Bladder Cancer

The bladder is an important part of a human’s body as it is one of the main organs which deals with detoxifying the body.

As the organ that stores urine, and thus helps remove excess nutrients and waste products from the body, the bladder plays an integral role in many bodily functions.

Bladder cancer can be of three main types, depending on which area of the bladder it forms in, and what type of cells are affected. There are no exact causes of bladder cancer but there have been many risk factors that have been identified to increase the chances of bladder cancer which include use of tobacco, infections or irritations in the bladder, age, gender and possibly family history. Use of tobacco is said to increase the chances of bladder cancer by two or three times.

Although a person may have one or more of the above mentioned risk factors, they are not definite causes for developing the disease. Symptoms of bladder cancer include needing to urinate often, pain during urinating, and blood mixed with urine. Again, having these symptoms does not mean that bladder cancer is present, as infections, bladder stones and benign tumours can cause similar symptoms, can but it is advisable to check with a doctor if symptoms like such appear.

Doctor’s use physical tests, urine tests and, in some cases, biopsies, to diagnose the cause of symptoms that appear. In most cases biopsies can be the best way to say if a patient has bladder cancer or not.

Bladder cancer occurs in four stages, separated as such due to the extent of penetration of cancer cells in the bladder. Stage 0 is when the cancer cells appear only in the inner lining of the bladder, whereas Stage IV is when the cancer cells have spread through the body and reached other organs, like the lungs or pelvis. The three stages in between refer to how far the cancer cells have spread in the bladder or to the rest of the body, in their various levels.

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Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet is a diet based on eating the foods people who live in the Mediterranean basin eat. The Mediterranean basin is an area that surrounds the Mediterranean Sea and has mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers.

This area includes areas of France, the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian peninsula, and the Balkan Peninsula. It also includes areas of the Sahara desert, and Africa.

The most known form of the Mediterranean diet was created in the mid-1990s by a Harvard health professor named Walter Willett. The diet calls for regular physical activity, along with abundant plant food, fresh fruit as a dessert, olive oil, dairy products, fish and poultry, up to four eggs each week, red meat in small amounts, and wine.

The fat in this diet is controlled, only up to 35% of calories, saturated fat at less than 8% of total calories. It’s considered a low-fat high dietary fiber diet. It has been around since 1945 when the version of the Mediterranean diet was first published Ancel Keyes who lived in Italy. But it did not become popular until the 1990s.

One of the main features of the Mediterranean diet is its use of olive oil instead of the animal fats used typically in American diets. Olive oil is known to lower cholesterol levels in the blood, as well as blood sugar and blood pressure.

Studies show that olive oil helps prevent ulcers and is an effective treatment for certain types of ulcers, as well as important for preventing cancer. Red wine also adds to the mix in that it contains elements with antioxidant properties.

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Skin Cancer

Being diagnosed with cancer is one of the scariest things that can happen to a person. It’s easy to lose all hope and just give up then and there, but it is important to keep in mind that the number of cancer survivors has increased over the last few years, and with proper treatment, it is possible to be one of them.

There are several types of cancer, and even in a smaller subset such as skin cancer there’s more than one type.

Skin cancer can be either a carcinoma or a melanoma. As the name suggests, the melanoma is a form of skin cancer that begins in the melanocytes. It is more likely than the carcinomas to spread to other parts of the body, but fortunately is the rarest form of skin cancer. The most common forms of skin cancer are basal and squamous cell carcinomas.

So what are basal and squamous cells and melanocytes? The epidermis (top layer of the skin) is made up of three types of cells:
Squamous cells – These are thin, flat cells that make up the topmost layer.
Basal cells – Found under the squamous cells, these are round.
Melanocytes – These produce melanin, the pigment that colours skin.

Factors that increase the risk of skin cancer include having fair skin, chronic inflammations or ulcers, scars or burns, having had radiation therapy and being exposed to a lot of either artificial (as in tanning booths) or natural UV rays. Keep in mind, that just because one of the risk factors applies to you, it doesn’t mean that you will definitely get skin cancer.

Unfortunately, the reverse is also true and people who don’t show any of the risk factors may also get skin cancer.

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Cancer Insurance

The concept of cancer insurance is rather simple.

It is when benefits, regardless of other insurances a person can have, are directly paid to the person, so that the person involved can use these benefits provided by the cancer insurance to help pay off the extra costs in their cancer treatment. However, to get cancer insurance, in most cases, there need to be medical proof that a person is diagnosed with cancer.

Cancer has become the leading cause of the increasing death rates among people of all ages. The risk of being a cancer patient increases with age, according to the statistics of American Cancer Society.

Treating cancer requires a large amount of financial support, as the medicines required, various radio, chemo therapies and surgeries are rather costly. The overall costs of cancer in United States in the year 2007 was estimated by the national institute of health- to be approximately $219.2 billion (of which, $89 billion was for medical costs).

Therefore, though a person might have a normal health insurance that could cover the expenses of day to day medical requirements and in case of accidents; it is doubtful whether those insurances can cover the high costs of cancer treatments.

Hence, it is important for a cancer patient to consider cancer insurance.

However, other than one specific cancer insurance, there are various other ways in which cancer patients can insurance themselves, such as private health insurances and government-funded insurance plans (such as in the US- Medicare and Medicaid).
Also, for cancer patients there are other financial resources available through government programs, disability benefits, aid from voluntary organizations, and living benefits from life insurance policies.

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Lung Cancer

Lungs are one of the biggest organs in a human body.

Separated into two sections, the left and right lungs, they perform THE most important task for life – breaking down the air we breathe to give every human the needed oxygen for survival. So what is lung cancer? The cells in each lung, and the whole body for that matter, go through the usual life cycle of living and dying. It is when old cells die that new cells should be formed to take their place. In the case of lung cancer, cells keep producing new cells when the other cells are perfectly normal, which means there is an excess of cells in a particular area of the lung.

These cells would not have room to be present, and they also have no function as they would not be able to specialize into the different types of cells because there is no reason for them to. Because of this there is an influx of cells in the lung, which cause a mass of cells, better known as a tumor, to be formed. Tumors can be of two kinds – benign or malignant. Benign tumors pose no harm to the person as they do not spread and do not interfere with the usual processes of the body.

Malignant tumors in the lung are what we call lung cancer. These malignant tumors can cause harm to the person, and could cause more harm by spreading throughout the body through the lymph system to other parts of the body.

Tobacco use is said to be one of the biggest reasons for lung cancer. The worst part is that you do not have to be a smoker yourself to be affected. Second hand smoking can have the same effect.

So if you live with someone who smokes a lot, work in an area where there are lots of smokers around, or are in any way in the presence of smoke from a cigarette, you are at the same risk that the person who is smoking is in. Tobacco is said to have carcinogens, which increase the chances of cells acting in the abnormal way to produce a tumor.

There have been many lawsuits against tobacco companies as they are not said to have made the impact tobacco has in the causation of lung cancer clear for the public. It is now the law that every cigarette packet should have a warning in bold letters mentioning how ‘tobacco is harmful to health’.

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