How to Protect Yourself from the Sun's Harmful Rays

Well, here's some unwelcome news. Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States, with one in five of us developing skin cancer in our lifetime. Dr. Stanley Glaser from New England Dermatology and Laser Center is here to show us the ABCs of melanoma, which is a serious type of skin cancer, and how to protect ourselves. So thank you for being with us because tis the season. And what is the difference between skin cancer and melanoma, or is there a difference? Melanoma is a form of skin cancer. Actually, it's one of the least common forms of skin cancer, but it's the most worried about because it's one of the lethal types of skin cancer. And it used to be almost uniformly lethal, but with modern technology of diagnosis, people were concerned about their skin and the newer treatments that we have, and picking up melanoma much earlier, it's not to the death sentence that it was years ago when I started practice. Wow. So we talked about the ABCs. Take us through a little bit about how I can identify what is melanoma. Well, first of all, melanoma can present de novo, that is, out of the blue for no reason, or it can develop from a preexisting mold that you might have. And we generally, there's something called the ugly duckling sign. When you look at someone's skin and you see something that looks different than all the other growths, that's when you become concerned. So there's something called atypical moles, which we're seeing now on the TV screen here now, and they're moles of varying sizes, shapes, and colors. And people who have these, what we call atypical moles, are a little bit more likely to develop a melanoma, not necessarily from that lesion, but there's a risk factor. The more moles you have, the more risk factor you have. So getting to your question about what we know called ABCDE. And what is the B? So A is asymmetry, which means one side of the mole doesn't look like the other. If you were to cut it in half and look at one side or the other, the asymmetrical sides. B means irregular border. It's not a round uniform, and this is a good picture of atypical moles. See, they're varying sizes, shapes, and colors. They not necessarily will turn into melanoma. In fact, it's uncommon, but they're a marker. People who have these are just at greater risk. And then there's C, variable colors in the mole. D, the diameter of a mole, greater than six millimeter, which is about the size of a pencil eraser. And E is the new version, is it evolving. It's something that evolves over time. It doesn't necessarily look necessarily nasty at one time, but over time, like this one shown right here, this is a classic example of the ABCDEs. It has all those different sizes and shapes and colors and larger than six millimeter. And usually, when you look at these pictures, if you look at the background skin, you can see that many of these people have very mottled skin. They usually are fair-skinned, fair-eyed individuals. They're more likely to have it, and these are people who've been in the sun a lot. One of the major risk factors for melanoma is severe sunburns in the past. Most skin cancers, the more common skin cancers called basal cell and squamous cell, which are much more common, infinitely more common, in the order of, those are called non-melanoma skin cancers. There are about five million of those a year, and melanoma, 200,000. So five million versus 200,000. So melanoma is, it pales compared to all the other skin cancers that we have. However, melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in this country. So sunscreen, protect the skin, run down for us, what do we do to protect ourselves from the sun that we don't end up with any of these? Well, sunscreen obviously is very important, but don't forget about wearing a hat, wearing sunglasses, wearing lip balm, seeking shade. So sunscreen is obviously the things that we can do, and we can seek shade. And that's every shade of skin should be wearing the sunscreen. Absolutely, nobody's immune. Darker people, less likely, but you can see it on the palms and soles in darker skinned individuals also. But it's directly related to the number of severe sunburns, whereas other skin cancers are related to the cumulative effect of light over time. So you could have had one sunburn as a child and be at higher risk. And tanning booths, they're not good. All right, well, that's gonna be our next topic. So thank you for teaching us how to stay safe. And we want to enjoy the sun, but we gotta be careful. And I would just like to say one other quick thing. A good thing to do is examine your birthday suit on your birthday. Oh, thank you, Tom.