The cancer facts that make a compelling case for your next checkup

Rectal cancer

Cancer creates a particular kind of avoidance that has nothing to do with laziness or indifference. It is the avoidance that comes from knowing something matters enormously and finding that knowledge itself too heavy to act on. This disease occupies that territory for millions of people who are aware that screening exists, aware that early […]

Alcohol is quietly driving 100,000 cancer cases each year

alcohol

A federal advisory ties drinking to seven cancers, yet fewer than half of us know the danger exists Most people know that heavy drinking can wreck the liver, but far fewer realize that alcohol is one of the leading preventable causes of cancer. A landmark advisory from the Surgeon General has pushed the link into […]

5 cancer warning signs that are easy to explain away and should not be

Cancer prevention, Leukemia, cancer recurrence, leukemia

A cancer diagnosis rarely comes without history. By the time a scan confirms what a biopsy will quantify, the disease has usually been developing for months, and often for years, in tissue that produced no dramatic alarm signal. The body communicates in subtler ways during that period, ways that are easy to dismiss, easy to […]

Why catching cancer early makes all the difference

Rectal cancer

Why catching cancer early makes all the difference Cancer does not arrive with a warning letter. It begins inside a single cell, a genetic error that escapes the body’s normal repair systems and sets off a cycle of uncontrolled division that the immune system fails to intercept in time. By the point that something feels […]

Cancer risk factors that are entirely within your control

cancer cell, Cancer

Cancer and the signals hiding in plain sight Cancer begins with a single cell. Somewhere inside the body, a genetic error accumulates to the point where normal growth controls fail, and that cell begins dividing without the regulation that keeps tissue orderly, organized, and functional. That process is happening in bodies across the world at […]

Alcohol and cancer, the link researchers can’t ignore

Alcohol

New research on cancer risk, brain health and early mortality is challenging the idea that moderate drinking is harmless.     New research on cancer risk, brain health and early mortality is challenging the idea that moderate drinking is harmless. Alcohol has long held a comfortable place in social life, tied to celebrations, dinners and […]

Cancer warning signs that are easy to dismiss but should never be ignored

Rectal cancer

Cancer remains one of the most feared diagnoses in medicine, yet the early warning signs that make it most treatable are also the easiest to rationalize away. Fatigue gets blamed on a busy schedule. Unexplained weight changes get credited to stress or a shifting diet. A lump gets categorized as nothing worth worrying about until […]

Why are young adults now getting cancers that used to wait until later

Rectal cancer

Cancer is not a single disease. It is a vast category of conditions sharing the characteristic of abnormal, uncontrolled cellular growth, and understanding that diversity is part of what makes both prevention and detection so individually consequential, and understanding that diversity is part of what makes both prevention and early detection so important, and so […]

What your doctor wants you to know about cancer prevention that rarely comes up in appointments

Cancer prevention, Leukemia, cancer recurrence, leukemia

Cancer prevention is one of the most evidence-rich areas of medicine and one of the least effectively communicated in routine clinical care. The average appointment with a primary care provider leaves little room for the kind of extended conversation about lifestyle-based cancer risk reduction that the evidence genuinely warrants, and most people leave without understanding […]

4 habits that can quietly increase your cancer risk over time

cancer cell, Cancer

Cancer touches nearly every family in America. According to the National Cancer Institute, roughly 2 million new cases are diagnosed in the United States each year, and approximately 39 percent of Americans will receive a cancer diagnosis at some point in their lifetime. Those numbers are sobering, but they are not the whole story. What […]