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Your sleeping body surrenders to Cancer’s invasion.

Cancer spreads on its own

In cancer, abnormal cells divide and spread uncontrollably, when the body normally keeps the cells in check.

The body has approximately 30 trillion cells, which are constantly being replaced. Old cells die and new ones are created as healthy cells divide.

Depending on the function of cells in the body, their ability to divide varies. For example, muscle cells rarely divide, while blood cells and so-called epithelial cells, which are in the upper layers of the skin and lining the intestines and lungs, often divide.

Cancer occurs when cells divide without the body’s signal. This phenomenon is often caused by mutations in the DNA of the cells.

Cells can ignore stop signals from the body and the immune system evade when it tries to stop them.

Once cancer cells proliferate, they form a cancerous tumor.

Small tumors can be surgically removed, but when they grow large, they invade surrounding tissues and even circulate with the blood.

Through the blood, the cancer cells can spread into new tissues far from the original cancerous tumor and form new tumors. We call this phenomenon metastasis or metastases.

Until now, the prevailing theory has been that cancer begins to metastasize at any point after a tumor has grown large enough.

But the Swiss results now cast doubt on that theory. They indicate that cancer has its own biological clock.

Cancer has its own rhythm

Researchers have wondered for decades whether the biorhythm influences the cancer cells and their development, or whether the cancer cells ‘break the rules’ of a normal day and night rhythm.

And for just as long, research has suggested that the body’s biorhythms largely determine the behavior of cancer cells, including a much-discussed study from 2007which shows that people who often work nights also have an increased risk of breast cancer.

Working at night disrupts the body’s biorhythm, which reduces melatonin production and inhibits the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. And so cancer can probably proliferate more easily.

But think now researchers from the Swiss university ETH that cancer behaves anything but randomly – it works independently of the body’s biorhythms and mainly spreads at night, while we sleep.

The researchers studied the biorhythm of cancer by taking blood samples from women with breast cancer, first at 4 am and then at 10 am.

Despite the rather small time difference between the two samples, the amount of circulating cancer cells in the blood differed enormously. About 80 percent of it was in the blood taken at night.

Cancer cells cannot survive in the blood for long, so the difference cannot be explained by the cells remaining in the blood.

That is why the researchers checked whether the cancer cells ‘consciously’ move in the blood at night when the rest of the body is resting. To do this, they transferred pieces of human tumors to mice and allowed the tumors to grow.

Mice are active at night and sleep during the day. The researchers found that the amount of circulating cancer cells in the blood was highest in mice that relaxed during the day – a whopping 88 times higher than when they were active.

The researchers also found that the cancer cells that left the bloodstream and formed tumors elsewhere in the body were mainly released during the resting phase.

So not only are more cancer cells released into the bloodstream at rest, they are also much better at forming new cancerous tumors and therefore more dangerous.

The researchers also found more hormone receptors on the surface of the metastasizing cancer cells.

Hormones, insulin for example, are signaling substances that travel through the blood and bind to and activate cells through their receptors. Normally, the body secretes insulin while we are awake, which is important for the absorption of the nutrients we get from our food and drink.

To find out what would happen if this rhythm were reversed, the mice were given insulin treatment while they were at rest. The body now appeared to think it is daytime, even though the mice were asleep, and the number of metastatic cells dropped to the same level as in mice that were awake.

The spread of cancer is thus to some extent controlled by the hormones, which are secreted in a certain rhythm during 24 hours. And the timing of cancer treatment is an underexplored area of ​​research.

Therapy needs new rhythm

Most cancer therapies today focus on destroying the proliferating cancer cells, making the cancerous tumor smaller.

But once the cells divide and spread through the blood to the rest of the body, there are few treatment options left. The knowledge about cancer’s night work can therefore be used to develop therapies that stop the cells before they proliferate.

The timing is crucial. One way to combat proliferating cancer cells is via melatonin, which is produced under the influence of sunlight. Research shows that light therapy before going to sleep can increase the amount of melatonin at night, which can inhibit the activity of the cancer cells.

In addition, cancer cells appear not only to be more active at night, but also more susceptible to therapies that affect their DNA – such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Future studies may reveal the extent to which hormone treatment at night can trick the cancer cells into thinking the body is inactive, thereby stopping the proliferation.

Doctors will also see if they can measure the exact times when most cancer cells move in the bloodstream and then fight them with drugs that break them down before they can leave the blood again to form new tumors.

The more researchers can check the biorhythm of cancer, the better the therapy can become. Patients can be spared treatment such as chemotherapy at times when the drugs have only a limited effect.

Cancer mainly attacks in the middle of the night, but researchers now think, with the new knowledge, we’re headed for a future where the devious disease will fear the dark.

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