Tag : cancer : Page 2

We have known for years that exposure to x-rays increases the risk of cancer. Because America does more x-ray imaging than any other country on the planet, researchers have looked closely at the impact of medical x-ray studies on cancer incidence.

The best current estimates are that between two and 3% of all of the cancers in America are caused by medical imaging studies. According to the American Cancer Society, there were about 1.4 million new cancers diagnosed in the US last year. That means that last year alone, roughly 40,000 Americans got cancer due to their x-ray

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute just published a study that followed over 400,000 cancer survivors for up to 35 years. They discovered that those people who received chemotherapy as treatment for their initial cancer were five times more likely to develop a new and unrelated cancer later in their lives.

It seems ironic that the very treatment that helps save their life from their first cancer frequently turned out to be the very drug that caused later cancers, which put their lives at risk for a second time. When chemotherapy was coupled with radiation therapy, the risk of cancer in later life

One of the common therapies used in prostate cancer are drugs that interfere with a man’s production of testosterone. While this does slow tumor growth, there is a downside.

With low testosterone men are at higher risk of forming blood clots in their legs, lungs and brain, not to mention sexual dysfunction, depression and chronic fatigue. As a consequence, many men end up taking anticoagulants to prevent those blood clots.

An interesting paper just published shows that men who use anticoagulants have significantly better survival from their cancers than men who do not need these drugs. This intriguing bit of data is causing researchers to take a look at the anticoagulants, such as warfarin and heparin, to see if they might have anti-cancer properties that have not previously been recognized.

Once more, studies designed to look at one thing, raise more intriguing new questions than they answer.

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. In spite of what people often say, estrogen is not a hormone – estrogen is a class of hormones. When a female patient comes to Longevity Medical Clinic and we start discussing Hormone Replacement Therapy, it’s critically important that we use the right type of hormones to accomplish our goal. Women can benefit dramatically from Hormone Replacement Therapy. But they need to receive human type hormone, in doses that maximize benefits while minimizing risks, and the hormones should never be given by mouth.

Would someone define “antiaging,” please?

One of the difficulties inherent in running Longevity Medical Clinic is that I never know exactly how to describe my practice. I don't particularly like the term “antiaging” because I'm not exactly sure what it means. Obviously we all connect emotionally with the idea of looking, feeling and functioning as though we were younger than we are – it’s a compelling thought, one that has been around for centuries. But the obvious reality is that we can’t truly reverse our age: that, as any sci-fi fan knows, involves warping space and time, and somehow shifting us to an earlier point in the space-time continuum. While the quantum physics folks tell us that subatomic particles do this on a regular basis, I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to do it with an intact human being.