Does chemo cause new cancer and does chemo leave the body once treatments end?
There are a number of chemotherapy drugs, each used for a specific cancer. They all leave the body and are excreted mostly through the kidney via urine or the liver via feces. Rarely, people will get rid of certain drugs through the lungs or respiration or the skin through sweat. Many drugs leave some mark. The taxanes used to treat breast, lung and prostate cancer usually effect a person’s fingernails. Doxorubicin, used in a number of cancers causes hair loss and after therapy, the hair often grows back a different color or consistency.
I have a question for the doctor – on my right inner thigh there is a non-cancerous lymph node. It is not cancerous, more like a fatty tissue. What can I do without having surgery to remove it? But if I have to have surgery, what do you think the cost of surgery would be and what are the side effects of having surgery?
I cannot give specific advice, not having seen the mass. I will say that the only way to remove something is usually through surgery. I would advise you to talk to a doctor about seeing a surgeon. Ask about the costs and the the risks of complications. I will say that benign lymph nodes and fatty nodules that can be mistaken for lymph nodes are common and often only need to be removed if they are bothering the patient.
What’s the chance that smoking marijuana could cause cancer?
We do not have studies to quantify the risk of marijuana use and cancer. This is because:
- the legal status of marijuana makes doing studies difficult and
- the number of marijuana users who smoke tobacco is high, making analysis of any study difficult.
We do have studies to show that marijuana smoke has about half the 80 or so carcinogens found in tobacco smoke. I am not ready to say smoking marijuana is safe from a cancer perspective. There are definite cancer-causing agents in marijuana smoke. The cancers caused by marijuana are likely the same as those caused by tobacco. Tobacco is linked to at least 12 cancers, including cancers of the lung, head and neck, esophagus, bladder and even leukemia.
Every time I use a Bluetooth headset, I get a headache. Is there a reason for that?
I cannot think of a reason for the functioning of a Bluetooth headset to cause headaches. I wonder if you might be holding the device in your ear by tensing muscles on the side of your head. People frequently get headaches from poorly-fitting eyeglasses due to this mechanism.
Does smoking weed daily cause cancer?
There are many carcinogens in marijuana smoke and therefore evidence that it can cause cancer. A rule of science is the more one is exposed to a carcinogen or series of carcinogens, the greater one’s risk of developing cancer.
Are there any health-related risks of smoking hookah?
Hookah which can involve burning tobacco and substances other than tobacco and filtering it through water, still involves the inhalation of smoke products which contain carcinogens, just as smoking cigarettes does. One hookah session averages the equivalent of smoking ten cigarettes. Hookah, like tobacco, causes cancer. I also worry about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cardiovascular disease. These are caused by tobacco smoke. Indeed, cardiovascular disease from tobacco use kills more people than cancer from tobacco use.
Dr. Otis W. Brawley currently serves as professor of hematology, oncology, medicine, and epidemiology at Emory University. From April 2001 to November 2007, he was director of the Georgia Cancer Center at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, and deputy director for cancer control at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University.
Dr. Brawley is a graduate of University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency at University Hospitals of Cleveland, Case-Western Reserve University, and a fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute. He is board certified in Internal medicine and medical oncology.
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