The Mayo Clinic published 10 tips to reduce cancer risk in their most recent issue of Mayo Clinic Women’s HealthSource.

Here are the tips and below there’s more explanation:

1. Stop smoking
2. Limit alcohol intake – some alcohol is okay, too much is not
3. Follow recommended intake of fruits and vegetable (daily!)
4. Decrease the amount of fat in your daily diet
5. Lose weight if you’re too heavy, try to gain weight if you’re too thin
6. Move! Get active
7. Watch your skin (from the sun and don’t use tanning beds)
8. Don’t take chances when having sex. Protect yourself.
9. See your doctor regularly and take part in recommenced screening tests
10. If you have had cancer or are at particularly high risk, speak with your doctor about chemoprevention, which is taking medications to reduce the risk of new cancers

How and why do these steps help?

First of all, none of these are a surprise. All these recommendations, save for the last one, are recommended to help reduce the risk of developing many health problems, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and more. So by following these tips, you’re helping your body more than you may realize.

Smoking: Did you know that smoking not only increases your risk of developing lung cancer, but also mouth (tongue, cheek, palate, throat, gum) cancer? Your risk of bladder cancer also climbs quite a bit. Smoking affects your whole body, not just your lungs. Also, the social act of smoking is often accompanied by other not-so-healthy lifestyle factors, like drinking alcohol, limiting exercise, and so on. By quitting the cigarettes, your risk drops every day you’re no longer a smoker.

Alcohol: Many of us like to enjoy a good glass of wine, a cold bottle of beer, a good scotch – and many of us limit ourselves to a moderate number of glasses. However, if you drink too much, more than the recommended amount for your sex, you increase your risk of mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum cancers.

Fruits and vegetables: It’s not that difficult to add the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables into your daily diet, but it does take planning. Unfortunately, with the hectic lifestyles many people lead these days, food planning often goes out the door. Five servings of fruits and vegetables daily are the minimal amount that you should be taking in. The thing is, servings are not huge, so this is not impossible. Two and a half cups of fruits or vegetables over the course of the day is maybe one apple, one tomato and a couple of stalks of celery. That’s not too much, is it?

Limiting fat: This one may be of the easiest things to do. Fat is an essential part of the human diet; we need it for our body to function properly. However, the type of fat and the amount you get is important.

This table, from the USDA, shows you how much fat you should have according to the number of calories you should have per day:

And this table, from the same source, gives you an idea of what foods have what fat:

Source: ARS Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 17.

Weight control: Being a healthy weight for your body build helps your body in many ways. It can even help reduce the pain of osteoarthritis for some people. Being too thin also has health issues, so keep that in mind if you are trying to lose weight.

Get active: Enough said!

Watch your skin: Tanning is not beautiful – any change in your skin color means there is damage going on. Don’t use tanning beds – they’re even worse than the sun. Plus, too much sun exposure doesn’t just contribute to skin cancer, it makes your skin old, dry and wrinkly well before its time.

Protect yourself from sexually transmitted infections: Sex with people without protection exposes you to hepatitis and HIV, both of which are very high risk for cancer, let alone the disease itself. Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes genital warts, some of which can cause cervical cancer, cancer of the cervix.

Screening tests: Screening tests for prostate cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, are all over the news, but don’t forget the other screenings that you can have done. You can have a colonoscopy to check for the beginnings of colon cancer and you can have your skin checked regularly to look for signs of skin cancer. If you are at high risk of a particular type of cancer, speak with your doctor about screening for that, as well. And, don’t forget your dentist. He or she is the one who can detect signs of oral cancer.

Chemoprevention: This is a relatively new area, most commonly known for women who take Tamoxifen to help reduce the risk of breast cancer coming back. You may want to speak with your doctor about this if you are at a high risk of cancer or you have already had it.

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Images: MorgueFile.com

Post from: Blisstree

10 Tips for Reducing Cancer Risk

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Image: iStock.com

Post from: Blisstree

Video Tuesday: Spot Oral Cancer Early

Oral cancers, of the tongue, gums, lips or mouth, are in the rise around the world. And the sad fact is that most oral cancers are preventable. According to the American Cancer Society ,

Most oral cancers could be prevented if people did not use tobacco or drink heavily.
Quitting tobacco and limiting alcohol use sharply reduce any risk of developing oral cancer, even after many years of use. Many oral cancers may be found early by a combination of routine screening examinations by a doctor or dentist and by self-examination.

Another cause of oral cancer, of the lips, is the sun. Just as we protect our skin from the harmful rays, we need to protect our lips, using lip balms that contain sun block. This isn’t just for the summer either – if you’re an avid outdoor winter sports person, the sun can be particularly hard on your lips as it bounces off the snow.

The use of alcohol and tobacco and its relationship to oral cancer shouldn’t be surprising, but what may surprise many people is the effect of HPV (human papillomavirus) on the rising incidence of oral cancer. This risk is even higher if combined with smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol.

HPV is the same virus that may cause women to develop cancer of the cervix. The virus has been the target of a vaccine that was recently developed, targeting young women who are not yet sexually active.

Fight Oral Cancer website

The Fight Oral Cancer website was started by Arma Shahidi Fitzgerald after the death of close friend to the disease. According to her homepage,

This cancer kills more people than breast cancer. Over 480,000 cases of oral cancer occur each year worldwide, over 34,000 cases each year in the U.S. When compared to other cancers very little has been done to inform the public on how they can avoid the ravages of oral cancer.

Learning about oral cancer

So, if this cancer is becoming so common, why don’t we hear more about it? It isn’t getting the same attention as breast cancer or prostate cancer but who knows why it’s still in the shadows. But, with sites like Fight Oral Cancer and by spreading the news about it, the awareness may increase and people may become more possibility of oral cancer.

Symptoms

The symptoms of oral cancer may be confused with something else in the mouth, but if you notice anything unusual, it’s best to contact your dentist or doctor to have it checked as soon as possible. With early treatment, most oral cancers have a good prognosis.

According to the MayoClinic.com, the symptoms of oral cancer include:

• A sore that doesn’t heal
• A lump or thickening of the skin or lining of your mouth
• A white or reddish patch on the inside of your mouth
• Loose teeth
• Poorly fitting dentures
• Tongue pain
• Jaw pain or stiffness
• Difficult or painful chewing
• Difficult or painful swallowing
• Sore throat
• Feeling that something is caught in your throat

Don’t be worried about feeling foolish if everything checks out ok. When it comes to cancer, it’s best to err on the side of caution, because the alternative is to have the disease and let it spread.

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Image: FightOralCancer.com

Post from: Blisstree

One Person, Every Hour of Every Day…

• Not caring for dentures properly (wearing ill-fitting ones or not taking them out often enough
• Medications that cause dry mouth and/or mucositis
• Xerostomia (dry mouth)
• Infections
• Malnutrition
• Certain illnesses
• Side effect of chemotherapy or radiotherapy

We’ve discussed dry mouth here before (Many Medications Cause Dry Mouth , Painful dry mouth from medications ) but mucositis is more than just dry mouth.

According to the article, Managing Oral Mucositis in Patients With Cancer,

This painful condition develops in approximately 40% of patients treated with standard chemotherapy, 30%-60% of patients receiving radiation therapy for cancer of the head and neck, 70% of patients who undergo bone marrow transplantation and receive high-dose chemotherapy, and over 90% of patients receiving concomitant chemotherapy and localized radiation.

That’s a large number of people who develop a condition that hasn’t been addressed too much in terms of research until recently. And, not only is mucositis painful, it comes at a high cost. People with mucositis often can’t eat “normal” meals and they may become dehydrated or malnourished, requiring additional care. They may need hospitalization if the condition becomes severe and, since they’re at risk for developing infections in the mouth, that also becomes an added cost in both money and quality of life.

Fortunately, researchers are now finding ways to help deal with mucositis and hopefully this will become just a nuisance rather than the serious problem it can be.

Prevention

Since we know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and since we know that mucositis is such a common problem among people who are being treated for certain types of cancers, specifically head, nose and throat cancers, wouldn’t it make more sense to try to prevent it from happening in the first place?

An important part of preventing mucositis or limiting its impact is patient education. If patients aren’t told what could happen, they can’t work on preventing it and they likely can’t recognize mucositis in its early stages. For this, encouraging good oral hygiene and nutrition habits is a must. If you’re being treated for cancer – or someone you know is – understanding why this is important is just as important as actually doing it.

“Early education of both the patient, and the entire supportive team of doctors and nurses, is critical to successful treatment of oral mucositis,” said Jeffrey B. Davis, President & CEO of Access Pharmaceuticals, Inc.  “Patients undergoing radiation or chemo therapy should be treated at the initiation of the treatment, prophylactically, rather than waiting until after this painful condition presents itself.”

Management

There are some products on the market that try to help reduce the severity of mucositis. They include “magic mouthwash,” which is made up by pharmacists with varying ingredients, depending on the pharmacist and the severity of the mucositis. The mouthwash usually is made up of a combination of a local anesthetic (numbing solution), antacid, maybe a pain reliever, and other ingredients. Other products include new medications like amifostine . This is a medication, called a chemoprotectant, given by intravenous. It helps protect your kidneys and mouth fromthe effects of certain types of treatment

Other new products on the market work to protect the mouth by coating it. MuGard is one such product. Developed by Access Pharmaceuticals, Inc, it’s the newest player on the block. These types of products work on the prevention angle of mucositis, rather than the treatment. According to a study done by this may be the right approach. In this article, Access Pharmaceuticals Announces Clinical Results Of MuGard(TM) At A Major Supportive Care Conference , researchers said:

“In our clinical study of head and neck cancer patients receiving radiation therapy, 47% of patients using MuGard(TM) had no mucositis,” stated Rosemary Mazanet M.D., Ph.D., [former] CEO of Access. “Historically, patients on the same treatment without MuGard(TM) had a high rate of mucositis, with only 7% of patients experiencing no mucositis. In addition, the number of patients with mild to moderate mucositis was statistically reduced as well by the use of MuGard(TM).

Have you or someone you know experienced mucositis? What worked or didn’t work for you?

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Part of the Let’s Talk About…. Series

(Let’s Talk About…. Strokes)

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Images courtesy of PhotoXpress.com and Access Pharmaceuticals

Post from: Blisstree

Let’s Talk About… Mucositis

John C. Comisi, DDS, FAGD, author of a study in the September/October 2008 issue of General Dentistry, discovered that the blue light emitted from a VELscope detects cancerous oral tissue through oral fluorescence!

When the VELscope shines on healthy cells, they will appear green in color, but damaged cells will look black (that is, they aren’t producing natural fluorescence).

All this oral fluorescence stuff sounds fun, but oral cancer is actually a very serious topic. According to the Oral Cancer Foundation, oral cancer kills about one person per hour, 24 hours a day in America. Since oral cancer is often detected late, the survival rate is low.

Some ways to protect yourself against oral cancer:

• Make sure your dentist is performing an oral cancer screening, but also make sure you get yourself to the dentist regularly.

• Talk to your dentist about STDs you may have. Oral cancer may be caused by human papillomavirus (HPV).

• Avoid tobacco use, especially if you’re a heavy drinker. If you smoke and drink, you’re 15 times more likely to develop oral cancer.

• If you notice a sore or discolored area of your mouth that doesn’t heal within 14 days, see your dentist.

Do you visit the dentist often?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Happy Dental Accident Helps Spot Oral Cancer