Battling Cancer

By Michael Russell

The bladder is a hollow organ lying within pelvis, which collects urine from the kidneys via tubes called ureters and stores it until it is full enough to empty through the urethra.

Bladder cancer is any type of malignant growth in the bladder. There are two main types - superficial and invasive. The superficial tumours, sometimes known as bladder warts, do not spread and are fairly easily treated. Invasive tumours, which have spread beyond the bladder walls, have a poorer prognosis.

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By Michael Russell

Bladder cancer is not the most common form of cancer, although it can be as deadly as other cancers. Bladder cancer is not a hormone-linked cancer such as breast, ovarian, prostate, or colon cancers. In addition, there is no evidence to support the idea that bladder cancer is inherited; it simply does not run in families. So what seems to be the root cause of bladder cancer? Bladder cancer would appear to be, from the available evidence, a cancer caused by carcinogenic compounds absorbed from outside the body. Bladder cancer is a cancer caused by environmental pollutants, whether they are lifestyle related, such as smoking, or chemicals in the workplace like benzidine.

Smoking is one of the most obvious risk factors that can contribute to bladder cancer. What’s worse, by the time bladder cancer starts to appear, the patient has likely been smoking for what may amount to decades. The ongoing deposit of carcinogens in the lungs and through the lungs into the blood stream has been considerable.

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By Marcus Stout

Each year more and more research is conducted on how to reduce your risk of developing cancer. For some forms of cancer, it’s fairly simple to understand how to reduce risk.

For example, we know that most lung cancer victims are smokers, and that many cases of skin cancer are caused by unprotected over exposure to the sun. For other cancers, understanding how to reduce our risk is not so simple, because we don’t really understand what causes them.

Even in cancers that we don’t fully understand, scientists are working to determine how our lifestyle might increase our risks. For example, a study was conducted in Nagoya, Japan to help better understand the lifestyle factors that might contribute to the development of urinary bladder cancer.

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