There many things that we can do to prevent skin cancer, such as following a healthy diet high in cancer fighting foods (such as garlic). Exercise, sleep and avoidance of excessive exposure to sunlight are more or less obvious, but simple and effective preventative strategies against cancer. To these you may also add fasting, which induces autophagy and cleanses the body from cancerous cells. The longer the fasting the higher is its therapeutic power.
Next, let us examine what is skin cancer. Skin cancer is a malignant lesion of the skin, which develops from epidermal cells. Unlike cutaneous malignant melanoma, most types of skin cancer rarely spread to other parts of the body (metastasise). Melanoma can grow very quickly and it can become life-threatening in as little as 6 weeks and, if untreated, it can spread to other parts of the body. Melanoma can appear on skin not normally exposed to the sun. Nodular melanoma in particular is a highly dangerous form of melanoma that looks different from common melanomas. Below you can see few pictures of Melanoma skin cancer.
There are three main types of skin cancer:
1) Basal cell carcinoma, the most common type of skin cancer that develops from cells in the basal layer of the epidermis. Basal cell cancer is the most common form of skin cancer, accounting for nearly 80% of all skin cancers. Basal cell cancers arise from abnormal basal cells in the skin. It is rarely fatal, but it can spread locally and cause damage to tissues or even bones.
2) Squamous cell carcinoma, the second most common, arising from the squamous cells of the epidermis. Most (95% to 98%) of squamous cell carcinomas can be cured if they are treated early. Once squamous cell carcinoma has spread beyond the skin, though, less than 50% of people have a five year survival.
3) Melanoma, from the melanocytes of the skin, i.e. the cells that produce melanin, the pigment of the skin. Melanoma is the least common form of skin cancer, but the most dangerous. However, due to the high incidence of skin cancer overall melanoma skin cancer is the 5th most common cancer in the UK, accounting for 4% of all new cancer cases (2016-2018). Getting sunburn, just once every three years, can increase your chance of getting melanoma 3 times! However, note that melanomas don't usually appear immediately appear after the sunburn. You might have to wait 5 years or more to see the long-term damaging results of a sunburn.
We must all take immediate action, and require from the public health authorities to provide people with consistent, frequent and above all free screening tests for all types of skin cancer. At a personal level we must perform careful self screening tests, and look for anything that resembles the pictures above. It might even worth paying a specialised doctor to perform an examination on us. Any, suspect finding must be immediately reported to a GP.
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