World Cancer Day: Your FAQs On Cancer Answered By the Expert

Does a lump always mean cancer? That and much more answered by an expert cancer specialist

Get the record straight on myths around Cancer (Photo: iStock)

Google ‘cancer’ and a million pages will be slapped on your face. And the number of ‘cancer cure’ videos on YouTube are equally overwhelming. Too much of that information is inaccurate, misleading and will send you in panic mode. No two cancers are alike. Cancer is not just a tumour in the body and it’s a group of more than 200 diseases.

On World Cancer Day, we got Dr Shubham Pant, Medical Oncologist and Associate Professor of Medicine in Oklahoma City to join us for a discussion on FIT’s social media platforms.

Watch the informative session below, it’s simple, easy, jargon-free and based on evidence rather than rhetoric and anecdotes.

Myths Debunked

Some very important questions were thrown open, like do men get breast cancer? Well, the truth is that breast cancer is not always pink. Anyone with breast tissues can get breast cancer. Medically 1 in 1000 men are diagnosed with this disease, that’s fewer than 1% of all breast cancers but that is not comforting to the 2,500 men who get breast cancers.

If men feel a lump in their chest wall or their armpits, they should contact a doctor because men get breast cancers too.

Dr Shubham Pant, Medical Oncologist

And then a lot of people wanted to know the ‘deadliest cancer’. The fact is that the disease kills more than a million Indians annually and affects many more. It is the second biggest killer after heart ailments, and the diagnosis is pretty shattering. According to Dr Pant, it all depends on the time of diagnosis.

Diet plays a major role after the diagnosis of cancer.

Cancer has a sweet tooth. Artificial sugars should be cut down from the patient’s diet because they get absorbed in the patient’s bloodstream to provide energy to the cancer cells. 

The World Health Organisation notes that in 10 years, the number of cancer cases in India will multiply five times, with a higher spike in women than men. So it’s otherwise also sensible to cut down on artificial sugars because an overall healthy diet will avoid weight gain and reduce your risk of cancer.