Re: Can an incessant cycle of heal/damage/heal cause cancer?

Dear User,

Please be advised that use of generalized concepts in biology may lead to confusion and error. "Healing" and "damage" are *extremely* broad concepts, and cannot be used without further definition.

The human body is constantly in process of repairing the damage done by movement, bacteria, air/water, temperature gradients, etc. etc. Every time we move, capillaries get broken and re-grown in a matter of minutes. Mechanisms for mechanical damage repair are very complex, a variety of processes are involved - such as secretion of substances indicating that the damage has been done, and a subsequent series of cellular and organ-levekl responces necessary to heal the damage. Cancer itself is a very broad term. Specifically in two cases you mention, the exact cause of cancer is proposed to be disruption of genetic mechanisms responcible for cell reproduction, either by radicals formed by UV radiation or by carcinogenic substances in tobacco smoke and tar. There is a variety of protective mechanisms in the cell, which "weed out" the damaged pieces , but they are not 100% efficient (take a notice here, they are more than 99.999% efficient, otherwise humans as species would never be possible). Some alterations have no effect, some are benign, some cause immediate cell death and, finally, some are responcible for various types of cancer. So, there is no short answer for your question.

As far as purely mechanical damage goes, there is a *slight* chance of misreading of genetic information during the repair process, but usually it takes something much more disruptive, such as specific chemicals or ionizing radiation, in order to cause certain irreversible changes responcible for some of the types of what we call "cancer". If you are interested in investigating the problem in depth, there is a wide variety of literature available on cellular oncology, tissue healing and other topics touched by your inquiry.

Sincerely,

A.G.E.