Charlotte Parker, Author at Oral Cancer News

Experts warn that new “smokeless” tobacco products are still dangerous

Source: FOX21News Author: Tracee Tolentino DULUTH - The tobacco industry is offering new products and finding new ways to attract and keep customers. However, health advocates say the new products are just as dangerous, and the customers are getting younger and younger. "Most 6-year-olds, if you queried them, they would know who Joe Camel is," said Michele Hughes of the Douglas County Health Department. Now, with the introduction of new smokeless tobacco alternatives, there are new ways that young adults can get hooked to nicotine. “They’re out there as the ‘good guy’ or look, these aren't quite as harmful, but indeed these are deadly products that lead to a lifetime of addiction and this is an industry that is out for our youth,” said Pat McKone of the American Lung Association of Minnesota. Many new tobacco products are more appealing to younger customers, with bright packaging, candy flavors and the illusion of a "safer" nicotine delivery source. McKone warns that these products are tricks. The alternative products include forms of snuff, chewing tobacco, e-cigarettes or snus, which are spit-less tobacco pouches that users place under their upper lip. "These products are to enable people to keep using nicotine and nicotine delivery systems until they can get out to smoke," said McKone. The popularity of these products has increased as more states have adopted smoking bans for workplaces and businesses. Minnesota’s ban is already in place and in July, Wisconsin will follow suit. “80% of current adult smokers started between the [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-04-19T22:29:13-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Busting the myth of the cervical cancer vaccine

Source: Temple University Press Editorial by: Gkramer Adina Nack, author of Damaged Goods? Women Living with Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases, draws on her expertise as a sexual health researcher to discuss the impact of human papillomavirus (HPV) on men and the need for gender-neutral STD vaccines. When I wrote my book, Damaged Goods? I focused on how living with contagious, stigmatizing, medically incurable (though highly treatable) infections transformed women’s lives – medically, socially and psychologically. I had included a discussion of the Gardasil vaccine, which had received FDA-approval and CDC recommendation for ‘routine’ use in girls and women (ages 9 to 26) back in 2006, and I had articulated some of my concerns about the delayed testing and approval process for ‘male’ Gardasil. A family of viruses, HPV is an ‘equal opportunity infector,’ so why have HPV vaccines not been equally accessible for men as well as women? In a recent interview on Huffington Post, several blog posts of my own, and my new feature article, “Why Men’s Health Is a Feminist Issue” (Ms. Magazine,Winter 2010), I investigate the substantial public health costs that result from HPV vaccines, such as Gardasil, not having been originally developed, tested and approved as gender-neutral vaccines. The narrow and inaccurate marketing of Gardasil as a female-only, “cervical cancer” vaccine has distracted us from public discourse about this family of sexually transmitted viruses that are not only a U.S. epidemic but also a global pandemic. In the U.S., HPV is estimated to affect 75% of adults and certain strains are known [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-23T22:33:02-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Mike Strantz remembered for visions

Source: Thepilot.com Author: Howard Ward He was a commanding figure. He wore his hair long, his mustache bushy, and he was a big guy, ruggedly handsome. Mike Strantz didn’t look like a man who would go easily, and he didn’t. He fought the cancer with the same determination that he approached a property that dared him to build a golf course on it. I was fortunate enough to do two interviews with Strantz, shortly after the opening of Tobacco Road in Sanford, one of his architectural triumphs, and again while he was applying the finishing touches to Tot Hill, an amazing course laid out on a challenging piece of land in Asheboro. Both of those golf courses tell you a lot about Mike Strantz, the golf course designer. But his widow, the lovely Heidi, can tell you a lot more about Mike Strantz, the husband and father of two beautiful daughters. Heidi Strantz talked about her late husband and the love of her life during a meeting of the Carolinas Golf Reporters and the South Carolina Golf Ratings Panel last weekend at Seabrook Island Resort, and it was both inspirational and moving. “I thought I was marrying a golf course superintendent when I married Mike,” she recalled. “He had just graduated from the turfgrass school at Michigan, and we thought he would make a career of that.” Mike definitely knew how to make grass grow, and he enjoyed working the land. He was on the scene at Inverness during the [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-23T14:15:57-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Reynolds tobacco closer to buying smoking cessation products company

Source: Beasley Allen Law Firm Author: Kurt Niland Reynolds American, the second largest American producer of cigarettes and other tobacco products, is in the advanced stages of negotiating a purchase of Niconovum, a Swedish company that manufacturessmoking cessation. If the deal works, as it appears it will, it shows the determination of the tobacco giants to cash in on the “whole cycle of a smoker from the first puff to the last piece of gum,” said Chip Brian, a business analyst for SmarTrend. Based in Helsingborg, Sweden, Niconovum produces nicotine-replacement therapies (NRTS), smoking cessation products designed to provide users with a smokeless form of nicotine relief. Niconovum’s products are Zonnicpouches (small bags containing a nicotine powder that users put beneath their lips), Zonnic “pepparmint” [sic] mouth spray, and Zonnic gum. SmarTrend’s analyst points out that both Reynolds and the Altria Group, owner of Philip Morris USA and other tobacco product companies, ownpharmaceutical companies, but Reynolds’ purchase of Niconovum would be the first time a tobacco giant marketed and sold a smoking cessationproduct. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the potential deal would mark the latest and most dramatic move by Reynolds into nicotine products that represent alternatives to cigarettes.” “Sales of cigarettes in the U.S. have been declining for years, prompting Reynolds to move into products that studies have shown present much smaller health risks than cigarettes,” the WSJ explains. Reynolds’ acquisition of Niconovum might seem contradictory and even hypocritical, but it makes good sense for the tobacco company. Somesmoking [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-04-19T22:30:41-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Are e-cigarettes too good to be true?

Source: Beasley Allen Law Firm Author: Kurt Niland I have that “born late” feeling. I quit smoking before I had a chance to “smoke” electronic cigarettes, the latest and most overtly sci-fi smoking cessation tool to come along in my lifetime. My first attempt to quit smoking was in 1989, 4 years after I started smoking, when my college roommate yanked a brand-new pack of smokes out of my hand and chucked them to the middle of a retaining pond near our New Mexico State dorm. I had given Keith my permission to do that or something like it “if you ever catch me with a pack of cigarettes again,” which was about seven hours earlier that same day. Subsequent attempts to quit involved Zyban, nicotine gum, nicotine patches, nicotine lozenges, various herbal “de-tox” remedies, and Chantix. I even bought this little gadget that punched holes in my cigarettes, allowing most of the smoke to escape through the filter. As ingenious as that device seemed to me, it was as frustrating as trying to drink with a broken straw. After a minute of sucking air, I simply got another straw that wasn’t broken. Eventually, the only method I had left to try was the primitive, old-fashioned cold turkey method. Had electronic cigarettes been around when I was trying to quit, I assure you, I would have bought them. The idea of an alternative cigarette is so appealing that many smokers probably have conceived of a fake cigarette at some point in their lives. I remember [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-18T10:39:18-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Oral cancer survivor wins fourth straight Iditarod

Source: CNN Author: Tracy Sabo (CNN) -- Lance Mackey rode into Nome, Alaska, and the record books, becoming the first musher to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race four times in a row. The 39-year-old throat cancer survivor from Fairbanks completed the 1,049-mile race in 8 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 9 seconds on Tuesday, the second-fastest finish in race history. "Even the doctors who said I would never race dogs again doubted what I was able to do," he said. "You know, people are easy to judge and doubt somebody's ability, but the mind is a very powerful thing." Among the throngs that boisterously cheered as Mackey pulled up to the burled arch on Nome's Front Street was his father, Dick Mackey, the 1978 Iditarod champion. "You've done something that will never be repeated, son," the senior Mackey said as he greeted his son with a hug. "I told my Dad I think I got one more in me, though," the younger Mackey said later. Mackey has dominated the sport in recent years and is the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 Iditarod champion. He was inducted into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame in February "for capturing multiple titles in two of the world's longest sled dog races." Mackey is also a four-time champion of the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest race from Fairbanks to Nome, as well as the record-holder for the most (four) consecutive first place finishes in that race. On Tuesday, Mackey took home $50,000 and a [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-04-19T22:31:12-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

George vs. The Dragon

Source: ESPN.com Author: Rick Reilly DAY 17: Tuesday, March 9, 7:30 a.m. -- Denver Nuggets coach George Karl pops in his mouthpiece and puts on his helmet and braces himself for a brutal 15 minutes, but this isn't football. This is cancer radiation. We're at Denver's Swedish Medical Center. The helmet is actually a white, hard-mesh mask that fits to every contour of Karl's big bucket head. It has red crosses all over it, like a hockey goalie's. He lays his 283 pounds on the table and the technicians clamp the mask on hard. How Karl breathes I'll never know. They secure his limbs and ask him to hold a blue plastic donut so no part of him moves. He looks like Hannibal Lecter about to get fried. "It makes you a little claustrophobic," the 58-year-old coach tries to say through the mask. "But what are you gonna do? Leave?" Coaching the wildly talented but wildly uneven Nuggets is hard enough, let alone doing it with throat and neck cancer, but that's what Karl is trying to do. Everybody tells him it's not possible, and today, maybe he's starting to believe them. With only three of his torturous six weeks of treatment done, and the inside of his mouth looking like he just took 100 bites out of a lava-hot pizza slice, and his head throbbing and his eyes hollow, Karl looks like a guy who should be on a stretcher, not an NBA bench. "George, this is only going [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-18T09:51:54-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Office-based ultrasound-guided FNA found to be superior in diagnosing head and neck lesions

Source: American Academy of Otolaryngology Author: Jessica Mikulski Office-based, surgeon-performed, ultrasound-guided, fine needle aspiration (FNA) of head and neck lesions yields a statistically significant higher diagnostic rate compared to the standard palpation technique, indicates new research in the March 2010 issue of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery. FNA is a diagnostic procedure used to investigate superficial lumps or masses. In this technique, a thin, hollow needle is inserted into a mass to extract cells for examination. FNA biopsies are a safe minor surgical procedure. Often, a major surgical (excisional or open) biopsy can be avoided by performing a needle aspiration biopsy instead. FNA biopsies in the head and neck have also proven to be an invaluable tool in establishing the diagnosis of lesions and masses from a broad range of sites, including the thyroid, salivary glands, and lymph nodes. The efficacy of ultrasound-guided FNA has been well documented in many areas of the body, leading to its acceptance as the standard of care among radiologists and many cytopathologists. However, while the utility of ultrasound in the head and neck is widely appreciated and employed by the radiology community, clinicians in the United States have not embraced office-based ultrasound. The study authors sought to provide additional evidence and support for this procedure in order to ensure appropriate use by the clinical community. In this randomized, controlled trial of 81 adults, researchers divided participants into two groups, using either ultrasound-guided or traditional palpation-guided FNA to evaluate an identified head and neck mass. [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-11T18:54:05-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer survivor tells his experience with smokeless tobacco

Source: Lifestyles Author: Nicole Printz Just like the trucks on every corner in Abilene, rings on back jean pockets are a common sight. Gruen Von Behrens, who visited Abilene High School on Wednesday, knows all about smokeless tobacco. He began with snuff at 13 years old. He asked the packed high school auditorium if the students knew someone who smoked cigarettes. A sea of hands rose at the question, with almost the same number rising for his next question – did they know someone who used smokeless tobacco? “I think about half our school smokes or uses smokeless tobacco,” Dynae Whiteley, a junior, said. “I mean, not to get anyone in trouble or anything.” “I have friends and relatives that use tobacco,” said senior Matt Bowers. “I think smokeless tobacco is safer because the use of cigarettes affects more people through second-hand smoke. Smokeless tobacco only affects that person.” Collin Sexton, a sophomore, also thought smokeless tobacco would be safer than smoking. Dynae Whiteley and Paige Piper, both juniors, thought all tobacco was “equally bad.” According to the Communities That Care 2009 survey, 23.1 percent of Dickinson County students sixth through 12th grade have used smokeless tobacco, and 27.4 percent had smoked a cigarette. Almost half of all seniors in Dickinson County had smoked a cigarette at least once. This statistics are almost double the state average. Von Behrens, one of the eight members of the National Spit Tobacco Education Program’s speakers bureau, continued his life story. He said “not [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-08T10:41:41-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Radiotherapy-induced skin changes and quality of life

Source: The Lancet Oncology Author: Julie B Schnur Quality of life is broadly recognized within oncology as an essential component of cancer care and has been studied extensively in patients with breast cancer.1 Yet, among the three pillars of breast cancer treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy), research on radiotherapy-related quality of life has lagged behind. Specifically, the study of quality of life as it relates to normal tissue effects in patients with breast cancer is woefully understudied. The reasons for this relative lack of attention are unclear, but the results are worrying. Insufficient understanding of the effects of radiotherapy on quality of life can impair doctor—patient communication, inhibit therapeutic progress, and limit a patient's understanding of radiotherapy and its outcomes. Therefore, the report of the START trials today in The Lancet Oncology, by Hopwood and colleagues, is much needed. 2 It makes an important contribution to the area of radiotherapy by looking at several aspects of quality of life (breast, arm, and shoulder effects, and body image). In doing so, these researchers show a consideration of the patient's point of view that is too often absent. The study's findings provide a strong foundation for further pursuit of understanding of the patient's experience of adverse skin changes after radiotherapy. Indeed, at least five areas of future research are readily apparent. 40% of women reported moderate or striking concerns for at least one body image item up to 5 years after treatment, and body image concerns did not differ between radiotherapy regimens. [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-04T12:20:58-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

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