It's basically singing tones with the human voice and once that came together that afternoon and a bunch of other really cool stuff that sort of coalesced into a day, I had realized that I was probably 4 seconds away from finding a frequency that would not only still be in the realm of the note A, but by changing the tuning of music, I could make that music work in harmony with how our human bodies were created in the genius of God. And to help people restore their circadian rhythm, which so many people have lost due to a myriad of problems — everything from EMF to over saturation and over satiation of the senses via Facebook, media, whatever. We're doing things that no other generation has done all of the time, which is not healthy for us, and my hope was to find a frequency of healing that I could actually embed into the … use as an underlayment for the music and thus create an environment where people could spontaneously heal.

And so that's in a nutshell, that's how it all started.

Cancer Tutor: How do solfeggio tones differ from tones that we in the West are used to?

Michael: That's a great question. As I mentioned before, for us in the West, the first takeaway is to realize that all countries don't tune the same. That's a big take away. The first way that I found out that was by subtraction on a trip to another country, to Columbia. I took my tuner and I had a band that was going to be playing with me that were Columbian musicians. They had their tuner, and we both tuned to our tuners and we were horrendously out of tune with each other because our tuning centers were not the same. So there's a (saying) sometimes that if you can see something it is but if you can't see it, it isn't. If you can hear something it is, if you can't hear something it isn't — until you realize that the bandwidth of frequency is so much larger than anyone had any idea.

Once you exhaust the audio realm, then you begin the realm of light, and so realizing that there's such a huge difference in just a … the most minute shift, like even from 440 hertz to 441 hertz, it's a huge difference. When I found out that by merely shifting to 444, I could help the body instead of actually … in other words, it's like having a wind at your back instead of a wind in your face, that was the first takeaway. The second thing was they were prescribed self-solfeggio tones, I mean a solfeggio is called sight-seeing and solfeggio tones are a group of harmonically competent frequencies that work together and they all have the sum of either 3, 6, or 9, so they all work together harmonically, but they are also from a melodic content, not quartet.

So when you have a tuner, everything's tuned in fifths in the West. Everything is tuned to A equals 440 in the West, which is a negative, if I can use that term — negative frequency as opposed to the electrical wiring in the human body. So, with that being said, I changed the tuning to be in harmony with seven specific solfeggio tones, even though I have close to 1,000 in a book that I've been working on. I've got more positive frequencies than I probably have time on the earth. With that being said, the big takeaway from solfeggio, from what we would consider typical music in the West, is the tuning is different. It’s a balanced instead of an unbalanced, tension-less frequency, so your instruments stay in tune better. It works better with your voice. The most important thing is using the proper modality that actually affects the body on a cellular level. What it really does in-vitro, and I do have the testing now for serum heart rate variability and 3D brain thermography to see — “This is your brain on Wholetones.” We can actually show people what it does as opposed to just telling them about it.

Cancer Tutor: On a cellular level, theoretically, how does sound affect our bodies, our immune system, our overall health?

Michael: My constant work is more demystifying frequency. It's funny because when you hear “frequency” or “vibe,” then people immediately go frou-frou on you and they think of all kinds of new age attraction or they think that it's fringe or weird. It's no weirder than if I said, Did you know I've got this cutting edge breakthrough I want to share with you today, and you're listening and the listeners are listening, and I say it's called breathing, you actually … inhale and you exhale, it's so good for your lungs.

That's how elemental frequency is. People aren't used to seeing that terminology, thus they think that it's something really bizarre. Every thought, every intention, every beat of the heart, everything that we see in color, everything that we hear in audio, our ability to communicate through conversation or via the telephone, which is a 900 megahertz phone, or through a computer or any other media that we use, television, radio …

Without frequency none of it would exist; no musical instrument could exist. So with that being said, it affects the body in every way. In the days of Pythagoras — we could talk about him for hours — he was primarily a musician even though he was known as the grandfather of mathematics, especially geometry. His main penchant was healing and music, and he basically did the same thing that I'm doing, but he created his own instrument called the monochord. His monochord was a 6 foot instrument that on one side was padded and then the other side had strings, so he would get his disciples to lay on top of this table when they were sick, when they were emotionally drained, depressed, stressed out, insomniacs — and they'd lay on this table and he would play the strings underneath and it would resonate their entire body.

Then after 20, 30 minutes they would go to bed and wake up the next morning just fine. One of his main disciples was Plato, so some of the most intelligent figures in history. They all realized one thing: If you can put the body into a place where it can find homeostasis, then because of the way that we are perfectly designed, the body will begin to heal itself. So it affects the body on a cellular level very simply because it's all energetics. I mean we have cells, we have white blood cells, red blood cells, you know, every bit of how a cell even breathes or how it proliferates or the function of it. Masamura Moto, he actually took pictures of all my solfeggio tones and froze them before he passed away and it's in my book. If we know how lipids and liquids respond to frequency or music — we do, we have pictures — so if we know that happens and considering how we are created, we're a good 70 percent plasma salt water.

Water has a low surface tension, so it's easily crossed into with frequency vibration music. We're affected on a cellular level because actually the cells can hear the music or feel the vibrations of the music.

Cancer Tutor: For people fighting serious illness and sleep disorders, what would you recommend?

Michael: I was with Dr. Mehmet Oz just a couple months ago and we were talking about it, his whole platform for this year is going to be sleep. He's working with Dr. Michael Bruce and I was called in, he spent some time talking with me about sleep and he said something that was profound. He said that it doesn't matter what treatment, albeit (naturopathic), prescription, or homeopathic preparation or you know … supplementation, it doesn't matter what you're putting into your body — if you're not sleeping a solid 6 to 8 hours a day, your body can not heal. So working with athletes or people with other problems, the first thing you realize is if your body isn't given the ability to sleep, it can't repair itself.

When people are dealing with something that's as diabolical as cancer, for example, they need all the fighting chance they can get. They need quality sleep. When I created the first Whole Sounds project, it went viral and people loved it, but they said you know it makes me so relaxed, but every time I fall asleep, the drum will come in or whatever and wake me up. I said well listen, it wasn't created for sleep, it was created for relaxation, but I understand. So I went and spent some time in Dallas creating a new project that's called Wholetones 2Sleep. We weren't really sure at first how much of a marker it would move until we released it and found out that even as a deaf girl named Stephanie Rude in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who’s become a huge advocate and a friend of Wholetones who was born deaf, and who thrives on the music.

Because of what I mentioned earlier, that she can sense music on a cellular level, Wholetones actually introduced a deaf girl to music, and you know, that would be like a blind person getting to see. Somebody their whole life they wonder what the big hubbub about music is and suddenly they feel the music and they start to understand. So if you're dealing with some of these heavy-duty illnesses like we've categorized them, disease or the body being out ease, the first thing we want to address is how can we get this person asleep. If they can sleep, they can heal, and everything else they are doing is going to be heightened greatly because of their ability to be able to shut down for 6 to 8 hours. The first thing I would recommend, and not because it's my product alone, would be the new generation Wholetones 2Sleep 2.0 player. It's a self-contained speaker that has over 3 hours of music and it's on a loop, so once you start it, it will continue to play until you shut it off, but it runs all night long, has no percussion.

The ambiance is the same throughout the entire thing, the frequency runs throughout the entire thing, so once you are asleep you stay asleep. If you're an actor you're thinking about your next line. If you're an athlete you're thinking about your next play. If you're massively ill, no matter what you're trying to stay in a positive place and stop thinking about cancer or stop thinking about your sickness. You don't think more about what you don't want, you start thinking about what you do want, but it's really hard to do. So I created this music to try to get people asleep and into a delta wave state as quickly as possible, thus improving their chances of sleeping through the night and being able to start to have some feeling of being human again even though they might be going through chemotherapy or other caustic treatments. At least it gives them a fighting chance to be able to get some well-needed rest.

So far we have a cut on this new one called Angels All Around and it's been reported by many people and we have thousands of testimonials, but the one that seems to be the continuum is this song is a song they’ll probably never hear the end of because they're already asleep — and that's the greatest thing I could say. To be able to create something that has music and frequencies together and it helps people sleep. We have 70 million people in our country as of 2017 that have some semblance of sleep disorder and I started all of this because I'm such a terrible sleeper, being a musician and staying up til 4 playing music for people every night of my life, you know. I was all jacked up and couldn't sleep.

Cancer Tutor: What's the most surprising thing Wholetones has given to you being in this realm, in this project, and working through all of this?

Michael: I think it's one of those gifts that keeps giving. It's one of those things in my life that was so transient. Every day I find another facet of how my life has changed because of this discovery. The beautiful part of it was I had all of the research and I had all of what I believed was an inspiration that was divine driving me on to do this. Kind of like when Mel Gibson all of a sudden did the Passion of the Christ. I got to meet the guy and I was asking him about that and he's like it was a mandate, I had to do it. That's how I felt about Wholetones; it wasn't like I just put my finger in the air and wet it and said oh yeah! I knew this was something I had to do but I didn't really know what it was.

When I had it in my hand, my wife had just flown back into Dallas to help me drive all my gear home in the truck and she goes, “Well, can I hear it?” She's smart and she'll tell me the way it is and sometimes I don't want to hear it, but she'll tell me. So I'm thinking I don't even know what this is and she wants me to play it for her. What if she just hates it? But I said OK. So I put it in the player and we started driving home, I didn't even get to the stop sign and she's completely come apart on me, bent over, crying. She looked at me and she said, “This is your magnum opus. This is the reason you were born.” It still gets me, it's hard for me even to talk about it because it was basically, hey guess what, this is your new life bud, this is what you're going to dedicate your whole life to.

In about two months, I'm getting all this stuff coming in from the marketing companies saying you're in 100 nations and then a month later you're in 120 nations, and then it's like, how is this even possible? Then the testimonials started coming in. The end of 2014, 2015, and we've had over 100,000 healing testimonies since then and they're coming in fast and furious. It changed basically my entire life. It changed my focus, it changed the way I produce and engineer music, and it changed the way I create music.

I got inundated with calls from people saying you have done an admirable job putting us to sleep and getting us to rest but a lot of us like to workout, and some of us are energetic, and could you possibly make one that works with correct tempo for people that do Pilates or people that do kettlebell workouts, you know, high intensity.

I'm actually going to record a project that I call Wholetones Active that's for people that go to the gym. They need something that's going to be more energetic (than Wholetones).

Cancer Tutor: What's the biggest lesson you've learned, personally?

Michael: Totally honest, regardless of the demographics of the audience, I have to stay that I am almost embarrassed that I was 52 years old before I learned the biggest secret of life: Just get out of God’s way. He knows exactly how to make your life perfect and to get you to do what you've always wanted to do, but we spend most of our life as a speed bump that impedes our success.

We don't realize that we're that speed bump, but we keep relying on what we know and what we think we know in order to move forward. And it's the beauty of it, that God’s not angry at us for doing that. It breaks His heart because He sees a better life for us than we see for ourselves.

When I was actually able to literally get out of God’s way and stop trying to run my life and my business, then I actually had a life and a business. That's the big takeaway for me — learning just how to get out of the way and stop being an impediment to my own success.

The post Wholetones’ music plays to healing frequencies appeared first on Cancer Tutor.

First, be thankful; you are alive during a time when information can literally save your life! There are volumes of studies and thriver testimonials to help shed light on your cancer journey.

Integrative cancer treatments – those that combine the best of natural regimens and conventional approaches – have made significant strides in recent decades. Many of the top cancer researchers are probing how to better utilize integrative treatments for cancer.

At Cancer Tutor, we are committed to providing this information free of charge to those who seek it. We will not put a price on your health. When we learn of new clinical trial results, we will share.

We do not make claims regarding treatments. We present the information in an unbiased manner and welcome those who disagree to have a conversation based on scientific facts – not a “gut feeling” or because “someone said.”

We're glad you've come to Cancer Tutor for answers. We look forward to helping address your needs, to provide information for caregivers, and to be a respected outlet for all health care providers to exchange ideas for the betterment of cancer patients.

You’ve heard of cancer. Likely there are people in your family who have faced cancer. But what is cancer, really? Until you are faced with reality, cancer is something that happens to someone else. And then, the doctor said three words — “You have cancer …” — that change your life. Immediately your mind began to race: What about my family? What about my job? Why me?

But cancer is not a death sentence.

Among your options are natural and integrative treatments that have been used to treat the disease. These natural cancer treatments have been documented to be helpful and can be less expensive than traditional chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.

Before you begin treating cancer, you need to understand what cancer is. Then you can approach treatment with a solid base of knowledge and understanding.

All cancers begin in cells

So what is cancer? It begins with cells, the basic building blocks of the body. There are many different types of cells, and they make up all of the tissues and organs in the body. Within each cell are thousands of genes that act as a command center for the cell. Genes provide instructions for what role the cell will play in the body. Each gene has a unique job to perform either by itself or in combination with other genes.

Otto Warburg discovered that the flavins and the nicotinamide were the active groups of the hydrogen transferring enzymes. This, together with the iron-oxygenase discovered earlier, gave a complete account of the oxidations and reductions in the living world. The discovery opened up new ways in the fields of cellular metabolism and cellular respiration. He showed, among other things, that cancerous cells can live and develop even in the absence of oxygen.

“[Warburg] determined the definition of a cancer cell is one with low adenosine triphosphate,” Cancer Tutor founder Webster Kehr said. “Every cell in your body creates an enormous amount of ATP every second; the ATP is the energy of the cell. The definition of a cancer cell is that something is blocking the creation of ATP energy in the cell.”

Cells divide to make new cells and replace damaged or old cells. As cells duplicate, they pass along copies of their genetic material to the new cells.

The process of cells dividing and passing along genes is usually well controlled, ensuring that the right kinds and numbers of cells are present for the different parts of the body to function correctly. The body and the cells can usually recognize when something has changed in a cell and will work to repair or destroy the abnormal cell.

Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body. Cancer develops when the body’s normal control mechanism stops working. Old cells do not die and cells grow out of control, forming new abnormal cells. These cells may form a mass of tissue — a tumor. (However, some cancers, such as leukemia, do not form tumors.)

All cancers begin in cells. Cancer starts with changes in one cell or a small group of cells. Usually, we have just the right number of each type of cell. This is because cells produce signals to control how much and how often the cells divide. If any of these signals are faulty or missing, cells may start to grow and multiply too much and form a lump (tumor). Where cancer starts is called the primary tumor.

Gene mutations are cellular

For cancer to start, certain changes take place within the genes of a cell or a group of cells.

Different types of cells in the body do different jobs, but they are basically similar. They all have a control center called a nucleus. Inside the nucleus are chromosomes made up of long strings of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA contains thousands of genes, which are coded messages that tell the cell how to behave.

Each gene is an instruction that tells the cell to make something. This could be a protein or a different type of molecule called RNA (ribonucleic acid). Together, proteins and RNA control the cell. They decide what sort of cell it will be, what it does, when it will divide, and when it will die.

Normally genes make sure that cells grow and reproduce in an orderly and controlled way. They make sure that more cells are produced as needed to keep the body healthy.

Sometimes a change happens in the genes when a cell divides. The change is called a mutation. It means that a gene has been damaged or lost or copied twice. Mutations also can happen by chance when a cell is dividing. Some mutations mean that the cell no longer understands its instructions and starts to grow out of control.

Mutations in particular genes may mean that too many proteins have been produced and trigger a cell to divide. Or proteins that normally tell a cell to stop dividing may not be produced.

Some genes get damaged every day, and cells repair them. But over time, the damage may build up. Once cells start growing too fast, they are more likely to pick up further mutations and less likely to be able to repair the damaged genes.

Most common forms of cancer

While trying to get your head around “what is cancer,” understand that it can occur anywhere in the body. In women, breast cancer is most common. In men, it’s prostate cancer. Lung cancer and colorectal cancer affect both men and women in high numbers.

There are five main categories of cancer:

Carcinomas begin in the skin or tissues that line the internal organs and are the most common type of cancer. They are formed by epithelial cells, which are the cells that cover the inside and outside surfaces of the body. There are many types of epithelial cells, which often have a column-like shape when viewed under a microscope.

Sarcomas develop in the bone, cartilage, fat, muscle or other connective tissues. These are cancers that form in bone and soft tissues, including muscle, fat, blood vessels, lymph vessels, and fibrous tissue (such as tendons and ligaments).

Leukemia begins in the blood and bone marrow. These cancers do not form solid tumors. Instead, large numbers of abnormal white blood cells (leukemia cells and leukemic blast cells) build up in the blood and bone marrow, crowding out normal blood cells. The low level of normal blood cells can make it harder for the body to get oxygen to its tissues, control bleeding, or fight infections.

There are four common types of leukemia, which are grouped based on how quickly the disease gets worse (acute or chronic) and on the type of blood cell cancer starts in (lymphoblastic or myeloid).

Lymphomas start in the immune system. This cancer begins in lymphocytes (T cells or B cells). These are disease-fighting white blood cells that are part of the immune system. In lymphoma, abnormal lymphocytes build up in lymph nodes and lymph vessels, as well as in other organs of the body.

Melanoma is cancer that begins in cells that become melanocytes, which are specialized cells that make melanin (the pigment that gives skin its color). Most melanomas form on the skin, but melanomas can also form in other pigmented tissues, such as the eye.

In all types of cancer, some of the body’s cells begin to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues.

More about common cancers

Carcinomas that begin in different epithelial cell types have specific names:

Osteosarcoma is the most common cancer of bones. The most common types of soft tissue sarcoma are leiomyosarcoma, Kaposi sarcoma, malignant fibrous histiocytoma, liposarcoma, and dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans.

Leukemias begin when large numbers of abnormal white blood cells (leukemia cells and leukemic blast cells) build up in the blood and bone marrow, crowding out normal blood cells. The low level of normal blood cells can make it harder for the body to get oxygen to its tissues, control bleeding, or fight infections.

There are two main types of lymphoma:

• Hodgkin lymphoma — People with this disease have abnormal lymphocytes that are called Reed-Sternberg cells. These cells usually form from B cells.

• Non-Hodgkin lymphoma — This is a large group of cancers that start in lymphocytes. The cancers can grow quickly or slowly and can form from B cells or T cells.

Multiple myelomas are cancer that begins in plasma cells, another type of immune cell. The abnormal plasma cells, called myeloma cells, build up in the bone marrow and form tumors in bones all through the body. Multiple myelomas also are called plasma cell myeloma and Kahler disease.

Also, central nervous system cancers develop in the brain and spinal cord. There are different types of brain and spinal cord tumors. These tumors are named based on the type of cell in which they formed and where the tumor first formed in the central nervous system. For example, an astrocytic tumor begins in star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes, which help keep nerve cells healthy. Brain tumors can be benign (not cancer) or malignant (cancer).

Malignant vs. benign tumors

Cancerous tumors are malignant, which means they can spread into nearby tissues. As these tumors grow, some cancer cells can break off and travel through the blood or the lymph system to other places in the body and form new tumors far from the original tumor.

Unlike malignant tumors, benign tumors do not spread into nearby tissues. Benign tumors can sometimes be quite large. When removed, they usually don’t grow back, whereas malignant tumors sometimes do. Unlike most benign tumors elsewhere in the body, benign brain tumors can be life-threatening.

Cancer cells are also often able to evade the immune system, a network of organs, tissues, and specialized cells that protect the body from infections and other conditions. Although the immune system normally removes damaged or abnormal cells from the body, some cancer cells are able to “hide” from the immune system.

Tumors also can use the immune system to stay alive and grow. For example, with the help of certain immune system cells that normally prevent a runaway immune response, cancer cells can actually keep the immune system from killing cancer cells.

To start with, cancer cells are contained within the body tissue from which they have developed — the lining of the bladder or breast ducts. Doctors call this superficial cancer growth. It may also be called carcinoma in situ.

The cancer cells grow and divide to create more cells and will eventually form a tumor. A tumor may contain millions of cells. All body tissues have a layer keeping the cells of that tissue inside called the basement membrane. Once the cancer cells have broken through the basement membrane it is called invasive cancer.

As the tumor gets bigger, the center of it gets further and further away from the blood vessels in the area where it is growing. So the center of the tumor gets less and less of the oxygen and the other nutrients all cells need to survive.

Like healthy cells, cancer cells cannot live without oxygen and nutrients. So they send out signals, called angiogenic factors, that encourage new blood vessels to grow into the tumor. This is called angiogenesis. Without a blood supply, a tumor can't grow much bigger than a pinhead.

Once cancer can stimulate blood vessel growth, it can grow bigger and grow more quickly. It will stimulate the growth of hundreds of new capillaries from the nearby blood vessels to bring it nutrients and oxygen.

As a tumor gets bigger, it takes up more room in the body. Cancer can then cause pressure on surrounding structures. It can also grow directly into body structures nearby. This is called a local invasion. How cancer actually grows into surrounding normal body tissues is not fully understood.

The spread of cancer

Cancer may just grow out in a random direction from the place where it started. However, tumors can spread into some tissues more easily than others. For example, large blood vessels that have very strong walls and dense tissues such as cartilage are hard for tumors to grow into. So locally, tumors may grow along the path of least resistance — they take the easiest route.

The place where cancer starts in the body is called primary cancer or primary site. If cancer cells spread to another part of the body the new area of cancer is called secondary cancer or a metastasis. Some cancers may spread to more than one area of the body to form multiple secondaries or metastases.

If the cancer cells go into small blood vessels they can then get into the bloodstream. They are called circulating tumor cells.

Researchers are currently looking at using blood tests to find circulating tumor cells to diagnose cancer and avoid the need for tests such as biopsies. They also are looking at whether they can test circulating cancer cells to predict which treatments will work best for each patient.

The circulating blood sweeps the cancer cells along until they get stuck somewhere. Usually, they get stuck in a very small blood vessel called a capillary. Then the cell must move through the wall of the capillary and into the tissue of the organ close by. The cell can multiply to form a new tumor if the conditions are right for it to grow and it has the nutrients that it needs.

Out of many thousands of cancer cells that reach the blood circulation, only a few will survive to form secondary cancer (metastasis).

Some cancer cells are probably killed off by the white blood cells in our immune system. Other cancer cells may die because they are battered around by the fast-flowing blood.

Cancer cells in the circulation may try to stick to platelets to form clumps to give themselves some protection. Platelets are blood cells that help the blood to clot. This may also help the cancer cells to be filtered out in the next capillary network they come across so they can then move into the surrounding tissues.

Cancer and the lymphatic system

The lymphatic system is a network of tubes and glands in the body that filters body fluid and fights infection. It also traps damaged or harmful cells such as cancer cells.

If cancer cells go into the small lymph vessels close to the primary tumor they can be carried into nearby lymph glands. The cancer cells may get stuck there. In the lymph glands, they may be destroyed but some may survive and grow to form tumors in one or more lymph nodes. Doctors call this lymph node spread.

Micrometastases are areas of cancer spread (metastases) that are too small to see. Some areas of cancer cells are too small to show up on any type of scan. For most cancers, the doctor can only say whether it is likely or not that a patient has micrometastases.

For a few types of cancer, blood tests can detect certain proteins released by the cancer cells. These may give a sign that there are metastases in the body that are too small to show up on a scan. But for most cancers, there is no blood test that can say whether cancer has spread or not.

So what is cancer?

Cancer is a group of more than 100 different diseases, and it can develop almost anywhere in the body. As a cancerous tumor grows, the bloodstream or lymphatic system may carry cancer cells to other parts of the body. During this process, known as metastasis, the cancer cells grow and may develop into new tumors.

One of the first places cancer often spreads is to the lymph nodes — tiny, bean-shaped organs that help fight infection. They are located in clusters in different parts of the body, such as the neck, groin area, and under the arms.

Cancer also may spread through the bloodstream, to the bones, liver, lungs, or brain. Even if cancer spreads, it is still named after the area where it began. For example, if breast cancer spreads to the lungs, it is called metastatic breast cancer, not lung cancer.

Often, a diagnosis begins when a person visits a doctor about an unusual symptom. The doctor will talk with the person about his or her medical history and symptoms. Then the doctor will perform various tests to find out the cause of these symptoms. Many people with cancer have no symptoms, though. For these people, cancer is diagnosed during a medical test for another issue or condition.

Sometimes a doctor diagnoses cancer after a screening test in an otherwise healthy person. Examples of screening tests include colonoscopy, mammography, and a Pap test. A person may need additional tests to confirm the result of the screening test.

For most cancers, a biopsy is the only way to make a definite diagnosis. A biopsy is the removal of a small amount of tissue for further study. After a biopsy, your health care team completes several steps before the pathologist makes a diagnosis. A pathologist is a doctor who specializes in interpreting laboratory tests and evaluating cells, tissues, and organs to diagnose disease.

Additional sources: National Cancer Institute, Cancer Research UK, American Institute for Cancer Research

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