We like to talk about inner beauty, but outer beauty matters, too, especially as a bellwether of health.  And when it comes to skin health, nothing is a greater concern than melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.  Melanoma is strongly linked to sunburn during childhood and adolescence, but it can strike women (and men) in areas that rarely receive any sun exposure.  Melanoma is a difficult cancer to treat; after years of research, the only reliable treatment has been to surgically remove the malignant growth before it becomes more than one millimeter thick.  The World Health Organization estimates that there are about 48,000 deaths from melanoma around the world each year.

So it’s pretty exciting to read about a newly released study from the University of Bonn, Germany, in which a “designer molecule” fights melanoma in two ways at the same time.  In one line of attack, the molecule acts like a virus, which alerts the body’s immune system to power up and start attacking the tumor cells.  In the other line, the molecule uses an aspect of RNA discovered in 2006 by two Nobel laureate scientists to “switch off” a specific gene in the tumor cells, essentially driving them to suicide more reliably than if you’d forced the cells to watch 24 straight hours of reality TV.

The disguised-as-a-virus approach tricked the immune system of the research subject (in this case, a mouse) into aggressively attacking its own malignant cells as though they were an infectious body, while the suicide strategy took advantage of a natural self-destruct mechanism that exists within all cells and keeps them from becoming out-of-control cancer cells.  The bottom line of this experiment was that in mice, the double-assault tactic inhibited the growth of melanoma cells that had metastasized to the lungs, and even shrank or eliminated secondary tumors.  The researchers caution, however, than what works in mice doesn’t always work in humans, and that more work and study is needed.  Fair enough.  But it’s safe to say that after years of having nothing but surgery in our arsenal to fight this dangerous cancer, any new advance is a reason for hope.

In the meantime, limit your sun exposure, wear sunscreen, and be sure to get a skin check every year from your general practitioner or a dermatologist.  In fact, if you go to your dermatologist for something as routine as Botox, have a skin check while you’re there.  Having a suspicious mole removed once in a while is infinitely preferable to enduring melanoma, no matter how much you like the idea of bronzed skin.  That’s what self-tanners are for.  That way, you can ensure that you stay healthy so you can enjoy being beautiful.  And by the way, if you can only afford one skin care product, make it a moisturizing sunscreen with an SPF of at least 45.

Stay beautiful,

Debi & Eva