Around 10 million people die prematurely of cancer every year & every 6th death in the world is due to cancer. In the United States of America alone, 5.5% of the population suffer from Cancer. Although number of deaths due to cancer have been declining, still the mortality rate is 40%, which is very high.
Understanding cancer is a complex process with multiple factors at play. It is important to understand what cancer is, how it happens & how we can treat it. For quite some time scientists have been trying to find answers to how they can eliminate this dreaded disease. In fact, cancer is one of the most researched topics, but we are yet to find a cure. Today we are going to discuss a connecting link between our gut microbiome & cancer in light of recent research conducted on this topic.
First things first! Let’s discuss how cancer develops!
Cancer does not occur overnight. It occurs over a period of time due to environmental attacks on our genes &/or series of biological events that build a mass of cancerous cells in our body. In essence, cancer refers to grouping of human cells with uncontrollable growth, a group of cells that can’t stop replicating. Like humans, cells in our body have a particular life cycle. They are born, they grow & perform specific functions, they replicate & then die. This is a normal process that allows our body to control our own growth, replicate & heal. This process of replication & renewal keeps our skin healthy, our organs function properly & regular our biological processes. Essentially when our cells are healthy, they prevent old cells from making a mistake & keeping the new ones ready to function once the old ones die. However, mutation can impact our DNA & interrupt the normal life cycle process. The genes impacted by these mutations are called oncogenes, when it can increase the risk of developing cancerous cells. When enough oncogenes have been mutated, cells do not function in line with the normal process. They have only one goal- replicating & reproducing. This mutated cell begins to replicate more & more, making more copies of itself. As it replicates, it forms more mutated copies until this mass of cells becomes a cancerous tumor. As a result of formation of tumor, the cells begin to grow, replicate & spread throughout the body.
There are multiple reasons why cancer is formed in our body- age, inflammation, stress & nutrition. Our diet is said to increase or decrease the risk of attracting cancer depending on harmful byproducts or beneficial nutrients our gut releases when they metabolize the food we eat. As such, the health of our gut microbiome has a role to play in attracting cancer.
Without food, our body does not get energy to heal ourselves & perform various biological functions. Without proper nutrition, our body does not have the right kind of micronutrients & antioxidants to regulate our metabolism, control & minimize inflammation & maintain health of beneficial bacteria in our gut. If you are consuming fad diets or eating something that is off the mark or is not feeding the beneficial bacteria in your gut, it will lead to gut dysbiosis & impact health of microbes that interact daily with your immune system. In fact, your immune system(response) & chronic inflammation can drive you towards dreaded consequences (including death) when it comes to cancer.
If a cell’s genes get too many mutations, our body has its own system in place to safeguard our body against cancer. There are multiple ways we can protect our DNA. Some protective mechanism aims at killing the mutation once they have integrated into our DNA by self-destructing the cell, thereby preventing it from replicating & reproducing more cells like it. This is called cells programmed death. While other mechanisms focus on preventing mutation from even occurring. Certain beneficial metabolites, released by our gut as a result of having diet that feeds beneficial bacteria, such as Butyrate is anti-inflammatory that reduces the mutation which might occur from high level of chronic gut inflammation in digestive tract. This actually makes sure to prevent disruption to cellular DNA of our gut, breasts & lungs.
Microbes living in our gut work towards keeping our gut safe. Provided, we are feeding our gut right, they are capable of improving the effectiveness of chemotherapy in case of cancer.
We, at Genefitletics, are focused on going to root cause of diseases & actually reversing & curing by sequencing & analyzing your gut & providing your right kind of dietary recommendations that can facilitate increased production of beneficial metabolites such as Butyrate, Acetate & propionate. Making friends with microbes living in your gut is just a click away.
Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/cancer
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322/caac.21551
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30213279/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327655247_Nutrition_and_cancer_Prevention_and_survival
