Why are more of us dying of Cancer?

With such a big title I should of course write a huge article, but time is not with me on this one. Still I wanted to get some info down based on a bit of research I was doing, on whether we are curing cancer or not and it made fascinating reading so I didn’t want to loose it.

Basically I started at seeing if we as a nation are developing Cancer at a faster rate than before, which interestingly is a difficult figure to come up with. What I did find from the article published by the UK government back in 1999, shows quite emphatically it is.

In it it shows that back in 1880 10% of all deaths were caused by Cancer and in 1999 43% as the graph below shows, so I thought I would do a bit more digging and I have to say nothing is straight forward when it comes to stats.

Anyway while I am writing this I thought I would try to get some info that is more recent and I found on the UK National Statistics Site that:

Between 1971 and 2007, the age-standardised incidence of cancer increased by around 21 per cent in males and 45 per cent in females.

You have to say it is very scary and there is no doubt that we are more likely to get one form of cancer, in fact the title of the article says that “1 in 3 people are likely to get cancer.” Which explains why we all know someone with this deadly disease. It is therefore obvious that our life style eating habits, what we drink, the chemicals in the food, our diet etc is all having an effect.

This only goes to prove if we can change the way we eat etc., then we have a better chance to survive!

Then for some reason I decide to look at skin cancer or as it is also known as Melanoma, which apparently is now the fastest growing incidences of cancer. The question is, is it the ozone layer or could it be the sun creams that we have started to use to help protect us is resulting in such a sudden increase in Melanoma? Don’t call me a cynic but this makes interesting reading “Could Sunscreens Increase Melanoma Risk?” If you then consider there are  $1.9 billion sales of sun creams, then obviously the manufacturers do not want to let this info out. Also you may find that this article makes very good read and goes into more depth on the John McCain Melanoma cover up. Still this all isn’t new to me as I covered this once before on this site with Does the Sun cause Skin Cancer?

To finish I read that finally someone is finally trying to get this exposed no other than Senator Charles Schumar, lets hope he can wins!!

Can having more fun fight Cancer

I know it has been a while since I have written anything, but I am not going to go into the excuses!

So today I was sent a really interesting piece of news saying that being socially active can help prevent cancer, not as ridiculous as it may seem. Some research at the Ohio State University showed that mice with an enriched living conditions and a boosts in their social life!! Shrank their tumors and with some completely disappearing altogether.

The article can be read here if you have a subscription but if not the Health Ranger does an excellent review here

I think therefore it goes to prove that it is all a balance and in recent years, we are all moving to far to one side giving cancer more opportunities to take hold.

So the answer is to live like a monk, well it may be extreme, but don’t laugh and read this article from the Times back in 2007. Compelling proof that cancer can be avoided, but in the 21st century it is near on impossible to live like a monk.