Most doctors agree: No tan is safe; an early tan won’t prevent sunburn later; and tanning parlors won’t save your skin – they use ultraviolet light for tanning, and ultraviolet light hurts skin (eyes, too).
Recently, many health food stores have offered a “natural” product that produces a “tan” if taken orally. It does color the skin orange, but it is not easily eliminated by the body, and at least one case of deadly aplastic anemia has been reported in association with it.
Once a melanoma is diagnosed, surgery usually is done around and under the cancer to make sure all of it is removed. Patients often are left with large disfiguring scars that, fortunately, can be helped by plastic surgery.
Dr. Hubert T. Greenway of the Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation in La Jolla, California, uses a less disfiguring technique – Mohs surgery – invented by Dr. Fred Mohs, retired, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Dr. Greenway removes the melanoma, thin slice by thin slice, and examines each slice under the microscope to see how far the cancer has spread. Subsequent slices are wider or narrower, depending on what the microscope shows. Surgery stops after several slices no longer show cancer cells, so the smallest possible scar results. He also is testing the drug interferon, which regulates the body’s system for fighting germs and cancer. Greenway estimates that he and his colleagues have injected interferon into 40 to 50 patients with widespread melanoma and that 10 to 12 of them have experienced complete disappearance of the cancer.
That is a low rate of response, but the experiment shows that a manipulation of the tumor-fighting power of the blood could, in theory, cure melanoma in more people. Also, interferon does control one kind of leukemia and, injected into other skin cancers, has cured them in 80 percent of cases.
*4/266/5*
Posted: Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 at 10:41 am
Filed Under: Cancer | No Comments »
As with all symptoms, it is quite common for more than one factor to play a part in producing constipation. Once the cause(s) have been found, consider tackling them directly. It may be possible to treat a blockage by surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. However, the cost of doing so may outweigh the benefit if, for example, the treatment is unpleasant and has only a small chance of shrinking the growth enough to relieve the symptoms. If you either can’t or don’t want to get rid of the cause of your constipation— for example, because it is due to painkillers which you want to keep taking — you will have to tackle the symptom itself. Prevention is better than cure here. Don’t wait until you are really badly constipated before doing something about it.
I suggest for a start you consider taking some form of laxative regularly. Laxatives work by softening the motion and/or stimulating the bowel muscle—good examples include liquid paraffin, phenolphthalein, dioctyl sodium sulphosuccinate, danthron, lactulose, and senna. If you normally take laxatives anyway, you will need much bigger doses now than someone who is not used to taking them. Other ways of helping the bowels to keep moving are by taking a high-fibre diet (but not if you have a blockage of the bowel), drinking plenty of fluids and exercising as much as is possible and comfortable.
If these measures don’t keep your bowels moving easily, you may also need to use suppositories or enemas, with the help of a nurse. By the way, most nurses know much more about treating constipation than most doctors. I suggest that you ask a nurse for help if you have this symptom. This should be easy if you are in hospital. If you are at home, just ask your doctor to arrange for a nurse to visit you there.
*195/40/1*
Posted: Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Tags: Cancer
Filed Under: Cancer | No Comments »
The role of female hormones
The fact that breast cancer is about 100 times more common in women than in men suggests a role for the female sex hormones.
Women whose first period occurred at a young age seem to be more at risk of developing breast cancer, as are those who have had their first child late (at 30 to 34 years old), and those who have had a late menopause. It seems that the longer a woman is exposed to her own female hormones – particularly oestrogen -the more at risk she is. Some diets which can lead to obesity, particularly those high in fats, can also lead to an earlier onset of menstruation. Thus girls in the well-nourished and high socioeconomic groups of the industrialized West, where the incidence of breast cancer is high, tend to have their first periods younger than those in areas of malnutrition where the disease is less common.
In pre-menopausal women, it is the ovarian oestrogen which is relevant, and this is produced for as long as menstruation continues. Breast cancer is less common in women who have had an operation to remove their ovaries in their 30s or 40s, before their menopause.
In the past, the doses of oestrogen used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may have been linked to a slightly increased risk if taken for longer than 10 years. HRT is now normally given as a combination of oestrogen and progestogen, and the drug doses are much lower. There is no evidence that modern HRT is linked with the development of cancer; in fact, some doctors continue to give it to women who have breast cancer.
Modern contraceptive pills – which also contain a very low hormone dose – have little apparent risk. They do, however, reduce the risk for endometrial and ovarian cancers. Fibroadenomas in the breast are also less common in women taking the low-dose contraceptive pill.
Smoking
Cancer cells may spontaneously develop at any time and are usually destroyed by the body’s immune system. As smoking suppresses the immune system, it is not surprising that all cancers are more common in those who smoke.
Other risk factors
Other risk factors have been suggested, but with less supporting evidence. For example, there may be a small, but real, link between high alcohol consumption and breast cancer. Stress, either the experience of it or the way it is dealt with, has also been implicated.
*19/39/5*
Posted: Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Tags: Cancer
Filed Under: Cancer | No Comments »