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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Are You Protecting Your Children from Future Deadly Skin Cancers (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

Are You Protecting Your Children from Future Deadly Skin Cancers (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:12:42
Publish Date: 2020-06-06 18:59:26
Description: Most people have heard of a skin disease called melanoma, a deadly cancer that can affect children and adults alike.   Do you know anything about what triggers this tumor and, more importantly, do you know how to lower your children's lifetime risk of ever developing this horrible disease? Stay tuned as we discuss all of this in this installment of Portable Practical Pediatrics Image by Pixabay Musical Intro Summer Means Fun in the Sun As I post this podcast, we just celebrated Memorial Day 2020, the beginning of summer when we start enjoying meals with family and friends, long summer days,  beach trips, and most significantly, the warmth of the summer sunshine.  All that sounds great but there is a darker side to the long days of sun, however. All that lovely sunshine may cause enough skin damage to initiate an extremely dangerous skin cancer called melanoma in your children- years after the sunburn-especially if the sun damage comes in the form of a blistering sunburn.  In fact, just one blistering sunburn in a young child doubles their chance of melanoma in their lifetime.  The more burns, the more risk. But while melanoma makes up just 10% of all types of skin cancer, it causes the overwhelming majority of skin cancer-related deaths. It is the gorilla in the room when it comes to skin cancer deaths, even in children.  So, let's explore this cancer a little closer, shall we? What is Melanoma: Skin cancers come in a variety of types, but the most deadly form is a cancer of the pigment producing cells in the skin called melanoma, the cells that give your children's skin color by producing a pigment called melanin. These pigment producing cells are located very close to the surface of your children's skin and are therefore quite susceptible to damage from the UV rays of the sun. You would think that children with darker skin, and therefore more melanin, would be more likely to develop melanoma, but the opposite is true. The children most likely to eventually develop melanoma are those that have very pale skin, who burn in the sun rather than tan. Other risk factors for melanoma are a child having a high numbers of moles, freckles, red hair, blue eyes, as well as a family history of melanoma. Fair skinned children have dearth of pigment which allows the high energy UV sun rays to penetrate more deeply into the child's skin and cause DNA damage that can trigger melanoma. In fact, melanoma, is thought to have a wider variety of genetic mutations than any other type of human cancer and these gene mutations are mostly caused by exposure to sunlight-especially when your child is young. In other words, melanoma is a disease triggered by damage from sunlight in genetically susceptible-fair skinned children and adults. And most importantly, it is preventable! Melanoma Good News But there is some good news when it comes to melanoma in children. From 2006 to 2015, the number of melanoma cases  in teens, in the US has actually decreased by about 5% after decades of rising. This is great news! This means that the preventative steps that public health advocates, pediatricians, and dermatologists have been stressing are being taken seriously and have been implemented by parents. We want this trend to continue, and hopefully we’ll also see this trend in adult cases. Unfortunately, the most recent research shows that  adult cases of melanoma continue to increase but maybe that will change soon as well. How Do Parents Prevent Melanoma in their Children? So, we now know that melanoma and other skin cancers are mostly preventable, especially if that prevention starts early a child's life. But how does a parent make sure their children are protected? Here is my list of action points for you to commit to memory and start implementing if you have not already done so: Use Sunscreen: This likely comes as no surprise. Sunscreen of 15 SPF or greater has been proven to be an effective way of protecting yourself from ...
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