Posts Tagged Prevention
Wordless Wednesday–Sun Safety is so “Easy”!
Thank you to Mommy-Momo for such an adorable picture of her son, "Easy"!
For more Wordless Wednesday photos go on over to 5min4mom!
To see more adorable pictures of “Easy” wearing his Ethan Navy Blue swim shirt and read Mommy-Momo’s Review go check out her site!
4 comments April 1, 2009
Teens and Tanning
Last week I was ’surfing the web’ and I came across many articles talking about the dangers of tanning, especially for teenagers under the age of 18. There are approximately 2.3 million teens that visit U.S. tanning beds–every year! and now new legislation may require teens to bring a doctor’s note and have a parent present in order to use indoor tanning.
I am totally with the ban on tanning salons for teenagers. Most people get 80% or more of their sun exposure by their 18th birthday. And one blistering sunburn or over exposure to tanning beds before the age of 18 increases a persons risk to develop melanoma as an adult. If this legislation is going to pass there must be more advocacy and education to urge teenagers to avoid tanning. Many agree that there is no such thing as a “safe” tan. Just like the Miss Florida story below, it will take teenagers talking to teenagers in order to persuade them to consider other alternatives to indoor tanning.
“Miss Florida Teen USA Kayla Collier was 15 when she first visited a tanning salon so the stage lights at a local pageant wouldn’t make her fair skin look ghostly white.
Later that year, as she tried on homecoming dresses, her mother noticed what looked like a scab on her back. It turned out to be skin cancer.
And though she can’t definitively link the tanning to the cancer, Collier, now 18 and healthy, won’t be back under the bulbs. (Source: News Day)”
Did you know that after only a few minutes of tanning that you could develop skin cancer? According to a study a quarter of teenagers ages 15-18 used indoor tanning last year. It is a really big step to take concerning the protection of our children against a very preventable disease. Here is a run-down of what some of the 17 states are doing;
“Florida already requires parental approval before minors can use tanning salons. If the new law passes, it would be among the strictest in the nation. Only one state, Wisconsin, bans teens 16 and under from using tanning beds, though a handful of others — California, New York and New Jersey among them — ban the under-14 crowd. At least 29 states have some regulations governing tanning by minors.
Even more restrictive proposals in Texas and Vermont would prohibit anyone under 18 from using a tanning bed without a doctor’s note.”
I want to know what you think this legislation to ban teenagers from tanning? Do you allow your teenager to tan?
I know that for sure I will not let my daughter’s tan at any age. I will always advocate for them to use an alternative to an indoor tanning salon. I’m sure they won’t really need to tan since they are bi-racial and have a brown complexion anyway. The one I really worry about is my husband. No matter what he loves to go tanning and even says it makes him happy. Whenever I give him a back rub I check his back for any abnormal moles. Early detection is key when dealing with skin cancer, but also just being smart about uv protection.
I want to leave you with a poll because I am really interested in knowing…
Thanks! I can’t wait to see the results!!
4 comments March 30, 2009
Would you? Could you…with Hippo Sweat?!
I want to know…Would you? Could you?….get better sun protection with hippo sweat?! If hippo sweat could be used to find an actual biological cure to one of the deadliest cancers, melanoma, would you? Could you? Seems far fetched, but ‘researchers have found that hippo sweat (actually an oily secretion) provides hippos with multiple types of protection: from the sun, disease and bugs.’ A professor, Christopher Viney from University of California has been researching hippo sweat since 2004!
‘Viney and his team found that the red-colored secretion acts as both a sunscreen and sunblock, with microscopic structures that scatter light, preventing it from burning the hippo’s skin.’
Nature is amazing isn’t it? Hippo’s are the ultimate in the world of chemical-free sun protection. Unlike our sunscreens that rely on chemicals to block out the uv rays–hippos have sweat that blocks the uv rays naturally!
Viney also found that ‘the sweat also deters bugs, and helps hippos keep wounds or scratches clean no matter how much mud or filth they’re exposed to. The researchers left the sweat stored in sealed containers for months, and it didn’t show any signs of microbial contamination.’
He has dreams of using his findings to create a four-in-one product that included sunscreen, sunblock, antiseptic, insect repellent.
Well, I have a hard enough time trying to get my girl’s to slather on regular sunscreen. Could you just imagine asking your child to put on their hippo sweat? It probably would have to have a snazzier name…maybe “Sweat No More!” Or maybe just “H” because nobody really wants to remember that they are wearing hippo sweat. Plus it sounds kind of incognito and mysterious!
The ultimate mystery.(hee hee!)
On a more serious note–It is about time that we do more research on biology like this. Most animals have been around longer than humans have. They must hold the secret to life and we should be taking more advantage of that. Nature is simply amazing! It would be kind of cool to get a better sunscreen based on hippo sweat.
So tell me would you? Could you…with hippo sweat? I really love reading your thoughts so tell me what you think!
Source: Greener Design
Add comment March 20, 2009
It’s Party Time!–Giveaway Ended
Hi! Welcome to the UV Skinz blog! I’m Kalisha, your host and resident blogger here at UV Skinz. This is UV Skinz first time at a 5 Minutes For Mom Ultimate Blog Party and I am so excited to party it up with you today!! Take a look around…and read on for a Surprise Party Favor Giveaway!
With my new found sun savvy-ness I will be bringing you lots of great giveaways, sun protection information, my own personal adventures in the sun and new sun protection products that I come across.
UV Skinz was established after Rhonda Sparks, the founder and President, lost her husband to skin cancer when he was just 32 years old. This sparked Rhonda’s passion to raise awareness and educate others about sun protection, but never losing sight of how valuable it is to PLAY and HAVE FUN outdoors!
I feel so lucky to be a part of a such a family-oriented company. I am a SAHM mom to two feisty and loving little girls; Journey-3yrs and Faith-2yrs. Living in So. California has us all spoiled because 80% of the time we are outside at the park, taking walks, or just exploring. My daughter’s are bi-racial, but sun protection is crucial for everyone–no matter skin type or race. I became a fan of UV Skinz after I had an opportunity to review their swim shirts for my personal blog the Mommy Lounge last year. Journey and I both fell in love with the uv swim shirt (she wouldn’t take it off!) and the UV Skinz mission to prevent skin cancer and get all kids covered. That is how I came to blog for UV Skinz. I have enjoyed learning and sharing with you so far and I hope that you come back and visit again!
Here are a few ways you can stay connected to UV Skinz;
- Join our new monthly UV Skinz Newsletter! (Sign-up is on the UV Skinz main homepage)
You can expect to receive newsletters from us about once a month and our goal is to bring you all the latest and greatest sun-safety information possible; whether that be in the form of the best sun screen lotion we’ve found on the market or what the latest medical statistics are saying about skin cancer. And we will always be sure to share with you about UV Skinz special offers or when we get new styles and items in.
- Sign-up for our RSS Feed
- Follow UV Skinz on Twitter (I will follow you back!) for some twitterific tweets!
I love hearing your comments, suggestions, questions, or expertise you have on sun protection and skin cancer prevention–so you can always email me at kalisha(at)uvskinz(dot)com
Thanks again for stopping by, but you shouldn’t leave before you’ve had the chance to enter into my Surprise Giveaway!………I have a UV Skinz party favor that three lucky winners can win!
Surprise!
Prize: 3 winners will be chosen–each will win a UV Skinz Sun Hat of their choice!
Here is how to enter:
(Only one entry per household please)
Entry #1
- Visit UV Skinz About Us on the UV Skinz main website, then Leave a comment with one of the reasons why we come to this place every day and the philosophy that governs us—at UV Skinz
- For example…Laughter heals!
Extra Entries (Entry 1 must be done first):
- Sign-up for the UV Skinz newsletter (4 entries)
- Subscribe in RSS reader (3 entries)
- Follow UV Skinz on Twitter and post on Twitter about the contest (2 entries)
If you complete all 4 of the entries then only leave 4 separate comments–each stating the entry that you completed. That’s it! Good Luck!!
*I will be using a random number generator (random.org) to select the winner. The winners will be emailed and also announced on here on Tuesday March 24, 2009.
* Contest ends at 11:59pm on Tuesday March 24,2009. If the prize is not claimed in 48 hours a new winner will be chosen. (Good reason to subscribe in reader–so you don’t miss the chance to claim your prize!)
77 comments March 20, 2009
Talking about Skin Cancer
Read this! I received this email update a few days ago;
In case you don’t watch the ABC-TV Show Grey’s Anatomy I found this
episode last week very telling.In July, a magazine reported that the show’s higher ups were considering
killing off popular character Izzy Stevens played by Katherine Heigl
after she withdrew from Emmy contention because she didn’t feel she was
“given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination.”Producer Shonda Rhimes and the writers were reportedly upset with her,
and a source told the press that producers were considering giving her a
brain tumor. It’s their way of screwing with her. She won’t know whether
she’s going to live or die..Instead the show revealed that the character discovers it’s metastatic
melanoma and it’s spread to her brain. The interns working at hospital
then say “The girl’s pretty much toast, Survival rate is five percent,”While this is just a TV Show of course it will immediate heighten
awareness as I am sure many fans had no idea what melanoma was before
the show and just how serious it is.Strange how this is finally getting national attention .
Wow! I didn’t realize that shows could use death as a kind of stab at an actor or actress!! At least one good thing would come of it by raising awareness about sun protection and skin cancer. Skin cancer is 100% preventable and that is something we all should remember. I know I never wore sunscreen as a child. Only when we went swimming because I was told the sun would reflect the worst from the water. Crazy! Right?! So, needless to say every time I smell that sunscreen smell I think of the swimming pool!
Regardless of the reasons behind this decision, it creates a buzz about melanoma. Melanoma and sun protection should be talked about a lot more. Especially to our younger generations. Now that Journey is three she is asserting her own independence by asking me the “why’s?” of everything with hopes of changing my mind or just plain saying “No” she won’t do something I ask of her. (How I miss those baby days when she just complied because she didn’t know any better) So, it caught me by surprise a little bit (well, kind of!) when Journey told me she didn’t want to wear her sunscreen the other day. She flat out said, “No, I don’t want that on me!”
“You have to wear it, it’s not a choice.”
“Whhhy?!
Since I didn’t really know how to explain it to her, I just told her straight and simple.
“Sunscreen protects us from the sun ray’s because they could give us cancer and we could die. So, it is very important we protect ourselves with sunscreen. Even if you are brown–you still wear sunscreen.” (We have already talked on the subject of death–I don’t want you to think that I would say it to her so harshly. I have explained to her that everything lives and dies–it’s the circle of life).
She accepted my answer and allowed me to put her sunscreen on. (Mission accomplished!)
I hope I went about it the right way…So, tell me how you explain sun protection to your kids and family. Do you talk with them about skin cancer? I really would love to hear all of your comments so don’t be shy!
Our giveaway ends today and I will announce the winner tomorrow! If you don’t win this one then come back on Friday for the start of the Ultimate Blog Party hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom. We will be giving away a party favor to one winner! It’s a surprise too. So, be back her on Friday to join in on the party fun!
4 comments March 18, 2009
How to safeguard yourself against malignant melanoma
How to safeguard yourself against malignant melanoma
By Samuel Broder
The term malignant melanoma and melanoma describe the most serious form of skin cancer, whose frequency is rising due to increasing sun exposures, especially when intermittent high-dose exposures (sunburns) come into play. Melanomas originate in melanocytes, which are specialized skin cells that make a protective brown pigment (melanin) to shield the skin against the harmful effects of the sun. Melanomas may arise in a mole (nevus). Individuals with a special skin condition called dysplastic nevi are at increased risk, as are people with a very large number (more than 50) of ‘ordinary’ moles.
full article HERE
Add comment January 27, 2009
Melanoma cases likely to decline
Article found on stuff.co.nz:
*New Zealand could lose its unenviable reputation as the skin-cancer centre of the world thanks to climate change.*
Extreme levels of ultra-violet (UV) radiation caused by clear skies and bright sunshine kill between 250 and 300 Kiwis a year, giving New Zealand the highest death rate from melanoma in the world.
However, there may be cause for celebration, with some scientists believing that by the second half of this century the rate will be falling.
Scientists think that climate change will speed up a recovery of the ozone layer over much of the world and block out more of the damaging UV rays.
The maximum value of the UV index which at this time of year can reach “extreme” levels of 12 over the South Island and 13 further north would drop by two or more steps under such a scenario.
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist Greg Bodeker said the peak in the skin-cancer rate was expected about 2040.
Beyond that, increased ozone concentrations were likely to take New Zealand and the rate back to where it was in the 1950s or 60s.
“It’s a good story, absolutely. We are already seeing ozone recovery over New Zealand,” Bodeker said.
“Skin-cancer rates of today are caused by UV exposure 20 or 30 years ago.
“All the indications are that climate change will accele-rate the recovery of the ozone levels.”
Some people were concerned that if UV radiation levels fell lower than so far experienced that might lead to vitamin D deficiencies, but that seemed unlikely, he said.
Add comment December 3, 2008
New cancer cases decline; melanoma on rise
Lauran Neergaard ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The rate of new cancer cases finally may be inching down – cautiously optimistic news but a gain that specialists worry could be derailed by economic turmoil.
Death rates from cancer have been dropping slowly for years, thanks to earlier detection and better treatments. But preventing cancer is the ultimate goal, and Tuesday’s annual “Report to the Nation” on cancer also shows a small but encouraging change: The rate of new diagnoses among men dropped 1.8 percent a year between 2001 and 2005.
For women, the dip was just over half a percent a year.
Also, the cancer death rate among men and women continued to drop, by an average of 1.8 percent a year through 2005, said the report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The improvements are due to gains against some leading cancers – prostate, colorectal, breast and, for men, lung cancer. But numerous other types still are on the rise, including melanoma and kidney cancer.
Full story at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/26/new-cancer-cases-decline-melanoma-on-rise/
1 comment December 1, 2008
How We Fight Summer Heat
By: Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
http://news.softpedia.com/
The summer is coming and our thermo-regulation system will be once again pushed to the limits. Did you know that the human body is more resistant to cold than it is to heat? The fact is that we have physiological mechanisms more effective for combating the cold than the heat.
Temperature is a parameter characterizing the heating stage of a physical system while heat represents the energy transferred from one body to another via a thermal process.
In other words, we have a constant temperature of about 37o C, which we maintain by losing or gaining heat, depending on the case and necessities.
How do we lose heat? Physically, thermoregulation consists of conduction (heat transport and its transfer to colder systems), convection (the transfer of gas with different temperatures), radiation (the loss of heat via infrared radiation, depending on the surface of the body) and evaporation via sweating. At room temperature (20o C), the first three factors dominate. At higher temperatures, sweating turns into the main cooling mechanism.
The skin is packed with sweat glands. On a square centimeter of skin, there are 6 million cells, 5,000 receptors, 15 sebaceous (oil) glands, 200 pain detecting nervous terminations (making a total of 4 m or 13.3 ft), 10-25 touch and thermal receptors, 1 m (3.3 ft) of blood vessels and over 100 sweat glands. And to think that the skin has 1.5 square meters (15,000 square cm).
The sweat glands are of two types: eccrine and apocrine. Eccrine glands have three segments: a twisted sector, resembling a kidney glomerulus, a sweat excretory canal, and a sweat route. The higher the amount of blood that has reached the glomerulus, the higher the amount of sweat.
Heat receptors located in the skin, viscera and brain can detect temperature variations of less than 0.1o C. The brain has thermo-sensitive neurons in the hypothalamus. They detect variations of temperature in the blood, and if they are too drastic, the blood is directed towards the skin where the sweating will be intensified, cooling the organism. The sweat is actually an ultra-filtered blood, containing not just water, but also sodium chlorine, potassium, ammonia (that gives it the urine like scent), uric acid and others.
Normally, we produce a little over 0.5 liters of sweat in 24 hours. In the desert, we can sweat over one liter of water per hour. The apocrine glands develop at puberty and are much more complicated than the eccrine sweat glands. For long, it was thought that only animals produce pheromones. Recent researches proved that the apocrine glands produce human pheromones.
The sweating is effective as long as the air is not too humid (that is, too charged with water vapors). In a dry environment, the human body can stand temperatures of up to 130o C by sweating, while in a wet environment 49o C are too much to stand even if only for a few minutes. 100% humidity of the air means the maximum water vapor amount that can be contained in the air without the vapors turning into a rainfall.
The evaporation of 2 grams of water is enough to decrease by 1o C the rest of 998 grams of water in a liter. Besides the nervous control of the thermoregulation, there is also the hormonal control, via the hypophysis, thyroid and adrenal glands.
Thermoregulation itself is very complex. For example, the hypothalamus makes us eat more at lower temperatures than at higher temperatures. Turns out the patrons of restaurants who provide a nice and refreshing coolness in their placement are really smart guys…
Add comment July 10, 2008
July: UV Safety Month
July has been deemed “Ultraviolet Safety Month” by the American Cancer Society. It is being sponsored by the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) so the main focus is on eye protection. Your eyes are very sensitive organs and need to be protected all year round. Snow, sand, grass and water all reflect UV rays that can damage your eyes. Make sure that when you do wear protection that you know what you are buying. The darkness of the shade of your lenses dose not indicate the amount of UV protection as many people think. The chemicals that are added during the lens making process determine the amount of protection. It is important to have protection against both UVA and UVB rays. UVA rays are know to cause leathering, wrinkling and other skin aging. UVB rays are usually the cause of skin cancers, sun burns, cataracts and damage to your immune system. The ozone layer filters out a lot of the UVB rays, but enough can get through to cause damage. Skin damage from overexposure to the sun is irreversible and can take years to present itself and while some skin types resist burning, all are susceptible to UV-related damage. This information and more can be found here.
1 comment July 1, 2008
