Blog — cancer

 The increasing incidence of thyroid cancer makes it a timely topic for any time of the year. In fact, something that every healthcare provider should know is that there's an expectation that will see a record number of papillary thyroid cancers being diagnosed, and the corresponding awareness campaign promotes a "neck check" for early detection and treatment. Additionally, it's hoped that heightened public awareness will encourage research leading to a cure for all types of thyroid cancer (TC). My review of the research literature for thyroid cancer reveals a controversy around the upsurge of this common endocrine cancer. Are more...

Having breasts, or just being a woman, is indeed the biggest risk factor, since the disease is 100 times more common in women than in men. But given the controversies that continue to rage about the benefits of screening (for example, a mammogram may not pick up the most invasive and deadly types of breast cancer) it seems appropriate to step back and look at what breast cancer really is, what it is not, and who is at the most risk.  What Breast Cancer Is Not Breast cancer is not the leading cause of death in women, or even the...

In our current medical paradigm, screening for cancer is considered a preventive measure by virtue of providing an earlier diagnosis. Getting an early jump on a disease process like cancer makes treatment exponentially easier and outcomes generally better. Under the current guidelines, that early jump on prostate cancer starts at age 55 for men at low to moderate risk and 40-45 for men at high risk. It takes years for cancer to grow to a detectable point after the tumor's initial induction from a normal cell to a cancerous one. There's been a lot of research done to determine what...