Surprising Causes of Skin Cancer

I was clicking around on the internet and was on a story that talked about how cheap drugstore brands are more effective at helping aging skin look younger than the expensive skin care lotions (don’t judge, you know you want to read that article too), when I saw a sidebar with the story headline “Surprising Causes of Skin Cancer“. Of course, I had to click on it.

Right away, this article caught my attention. Did you know that people who consumed citrus at least once a day had a 36 percent higher skin cancer risk compared with those who consumed citrus fewer than two times a week, according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology? Wait, what? Citrus is supposed to be good for you, right? Well, apparently you shouldn’t be drinking your mimosas or eating your grapefruit while sitting outside on the patio. One of the doctors from the study was quoted as cautioning people to wait a few hours after eating citrus before being exposed to the sun. Ummm, well, if you’re drinking orange juice, more than likely it’s in the morning. So, I guess the lesson is, make sure you slather that sunscreen on every morning.

The next one really threw me for a loop: men who used Viagra were 84 percent more likely to develop melanoma over a period of ten years in one JAMA Internal Medicine study. Ummm, really? I mean, were these friskier men getting busy in the great outdoors without protection – sun protection (you have a dirty mind) is what I meant. Now, there are no studies that prove causation, just correlation. Two totally different things there. But it is intriguing to wonder if let’s say the genetic causes of erectile dysfunction (and I never thought I would be typing that in my blog) and melanoma susceptibility are linked? Or something in the medication makes your skin less able to repair itself because all of the blood was going in a different direction? Moral of the story, if you or someone you love is popping the little blue pill, make sure that they are also getting their skin checked regularly by a dermatologist.

The other risk factors, like having more than 11 moles on your right arm or intermittent sun exposure (like when people from the northern climes go on a tropical vacation once a year and roast themselves to a crisp), are ones that I’ve already seen in other articles. But having more than one alcoholic drink per day, or suffering from an auto-immune disease upping your risk are two that I hadn’t seen before. And those are the two that are most applicable to me. I mean, I don’t have an alcoholic drink every day, but I’m not a teetotaler either. And my bout with psoriasis is the whole reason why I ended up even finding out about my melanoma.

Did any of these risk factors come as a surprise to you?