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Every day, we go about our business without much thought that our bodies may eventually fail us.
We don’t pay attention to the warning indications it sends us until it’s too late. The value of excellent health and well-being should be of utmost importance too. We should have a better understanding of how our bodies work so that at any sign of distress or early symptoms, we can seek the help of professionals before it becomes worse.
It is quite surprising that not many of us realize 8% of our typical bodyweight is, in fact, made up of our blood.
It plays a critical part in how our body functions. It transports oxygen, hormones, nutrients, and antibodies to all our organs as it flows through our vascular system. Unfortunately, it is not immune to the onslaught of some abnormalities or cancers, emphasizing the necessity of learning as much as possible about it and doing everything we can to increase our chances of avoiding or beating those.
Here are seven facts we need to know about blood cancers:
1. What is blood cancer?
Abnormalities in cellular growth and behavior cause cancer. In a healthy body, new white blood cells are created on a regular basis to replace old, dying ones. An overproduction of white blood cells causes blood malignancies in the bone marrow.
2. Three main types of blood cancer
Leukemia – affecting both children and adults, it is a type of cancer that affects our white blood cells. The white blood cells in our body cannot fight infections due to leukemia. Lymphocytes and other immune cells are affected by acute (quickly developing) or chronic (slowly growing) leukemia.
Lymphoma – blood cancer affecting the lymphatic system, which plays a vital role in our immune system, specifically the lymph nodes. The lymphatic system has the job of filtering out harmful substances. The blood cancer targets the white blood cells called lymphocytes. There are two types of lymphomas: Hodgkin’s lymphoma (commonly called Hodgkin’s disease) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Myeloma – a blood cancer that targets our plasma cells which are white blood cells found in the bone marrow. These are lymphocytes that produce antibodies to protect us against infections. Having myeloma leaves us susceptible to infections because it hinders the production of antibodies.
3. There are no practical screening tests to detect blood cancers early
To begin with, no matter how hard medical specialists have tried to find a means to detect blood cancers in their early stages, nothing has been found. Unlike other cancers, we only realize anything is wrong when we have already experienced associated symptoms.
Although blood cancers are assumed to be caused by a combination of hereditary and environmental factors, risk factors are unknown. Some forms of blood cancers have been linked to tobacco use, radiation, and chemical exposures such as benzene (a frequently used industrial chemical).
4. Common blood cancer warning signs
While there’s no means to detect blood cancer early, there are signs to warn us something’s wrong. It includes the following symptoms:
- Anemia
- Chronic fatigue and weakness
- Swollen lymph nodes, spleen and liver
- Joint pains
- Fever
- Inexplicable weight loss
5. Each year, almost 10% of new cancer cases in the U.S. are blood cancers
This percentage affects both children and adults translates to an approximate of 178,520 people with a blood cancer diagnosis in a year alone. That’s one person for every three minutes. Of these cases, researchers approximate that 48% have lymphoma, 34% with leukemia and 18% with myeloma.
Sadly, every 9 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies from blood cancer. That’s more than 56,000 people, or 9.4% of the more than 600,000 plus cases, who die from some cancer every year.
6. Survival rates improving over the last two decades
While over 1 million Americans are living with or in remission from leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma, they still require blood transfusions. However, thanks to decades of research, people with blood cancers now have far better outcomes, and they live longer than before.
7. Greater developments in blood cancer research
Known for his work in bone marrow stem cell transplants, Dr. Curt Civin is partly responsible for the rise in leukemia survival rates. He discovered a class of drugs that effectively kill cancer cells of one of the deadliest forms of leukemia. His work continues to vastly make a difference in the lives of patients with blood cancers.
While there’s progress in the fight against blood cancer, there is still much work to do and many more challenges ahead. We need to support Power MDS clinical trials conducted for this and hope researchers will discover breakthroughs sooner than later.
On our part, we need to be more aware of our bodies. Monitoring our own health might be good in avoiding serious health problems.