What Is Lymphoma?


by Jeff Kimball - Date: 2006-12-04 - Word Count: 522 Share This!

Most folks diagnosed with any type of cancer notice it hugely difficult to agree with their predicament. The typical reaction of patients and their family is disbelief of their disease. However, cancer is something that won't go away quietly because you avoid its existence. It is therefore better to determine as much as possible of the illness and learn how to attack it than to simply hide and wait for the unavoidable to happen. In the case of people with lymphoma, it is critical that you should understand what is going on in your body and be ready for any circumstance. Many things can happen to people with lymphoma, as this type of cell anomaly is rather mobile compared to other forms of cancers.

Lymphoma is a type of cancer that assaults the lymphocytes. The lymphocytes are defined by medical science as any of the nearly colorless cells found in the blood, lymph, and lymphoid tissues, constituting approximately 25 percent of white blood cells and including B cells, which function in humoral immunity, and T cells, which act in cellular specific immunity. So you should know that lymphocytes are not only most mobile as it is carried in the blood, it is also part of the body's typical protective armor called the immune system.

Like all forms of cancers, the cells divided abnormally or too quickly in folks with lymphoma. Abnormal lymphocytes most often collect in the lymph nodes making the lymph nodes enlarge. However, swollen lymph nodes does not necessarily mean you have lymphoma as there are other forms of diseases that lead to the swelling of lymph nodes. There are many forms of lymphomas; however, the most popular classification is Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is named after Thomas Hodgkin who discovered this line of cancer in 1832, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which includes all other forms of lymphoma.

Lymphocytes are part of the ordinary circulation of the human body. Since lymphoma assaults the lymphocytes, aside form the lymph nodes; the abnormal lymphocytes have access to individual parts of the human body. Although in most cases, the spleen and the bone marrow are the favorite spots where abnormal lymphocytes would gather and form lymphoma exclusive of of the lymph nodes, there are some everyone who can develop lymphoma in the liver, the stomach, and in very rare cases, in the brain. Lymphoma can form almost everywhere in the body and it is not uncommon for lymphoma to occur all at once in different parts of the human body. This is why lymphoma is considered one of the systemic diseases that affects the entire human physiology.

Indications of lymphoma are frequently affiliated with the swollen glands. As the unnatural lymphocytes no longer performs it typical functions of protecting the body from infections, the person with lymphoma become more prone to infections of any breed. It should be noted that part of the functions of the lymphocytes in the human body involves assisting the body's immune system in fighting off infection and other forms of diseases. Where a person has lymphoma, his or her immune system is now impaired and he or she can no longer fight infections efficiently.


Related Tags: lymphoma, lymphoma cancer, non-hodgkins lymphoma, hodgkins lymphoma

Read more here: Lymphoma Cancer Information Portal

Jeff Kimball is a health and wellness writer and a guest writer for The-Health-and-Wellness-Center.com and contributing editor to their Lymphoma Cancer Information Portal

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: