Melanoma: The Invisible Threat
What is Melanoma? Can it Happen if You Live in a Cave?
Most people associate skin cancer with sun exposure, but there are places on the body that can develop skin cancer without sun exposure.
Melanomas can occur behind the eye, in the mouth, in personal areas where it can become quite aggressive.
There are structures in the body where the derivation of the cells are from stem cells. Melanoma can also occur internally in non-skin areas composed of related cells. A person will only know they have the problem when it reaches the skin. Most melanoma is dark (though some have no color at all).
Prevention: For the vast majority of skin cancers, avoidance of excessive light exposure is most important. Those mentioned briefly above cannot be prevented because we have no real control over them. These rarer growths can happen even if you live in a cave.
Media attention to breast cancer is obviously justifiable - one in ten women can become victim to breast cancer, while one in 75 might be the victim of melanoma. Yet, metastatic melanoma is potentially even more lethal than breast cancer, and increasing numbers of people are hit with it.
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