Skin Cancer

Skin cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal skin cells. If left unchecked, these cancer cells can spread from the skin into other tissues and organs.
There are different types of skin cancer. Basal cell carcinoma is the most common. Melanoma is less common, but more dangerous.

Causes
The outer layer of skin, the epidermis, is made up of different types of cells. Skin cancers are classified by the types of epidermal cells involved:

• Basal cell carcinoma develops from abnormal growth of the cells in the lowest layer of the epidermis and is the most common type of skin cancer.
• Squamous cell carcinoma involves changes in the squamous cells, found in the middle layer of the epidermis.
• Melanoma occurs in the melanocytes (cells that produce pigment) and is less common than squamous or basal cell carcinoma, but more dangerous. It is the leading cause of death from skin disease.

Skin cancers are sometimes classified as either melanoma or nonmelanoma. Basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are the most common nonmelanoma skin cancers. Other nonmelanoma skin cancers are Kaposi's sarcoma, Merkel cell carcinoma, and cutaneous lymphoma.
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the Unites States. Known risk factors for skin cancer include the following:

• Complexion: Skin cancers are more common in people with light-colored skin, hair, and eyes.
• Genetics: Having a family history of melanoma increases the risk of developing this cancer.
• Age: Nonmelanoma skin cancers are more common after age 40.
• Sun exposure and sunburn: Most skin cancers occur on areas of the skin that are regularly exposed to sunlight or other ultraviolet radiation. This is considered the primary cause of all skin cancers.

Skin cancer can develop in anyone, not only people with these risk factors. Young, healthy people -- even those with with dark skin, hair, and eyes -- can develop skin cancer.

Symptoms

Skin cancers may have many different appearances. They can be small, shiny, waxy, scaly and rough, firm and red, crusty or bleeding, or have other features. Therefore, anything suspicious should be looked at by a physician. See the articles on specific skin cancers for more information.
Here are some features to look for:

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Weight-Loss Surgery May Prevent Diabetes

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

 

Marilyn K. Yee/The New York Times

  Bariatric surgery proved effective for preventing Type 2 diabetes.

 For people who are extremely overweight and likely to develop diabetes, surgery may be the best form of prevention.
A new study shows that weight-loss surgery not only produced sustained weight loss in obese men and women but substantially reduced their odds of developing Type 2 diabetes. Over the course of a roughly 15-year period, those who had one of three types of bariatric procedures were 80 percent less likely to develop the disease than people who tried losing weight with diet and exercise advice from their doctors.
In fact, those who had the worst blood sugar levels at the start of the study, putting them in a high-risk category called prediabetes, benefited the most from surgery. Their risk of becoming diabetic fell by nearly 90 percent.
“The message is that bariatric surgery works,” said Dr. Claude Bouchard, an author of the study and a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana. “You can take people on their way to becoming diabetic, and you intervene with bariatric surgery and weight loss, and you have a very, very strong protective effect against Type 2 diabetes.”
The findings add to a growing body of literature supporting bariatric surgery as a means for combating diabetes. This year, two studies showed that for people who are obese and already have diabetes, weight-loss surgery was more effective than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of the disease. The new report, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, is the first large study to show a long-term preventive effect of surgery in people who are not yet diabetic but well on their way.
Experts who were not involved in the research said it could have tremendous public health implications. Nationwide, more than 20 million Americans have diabetes, most of them Type 2, the form linked to obesity. But almost three times that number are prediabetic, with blood sugar levels that are higher than normal but not quite high enough for a diagnosis of diabetes. Prediabetes is also referred to as impaired fasting glucose.

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HYPERTENSION

Hypertension is the term used to describe high blood pressure.
Blood pressure is a measurement of the force against the walls of your arteries as the heart pumps blood through the body.
Blood pressure readings are measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and usually given as two numbers -- for example, 120 over 80 (written as 120/80 mmHg). One or both of these numbers can be too high.

The top number is your systolic pressure.

• It is considered high if it is over 140 most of the time.
• It is considered normal if it is below 120 most of the time.

The bottom number is your diastolic pressure.

• It is considered high if it is over 90 most of the time.
• It is considered normal if it is below 80 most of the time.

Pre-hypertension may be considered when your:

• Top number (systolic blood pressure) is between 120 and 139 most of the time, or
• Bottom number (diastolic blood pressure) is between 80 and 89 most of the time

If you have pre-hypertension, you are more likely to develop high blood pressure.
If you have heart or kidney problems, or if you had a stroke, your doctor may want your blood pressure to be even lower than that of people who do not have these conditions.

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FIGHT CERVICAL CANCER

Fighting Cervical Cancer With Vinegar and Ingenuity

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: September 26, 2011 

POYAI, Thailand — Maikaew Panomyai did a little dance coming out of the examination room, switching her hips, waving her fists in the air and crowing, in her limited English: “Everything’s O.K.! Everything’s O.K.!”

<<<<Anuree Talasart, a nurse provider in Roi Et Province, Thailand, teaches a group of women about the female reproductive system.

Translation: The nurse just told me I do not have cervical cancer, and even the little white spot I had treated three years ago is still gone.
What allowed the nurse to render that reassuring diagnosis was a remarkably simple, brief and inexpensive procedure, one with the potential to do for poor countries what the Pap smear did for rich ones: end cervical cancer’s reign as the No. 1 cancer killer of women. The magic ingredient? Household vinegar.
Every year, more than 250,000 women die of cervical cancer, nearly 85 percent of them in poor and middle-income countries. Decades ago, it killed more American women than any other cancer; now it lags far behind cancers of the lung, breast, colon and skin.

Nurses using the new procedure, developed by experts at the Johns Hopkins medical school in the 1990s and endorsed last year by the World Health Organization, brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant.
The procedure is one of a wide array of inexpensive but effective medical advances being tested in developing countries. New cheap diagnostic and surgical techniques, insecticides, drug regimens and prostheses are already beginning to save lives.
With a Pap smear, a doctor takes a scraping from the cervix, which is then sent to a laboratory to be scanned by a pathologist. Many poor countries lack high-quality labs, and the results can take weeks to arrive.
Women who return to distant areas where they live or work are often hard to reach, a problem if it turns out they have precancerous lesions.

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Most Effective Diets for 2012, from Weight Watchers to Vegan

 

Nearly every year for the last two decades, the news has been the same: Americans are fatter now than they were last year. The country’s adult obesity rate, currently at 34 percent, has doubled since 1995. And as our waistlines have expanded, so have the number of trendy diets and nutritional fads that promise fast results.
Thanks to the Duchess of Cambridge, or rather her svelte mother, Carole Middleton, 2011 was the year of the Dukan diet, a regimen similar to Atkins that favors a high-protein, low-carb pattern. Last year, it was a juice diet. In 2010, Michael Pollan authored the top-selling diet book, Food Rules. But whether practical or extreme, which diet actually will work?
To find out, The Daily Beast revisited its annual diets ranking. This year, we added two more diet regimens that have garnered greater mainstream attention in the last few years. A Paleolithic diet, which focuses on eating the same energy sources as our ancestors did, and a vegan diet, which forbids any animal-based food, have both been the subject of numerous stories. But, neither diet has undergone the type of clinical study that provides enough identical data points to compare it with other diets in our ranking. Nevertheless, given the positive results of several published articles on each, we felt it was only logical to include them to encourage readers to do their own research.
As with last year, our ranking was derived by combing journals of nutrition and medicine to find clinical studies on specific diets. To be ranked, the dietary studies had to include six-month and 12-month data on weight loss and participant retention, as well as 12-month change in body mass index, or BMI. Each data point was weighted one-fifth of the final score for each diet. If there were multiple studies for diets, results were averaged.

 

#1, Volumetrics

FRANCK CAMHI

The Trick: Lots of water in everything you eat

Pioneered by nutritionist Dr. Barbara J. Rolls, who co-authored The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan with journalist Robert A. Barnett in 2000, the Volumetrics diet focuses on eating foods that have high water content to promote the feeling of satiety and combat feelings of hunger and deprivation. Foods such as soup and non-starchy vegetables are favored over calorie-dense foods like chips and cookies. "It's not a gimmick where you're giving up a whole food group," says Rolls. It teaches people to "eat for optimal health and eat what they should be eating."

Breakdown:
6-month attrition rate (n/a),
6-month mean weight loss (19.6 lbs.)
12-month attrition rate (27%)
12-month mean weight loss (17.4 lbs.)
12-month BMI decrease (2.9),
Nutrition score (n/a),

Clinical study ( American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, June 2007)

#2, Low-fat diet

The Trick: Plenty of fat-free and low-fat foods

In a 2008 clinical study, researchers studied a diet based on the guidelines of the American Heart Association, in which a limit of 30 percent of calories comes from fat, 10 percent comes from saturated fat and 300 mg of cholesterol. The regimen is designed to reduce the risk for heart disease and stroke. When participants stuck to the diet with a limit of 1,500 calories per day for women or 1,800 cals/day for men, the diet produced the second highest short-term weight loss and the lowest short-term attrition rate among the clinical studies included in the rankings.

Breakdown:
6-month mean attrition rate (2%)
6-month mean weight loss (12.9 lbs.)
12-month mean attrition rate (6%)
12-month mean weight loss (11.3 lbs.)
12-month BMI decrease (1.0)
Nutrition score (n/a)

Clinical studies: The New England Journal of Medicine, July 2008, Annals of Internal Medicine, August 2010

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