10/31/2022
Timothy Chapman
Every year, Breast Cancer Awareness month runs from Oct. 1 and ends on the 31. Medical experts from all over the world educate people on the importance of taking care of one’s health.
Sabash Chauhan, professor and chairman of the immunology and microbiology department at the UTRGV school of medicine, recommends women to attend regular check ups because they are susceptible to breast cancer.
“So breast cancer is probably the most diagnosed cancer in women. It is really a big deal when women deal with breast cancer because at least every 1 in 5 women are going to experience this problem in their lifetime,” said Chauhan.
He said there are many contributing factors as to why individuals develop breast cancer.
“Now, I will say stress is one the more major contributor. If we see prolonged stress in women or in men, that’s how our biological machine is cliffed by the stress.” Chauhan said. “Stress endues a lot of chemokines and a lot of cytokines or we can say biochemicals which are triggering the overall cancer process.”
Certified General Surgeon at UT Health RGV Dr. Vijian Dhevan said people don’t have to schedule an appointment with a doctor if they believe something is wrong within their bodies.
“Who knows your body the best? You do. What I always tell patients that come and see me is, once a month while you are in the shower feel your own body if you feel something, go see a primary care doctor, who then can do a formal breast exam if needed,” Dhevon said.
Dhevon said he wants to emphasize how breast cancer affects men also and how important it is for people to not ignore health problems.
“It’s human nature sometimes to sweep things under the carpet and say, ‘you know what, out of sight out of mind’, but these are things I highly, highly stress to patients. We have to do early detection, early intervention, Dhevon said. “Sometimes when you have early detection, early treatment,the treatment is very short and you go the rest of your life never having to worry about this again.”
Dr. Chauhan said he gives credit to the hard working scientists who have exhausted their lives in finding research to improve breast cancer treatments and lower the mortality rate caused by the disease.
“So in general, we are seeing like 90, more than 90% survival rate in breast cancer, but this all happened because a lot of investment was done for cancer research,” said Dhevon.
For more information on breast cancer awareness, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
This is Timothy Chapman for Vaquero Radio.
