Take one cancer scenario: EGFR-mutation-positive adenocarcinoma of the lung. This is one subset of lung cancer not uncommonly encountered.

In the US, 10,000 such cases are diagnosed each year; in the world, about 100,000.

In Malaysia, a guess estimate would be 800. The treatment of choice for this subset of lung cancer is either gefitinib or erlotinib.

The cost of treatment is RM10,000 a month (S$4,000). This covers the cost of the drug and other incidentals.

How long must the patient take this cancer drug? The answer is, “as long as the drug works”.

Which only begs the next question: “How long will the drug work?”

And this is the tricky part. In some patients, the drug is no longer effective after two months.

In about 5% of patients, the drug keeps the cancer in check for four years or more.

The rest lie in between.

You will have to budget between RM20,000 and RM480,000 for this treatment, for this particular cancer.

Take another scenario: metastatic cancer of the colon, K-RAS wild type.

Again, the number of patients with this cancer is not small, almost as many as the lung cancer subset we discussed.

Seminar after mind-numbing seminar, we are taught that the best results for patients with this subset of colon cancer are obtained if you use up all six effective drugs: 5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, oxaliplatin, cetuximab, and bevacizumab.

We are also taught that liver metastases (spread to the liver) should be resected whenever possible.

If we do our best for patients with this cancer, some will live for six months, and some other fortunate ones live four years or more.

And the cost of treatment? Between RM240,000 and RM1.5mil.

For more, read: Planning a budget for cancer treatment

Why waste all your hard-earned money on treatment with no guarantee results when you can fork out a small sum for your yearly health screening?… where chances of recovery are high when you catches cancer early…

He died just a day after Apple unveiled its latest bauble, the iPhone 4S, at an event that Jobs usually presided over with singular showmanship. It was the first such presentation in years where Jobs did not take the stage in his signature jeans and black turtleneck.

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple said in a statement. “His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.”

Jobs stepped away as CEO of the company he helped turn into a tech titan in August, citing his failing health. He was replaced by Tim Cook, but continued to serve as the company’s chairman.

Apple’s homepage currently bears an image of the company’s co-founder, top, and advised those wishing to send condolences to email them to rememberingsteve@apple.com.

His former rival, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, paid tribute to Apple’s creative visionary, calling him a colleague, a competitor and a friend.

“The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come,” Gates said in a statement. “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”

Apple has also put up the following website in memory. They’re asking for “thoughts, memories, and condolences” to be shared by way of this email address: rememberingsteve@apple.com

Jobs announced to his employees in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a tumor in his pancreas, eventually undergoing a pancreaticoduodenectomy that seemed to have removed the tumor. Health concerns continued to plague him, though; in 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant, and took a medical leave of absence in January to focus on his heath.

In a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, Jobs spoke movingly of his decision to drop out of college and his 1984 ouster from Apple, before delving into his cancer diagnosis. Although pancreatic cancer has a high mortality rate, Jobs said he took the news in stride.

Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene Powell, their three children Reed Paul, Erin Sienna and Eve, and a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from a previous relationship.

Source: Reuters

Some people suffer so greatly that they are willing to take the risks, but what of the people who haven’t been properly informed? Here are some potential side effects from common prescription drugs that patients should watch out for:

Hypertension: It’s ironic that a common disorder that is often treated pharmacologically would also be caused by other drugs. However, it is true that there are many prescriptions that cause an increase in blood pressure. Some common drugs for fibromyalgia as well as anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and corticosteroids can cause hypertension. Untreated high blood pressure can lead to a host of other problems, such as cardiac arrest, stroke, and kidney failure.

Suicidal thoughts: Unfortunately, there are many drugs that can lead people to experience suicidal thoughts. Some of the medications are used to treat fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, or help people with smoking cessation. Unfortunately, people who are experiencing depression might be prescribed a drug that simply makes it worse, and – it goes without saying – suicidal thoughts can often lead to suicide.

Liver damage: There are numerous drugs that can lead to liver damage, including medications used to treat epilepsy, high cholesterol (statin drugs), and pain and inflammation (again, NSAIDs). Untreated damage to the liver can lead to myriad problems, such as liver cancer, failure of the liver, and chronic liver disease.

Kidney damage: There are numerous prescription drugs on the market that can cause kidney damage. Some of them include chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, and high blood pressure medications. Kidney damage that is untreated can lead to renal failure.

It’s tragic that when people trust their physician to make them well, they’re given a medication that can leave them worse off than when they started. Medications are not always safe, and people need to be aware of the potential dangerous and deadly side effects they could experience because they chose to blindly take something that was supposed to heal them.

Source: Natural News

You do not have to resort to medicine. Stay healthy simply means early detection and prevention. Come to MJLife for your regular health screening and see for yourself how your health can be managed.

In the US, 10,000 such cases are diagnosed each year; in the world, about 100,000.

In Malaysia, a guess estimate would be 800. The treatment of choice for this subset of lung cancer is either gefitinib or erlotinib.

The cost of treatment is RM10,000 a month ($US3,300). This covers the cost of the drug and other incidentals.

How long must the patient take this cancer drug? The answer is, “as long as the drug works”.

Which only begs the next question: “How long will the drug work?”

And this is the tricky part. In some patients, the drug is no longer effective after two months.

In about 5% of patients, the drug keeps the cancer in check for four years or more.

The rest lie in between.

I will tell you with a straight face and an unwavering voice that you will have to budget between RM20,000 and RM480,000 for this treatment, for this particular cancer.

And yet despite this range, I will be perfectly correct and scientifically sound.

Take another scenario: metastatic cancer of the colon, K-RAS wild type.

Again, the number of patients with this cancer is not small, almost as many as the lung cancer subset we discussed.

Seminar after mind-numbing seminar, we are taught that the best results for patients with this subset of colon cancer are obtained if you use up all six effective drugs: 5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, oxaliplatin, cetuximab, and bevacizumab.

We are also taught that liver metastases (spread to the liver) should be resected whenever possible.

If we do our best for patients with this cancer, some will live for six months, and some other fortunate ones live four years or more.

And the cost of treatment? Between RM240,000 and RM1.5mil.

If my figures are wrong, they are wrong on the conservative side.

In HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer, two molecularly targeted drugs are used: trastuzumab and lapatinib.

They are usually used together with conventional chemotherapy.

Again, the answer to the question, “How long must the patient be on the drug?” is “Until the disease becomes worse.”

And this can be anything from six months to five years or more.

Stopping treatment prematurely will make the disease that much worse.

The cost of treatment is very high. Trastuzumab also costs about RM10,000 per month.

The sad thing is that many patients go off treatment because they can no longer afford it…

Source: Money, Money, Money

However, most of the reasons boil down to the need to maintain the image of masculinity. Traditionally, men are expected to be stoic, tough, able to withstand stress, able to take care of themselves and earn for the family. They are taught not to cry easily; minor cuts and scars are to be seen as badges of masculinity. Therefore, medical check-ups are certainly not on their agenda.

A check-up is traditionally viewed as something for kids and pregnant mothers. Hence, health check-ups are viewed by men as something feminine. Once a boy has grown up to become a teenager, clinic visits are important only when he is sick enough to call for help, and not even if there is only a minor ailment.

However, this trend is slowly changing after years of campaigns on the importance of health check-ups and healthy lifestyles by various authorities and non-governmental organisations. Now, more men are interested in going for health check-ups.

For example, men whose parents died of heart disease early in life have substantial risk of heart disease and therefore need earlier assessment of their cholesterol level; men who smoke and have diabetes may need cholesterol treatment at a lower threshold than men who don’t; men who have erectile dysfunction may have undiagnosed hypertension which needs intervention, and so on and so forth.

Hence, it is important for you to visit your doctor for a comprehensive health check-up and determine what tests are needed.

Screening tests are not diagnostic. This misunderstanding might be a little difficult to explain, but I’ll try. A screening test is performed to identify people who might have a particular disease. It merely identifies those who have high risk (or chances) of contracting a disease.

To be more specific, a good screening test should be able to differentiate whether we are at higher risk or lower risk of a disease from our own baseline risk. If our baseline risk of a disease is negligible, a screening test result would not be informative; and worse still, it may cause unnecessary anxiety.

Therefore, it is meaningless to have a screening test done before even knowing our own baseline risk.

Source: Recalcitrant men

Smoking does cause mouth cancer as well. It is called oral cancer, which comes under a broader group called oropharyngeal cancer (cancer of the mouth or throat). When detected early, oral cancer is almost always cured.

But unfortunately, so many people still present it at such a last stage. Oral cancer is more common in men than women because men tend to smoke more frequently.

Relatively speaking, oral cancer is easy to detect, but so many people still present it at a late stage? This is because this type of cancer is usually confused with other mouth, lips, tongue, cheek and throat diseases. Many people also overlooked the importance of having ENT (ear, nose, throat) screening in their yearly checkup, thinking it’s not important.

Also oral cancer is usually painless. So the hapless patient might think that innocent-looking swelling in his/her cheek is due to an ingrown wisdom tooth rather cancer. Most oral cancer are on the lips (easy to see), tongue or the floor of the mouth (easy to feel).

Things you have to look out for include:

• A sore in your mouth that doesn’t heal. Or if it keeps on increasing in size (mouth cancer)
• Lumps in your mouth that don’t go away (mouth cancer)
• White read or dark patches inside your mouth that persist, or anything out of the ordinary that wasn’t there before (mouth cancer)
• Persistent pain in your mouth (mouth cancer)
• Repeated bleeding in the mouth
• Thickening of your cheek (mouth cancer growing inside the soft tissue)
• Difficulty chewing, swallowing or moving your tongue (tongue cancer, mouth cancer, oropharyngeal cancer)
• Difficulty moving your jaw, swelling or pain in your jaw (mouth cancer, salivary gland cancer)
• Soreness in your throat or the feeling that something is caught in your throat (oropharyngeal cancer)
• Pain around your teeth (gum cancer)
• Loosening ofy our teeth (gum cancer)
• Numbness of your tongue or elsewhere in your mouth (tongue cancer, mouth cancer, gum cancer, salivary gland cancer)
• A lump in your neck (salivary gland cancer)
• Bad breath

Tobacco use is one cause, which can gbe either smoking or chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco exposes your inner cheek and inner surface of the lips to mutation.

Another is excessive alcohol drinking. Apparently, about 90% of people who have oral cancer have used some form of tobacco and about 75% of the same people are frequent drinkers of alcohol. If you use both toacco and alcohol, your risk is much higher.

Another risk factor is chronic denture irritation caused by poorly fitting dentures. If you smoke and drink alcohol on top of that, these ill-fitting dentures might trap the tobacco and alcohol particles and prolong your mouth’s exposure to them.

If you expose yourself to excessive ultraviolet light (sunlight), it may also cause oral cancer, particularly on the lips. It has been found that one out of three people with lip cancer have jobs or lifestyles that necessitate them being outdoors for long periods of time.

So, do not overlook that cancer can grow in the mouth as well. Make sure you include ENT in your regularly checkup plan. That’s why a comprehensive screening is important for today’s complex and hectic lifestyle society. Start your health management journey today and schedule a health screening. You will be amazed.

Source: NST Fit4life, Sunday 2 March 2008 Health At Large

Image courtesy: Oralcancerfoundation.org

Cervical Cancer

• Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer occurring in women, after breast cancer.
• Worldwide, every two minutes, a woman dies of cervical cancer.
• Globally, more than 270,000 deaths occur each year from cervical cancer.
• There are an estimated 500,000 reported cervical cancer cases each year, with more than 80% in developing countries.
• In Asia Pacific, an estimated 266,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed each year, with approximately 143,000 dying from the disease.
• In developing countries, only 41% of women will get the treatment they need to survive.
• Cervical cancer affects women in the prime of their lives, often while they are working and are still responsible for their children and wider family.

Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer among Malaysian females after breast and colorectal cancer. In 2006, cervical cancer accounted for 9.1% of all female cancers in Peninsula Malaysia .

Screening programmes using Pap smears are an important early detection tool, but normal Pap Smear do not detect all pre-cancerous lesions or cancer. Screening programmes can identify abnormal and pre-cancerous cells on the cervix; they do not prevent the cause of cervical cancer and abnormal cells, ie persistent infection with cancer-causing HPV types .

Excerpt: HPV and cervical cancer

There are 2 types of Pap Smear test in the market. Do take note that Pap Smear Thin Prep method should be used whenever possible for more accurate screening of cervix.

This is contributed by the global changes of population growth, longevity, urbanisation, mechanisation, obesity, and lifestyle.

At present, the highest number of people with diabetes is in Europe and America. It is predicted that by 2025, the number of diabetes sufferers in Asia would exceed 100 million.

Diabetics are often afflicted with many complications – eye problems, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, and leg amputations.

In Malaysia, the prevalence of diabetes has increased; 4% in the 1980s, 8.3% in 1996, to 14.9% in 2006 – an increase of 250% over 20 years!

It is predicted that if this trend continues, one in every five adult Malaysians above the age of 30 would be diabetic.

Unfortunately, there are challenges in managing this condition in Asia, and Malaysia is no exception. There is inadequate understanding of the disease among patients and some healthcare providers.

Prevention is always better than cure. Click here to sign up as MJ Life Health Screening VIP and get your health managed for life!

Excerpt: Foot At Risk

2. Strategic Joint Venture with NCI to Setup 34 new Screening  Centres In Mainland China.

3. MJ Being Voted as 3rd Ideal Health Care Brand for Business People by Business Today.

4. MJ Beijing Being Selected as Chinese Health Management Model Platform.

5. MJ Shanghai, Taiwan, Total 5 Health  Management Centres Achieved ISO 9001  standard 2008 International Authentication.

6. MJ Signed Agreement for new HSC Setup in Nansha, Haiko  and Shenzhen city in China.

7. MJ is Awarded as 10 Years Leading Brand of Health Management in China & Top 10 Health Management Brands in China.

8. Mandarin Version of the Wellness Letter (University of California, Berkeley) is launched!

9. MJ Awarded by Frost & Sullivan, 2010 Asia Pacific Region  Product Differentiation Award  For Pathology  Services

10. Launched of MJ PRP –   Patented Medical Cosmetic Product

From Cancer Facts & Figures 2010