Women Cancer Health Treatment

Mammography has been known as the gold standard in early detection of breast cancer. Mammograms are X-rays of the breasts to look for suspicious masses or breast tissue changes before they can be seen or felt.
But mammography is not perfect. Accuracy depends on the quality of film, the technique used and the skill of the radiologist examining the films. Dense breast tissue can make abnormalities difficult to see on a mammogram.

The Mayo Clinic Women’s HealthSource issue examines other imaging technology in use or that’s being studied to help doctors detect and diagnose breast cancer. Read more!

The cancer-stopping power of tea does not play favorites; Venus and Mars can both benefit from increasing their intake of green tea. In men, ECG reduces the body’s synthesis of DHT, a potent form of testosterone that causes prostate cancer.
ECG has also been found to be the most potent catechin in inducing cancer cell death in human prostate cancer cells. In women, ECG also helps keep breast cells from turning cancerous. In addition, green tea enhances the effectiveness of chemotherapy and helps protect against radiotherapy damage.
A recent lung cancer study showed that a combination of catechins rather than ECG alone was more effective at producing apoptosis (programmed cell death), and the effect was synergistically increased when catechins were combined with other anti-cancer agents such as the well-known breast cancer drug tamoxifen. Read more!

As the American Academy of Dermatology warns, there is an unrecognized epidemic of skin cancer underway in the United States. One in five Americans will develop skin cancer, and a person’s risk of the disease doubles if he or she has had five or more sunburns, according to a report in the April issue of the Mayo Clinic Health Letter.

Mayo Clinic researchers found that the percentage of women under 40 with the more common type, basal cell, tripled between 1976 and 2003, while the rate of squamous cell cancers increased four-fold. Basal and squamous cell carcinomas, the most common and treatable types of skin cancers, had long been considered a problem only for people over 50, according to the report. Read more!

Women who have had surgery for breast cancer can lift weights to improve quality of life and gain a better sense of well-being, according to researchers here.
In a study of 86 women who were between four and 36 months past their primary treatment, those who were assigned to twice-weekly weight-training sessions had significantly better quality-of-life score and global psychological scores compared with controls, reported Kathryn H. Schmitz, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues at the University of Minnesota.

Previous studies have shown that aerobic exercise improves quality of life for breast cancer survivors, but whether weight training would offer a similar benefit in women who have recently undergone breast cancer therapy was unclear, the investigators wrote. Read more!

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection– transmitted during sex, is the most important risk factor for cervical cancer. Women sexual life risk factors include having sex at an early age, multiple sexual partners, and sex with uncircumcised males. You must be infected with HPV to get cervical cancer, but most women don’t get the disease.

Researchers from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine found that risk of cervical cancer in Holland is higher during sunny months. Women were twice as likely to be infected with HPV during sunny August than in the darker months of winter. Researchers looked for seasonal differences in HPV infections appearing in nearly one million Pap smears collected from 1983 to 1998. Read more!

Cancer is linked to unhealthy lifestyles that include diets high in saturated fats and simple sugars, lack of exercise, exposure to environmental poisons (cigarette smoke and industrial poisons) and depressed immunity. Cancer wreaks havoc on your physical and emotional well-being because of fatigue and nausea from medications and pain from surgery. Yoga may be just the ticket to help people slow down and reduce stress so that medical treatments have a chance to work.

The Mountain States Tumor Institute at St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho has been using Yoga to help patient cope with the stress of the disease. Meditation is used during yoga that allows patients to focus their minds on how their bodies feel. Read more!

California is famous for sunshine, beautiful beaches, a superstar governor, and people with tanned, healthy- looking bodies. The younger generation will be less tanned if some members of the legislature have their way. The State Assembly voted 42-26 to ban teenagers from visiting artificial tanning booths.

The California Society of Dermatology Surgery backs the bill. They blame tanning booths for many of the one million new cases of skin cancer diagnosed every year and 7,400 deaths from melanoma (a deadly form cancer of skin cancer). Read more!

The American Cancer Society predicts about 174,470 new cases of lung cancer in the U.S. in 2006 and be the No. 1 cause of cancer deaths for men and women alike. Lung cancer accounts for more than a quarter of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.

Smoking is a leading cause of lung cancer, but not all lung cancer patients are or have ever been smokers.

Just like what happened to Dana Reeve lung cancer, Jay Broks, chief of hematology and oncology at the Ochsner Clinic in Baton Rouge, said, “We don’t completely understand why they develop lung cancer,” when Reeve announced her diagnosis last summer. Brooks also chief of staff at the Ochsner Medical Center in Baton Rouge. Read more!

Sisters share all kinds of things: clothes, makeup, family recipes. Unfortunately, sometimes they also share a disease. According to the American Cancer Society, sisters of breast cancer patients are twice as likely to develop it as well. Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences are trying to find out why, and they need the help of Latinas.

Women whose sister have breast cancer are being asked to join the Sister Study, a national study focusing on identifying factors that influence the development of this type of cancer.
By studying sisters, who share the same genes and often similar experiences and environments, researchers are hoping to have a better chances of learning what cause the disease. Read more!

An African American woman is less likely to get breast cancer than a white woman, but more likely to die from it. For her, breast cancer often comes at a younger age and in more dangerous forms than for other U.S. women.

Dr. Beth A. Jones of Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Conn., found that a breast tumor characteristic called “p53″ (gene mutation that belongs to the tumor itself, not part of the woman’s genetic inheritance) is four times more common in African American than white women and P53 tumors are harder to treat.

“Women with p53 alterations don’t have the same response to standard chemotherapy treatment,” explained Jones. “One study suggested using higher-dose chemotherapy.” Read more!

One research showed that approximately 520,000 Americans die of cancer each year and it’s been cost roughly $104 billion to United States, including medical expenses and loss of work productively. Stats reported that in the 1980s more than 4.5 million Americans died from cancer and mostly appears in people middle-aged and older and can occur at any age.

Actually cancer is not one disease, but rather many related diseases. Cancer is typed according to the part of the body where it is located and the kind of cells that comprise it. Here are some common types of cancer cells and their locations :

Sarcomas, it grow in bones and connective tissues between organs and skin, but sometimes spread into the lymphatic system or blood. Read more!

Recovery from breast cancer is not so different a program than simply exercising to avoid such a catastrophic event in a woman’s health and life. If you have followed fitness for any amount of time, visited your doctor or taken a class in school, the informative path to righteous living is well paved with getting the blood flowing and the heart pounding. In turn, you increase your chances of avoiding disease (heart-related, cancer, diabetes). Likewise, if you have successfully battled the disease and yearn for a method of attack against it recurring or simply want to lessen the unpleasant after affects, the all-knowing finger will be pointing in the same direction…the local gym.

Even as early as the 1980’s, research was proving that aerobic exercise improved fatigue levels and nausea in post cancer patients. Fast forward to present and the benefits have multiplied over the years. Subsequent studies indicate that weight training, aerobic exercise, and fitness emphasizing mind and body (i.e., yoga) all have a substantial impact of up to 25-50% improvement on pain, fatigue, overall optimism, the general fitness level of the individual and how much a person can improve their quality of daily life, complete with energy-draining tasks. Read more!

As women, especially American women, much of our femininity is centered on our breasts. No matter where you look, there are pictures, billboards, commercials, television shows, and movies with women with these beautiful breasts and ample cleavage. The thought of losing one or both breasts, to breast cancer, can be devastating for many of us. Sure, there’s reconstruction, but will it ever really look the same again? Even if you have reconstruction, you’ll never have sensation there again and, for many of us, that definitely affects our sexuality.

I went through two separate mastectomies, for my breast cancer, despite the fact that I wanted them both done at the same time. Two different surgeons told me that wasn’t necessary. They found out, later, that it was, as I had the same breast cancer in both breasts. Through these surgeries, I learned a few things about what to expect, and how to get up and running again, after a mastectomy for breast cancer. Read more!

Many different ways for breast cancer treatment as usually doctors will use two or more types of breast cancer treatment together. Here is some major options for breast cancer :

Chemotherapy
It’s often called “chemo,” by using drugs, this therapy will kill new tumor cells or shrink lymph nodes that contain cancer cells. You may have surgery to remove the rest of the cancer once the tumor is smaller. Some forms of cancer can be completely cured with drugs alone.
Many different chemotherapy medicines are available like pill as a shot, or in an IV. Some frequent blood tests might be needed to determine how the body is doing and how much hemotherapy needed. The drugs can produce many side effects, and may leave you susceptible to infection for a while. Read more!

Cancer is treated by surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or a combination of these methods. Diagnoses and treatment have become increasingly individualized in recent years. Early detection and the precise staging of therapies have contributed to higher success rates in the battle against cancer.

Many cancers that only recently had poor prognoses are now considered curable. Potentially curable cancers now include acute lymphocytic leukemia in children, Burkitt’s lymphoma, Ewing’s sarcoma (a form of bone cancer), Wilm’s tumor (a kidney cancer in children), Hodgkin’s disease, rhabdomyosarcoma (a cancer of certain muscle tissues), testicular cancer, choriocarcinoma (placental cancer), osteogenic sarcoma, and breast cancer. Read more!