Preventing and diagnosing cancer early.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Doctor Peter Michlos our in house singings and our motto is live long and prosper Doctor Mihlos. What are we doing this week?

0:12 Speaker 2 Well, this week we’re going to talk about a very important topic that’s cancer screening and how when to start doing screening and the different tests that you can do to check for screening. And we’re going to start off with the some of the younger age groups, and one of them is in women, cervical cancer screen should start

0:33 at age twenty five, and really they say not to do it under twenty five because it’s extremely rare to have cervical cancer under twenty five. But the PAP test name they have to doctor Papa Nicolao, which has saved millions of women’s lives, is a test where they swab an area of the cervix and women and you can

0:51 find things out early. Another thing is that people between the ages of twenty five and sixty five can get an hpvvirus, which is a human papoloma virus, and that can be done when you have your gyn exam and you can catch the precursor to cervical cancer because that can also occur in people’s throats, and that can happen

1:15 sexually transmitted and people can end up with throat cancer. There’s even a vaccine now for HPV the other cancers on mammograms, and women should definitely start mammograms at age forty and forty five to fifty four. They should really be doing it annually, and if you have a strong family history of cancer, you should discuss with your doctor

1:36 if you should do it at an earlier age. And the other thing that you can test for, of course is callon cancer and colon They say the star colonoscopies at age forty five, but there are now tests like colo Guard which basically they take a stool sample and you can find little tiny pieces in DNA fragments of

1:58 colon cancer. A simple test through the colon, but if it comes back positive, then you do need a colonoscopy to remove any cancerous a polyps. And then the other one is for the lung, and they do have low dose cat scans screening now, and people who are smokers age fifty to eighty or smoke at least twenty have

2:23 a twenty pack year history of smoking, those people can get screened and you can catch it early and prostate cancer. Basically, men should start at age fifty and talk to their healthcare provider and you can take to a test call the PSA test, and if you see that PSA test climbing, you can have a rectal exam with it. Actually can

2:45 feel it. But if it is climbing. There is a test full the three D MRI, which basically does a image of the MRI, And I know people whose PSA was climbing. Their doctor said watch it, but they went and got a three dMRI and they found a marble size lead and sitting in the center of the prostate

3:02 that they couldn’t they couldn’t see normally. Then if you do have a positive test on one of these tests, there’s also something called a PET scan, and a PET scan is a test where your whole body they put a radioactively labeled dye and if you do have a cancer, it shows up as an increased signal or a bright area,

3:24 and that shows an increased blood flow because tumors tend to have more blood vessels to feed the rapidly growing cancer, and it shows up. So PET scans can show an area for example, if you have a lad nodule on your lung. Then you can get a pet scan and if it lights up like a Christmas tree and it

3:41 shows up, then you might have to go on and get a biop seat and things that you can do to reduce your risk of cancer. Of course, stay away from all forms of tobacco, Try to keep a healthy weight, regular physical activity, eating fruits and vegetables. Avoid alcohol, no more than one drink per day for women and know

4:02 more than two for men. Protect the skin, which is our largest organ where we can get skin cancers like melanoma, scraamou cell. So do your annual screening minimal if you have light skin, twice a year with your dermatologists, and know your family history and know your risk. And of course we’ve talked about on the show the blood test.

4:21 Now that exists like the Gallery test by Grail, where you can catch fifty cancers before they even start with one simple blood test, and then eventually by now it’s not covered by insurance, but eventually it will be part of a regular screenings and it will save the system lots of money because when you catch things early, you

4:38 treat early, your survival rate is very high.

4:42 Speaker 1 The Gallery test does that include all the other tests. I mean, can you skip the other test by taking the gallery test or lives have to have done separately.

4:53 Speaker 2 Well, the gallery test is cells start appearing in your bloodstream, so you’re catching things a little bit more ahead, whereas a callon test, for example, the colonoscopy, you can catch a polyp when the cancer is still very early on the tip of the polyp and it hasn’t invaded yet or hasn’t gotten into your blood stream. So some of

5:13 these tests can catch things super super early, like the PAP test. You can catch a cervical cancer when the cells are right on the surface before they’ve even invaded or gotten into the blood stream. It’s just another test that helps. For example, there was a lady who wasn’t feeling well and I told her go see your doctor,

5:33 get a gallery test, and he came back positive ovarian signal. The doctor said, oh, don’t worry about it. But she went and got the MRI. One overy was bigger than the other, and guess what they got the one over It was still with cancer. But she caught it so early.

5:46 He’s going to go on to have a normal life, whereas with ovarian cancer, if it’s spread, it would have been a disaster. And another I had a friend in Flora. His doctor told don’t worry about his PSA was five.

5:56 I says, get a gallery test. Guess what came back positive? Guy three d MRI marble size lesion inside the center of his prostate, that is prostate removed. Why because his father had died of metastatic prostate cancer and had severe bone pain from it. So he caught it early. As PSA is zero now and he’ll go on to live

6:15 a normal life. So these new tests will be the mainstay in the future. And there’s even tests that you can find your risk just testing how do you how do you spoke gallery g A G A L L E RI I test by Grail and it comes right up and we can put it on the w ABC website.

6:34 But again it’s a great thing to catch early. And even if you swab your mouth now certain bacteria in your mouth, if you find a high number of certain bacteria, they can warn you of early pancreatic colon stomach cancer.

6:46 So even the gut microbes are are going to be a future signal of what is going on inside your body.

6:54 Speaker 1 Well, doctor Peter Michellos, thank you so much. And and thank you for keeping our listeners alive and now they’re going to be listening to over one hundred.

7:04 Speaker 2 Well, thanks for always getting the truth out on the Cats round Table where we want people to live long and prosper.

7:10 Speaker 1 Live long and prosper Pito. Thank you so much