Loving the skin you’re in

“Invest in your skin.  It is going to represent you for a very long time.” – stylist Linden Tyler 

Escaping to a beach resort to get some sun is a common dream at any time of the year, with some of us aiming to achieve that seemingly beautiful golden tan.  This article is by no means meant to rain on that proverbial parade but simply to provide some awareness of a disease that continues to plague thousands of people every year. Based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are roughly 78,000 new cases of melanoma in the United States each year.  Although melanoma accounts for only about 1% of all skin cancers diagnosed in the United States, it causes the most deaths from skin cancer.   

Worldwide, an estimated 324,635 people were diagnosed with melanoma in 2020.  In 2023, an estimated 97,610 adults in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive melanoma of the skin. In this country, it is the fifth most common cancer among both men and women.   

Melanoma occurs when melanocytes (the cells that produce pigment in the skin) become damaged, mutate and start growing unchecked.  A common misconception of melanoma is that it occurs only on some parts of the body. However, it can actually occur anywhere – even on patches of skin that are never exposed to the light of day.  This indicates that UV radiation exposure is not the only cause of melanoma.   

While there’s a chance that those who develop melanoma inherited the genetic mutations from a parent, the American Cancer Society said gene changes related to melanoma are typically acquired during a person’s lifetime and, in some instances, seem to happen randomly within a cell.   

The Mayo Clinic has stated that there may be additional environmental factors that damage the DNA in skin cells and cause melanoma, but the cause of cell damage isn’t always clear.  The following should be considered environmental risk factors: 

• Having fair skin;  
• A history of sunburn;  
• Excessive UV light exposure; 
• Living closer to the equator or at a higher elevation; 
• Having more than 50 ordinary moles on the body; 

• A family history of melanoma;  
• Having a weakened immune system from disease or medication;  
• Excessive abnormalities.  

There has been a new type of immunotherapy that enables T-cells to fight cancer cells and is proving helpful for people suffering from melanoma.  Researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston found that a high-fiber diet improves the effectiveness of the therapy.  By analyzing the gut microbiome in hundreds of patients, the researchers discovered that higher dietary fiber was linked with disease nonprogression among patients receiving immune checkpoint blockade therapy, compared with patients eating little fiber.  The results were strongest in patients who ate the most dietary fiber but did not take probiotics.   

The studies on skin cancer are a reminder that for all our efforts to preserve our skin cosmetically, perhaps the best thing we can do is to eat right, stay out of the sun and visit our dermatologist for an annual skin checkup.  

Reach Giovanni Roselli at gio@giovanniroselli.com.