just thought i’d share something i came across , there’s research that has shown that extra virgin olive oil is stopping skin cancers from developing on mice… it’s working on people too… look up on google , skin cancer olive oil to see the research… we’ve all been in the sun too long… aloha
Another reason to justify to my worried family my obsession with lathering myself up in olive oil!
I believe water-based products are recommended for your lifestyle…
I rely on 6mm rubber, although, I think you need sunlight, never mind.
thanks for the heads-up.
The antioxidant properties of the olive oil are thought to be helping the already UV-damaged skin. The best way to avoid skin cancer is to not UV-damage your skin any more than you have to! Putting olive oil on your skin once you are burned is not as good a strategy as sunscreen, or even better, an opaque barrier to UV light (like a rashguard, hat, sunglasses, sunblock, etc.).
The olive oil may/will help once you are burned, but avoiding getting burned is the best defense. That, and keep an eye on your skin. Remember the ABCDE rules for skin cancer (melanoma, one of the worst kinds):
A: Asymmetric (a mole or spot that is not symmetric can mean trouble)
B: Irrregular Borders (if it has a scraggly/sawtooth border, can mean trouble)
C: Color Variation (if it is not just one uniform color)
D: Diameter greater than 6mm (about the size of a pencil eraser)
E: Elevation/Evolution (if it has different elevations/contours, or if it has changed)
Get to a doc to have them look at anything that you suspect has the above traits. Here is a good website with pics:
http://bfmelanoma.com/abcd.htm
Also check out their ‘how-to’ for a self-exam, but it is pretty self-explanatory…look everywhere on your body.
UV creates tons of free-radicals, which go about their business of screwing things up in your skin (and other places). Anti-oxidants help neutralize free-radicals.
Remember that an ounce of prevention…
Hope this helps,
JSS
my understanding (not a MD!) is that getting burned is not the problem by itself, but that skin cancer is a result of cumulative UV exposure over your lifetime - thus tanning can be just as bad as burning, if you do it enough…
Correct. Extensive tanning can be essentially thought of as a subacute ‘burn’ which your skin cells respond to by making more melanin pigment (tan). The UV has already done the damage, but not enough to warrant a lot of cell death (blistering/peeling), so while your body is trying to fix the damage, it also tries to protect itself from further exposure by making the pigment. Tanning is inevitable, though, even if wearing sunscreen, as small amounts of UV exposure can result in the tanning effect. The danger is in folks wanting to build up a tan in a short amount of time, using low SPF sunscreens and lots of exposure, riding the fine line of tan/burn. Not a good idea.
JSS
Just for a heads up, nearly all sunscreens are estrogen mimics i.e. xenoestrogens like leaches into water in plastic bottles. Risk factor for internal cancers, skin cancer, prostate enlargment. Barriers are the way to go i.e. zinc and titanium dioxide only, cloths, rubber wear, hats. Lycopene, from tomatoes (and pills) helps prevent UV damage.
DrStrange,
I am not educated on the xenoestrogen issue, I’ll have to look into it… But the Lycopene you mentioned is an antioxidant (and popular in the news), so all it can do is help fix the damage done by UV, not necessarily prevent the damage (it will not prevent free-radical formation, just help address already existing free radicals). UV also directly damages structures (like any other short wavelength radiation) in addition to creating radicals (which the Lycopene will help get under control).
You are absolutely correct, blocking/reflecting/absorbing the UV rays entirely before they reach the skin is much better than rubbing chemicals on your skin that absorb the UV energy while on/in your skin…
JSS
You guys have any specific product recomendations?
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/3rduspstf/skcacoun/skcarr.htm
This is a good website for sunscreen and sun exposure facts, from the AHRQ, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The scientific evidence portion is very good, but you may need a statistical dictionary nearby… As far as sunscreens, Zinc Oxide and Titanium Dioxide containing sunblocks (the white pastes) are blockers and not absorbed into the skin. Other than that, I’m not too keen on any of the UV-absorbing compounds, so I can’t say.
As for hats, there was a thread not too long ago that discussed them, and some sunglass options…
http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=315884
If you have a question about uv protection potential of a fabric, optometrists have meters that can tell them how much light is blocked by a sunglass lens. They mnay have a different name in the optometric field, but we used to call them scanning monochrometers. Have the optometrist test the fabric (any Sways optometrists out there?). This should give you a pretty good idea of what is going on.
Hope this helps,
JSS
Hell! I live on Maui! You know “Maui the sun god”! All those years on the Central Coast of Calif. and Oregon with their fog and haze. Never knew what Basil Cell was until I had been on Maui a year. I do now though and am over-due for a few “freeze/burn offs”. I watch the food channel alot and have decided everything is better in “Virgin Olive Oil”. Including me! Just ask “Emeril”.
No doubt about the sun on in Hawaii. I skippered sailing catamarans off the waters of Maui for over ten years. Then back to CA for 10 more on the water daily too. But I also grew up surfing around Dana Point and working on boats in the harbor there too. If I wasn’t working on the water I was playing in it. But mostly on Maui where working without a shirt on all day or surfing or windsurfing.
Then in 99’ I went to see the Doctor about a mole that I had. Not sure how it materialized. At the time I was not thinking about it much, yet it did concern me some. But I knew I had not seen it before the way it was. Or I felt that if I had had it for awhile it seemed to be changing, growing, or getting darker. It was text book as to what was posted here above.
So I go see this Doctor (a dermatologist) in San Juan Capistrano, CA and told her I was most concerned about this mole but to check everything because I felt I had other spots like Basil Cell. Basil Cell I felt I knew something about because I had some burnt off before that.
Anyway she looks at this mole and said that it was nothing that I looked OK and sent me on my way.
Well about 8 months later I rubbed the mole and it started to bleed. So at the urging of my wife I went to see a different dermatologist the very next day and had it cut out. The results came back as Stage 1 (.79) melanoma.
That was quite a time in my life getting that diagnosis. I desperately seeked others that were going through or had gone through melanoma. I even called Matt Schweitzer back on Maui because I knew Matt had had it too. Matt survived even a more aggressive bout with it. Matt was super encouraging and it was a big help talking to him about it at that time.
Mine they just cut off a pancake size patch of skin off my shoulder and took out my lymp nodes under my right arm pit. Luckly it all came back negitive. God is letting me hang around a bit longer. So far so good. That was nearly 7 years ago now.
My doctor at UC Irvine Hospital who performed that surgery was considered to be one of the best. He said that all my time in the sun probably helped it not attacking more aggresively, If that make sense. That people who only once in awhile get really bad sun burns, but enough to do bad damage, but are usually without tan, that it attacks them quicker.
I don’t know, I think that’s all speculation to some degree. Best it to self exam. If I’d had been better educated about skin cancer I could have diagnosed myself. I should have looked it up on the internet. But at the time I just didn’t know.
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Another reason to justify to my worried family my obsession with lathering myself up in olive oil!
Great, now we find out that oral sex can give you cancer, sounds like you’re way ahead of yourself Sir WAL…
Can you let us know if your evil experiments with OO can prevent this type of cancer???
Back on topic, how come us blokes only go to the doctor when our WIVES tell us to…
message to all: beware the melanoma!
don’t be foolish…put on sunscreen every time you paddle out (even if it’s cloudy).
this is a picture of me and my friend hank. hank was out in san diego on biz about 4 years ago, saw this Hobie Vintage sitting in a shop out there, and instantly fell in love. he bought it, and had it shipped back to him in Florida. a week after returning from the west coast, he was diagnosed with first-stage melanoma, and told he had to stay out of the sun whenever possible – no more surfing. the board sat unwaxed in his garage for over 3 years before he decided it needed to be ridden. he sold me the board for a steal, and it’s now one of my favorite boards ever…but to be honest, i’d rather that hank be the one riding it. sunscreen is our best defense to ensure that skin cancer doesn’t bring our time surfing to an abrupt end. i prefer Coppertone Sport (non-greasy, dried quickly, doesn’t run into my eyes). that is all.
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I do now though and am over-due for a few “freeze/burn offs”. I watch the food channel alot and have decided everything is better in “Virgin Olive Oil”. Including me! Just ask “Emeril”. -McDing
If “the Food Channel” plus “Virgin Olive Oil” = “Emeril” in your world view, you do need to stay out of the sun…even the animatronic zombie version of Rachel Ray they have stumbling around is more attractive…
But seriously folks…
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My doctor at UC Irvine Hospital who performed that surgery was considered to be one of the best. He said that all my time in the sun probably helped it not attacking more aggresively, If that make sense. That people who only once in awhile get really bad sun burns, but enough to do bad damage, but are usually without tan, that it attacks them quicker. -glenn
I’ve never heard that before, and I’ve tagged along down the M Road with a couple of others before. But out of about 4 people afflicted whom I’ve known well and long it really fits in. Very interesting. An old bodysurfing and drinking pal and I always used to say “shock the system to keep it strong”, and we would get out of the water and off the beach from roughly 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. It’s amazing how much fun, food, sleep, and trouble you can pack into a 3-4 hour surf-siesta, and still catch the evening glassoff.
Once you start having the odd bit burnt or frozen off I would recomend annual visits to a dermatologist. Before I had health insurance I used to pay cash for it…for those in that boat just casually mention that fact to the doctor and most of them won’t jack the prices (insurance doctors seem to charge per 'bit"). You are buying peace of mind. And if you aren’t comfortable with what you hear from one doctor, by all means get another opinion. I had the reverse of Glenn’s experience once: a doctor took one look at my face and wrote me the coveted referral to a full-time dermatologist. The trick was the guy was so busy he couldn’t see me for 6 weeks…literally that can mean eternity if you have something bad or advanced. Turned out to be nothing…found out that gatekeeper doctor had left the HMO…but it was a freakishly long 6 weeks of my life that I do not want to repeat. I should have just paid and gone to a non-HMO guy.
Nels
I am not sure about skin cancer but I started taking Bioastin and it just about eliminated sunburn for me. I still use sun blocks but I noticed I am not burnt like I use to be. I spend a lot of time in the sun surfing and coaching water polo. Bioastin really seems to really help. Try it! Google Bioastin. I am not paid to say this also.
Thanks,
D
I read the article about it. Extra Virgin Olive oil is always been
my favorite ingredient whenever I make my salad, but other than an
ingredient in salad dressing, I discovered that extra virgin olive oil
is very good in soothing skin irritation and inflammation, and it can
even stop a new pimple from developing. Olive Oil is considered a healthy oil because it contains monounsaturated fat (omega 9) and polyphenols (a potent antioxidant). Study
shown that the intake of Extra Virgin Olive Oil can help prevent heart
disease, colon cancer and osteoporosis and its application to the skin
can help prevent skin cancer. I found a website that agrees with this, Orange County Oncologists. Cheers!
Funny timing, I was going to open a thread on the skin cancer subject today. While everyone reacts differently to sun and chemical exposure, I’ll add another voice to those asking you guys to be careful.
I got the hated ‘no more sun’ notification last week due to the squamous cell and basal cell cancer spots that I have, especially on my face and neck and that band where your trunks sit low and your vest (this is mostly pre-rash guard days) doesn’t quite cover. I’m really thankful that I can still surf- just have to limit my sessions to early mornings and very rainy days, and be thoroughly covered. Still, it represents a major change in the way one lives: no more long beach days with the kids, summer sessions with my brother or my buddies, even have to be careful about going on hikes with the family.
As a note: every time I’d glass, and later ever time I’d work with PU, all those little spots would light up like a Christmas tree: get deeper and redder over the next few days, open up and stay open for the best part of a week. I tried hats, and bandanas, and a full-face mask, and it just didn’t do the trick. So, no glassing at all (it seems really strange to have someone else glass or repair) my boards, and only wood shapes for the time being.
Like everyone else who has worked in this business, I have plenty of examples of friends who rarely protect themselves, and even in their fifties or sixties have no apparent problems due to either sun or chemicals. But since you don’t know until you do develop something, better to head it off. I’m 37, and that feels pretty young to be dealing with this crap.
I’ll look into the olive oil- if anyone has any diet or other suggestions they’re more than welcome.
Mahalo.