Cancer RiskApr 29, 2026
A single high iron or ferritin reading on your blood work is not a cancer diagnosis. But it's not meaningless either. Large cohort studies and meta-analyses link very high serum iron with increased incidence and mortality from several cancers, especially liver and breast. At the same time, other equally large studies find no overall increased cancer risk with higher ferritin, and some even show lower risk or mortality at higher levels. The picture is messy, and the details matter far more than the headline number.
One large health-system study found that people with markedly elevated ferritin had about 1.9 times higher odds of a new cancer diagnosis, with the strongest associations in blood, liver, and lung cancers. That sounds alarming in isolation. But ferritin rises for a long list of reasons that have nothing to do with cancer, and the connection varies dramatically depending on the type of tumor.
CancerApr 28, 2026
The scalp is one of the highest-risk locations on the body for skin cancer, yet it is also one of the least examined. Clinicians frequently skip thorough scalp checks, and patients can't easily see what's growing under their hair. That combination of biological aggressiveness and delayed detection is what makes scalp skin cancers stand apart from the same tumors elsewhere on the body.
Despite being a relatively small area, the scalp accounts for a disproportionately high share of squamous cell carcinomas and other keratinocyte cancers. Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) on the scalp carries local recurrence rates of roughly 6 to 10 percent and lymph node metastasis rates around 7 to 9 percent, numbers that earn it a "high-risk" classification. Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is still the most common malignant scalp tumor overall, followed by cSCC, with melanomas and rarer tumors also occurring in this location.
CancerApr 28, 2026
Melatonin does something unusual that most antioxidants cannot: it protects your healthy cells' DNA while simultaneously making cancer cells worse at fixing themselves. This dual behavior, supporting genomic stability in normal tissue and undermining it in tumors, makes melatonin one of the more fascinating molecules in DNA damage research. It is not just passively blocking damage. It actively participates in repair chemistry and flips its role depending on the cellular context.
The practical tension here is real. A molecule that enhances DNA repair in one setting and deliberately impairs it in another raises important questions about who benefits, at what dose, and under what circumstances.
Skin HealthApr 28, 2026
The nose is the single most common site on the face for non-melanoma skin cancer. It protrudes, it catches sun year-round, and its complex anatomy makes both removal and repair a challenge. But the research is clear on what determines whether nasal skin cancer comes back: clean surgical margins. When surgeons achieve clear margins, recurrence sits around 6%. With positive (incomplete) margins, it climbs to roughly 24%.
That fourfold gap makes the surgical approach one of the most consequential decisions in treatment, sometimes more so than the specific type of cancer itself.
Colon CancerApr 28, 2026
For years, six months of chemotherapy after surgery was the default for stage 3 colon cancer. That's changing. Large pooled trials now show that for a significant portion of patients, three months of treatment delivers similar survival with far less long-term nerve damage. The difference comes down to your specific tumor characteristics, and increasingly, to biomarkers that didn't exist in routine practice a few years ago.
Stage 3 means the cancer has reached nearby lymph nodes but hasn't spread to distant organs. Surgery removes the tumor and affected lymph nodes, and then "adjuvant" chemotherapy (treatment given after surgery) works to eliminate any microscopic cancer cells left behind. The real question isn't whether to do chemo. It's how much you actually need.
