15 Cancer Symptoms No Man Should Ignore

You eat pretty well (some days) and work out (most days). But if you’re like a lot of men, a trip to the doctor isn't on your to-do list. That can be bad if it means you brush off early signs of cancer.

One of the best ways to fight the disease is to catch it in the early stages, when it’s more treatable. The problem is that the warning signs for many kinds of cancer can seem pretty mild.

Take a look at these 15 signs and symptoms. Some are linked more strongly to cancer than others, but all are worth knowing about -- and even talking over with your doctor.

1.         Problems When You Pee

Many men have some problems peeing as they get older, like:

•           A need to pee more often, especially at night

•           Dribbling, leaking, or an urgent need to go

•           Trouble starting to pee, or a weak stream

An enlarged prostate gland usually causes these symptoms, but so can prostate cancer. See your doctor to check on the cause of the problem. He’ll give you an exam to look for an enlarged prostate, and he may talk to you about a blood test (called a PSA test) for prostate cancer.

2.         Changes in Your Testicles

"If you notice a lump, heaviness, or any other change in your testicle, never delay having it looked at," says Herbert Lepor, MD, urology chairman at New York University Langone Medical Center.

"Unlike prostate cancer, which grows slowly, testicular cancer can take off overnight." Your doctor will look for any problems with a physical exam, blood tests, and an ultrasound of your scrotum.

3.         Blood in Your Pee or Stool

These can be among the first signs of cancer of the bladder, kidneys, or colon. It's a good idea to see your doctor for any bleeding that’s not normal, even if you don't have other symptoms.

Although you're more likely to have a problem that's not cancer, like hemorrhoids or a urinary infection, it's important to find and treat the cause.

4.         Skin Changes

When you notice a change in the size, shape, or color of a mole or other spot on your skin, see your doctor as soon as you can. Spots that are new or look different are top signs of skin cancer.

You’ll need an exam and perhaps a biopsy, which means doctors remove a small piece of tissue for testing. With skin cancer, you don't want to wait, says Marleen Meyers, MD, an oncologist at NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center.

5.         Changes in Lymph Nodes

Swollen lymph nodes, small bean-shaped glands found in your neck, armpits, and other places, often signal that something's going on in your body. Usually, they mean your immune system is fighting a sore throat or cold, but certain cancers also can make them change.

Have your doctor check any swelling that doesn't get better in 2 to 4 weeks.

6.         Trouble Swallowing

Some people have trouble swallowing from time to time. But if your problems don’t go away and you’re also losing weight or vomiting, your doctor may want to check you for throat or stomach cancer.

He’ll start with a throat exam and barium X-ray. During a barium test, you drink a special liquid that makes your throat stand out on the X-ray.

7.         Heartburn

You can take care of most cases of heartburn with changes to your diet, drinking habits, and stress levels. If that doesn’t help, ask your doctor to look into your symptoms. Heartburn that doesn't go away or gets worse could mean stomach or throat cancer.

8.         Mouth Changes

If you smoke or chew tobacco, you have a higher risk of mouth cancer. Keep an eye out for white or red patches inside your mouth or on your lips. Talk to your doctor or dentist about tests and treatments.

9.         Weight Loss Without Trying

Pants fitting a little looser? If you haven’t changed your diet or exercise habits, it could mean that stress or a thyroid problem is taking a toll.

But losing 10 pounds or more without trying isn’t normal. Although most unintended weight loss is not cancer, it’s one of the signs of cancer of the pancreas, stomach, or lungs. Your doctor can find out more with blood tests and tools that make detailed pictures of the inside of your body, like a CT or PET scan.

10.       Fever

A fever is usually not a bad thing -- it means your body is fighting an infection. But one that won't go away and doesn’t have an explanation could signal leukemia or another blood cancer. Your doctor should take your medical history and give you a physical exam to check on the cause.

11.       Breast Changes

"Men tend to ignore breast lumps because breast cancer isn't on their radar," Meyers says. "But 1% of all breast cancers occur in men, although they're usually diagnosed much later."

Don’t take any chances. If you find a lump, tell your doctor and have it checked.

12.       Fatigue

Many types of cancer cause a bone-deep tiredness that never gets better, no matter how much rest you get. It’s different from the exhaustion you feel after a hectic week or a lot of activity.

If fatigue is affecting your daily life, talk to your doctor. She can help you find the cause and let you know if there are ways to treat it.

13.       Cough

In nonsmokers, a nagging cough is almost never cancer. Most go away after 3 to 4 weeks. If yours doesn’t, and you’re short of breath or cough up blood, don't delay a visit to your doctor, especially if you smoke.

A cough is the most common sign of lung cancer. Your doctor can test mucus from your lungs to see if you have an infection. He may also give you a chest X-ray to check for another problem.

14.       Pain

Cancer doesn’t cause most aches and pains, but if you’re hurting for more than a month, don’t just grin and bear it. Ongoing pain can be a signal of many types of cancer, especially those that have spread.

15.       Belly Pain and Depression

It’s rare, but depression along with stomach pain can be a sign of cancer of the pancreas. Should you worry? Not unless this cancer runs in your family, Meyers says. Then you need to see your doctor.

Culled:

15 Cancer Symptoms No Woman Should Ignore

 Women's bodies are always changing. Sometimes changes that seem normal can be signs of cancer, though.

The key is to pay attention to your body so you can notice when something's different, says Robyn Andersen, PhD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. "New symptoms indicate something has changed in your body, and you want to know what that means."

So, what should you watch for?

1.         Breast changes

Most breast lumps aren't cancer, but your doctor should always check them. Let her know about these changes, too:

• Skin dimpling or puckering
• Nipples that turn inward
• Nipple discharge
• Redness or scaling of your nipple or breast skin

To look for the cause of your symptoms, your doctor will do a physical exam and ask you questions about your medical history. You may also have tests like a mammogram or a biopsy, when doctors remove a tiny piece of tissue for testing.

2.         Bloating

"Women are natural bloaters," says Marleen Meyers, MD, an oncologist at NYU Langone Medical Center. "It's OK to wait a week or two to see if it goes away."

If your symptoms don't get better with time, or if they happen with weight loss or bleeding, see a doctor. Constant bloating can sometimes mean ovarian cancer. 

You'll have a pelvic exam as well as blood tests, and sometimes an ultrasound, to look for the cause of the problem, Andersen says. 

3.         Between-Period Bleeding

If you’re still getting periods, tell your doctor if you’re spotting between them. Bleeding that’s not a part of your usual monthly cycle can have many causes, but your doctor will want to rule out endometrial cancer (cancer of the lining of your uterus). 

Bleeding after menopause is never normal and should be checked right away.

4:         Skin Changes

A change in the size, shape, or color of a mole or other spot is a common sign of skin cancer. See your doctor for a thorough exam and perhaps a biopsy. This is one time you don't want to wait, Meyers says.

5.         Blood in Your Pee or Stool

Talk to your doctor if you're bleeding from a part of your body that normally doesn't, especially if the bleeding lasts more than a day or two, Meyers says.

Bloody stool is often from hemorrhoids, but it can also be a symptom of colon cancer. Bloody urine is usually the first sign of cancer of the bladder or kidneys.

6.         Changes in Lymph Nodes

Lymph nodes are small, bean-shaped glands around the body. Most changes in them come from common infections. But some cancers, including leukemia and lymphoma, can also cause lymph nodes to swell.

It's a good idea to see your doctor if you have a lump or swelling anywhere in your body that lasts a month or more, Meyers says.

7.         Trouble Swallowing

Occasional trouble swallowing is nothing to worry about. But when it happens often, especially with vomiting or weight loss, your doctor may want to check you for throat or stomach cancer. 

He'll look into your symptoms with a throat exam and a barium X-ray. During a barium test, you drink a special liquid that makes your throat stand out on the X-ray.

8.         Weight Loss Without Trying

Most women wish extra pounds would magically melt away. But losing 10 pounds or more without a change in your diet or exercise habits could signal a problem.

Most unintended weight loss is not cancer, Meyers says. It's often caused by stress or your thyroid, but it can be a sign of pancreatic cancer. Stomach and lung cancers are also possible. 

Your doctor may ask for a lot of tests to look for a problem, including blood tests and imaging tests, like a CT scan.

9.         Heartburn

Too much food, alcohol, or stress (or all three) can cause serious heartburn. Meyers suggests that you change your diet for a week or two to see if your symptoms get better. 

If that doesn't help, talk to your doctor. Heartburn that doesn't go away or gets worse could mean cancer of the stomach, throat, or ovaries.

10.       Mouth Changes

If you smoke, watch for white or bright-red patches inside your mouth or on your lips. Both can signal oral cancer. Ask your doctor or dentist about tests and treatment.

11.       Fever

A fever that doesn’t go away and can't be explained could mean leukemia or another blood cancer. Your doctor should get the details of your medical history and give you a physical exam to check for the cause.

12.       Fatigue

A lot of women are tired because they lead hectic lives. But extreme tiredness that won’t go away isn’t normal.

Talk to your doctor if your fatigue never gets better or if you have other symptoms, like blood in your stool. Your doctor will ask for your complete medical history and give you blood tests. 

13.       Cough

Most coughs go away on their own in 3 to 4 weeks. Don't ignore one that lasts longer than that, especially if you smoke or are short of breath. If you cough up blood, go to the doctor. A cough is the most common symptom of lung cancer.

14.       Pain

Cancer doesn’t cause most aches. But ongoing pain can signal bone, brain, or other cancers. Ask your doctor about any unexplained aches that last a month or longer.

15.       Belly Pain and Depression

It’s rare, but belly pain plus depression can be a sign of pancreatic cancer. Should you worry? Not unless pancreatic cancer runs in your family, Meyers says. "Then you need a prompt [exam]."

Culled:

Erectile Dysfunction in Married Men: Real Causes And Solutions

 

Many people associate erectile dysfunction with growing older; and married men are more susceptible to the problem. But the simple truth is, Erectile dysfunction (ED) is NOT a natural part of aging. Men can have loving, fulfilling, and active sex lives well into old age.

ED is more common than people realize. According to the US National Institutes of Health, approximately 5 percent of men age 40 and between 15 percent and 25 percent of men age 65 experience ED on a long-term basis.

In the USA alone, an estimated 30 million men struggle with ED. The risk of erectile dysfunction increases with age but is not caused by age. About 40 percent of 40-year-olds struggle with ED and 70 percent of 70-year-olds have the same problem.

More and more researchers are recognizing the link between sexual health and chronic diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. The more advanced these diseases are, the more at risk a man is of erectile dysfunction.

ED has a strong association to cardiovascular disease. Studies have found that ED may precede a patient's heart attack by five years.

Many people don’t realize that ED actually starts when a man doesn't sustain his erections for as long as he or his partner would like. The good news is that ED can be corrected, and often times, reversed. Several studies have shown that changing your diet, exercise levels or other health habits have been shown to improve the symptoms of ED in men.

Correcting Erectile Dysfunction:

1.         Exercise
A study of almost 300 racially diverse men showed that physical activity was linked to improved sexual function and erectile dysfunction symptoms. More studies have revealed that men were able to improve ED symptoms after regular exercise.

2.         Quit Smoking
An extensive study showed that men with ED who were able to quit smoking cigarettes were able to improve their ED symptoms after one year, compared to the men who continued their tobacco habit.

3.         Diet
A study found that men who chose a more Mediterranean diet and ate more vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains and olive oil improved their vascular health and "reduced the prevalence of ED in men with the metabolic syndrome."

4.         Weight
A massive study surveyed over 30,000 men between the ages of 53 and 90 years old and found that men who became obese had a 40 percent increased risk of developing ED than those who didn’t become obese.

It's never too late to make a lifestyle change. However, too often physicians treat ED with erectile enhancement drugs and ignore the underlying problems, but those pills may not be all that they claim to be.

According to research, Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra have less than a 50 percent refill rate, despite the happy guys that you see on the television commercials. And for those that continue taking them, these erectile-enhancing drugs impact your whole body and can produce dangerous side effects outside of the much talked-about four-hour erection.

A 2010 study from the Archives of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery demonstrated that men over age 40 who were taking erectile dysfunction drugs had a doubled risk for hearing loss.

So if things in the bedroom aren't quite what they used to be, first see your doctor to rule out other underlying health concerns. Then follow your doctor’s prescription and recommendations.

Adapted:

EXERCISE…It’s Not Just For Great Hips!

A lot of women, especially wives, desire to look good, fit and trim. Many admire the catwalk of model on stage and wish they could fit into the clothes of these models. But having a great body sometimes comes down to exercise and your willingness to stay in shape.

 

But exercise isn't simply all about fitting oneself into great clothes. Perhaps you hate to exercise. Even the promise of a weight loss or an Omotola Ekiende / Angela Jolie look won’t be enough to lure or move you to the gym.

Well, here are more important benefits of getting at least 30mins of activity/ workout five days a week.

• Exercise Lowers Heart Disease risk by 40% 
• Exercise Lowers Breast Cancer risk by 20%
• Exercise Lowers Depression risk by 30%
• Exercise Lowers Hypertension risk by 40%
• Exercise Lowers Type 2 Diabetes risk by 58%

So, let’s hit the roads and do some workout!

Stats from American College of Sports Medicine

Being Mindful May Guard Against Belly Fat

Being self-aware may help reduce your risk of obesity, a new study contends. Researchers looked at more than 400 people in New England and found that those with higher levels of what is known as dispositional mindfulness - an awareness and attention to current feelings and thoughts - had less belly fat. They were also less likely to be obese than those with lower levels of such mindfulness.

Specifically, people with low levels of this type of self-awareness were 34 percent more likely to be obese and to have a bit more than a pound of belly fat than those with higher levels of self-awareness, the investigators found.

The study was published Oct. 19 in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

Dispositional mindfulness is not the same as meditation, the Brown University researchers explained.

"This is everyday mindfulness," study author Eric Loucks, an assistant professor of epidemiology, said in a university news release. "The vast majority of these people are not meditating."

Previous research has shown that mindfulness can help people overcome cravings for unhealthy foods, and it may also help people overcome their reluctance to start exercising, Loucks added.

"That's where the mindfulness may come in. Being aware of each and every moment and how that's related to what we do and how we feel," he explained.

While the effects of mindfulness on weight and belly fat are significant, they are not huge, the scientists said.

"Awareness seems to be enough to have a small to medium effect. Then there is the question of what could we do to increase it," Loucks said.

He pointed out that this study found an association, but did not prove that higher mindfulness levels actually cause weight loss. Further research is needed to determine if that's the case.

Loucks' next study will examine whether mindfulness helps people adhere to doctor-prescribed healthy lifestyle regimens, such as changing eating habits or getting more exercise.

- Robert Preidt

Reducing Sugar From Diet Boosts Kids' Health Immediately

 

Removing most of the sugar from a child's diet can immediately improve health, even if the diet still contains the same amount of calories and carbohydrates as before, a new study suggests.

Researchers put a group of 43 obese kids on a nine-day diet that severely restricted sugar intake, but replaced added sugars with starchy foods to maintain the children's intake of calories and carbs.

That diet caused immediate reductions in their high blood pressure and improvement in their blood sugar and cholesterol levels, the investigators found.

"Every aspect of their metabolic health got better, with no change in calories," said study author Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in San Francisco. "This study definitively shows that sugar is metabolically harmful not because of its calories or its effects on weight. Rather, sugar is metabolically harmful because it's sugar."

The finding raises serious concerns about the health effects of sugar, and calls into question the longstanding belief that "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie," regardless of its food source, said Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, director of metabolic support in the division of endocrinology, diabetes and bone disease at Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in New York City.

"It's an important study that adds to the weight of evidence, and really calls out for us to examine the fact that eating patterns, and what a healthy eating pattern is for the American public, are as important as total caloric intake," said Mechanick, who is president-elect of the American College of Endocrinology and a past president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

For the study, researchers recruited kids aged 8 to 18 who were obese and had at least one other chronic metabolic problem, such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels or signs of insulin resistance.

The study only involved black and Hispanic kids, because of their higher risk for certain conditions associated with metabolic syndrome, such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.

The researchers provided the study participants with nine days of food, including all snacks and drinks.

The menu was crafted to be kid-friendly, but restricted foods loaded with added sugars such as high-sugar cereals, pastries and sweetened yogurt.

All of the foods -- which included turkey hot dogs, potato chips and pizza -- came from local supermarkets, and researchers provided starchy carbs from foods such as bagels, cereal and pasta to replace the carbs that normally would have come from sugary treats.

The end result: kids consumed the same amount of carbs, but their total dietary sugar intake dropped from 28 percent to 10 percent.

The children were given a scale and told to weigh themselves every day. If they started to drop weight drastically, they were given more low-sugar foods so that weight loss could be discounted as a factor in any positive health effects that might occur.

After just nine days on the sugar-restricted diet, virtually every aspect of the participants' metabolic health improved without a huge change in weight.

Blood pressure began to move toward normal, and levels of triglycerides and LDL ("bad") cholesterol decreased. Fasting blood glucose went down by 5 points, and insulin levels were cut by a third, the findings showed.

"We took kids who are sick and we made them healthy," Lustig said. "We didn't completely reverse it, but within 10 days we went a very long way in reversing their metabolic dysfunction, with no change in calories and no change in weight."

Other studies have shown that sugar can have bad metabolic effects outside of promoting weight gain through additional calories, Lustig said.

The sugar contained in foods is made up of two simple sugars called glucose and fructose, and studies have found that fructose can promote cellular aging, he said.

Fructose also acts directly upon the reward system in a person's brain, causing them to crave more sugar. "The more sugar you get, the more you want," Lustig said.

These findings show that people would do well to follow dietary guidelines that already encourage them to limit sugar intake and eat more fruits and vegetables, Mechanick said.

However, he noted that the study involved only a handful of kids over a short amount of time, and needs to be replicated in a larger group.

"It's an important study to file along with the total weight of evidence," Mechanick said. "Obviously, it's going to need to be corroborated in a different setting and a different population."

The study was published online Oct. 27 in the journal Obesity.

HealthDay

The Secret To Staying Slim May Be Just Be As Close As Your Fruit Bowl

The food sitting out on your kitchen counter offers clues about your weight, a new study reveals.

Cornell University researchers photographed kitchen counters in more than 200 American homes and then checked the weight of the women living in those houses.

Women who had breakfast cereal sitting on the counter weighed 20 pounds more than women who didn't have cereal boxes on display. And women in homes with soft drinks sitting on the counter weighed 24 to 26 pounds more than those living in homes without soft drinks on the counter, the investigators found.

"It's your basic 'see-food diet' - you eat what you see," lead author Brian Wansink, professor and director of Cornell's Food and Brand Lab, said in a university news release.

"As a cereal lover, that shocked me. Cereal has a health-halo, but if you eat a handful every time you walk by, it's not going to make you skinny," he explained.

On the flip side, women who had a stocked fruit bowl on their countertops weighed 13 pounds less than women without the easily accessible fruit.

Although this study found an association between what was on the counter and a person's weight, it wasn't designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

The study was published online recently in the journal Health Education and Behavior.

"We've got a saying in our lab: 'If you want to be skinny, do what skinny people do.' If skinny people make their homes 'slim by design' by clearing the counters of everything but the fruit bowl, it won't hurt us to do the same," Wansink said.

- Robert Preidt