Question: is there any things you could do which have been scientifically proven to prevent the growth of cancerous cells?

Vicky Forster answered on 16 Nov 2013:

Hi wise!
Good question. Yes, there are many things which we can currently do to prevent the growth of cancerous cells. Patients with cancer are generally treated with a combination of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery (but not always all of these). Surgery works by literally removing the tumour cells from the body, although it is often difficult to remove all of the tumour this way – cells which are left behind can make the tumour regrow, so this is normally combined with chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy to get rid of every single last cell. Chemotherapy is the word used to describe drugs which we use to treat cancer. There are lots of different chemotherapy drugs – most of them work by targeting cells which are dividing and replicating fast – like cancer cells. Unfortunately these drugs do not always just target cancer cells – other fast growing cells in the body, such as hair folicle cells can also be affected, which is why many people on chemotherapy lose their hair and are quite sick (your stomach lining is mainly fast-dividing cells too). Radiotherapy works by using ionising radiation to kill cancer cells in one particular area, whereas drugs normally go around all of the body. All of these methods are scientifically proven to kill cancer cells – and we can cure some people of cancer, but unfortunately a lot of people can’t be cured by drugs we currently have. Sometimes this is because their cancer is far too aggressive by the time they are diagnosed, and sometimes it is because the type of cancer they have cannot be cured by treatments we currently have. This is why we have to keep finding better treatments for cancer – so that we can successfully treat more people. Great question 🙂