Jimmy Buffet, skin cancer.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is doctor Peter Michlos are in house genius. He’s a historian, he’s a medical person. He is a little bit of everything, but he’s one smart guy and he’s trying to teach us how to live wrong. Doctor Milos.

0:17 Welcome to the weekend after the summer.

0:22 Speaker 2 Good morning, John, and it’s great to be with the Cats round table audience. And today in the news we have heard a lot about skin cancer because a very famous beloved singer passed away, Jimmy Buffett, from merkle cell carcinoma of the skin, and merco cell carcinoma of the skin is particularly deadly. It’s three to five times deadlier

0:46 than melanoma. It’s more common and people have lighter skin, and it’s mostly in men and sixty five and older. It’s more common. The good news is if you catch it, believe you can get it out. The problem is, like in his case, once it goes to the regional lymph nodes, it spreads throughout the body. And there’s even some new

1:08 literature that’s out that hasn’t really even been mentioned that they found in these tumors a mercle polyomavirus, So there’s actually a virus also possibly implicated in the growth of this type of cancer. And sometimes it just appears as a very fast growing pimple or as cyst, and it’s oftentimes confused as an insect bite. And that’s why it’s

1:32 important to be seen by a dermatologist. And I think people should at least minimally annually get checked, and people with light skin and light eyes probably twice a year to get checked for melanomas and other type is called sclamo cell carcinoma that can also go to regional lymph nodes and basal cell which is regionally or locally invasive.

1:53 So things we can do to avoid it are stay out of the sun between ten and twelve. Yes, of course we need our vitamin D and small bursts of it, but you want to avoid the peak UV damage from the UVA and that’s between ten and two pm. And the other the other thing about the skin is.

2:14 Speaker 1 How much time you see this As I understand you know we all take vitamin D three with K two. How much time a week? Uh, do you need to have a little bit of sunshine to supplement without overdoing it on your vitamin D from the sun.

2:38 Speaker 2 Well, if you take a walk. If you’re doing like you know, twenty minutes half an hour a day, that’s fine. But again just because you know your arms and your body can be getting it, but you’re really the face and eyes are much more sensitive, and that’s why you can see the signs of skin aging and wrinkles. And

2:56 also we know that UV light is a sociod cataract. So you can be out in the sun, you need to wear a hat with a brim. You should wear sunglasses, so the rest of your body, even on the beach, you’re walking around, you can have sunscreen on, you’re still getting some UV coming in, so you have a large

3:12 surface area. The most sensitive areas where the thinnest skin in our body is like the thinnest skin in our body is like our eyelids. They’re very sensitive. And interestingly, in the United States, we get our first skin cancers and first cataracts usually on the left side. Why because we drive on the left And if you live in

3:29 New Zealand, you usually get your first cataract, your first skin cancer on the right side of the face and the right arm. So that’s another interesting thing. And I was having a discussion with an anti aging expert doctor Magdalena and a skin cancer expert, doctor can Mark, and they were talking about how from the time you know

3:47 you’re born, you can actually it adds up. It’s cumulative, so you need to even with children. We want our audience to have children. Please protect those even small kids. Get them some sunglasses, hats on the beach, use sunscreen because all that UV damage is cumulative over a lifetime and it really adds up and whatever we can do

4:07 to slow it down. Like countries of Australia, it’s part of the school system and on the beaches they have free sunscreen that you just have a pump and they give it out for free. And even the clothing has built in UV so if you want to buy a hat sometimes you can often find them online. They’re made

4:22 in Australia, New Zealand and they make clothing lines that have built in UV protection because we want to try to avoid things like skin cancer because sometimes they can be deadly. And even your hairdresser when they’re looking in between your hair and they see something suspicious as I know one person and a melanoma was discovered just during

4:39 a haircut.

4:41 Speaker 1 Wow, So it’s really in how many people do you think we lose a year in the United States at three hundred and fifty million people on skin cancer.

4:55 Speaker 2 Well from the mercle cell we lose at three thous a year in the United States. But melanomas, squamous cells, it’s you know, it’s in the tens of thousands. Over twenty to thirty thousand people and die from related melanomas and squamous cells. And sometimes these cases go unreported, and you know, we don’t even hear about them even in

5:22 the rest of the world. But it’s a high amount of good news is that there are drugs now from metastatic melanoma like Jimmy Carter used, and those special immune therapy drugs have been able to slow down the progression and metastasis and people now are living longer. And as we heard from the great Albert Bower Adfiser, they’re going

5:45 to be able to sample your own personalized melanoma and make vaccines against your own tumor one day. So it’s going to be personalized precision medicine where they take your own tumor and make a vaccine to attack your specific tumor.

5:58 And that’s a very forefront that’s happening. Thank goodness to capitalism and investment dollars going into research and development, and the rest of the world waits while the United States is the leader in this amazing field of immune therapy.

6:15 Speaker 1 Thank you, Peter Mihllos. Any other subjects you want to cover today the Sunday morning, not just the.

6:23 Speaker 2 Importance of eating a good, healthy diet, having some exercise in your life, lots of olive oil and avocados and the like. Try to eat twenty plants a week, keep your vitamin D levels up and COVID is back, and just try to be careful. And if you’re sick, don’t go into work and spread it. And because it’s on

6:47 subways and buses, and when people around you are sneezing, it’s good to have a little mask in your pocket you can slip on if you see people around you start coughing and sneezing. As the winter approaches.

6:59 Speaker 1 Well, thank you to Peter Mihllos. And we’ll catch up with you again real soon, and thank you for keeping all our listeners live longer.

7:08 Speaker 2 Thank you very much. I appreciate everything you do to get the truth out Every week on the Cast round Table,