Melanoma is a malignant tumor that originates in the melanocytes. These cells are responsible for generating melanin, the pigment that gives color to skin, hair and eyes. This pigment is the strongest in moles. It is due to this reason that melanomas are usually brown or black in color. Sometimes, melanomas stop producing the pigment and appear red, pink, and even skin-colored. According to the National Cancer Institute, melanoma is a serious cancer of the skin. Every year, there are about 60,000 people diagnosed with malignant melanoma.

There are reports that document the varying survival rates in children, in contrast to the melanomas in adults. Earlier, it was considered an uncommon phenomenon infecting children. Recently, the number of cases has risen from 3 per million in 1982 to almost 7 per million in 2002. On an average, about 500 kids are getting diagnosed with melanoma each year. Melanoma rarely occurs in children under 10 years of age. Among children in the age group of 10 to 14 years, the incidence is only 0.3 per 100,000. It is recorded as 1.3 per 100,000, in children between the ages of 14 and 19.

The treatment of malignant melanoma in children is done through surgery. Excisional biopsies are performed to detect suspected lesions. If the malignancy is confirmed histologically, a biopsy is performed. It includes the complete thickness of the dermis, to assist measurement of the depth of tissue invasion. Once the diagnosis is successfully done, surgical excision within adequate margins is performed.

Parents need not panic for every minor skin imperfection detected in their children. Nonetheless, melanoma is a serious form of cancer and needs immediate detection. This helps in curing the disease at the initial stage. People need to be aware of moles or birthmarks that may have characteristics of melonama.

e-Melanoma.com Melanoma provides detailed information on Melanoma, Malignant Melanoma, Melanoma Cancer, Nodular Melanoma and more. Melanoma is affiliated with i-Ozone.com Ozone Generator.

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Tags: melanoma

In this article, you will discover:

What is fibre?Why is fibre vital in the prevent breast cancer diet?

What Is Fibre?

All foods, which you consume, which are derived from plants contain fibre, typically:

Cellulose HemicelluloseLigninPectinsGums
This fibre is passed undigested through your small intestines.

The following foods are good sources of fibre:

VegetablesFruitsPulsesNutsSeedsCereals
Research has shown that a high fibre diet can reduce the development of certain health conditions, one being breast cancer.

Why Is Fibre Vital In The Prevent Breast Cancer Diet?

Including high amounts of fibre is vital in the prevent breast cancer diet because research has shown that insoluble fibre from whole grains, such as those present in wholegrain bread, can delay the development of breast cancer in animals.

Other studies have found that this also relates to people, women who consume a lot of whole grains are less likely to develop breast cancer, especially young women.

It is thought that young women, whose diet is high in whole grains, are less likely to develop breast cancer than older women.

This is because fibre lowers oestrogen levels in premenopausal women, but not in postmenopausal women.

Apart from lowering oestrogen, the substances phytate and isoflavones present in fibre are believed to protect against breast cancer.

So, to sum up…

Including high amounts of fibre within your diet is a good idea to prevent breast cancer.

Breast cancer in postmenopausal women is known to be partly caused by estrogen, fibre is known to help the body removed and lower high amounts of estrogen.

To prevent breast cancer, it is best to have a high fibre and low fat diet. This is why vegetarians are less likely to develop breast cancer.

Stewart Hare C.H.Ed Dip NutTh

newbeingnutrition.com/breast-cancer.htm Download ‘How To Protect Against Breast Cancer Naturally’ Free E-book

Website: newbeingnutrition.com/wordpress/ NewBeingNutrition.com

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Tags: breast cancer

How does an average woman react to the terrifying diagnosis of breast cancer? Many women go through several psychological steps in learning how to deal with breast cancer.

First, there is shock. Particularly when you’re relatively young and have never had a life-threatening illness before; it’s hard to believe you have something as serious as cancer. It’s all the more difficult to believe because, in most cases, your body hasn’t given you any warning at all. Unlike, for example, appendicitis or a heart attack, there’s no pain or fever or nausea - no symptom that tells you something is going wrong inside. You or your doctor have found this painless little lump, or your routine mammogram shows something peculiar - and the next thing you know, your doctor is telling you you’ve got breast cancer. Many women say this is the worst part of the journey. The initial shock can leave you feeling confused and not sure how to proceed. Along with the shock, there’s a feeling of anger at your body, which has betrayed you in such an underhanded fashion. In spite of the horror that you feel at the thought of losing your breast, often your first reaction is a desire to get rid of it.

While this is a perfectly understandable emotional response, it’s not one you should act on. Getting your breast cut off will not make things go back to normal; your life has been changed and it will never be the same again. You need time to let this sink in, to face the implications cancer has for you and to make a rational, informed decision about what treatment will be best for you both physically and emotionally.

Today there’s much more emphasis on doctor and patient sharing the decision making process and there are more options to choose from. There’s also a lot more knowledge available - there are manuscripts about breast cancer and its survival rates in both the medical and the popular press and on the internet.

So if the first stage is shock, the second is investigating your options. It is very important to reflect seriously on what the possibility of losing a breast would mean to you. Its importance varies from woman to woman, but there is no woman for whom it doesn’t have some significance. Although many women will say, “I don’t care about my breast”, deep down this is probably not true for most of us. A mastectomy may be the best choice for you, but it will still have a powerful effect on how you feel about yourself. For many women, the loss of a breast can mean feelings of inadequacy.

Several studies have been done comparing conservative surgery and mastectomy with or without immediate breast reconstruction, looking for differences in psychological adjustment. Interesting enough, the important factor often appears to be the match between the woman and her treatment. That is, the way she feels about her body, about surgery, about radiotherapy, about having a part in the decision making process of her treatment and about a multitude of factors affects how she reacts to this new and enormous stress.

Along with the fears and stages of recovery, there are also a number of related issues that come up for people with cancer. One of these is the tendency to feel quilt for having cancer - a sense that you’ve somehow done something wrong. People have a tendency to blame themselves for being ill anyway and a woman will often feel she’s betrayed her function as a caregiver by getting breast cancer.

For many women breast cancer never returns and they begin gradually to rebuild their lives. But sometimes, cancer does return. The emotional issues of breast cancer recurrence are so profound and complex that, if you do have a reappearance of the cancer, you may need the help of a mental health professional.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to breast-cancer.treatment-and-guides.com/ Breast Cancer

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Tags: breast cancer, mastectomy

Proto-oncogenes are normal genes involved in making cells differentiate and divide. When these genes are mutated, they are then called oncogenes. Proto-oncogenes involved in breast cancer are mostly those that cause more cell division by making the cell cycle go faster and accelerate. They are involved in pushing cell division harder, stronger and faster.

One of the proto-oncogenes is related to the epidermal growth factor receptor. This receptor plays a vital role at certain times of the life cycle, such as puberty, when big changes are going on with body growth, wherein a protein known as epidermal growth factor functions to promote cell growth. This protein binds to an epidermal growth factor receptor and signals the cell to grow. When the proto-oncogene for the receptor is over expressed, it doesn’t wait for the epidermal growth factor receptor to tell it to grow. Instead, cells begin to grow independently, just like getting stuck in the “ON” position.

Another type of epidermal growth factor receptor is a subtype, the epidermal growth factor receptor 2. This receptor is more commonly known as Her-2/neu oncogene. The type of genetic alteration that Her-2/neu has in breast cancer is known as amplification. Instead of having only one copy during cell division, the cell makes numerous copies of this gene, about ten to sixty times more. Either the gene over expression or the extra protein can be measured in a woman’s cancer by examining the cancer tissue that has been resected. Since Her-2/neu oncogene encodes a growth factor receptor, it functions in signaling the cells to grow faster and faster, although it is not involved in cancer invasiveness. About 70 to 80 percent breast precancers have over expression of Her-2/neu oncogene. The cancer cells are still contained within the breast duct, but they have been programmed to grow much faster because of the over expression of such oncogene. Although Her-2/neu oncogene was first identified in breast cancer, research is also being done to see if it is also involved in other cancer types such as lung, pancreas and ovary cancer.

For breast cancer to have an invasive nature, it needs more than one genetic alteration. So long as there’s only over expression of Her-2/neu oncogene, the cancer will remain confined within the breast duct. If it requires other forms of genetic alterations, one that causes cancer cells to move out of the ductal region or make new blood vessels (angiogenesis), then it can spread. If the cancer patient has these invasive cancer alterations and one of the accelerated cancer growths, then it is worse. People with both of these genetic alterations have a worse prognosis than with only one type of alteration alone. Cancer not only requires excessive cancer cell proliferation, it also has to invade, grow new blood vessels and spread from the breast area.

One of the fascinating things that have happened in recent years is that there is now an antibody to counteract the Her-2/neu receptor, which can be given intravenously to breast cancer patients. It has quite a unique mechanism of action. It attaches only to cells with too much Her-2/neu receptor, not the normal ones, so that while it antagonizes Her-2/neu cells, it leaves the other cells unaffected. Unlike chemotherapy, with which case most dividing cells are destroyed, it is a targeted therapy. So far, this treatment has been used only in metastatic breast cancer, but it has implications for disease that hasn’t spread yet.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to

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Tags: breast cancer, cancer patient, chemotherapy, oncogenes