Your body is made up of cells, which are the main elements in the tissue that your body uses to create and maintain your organs. When some of these cells grow and divide in improper ways, they can turn cancerous and form into a mass called a tumor. As cells grow old and die within your body they’re replaced with new ones. At least, this is what happens when cells behave as they’re meant to.

When this process of cellular regeneration falters for whatever reason, the cells have nowhere to go and that’s part of the reason they form into these growths. The tumors can be classed as either benign or malignant. Benign tumors are not cancerous although they’re just as scary when found in your body. They aren’t life threatening and can usually be removed easily. Benign tumors do not spread or invade the cells around them. Malignant tumors on the other hand, are cancerous and are definitely bad for your health in all cases. Though they can generally be removed, they sometimes grow back or invade other nearby organs or tissue. This spreading of the malignant cancer cells to other parts of the body is called Metastasis.

With breast cancer, the diseased cells are usually located within the lymph nodes near the infected breast. Breast cancer can spread to other areas of the body as well, with the most common areas being the liver, lungs, brain or bones. This is known as metastasic breast cancer and the cells in the other infected areas are still composed of breast cancer cells. Doctors generally term this sort of tumor migration as, distant metastasic cancer.

Breast cancer has no set type of woman that it attacks. Doctors have no explanation for why some women get the disease while others don’t. However, women with certain risk factors are more likely to develop cancer than women without these factors. Some of these factors can include:

1. A woman’s age is directly proportionate to her chances of developing cancer. Older women are at greater risk, while younger women rarely develop the disease before they reach menopause

2. A family history of cancer will raise the risk factor of developing the disease

3. If a woman has already had the disease in one breast, the chances are high that she will develop cancer in the other one

It is important to remember that women with high risk factors do not always get cancer, just as women who develop breast cancer may not fall into any of the high risk groups. This is why it’s hard to predict who will get this terrible disease and who will be spared. Other than those in higher risk groups, there’s no real way to tell. It’s very important to have yourself screened for the disease before any symptoms develop. The earlier that this cancer is caught, the sooner it can be treated and the more likely it is that you’ll survive the disease. If you have any breast pain or any other symptom of the disease, don’t panic. Many similar symptoms are attributed to many other problems and are generally not cancerous.