May is the perfect time time of year to assess your risk of skin cancer and get everything you need for summer sun protection. May is also officially Skin Cancer Awareness Month which means it’s a great time to find free skin cancer screenings and sun protection resources.
Now is definitely the most auspicious time to think about skin cancer and your skin, and it’s also great timing. As the weather warms, if you live north of the equator, you’ll start spending more time outside, wearing short sleeved shirts, shorts, swimsuits….. and that means sun damage and DNA mutations to last a lifetime. Decisions, or lack of decisions, that you make this summer can and will affect the future of your skin’s potential for skin cancer.
While sun safety is the most important element of skin cancer prevention, certain natural compounds also play a vital role in your skin-cancer defense.
Resveratrol: the first natural medicinal to have solid evidence behind it showing that it blocks or stops many stages of cancer. Resveratrol not only helps prevents cancer, it’s being proposed as an additional treatment.
Pomegranate: research is unveiling that most pomegranate fruit parts—its juice, peel, oil, seed, flowers, bark, roots—are known to possess enormous antioxidant activity with benefits especially for the skin: UVA- and UVB-induced damage control, to skin regeneration, hyperpigmentation control, to collagen production, chemopreventative activity, and matrix metalloproteinase inhibition. Pomegranates have also been shown to enhance the topical effectiveness of sunscreens.
Vitamin E and Vitamin C: Free radical damage may lead to cancer. Skin cancer prevention requires the elimination or reduction of free radicals. Vitamin E and Vitamin C as natural supplements are powerful free radical fighting antioxidants.
Polyphenals: these potent antioxidants also help with skin cancer prevention by fighting free radicals, the unstable molecules that are the major cause of aging and disease, prior to the formation of cancer cells
Tumeric: contains a substance called curcumin which may help stave off cancer due to its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immune-stimulating benefits
Vitamin D3: research has indicated that higher levels of vitamin D3 are associated with a decreased risk of skin cancer and a lower risk of death from any cause
Vitamin K: can destroy certain types of cancer cells, protect the skin, and may prove useful in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and aging
Many more vitamins and antioxidants help in the prevention and fight against cancer.
Dr. Salerno recommends 5 nutritional supplements to boost the body’s natural defense:
Anti-Aging Factor
Salerno Factor Multi-Vitamin
Vitamin D-K Factor
Greens First – a phyto-nutrient rich superfood
Greens First Berry – an antioxidant rich superfood
Your first line of defense against skin cancer is prevention, but early detection can ensure that when skin cancer does strike you receive the best possible outcome from treatment.
