How is radioactivity applied in the treatment of cancer?
ehiman asked:
Since radioactivity causes cancer, what science is behind its medical aplication? “And what is artificial radioactivity” Does it have anything to do with the med application of radioactivity?
Since radioactivity causes cancer, what science is behind its medical aplication? “And what is artificial radioactivity” Does it have anything to do with the med application of radioactivity?
controlled radiation therapy damages infected cancer cell by destroying the genetic material that controls how cells grow .
Radioactivity harms cells by altering the DNA in the cells. You can imagine radiation as shot gun pellets except on an atomic level. When you are exposed to radiation, it is like billions of little pellets shooting into and through your body. These particles will occasionally hit a strand of DNA, altering it. Once this occurs, the cell keeps on replicating this DNA and thus you get cancer if the DNA gets mutated in a certain way.
If the DNA is damaged enough, the cell will not be able to replicate and it will die. This is the idea behind radiation treatment for cancer. What doctors do is they target the tumor with strong, focused beams of radiation. This damages the cancer cells’ DNA so much that the cells eventually die and cannot reproduce. Now to do this without damaging other cells, they use multiple beams, each with intensity low enough that it won’t damage your normal cells too much. Then, they point these beams at different angles and intersect them where the tumor is. At that point, the cells will be recieving a deadly dose of radiation.
This is a very simplified explanation, and there is much more to it. However, this is the basic idea.