Cancer is a tricky disease. We know some causes of some cancers and some risk factors for some cancers, but we don’t know enough to cure most of them. What we can do, however, is take what we know and try to reduce the risks we do know of.
It’s not surprising to anyone in the healthcare field to know that unhealthy lifestyle choices, like smoking, drinking too much, not eating well, not exercising enough, and so on, contributes to ill health. Obesity is also something that contributes to disease, and now it’s being found that it could also be contributing …read more

Although this may sound like something out of the "don’t do it because you’ll go blind" book of sexual repression, it’s not a joke. According to a report published in the January issue of BJU International, men who are very sexually active in their 20s and 30s, especially if they masturbate frequently, have a higher risk of developing prostate cancer.
BUT – men in their 50s who have even infrequent sexual activity actually decrease their risk of developing prostate cancer.
According to the study, which looked at 800 men:

frequent sex in 20s and 30s: not good
frequent sex in 40s: no …read more

Cell phones have been the subject of many studies when it comes to cancers of the head. From brain tumors to eye cancer, researchers have been hard at work to see if there are any connections.
In the latest of studies, the findings show that using and talking on a cell phone doesn’t increase your chances of developing melanoma of the eye.
An earlier, smaller study of just over 100 people said there was such a connection, but this larger study of 459 subjects did not come to the same conclusion. The results of the study were published in the online issue …read more

No-one knows for sure if you will get cancer, but there’s a need for many of us to know what our risks are.
Disaboom.com has a good article, written by Debbie Marsh, How Likely Are You to Get Cancer?, which covers several of the lifestyle and environmental contributions to cancer development.
I’m a fan of the Disaboom.com site, so I like it when I can refer people to some of their articles.
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Tags: cancer blog, risks of cancer, lifestyle and cancer

Is there such a thing as Pink Ribbon overload? Has all the attention that has gone to breast cancer awareness and fundraising taken away from other cancers, such as lung cancer?
The University of Michigan Health System has issued a release that discusses how lung cancer still plays a large role in North American society. According to their press release, lung cancer kills four times the number of Americans as does breast cancer. Not only tht, but lung cancer is the number one killer of both men and women.
Did you even know that November is Lung Cancer Awareness month? …read more

It’s safe. No it’s not. Yes it is. No it’s not. Could it be that our health and safety – and all the research that is being done – are reduced to schoolyard-like exchanges like “is to!” and “is not!!”? That’s what it seems like sometimes.
First, we read of research that says cell phone use cause brain cancer and not just any brain cancer, but a rare form of it. Then we read that it doesn’t cause the cancer because other researchers had different findings. But wait, yet more researchers say it does cause cancer. And what’s the latest? Apparently, …read more

Many years ago, before I had my children, I knew someone who received a new liver. I remember as she was waiting for the call; it was very stressful on her because she knew what had to happen for her to get a liver. She was also very tiny, not even 5 foot, so she needed a tiny one and she knew where a tiny one would come from.
As it happened, my friend became one of the first to receive a partial liver and when I last heard about her a few years ago, she was still doing well. I …read more

It’s frustrating, isn’t it? One day you hear that drinking coffee can cause breast cancer. You hear another day that’s not true. Then other researchers come back and say that it is true. Who to believe? After all, you like your coffee, but not at the expense of your long-term health, right?
Well, according to the latest report that was published recently in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, caffeine does NOT increase the overall risk of developing breast cancer. *BUT*, if you have a history of benign breast disease or tumors that are hormone-receptor negative, caffeine could increase your risk.
If …read more