Skin Cancer – Burn your bikini

Cancer is always a major topic in any family, especially as some of the family members get older, remembering that “cancer” by and large is a condition brought about during aging. Did you know for example that Malignant Melanoma is the second fastest increasing cancer in females (with age-standardized rates rising by 46 percent in the last decade). Some of the apparent increase may be due to increased surveillance and early detection as well as improved diagnosis, but most is considered to be real and linked to changes in recreational or holiday exposure to UV rays (including sunlight and sunbeds), and we do get the odd bit of sunshine here in Thailand. The Thai people are not silly when they go fully clothed to the beaches! It is generally just the farangs that go there to fry.However if we look at the most common cancers in women we get Breast cancer Lung cancer Bowel cancer Uterine cancer There are some ‘ethnic’ differences too, with Hispanic women having lung cancer in the top spot, for example.So can we do anything constructive with these statistics? Actually we can, as the key to averting cancer disaster is early detection.There are tests available to allow these conditions to be spotted early. I do recommend you avail yourself of them. PS. Sorry this e-news isn’t one of my dry humorous ones – it’s difficult to be light-hearted about the subject.