Most advice on avoiding cancer can be followed painlessly enough: Don’t smoke; limit sun exposure; eat healthy, low-fat foods; exercise regularly. None of these requires time in a doctor’s office. Follow these words of wisdom, and we’ll be fine, correct? To an extent, yes: a healthy lifestyle can help minimize visits to the doctor, and countless studies show the positive...

“Location, location, location”— this is a popular maxim among real estate agents and home buyers, determining the price and desirability of a property. But it also has some relevance in the fight against cancer, with debates about which countries have the lowest cancer rates and/or the highest survival rates. Can we increase our life­span by where we live? Prevent cancer...

Illustrating the magical elements commonly associated with prayer is a final scene in the Coen Brothers’ film, O Brother Where Art Thou? Everett, played by George Clooney, gets down on his knees and prays to God to save him and his three buddies from being hung by the movie’s villain. The moment Everett finishes praying, a tidal wave crashes through...

Chances are we all know someone who has had breast cancer. The most common cancer to afflict women, it accounts for 29 percent of all cancers suffered by women, followed by lung cancer at 14 percent and colorectal at 9 percent. The pink ribbon designating support of breast cancer research is ubiquitous, so we know there’s lots of research ongoing...

Prostate cancer and PSA scores have gotten a lot of airtime and print for a variety of reasons, ranging from media exposure like pharmaceutical ads to celebrity survivors of the illness. Testicular cancer may not have as much media play at the moment or as many diagnoses (8,000 new diagnoses every year, compared to 200,000 for prostate cancer), but its...

With the concept of “pre-existing conditions” making front-page news in the ongoing tug-of-war focused on U.S. health care, it is not surprising that an increasing number of Americans are making more of a concerted effort to track their family health history. Research reveals that regular check-ups and informative websites barely scratch the surface when it comes to family legacies. Indeed,...

Sexual intimacy is one way couples bond and reaffirm their affection for and their attractiveness to one another. For patients living with a breast cancer diagnosis, those affirmations are more important than ever. But getting intimate can be complicated when your libido is compromised by the very drugs you hope will cure you. Women living with a breast cancer diagnosis...