MSI Press Blog

  Probably, most people would not connect sleep deprivation and cancer, but some new research indicates there might be a connection. There appears to be as well a connection between sleep deprivation and obesity and between obesity and certain kinds of cancer.  According to various research projects, long-term sleep deprivation can affect the body's biological clock, which controls sleep and other functions, potentially raising the odds of cancers such as breast, colon, ovarian, and prostate. Night owls can be particularly at risk. Exposure to light during overnight shifts for several years can reduce levels of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate sleep and may also have a role in preventing cancer growth. Here are a couple of the websites:  Does Sleep Affect Cancer Risk? | American Cancer Society  and  How does being a night owl impact quality of life and why? . For other Cancer Diary posts, click  HERE . Blog editor's note: As a memorial to Carl, and simply because it is

Carl, so proud in his new, smaller, fully fitting Scott vest   Indeed, several months before Carl was diagnosed with advanced metastatic cancer (stage 4), he lost quite a bit of weight. Nearly 50 pounds overnight. Now, he was big, very big. Any weight loss, in our thinking at the time, was to be applauded. And so, he ordered s smaller Scott vest and showed off his new slimmer self. (Not slim, mind you, but slimmer -- he was still nearly 300 pounds when he died.) What we did not realize -- and I certainly wish we had is that such a weight loss is not to be celebrated. It is a sign of dying, or at least, of advanced cancer. Instead of showing off his success ("achieved" -- more accurately, "experienced" -- though he was not on a particularly regimented diet), he should have been rushing to his doctor and asking, "What is wrong with this picture?" Perhaps, hopefully, the doctor would have figured out the cancer diagnosis early enough to do something about it,