HOW TO PREVENT CANCERS

We've dedicated a number of posts over the past year on the policy and health pitfalls of indoor tanning - from the potential benefits of the "tanning tax" (post) to surprisingly high rates of tanning by some youth (post).  Now comes a fascinating, if not perfectly surprising, little analysis on the influence parents can have as indoor tanning...

The documented benefits of aspirin go back, literally, thousands of year.  As early as the fifth century B.C., Hippocrates noted that a bitter willow bark extract - which contained chemicals very similar to today's aspirin - was effective at relieving pain.  Since then,...

With over 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the US today, a question raised by several poster presentations at the recent San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium included the endpoint for studies of breast cancer survivors. For example, in a study by Jones and colleagues (poster PD08-03) studied 9766 women with early stage hormone receptor positive...

A new report out this week highlights the value of personalized risk information, like that provided by Your Disease Risk, to the health decision making process. As we have noted before, colon cancer screening has a clear mortality benefit.In the new study, Tom Sequist and colleagues...

For a long time, breast cancer survivors were told by physicians and others on the cancer care team to avoid overuse of their arms after breast cancer surgery. Told to avoid lifting items over 5 pounds (or sometimes as little as 2 pounds), women were functionally limited from activities...

For a long time, the CNiC team has talked about 8 ways you can prevent cancer. This week, we're proud to announce our 8 ways to stay healthy AFTER cancer. With over 12 million cancer survivors in the US alone, addressing the chronic health needs of cancer survivors is a priority....

In our previous posts we have written about the role of postmenopausal hormones as a cause of breast cancer, the value of weight loss and increasing physical activity for prevention and improved quality of life. Here we list 8 major opportunities to reduce the chances of developing breast cancer. When in life they apply can vary. Paying attention to...

Dissemination and implementation of research findings into practice is necessary to achieve a return on investment in our research enterprise and to apply research findings to improve outcomes in the broader community. In a thoughtful review of the application of discovery to prevention of cancer, Bowen and colleagues note, “Our previous 30 years have...

In what in many ways is a definitive study on the topic, a very large analysis of 1.46 million adults further confirms that overweight and obesity significantly increase the risk of mortality (study). The analysis by Berrington de Gonzalez and colleagues, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine today, pooled together data from 19 prospective...