Stress and cancer
Toady I am going to talk about CANCER again. Remember last time we mention it in our table topic session, and I was said to have bad time control, but this is …, ok, let us not to talk about time control.
Why I mention cancer again? Because I like cancer? Because cancer is amusing and adorable? No! of course not! ‘cause we hate cancer, we don’t want cancer happen to people around us or even to ourselves. We want to know more about it so that we may diminish any chance possible to confront it. Because face cancer, you might probably face death.
My eldest aunt passed away ten years ago due to carcinoma of the rectum.(直腸癌) And two years ago another aunt of mine died because of another type of cancer. Although she played trick upon me all the time, I still feel sorry for her. I have asked why to my father when I was a ten-year-old boy, “Why people got cancer? Why aunt got cancer?” My father told that my aunt didn’t feel happy after marriage, and often felt stressful living with her parents in law. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t even know what cancer was at that time. And when I was eighteen years old, I asked the same question to the same person for another aunt, and I got the same answer. I just can’t figure it out! How can mental states leads to cancer? Would I just got cancer by feeling bad and stressful everyday? If so, my teacher would have already die from certain type of cancer when I was in his class! I refuse to believe it. I think it’s merely excuses invented by adults. They want only to find a simple reason to explain it , to release their emotions or find somebody to attribute to!
However, after I read some text about stress and cancer recently, I find this simple answer no simple. Cancer does have something to do with negative emotions, although not so direct and plain. And in more correct words, mental states, especially negative emotions do not cause simply cancer but affect the growth of some cancerous tumor.
There are at least two ways discovered:
First, because negative emotions like stress, would arouse your body’s responses such as increasing heart rates and releasing of certain hormones that cost energy leading to the repression of the immune system. Consequently, we would fail to destroy cancer cell or to prevent it by spreading..
A second way is that because when stress cause our body to react physically, our body produces more capillaries(微血管) to supply blood to the working area. However if a tumor is already present in the body, the stress response will cause more blood supply to nourish the tumor and support its growth. Stress does not cause a tumor to develop, but assists in its growth.
Although other elements such as type of cancer, biological and genetical factors related can outweigh psychological factors in tumor growth, but why not just try to keep yourself happy and carefree? Why not try your best to release tension or try to solve the source of it? Why not just pay more attention to negative emotions and health maintenance since you have known such a connection between them? Why not?