Dr. Satya Krishna

Skin is a very vital organ of your body as it protects your body from external injuries and also helps in regulating your body temperature. The gradual development of cancer cells on your skin region is known as skin cancer. Skin cancer is a very common disease that is affecting people worldwide. Many causes are responsible for skin cancer.

Some of them are stated as follows:

• Overexposure to sun rays. The Ultraviolet rays can cause serious damage to your skin that can lead to cancer.
• Sun burns may also result in the development of cancer cells
• Frequent exposure to toxic chemical substance can also trigger skin cancer.
• A frail immune system may also contribute to skin cancer.
• Certain scars on your skin, if left untreated, may become cancerous and eventually lead to skin cancer.
• Consuming unhealthy foods and being unhygienic may also lead to skin cancers.

Skin cancer may develop all over your body or on any particular region of your skin. It can spread to other parts of your body rapidly. The symptoms of skin cancer depend on the type of your cancer.

Some of the common symptoms of skin cancer are as follows:

• A sore on your skin that cannot be healed
• Swelling of your skin
• You may also get an itching sensation frequently
• Appearance of bumps
• Bleeding of the affected areas
• Appearance of reddish spots
• A bleeding mole

Skin cancer is absolutely curable if treated at an early stage. Ayurveda offers effective remedies for treating skin cancer.

They are mentioned below:

1. Panchakarma therapy is the most effective treatment for healing skin cancer. It involves purification and removal of harmful toxins from your body through its 5 constituent therapeutic treatments namely, Vamana, Virechana, Nasya, Basti and Raktamokshana.
2. Drinking green tea can be very helpful. It is known to have anti cancerous properties which help prevent and combat this killer.
3. Including more of citrus food in your diet such as lemons, oranges; excluding oily, fried foods and cutting down on higher quantities of sugar can prove to be beneficial.
4. Applying turmeric paste on the affected areas may help you to guard against skin cancer.

You must not ignore skin cancer and seek advice from a doctor as early as possible since the process of metastasis (spreading of cancer cells to different spots of your body) is very rapid in this case.

Are you fed up of tweezing, shaving or waxing the unwanted hair, then laser hair removal is the right option for you. Unwanted hair removal from different parts of the body is not only time consuming, but is also a very boring chore, which needs to be carried out on regular intervals. On top of it, the process is accompanied with the worry of bruising skin and often resulting in patches. With laser hair removal, the process has become easier and hassle free.

As per the laser hair removal process, a laser beam hits the individual hair follicle after passing through the skin. The intense heat of the laser damages the hair follicle, which inhibits future hair growth. Laser hair removal effectively slows hair growth and typically takes multiple laser hair removal sessions to completely get rid of the unwanted hair. The laser hair removal is most opted for areas such as female facial hair, bikini line hair and back hair for men. The process is most suited for people with light skin and dark hair.

Laser hair removal therapy has been classified in five methods. Although they are all different, but they function on one same principle of converting light to heat producing effect of laser. Lasers can selectively target dark, coarse hairs while leaving the surrounding skin undamaged. The process does not require any recovery time which allows one to return to work immediately.

1. Ruby Laser Hair Removal was the first cosmetic laser hair removal system. The wavelength of this laser is 694 nm. The laser damages the hair follicles keeping surrounding tissues and structures in the skin safe. It gives long term hair free results and any hair regrowth is thinner, finer and patchier than previous growth. The built-in cooling system continuously cools the skin and is least painful in comparisons with other laser hair removal systems. It can be used on small areas of skin and slow laser repetition rate resulting in better and long treatment times.
2. Alexandrite Laser Hair Removal works in a similar manner as the Ruby Laser hair removal system. The wavelength used in this system is 755 nm, which is in the red infrared part of the light spectrum. It is the fastest available laser hair removal treatments. It has excellent penetration rate and can cover large areas of skin. It also work great on albino skin and freckled skin, on which many other laser hair removal systems are ineffective. It is effective on skin with white to olive tones with thinner hair types. It is not suitable for dark skin as the skin pigment can change.
3. Diode Laser Hair Removal are made up of diodes or semiconductors operating at wavelength of 800 - 810nm. It can be used effectively darker skin coupled with thick, coarse hair making it popular with men due to its effectiveness on back and chest hair. It is the next most useful hair removal light source and the most promising laser for hair removal. The Diode laser features a longer wavelength and thus able to provide better results among dark-skinned people. This laser provides safer and deeper penetration into the skin layer. Large areas of the body tend to recover faster.
4. Nd:YAG Laser Hair Removal is the most advanced type of laser hair removal system. It works at wavelengths of 1064 nm in a double frequency mode, which creates green light at 532nm wavelengths. It is effective on all skin types, including Asian and dark skin tones. It has a fast rate of repetition and can be used on larger areas of skin.
5. IPL or Intense Pulse Light Hair Removal system is a non-coherent laser. It is flexible than laser hair removal, as there is no set laser wavelength. For this treatment parameters are set to suit one's individual needs, giving one a personalised treatment. It can cover large areas of skin and has smaller risk of damaging surrounding tissues.

If you wish to discuss about any specific skin or hair related problem, you can consult a specilized dermatologist and ask a free question.

Hernia surgery is performed for the correction of a hernia which refers to the bulging of internal organs or tissues through an abnormal opening. It is easy to detect hernia through any pain or discomfort while lifting heavy objects, cough and strain during urination or bowel movements or during prolonged standing or sitting. It can be found in both men and women. The Hernia can be congenital or can be developed over a period of time. If it doesn’t get better over time and also does not go away by itself, then surgery becomes the only option.

Types of Surgery
There are two types of surgery for hernia treatment. One is the conventional open method, which requires an incision in the skin directly over the hernia. The other one is the Laparoscopic hernia repair in which surgery is performed using a small telescope known as a laparoscope. In this type of surgery minimal invasions are made and the hernia is repaired with only small incisions adjacent to the hernia. Most hernia operations are performed on an outpatient basis, which means that you can go home the very same day.

Tips for early recovery

1. Wear comfortable clothing with expandable waistbands.
2. Keep yourself active by moving around as much as you can as it increases circulation, which further speeds up healing.
3. Eat a diet rich in fibre, fresh fruits and vegetables.
4. Drink lots of water and other fluids to avoid constipation.
5. Do not lift any objects even if it is very light as it can bring back pain.
6. Do not to pick up things from the floor as it will be difficult to bend.
7. Hold a pillow against your stomach while sneezing or coughing to lessen the pain.
8. Use stool softener for a few days before and after surgery to help you with your bowel movements.
9. Avoid driving till the time you feel any pain and as long as you are taking narcotic pain medicines.
10. Band-Aids which cover the incisions should be changed as and when needed.
11. Refrain yourself from intercourse as it can be painful.
12. Check with your doctor when to take a shower so as not to hurt your incisions, and make sure to gently dry your incisions and replace the Band-Aids after taking a shower.
13. Do not consume any alcoholic drinks for at least 24 hours.

The tips mentioned above will definitely provide help to cope up with post surgery blues. However, in case of fever, excessive sweating, difficulty in urinating, bleeding or any prolonged pain consult your doctor immediately.

Ovarian Cancer, as the name suggests, is a cancer that affects the ovaries. It leads to the abnormal growth of cells, which eventually spreads over to other parts of a woman’s body, such as the stomach, uterus and vagina. The risk of ovarian cancer is greater in women who have experienced the process of ovulation many times in their lifetime. It also includes those women who attain menopause at a much later stage in their lives or those who start ovulation at an early age. The different types of tumors, which develop in ovarian cells are more often than not, benign or non-cancerous and do not spread beyond the ovaries.

Therefore, they can be easily treated by either removing a part or the whole of the ovary. But malign tumors have the ability to spread to other parts of the body and can prove to be fatal.

What are the causes of ovarian cancer

1. Family History: If someone in your close relation like mother, sister or daughter has developed ovarian cancer, then the risk of becoming susceptible to the disease also increases. If any of your close relatives have developed the disease earlier at a young age, then it’s quite likely that it was due to some inherited faulty gene. BCRA1 and BCRA2 are known to be the faulty genes that are connected to ovarian cancer.

2. Age: You become more susceptible to developing ovarian cancer at a postmenopausal stage.

3. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT): Women who go for hormone replacement therapy put themselves at a greater risk of developing the disease. Nevertheless, if you stop undergoing the sessions of HRT, your risk of suffering from this fatal condition eventually decreases.

4. Obesity/overweight: This is also one of the important factors behind the increased risks of developing ovarian cancer. So, the more obese you are, greater is the risk involved.

What are the symptoms associated with ovarian cancer?

1. Symptoms at an initial stage include pelvic or abdominal pain, postmenopausal vaginal bleeding or irregular menstruation.

2. Loss of appetite or feeling full quickly

3. Other typical symptoms are diarrhea, constipation, nausea or changes in bowel movements.

4. Feeling of mass pressure at your lower back or pelvis

Treatment available for it

Treatment for ovarian cancer generally consists of a combination of surgery and chemotherapy:

1. Surgery: Treatment usually entails removal of the ovaries, uterus and fallopian tubes, including the surrounding lymph nodes as well as the fatty abdominal tissue, which often gets affected with ovarian cancer. This surgery may help you to retain the ability to conceive.

2. Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy is a procedure that follows a surgery and is performed to destroy the remaining cancer cells, if any. Chemotherapy drugs are either inserted into your vein or directly into the abdominal cavity and if need be, into both.

Sweet's syndrome is when you suffer from fever as well as painful skin lesions. These skin lesions usually appear on your head, arms and neck. The cause of Sweet's syndrome is still not known. However, it is known that certain medications, illnesses and infections are a possible trigger for Sweet's syndrome. Sweet's syndrome is such a condition that the symptoms usually go away in a few days but it may come back later on. To know exactly what causes Sweet's syndrome and what the symptoms of it are, read on.

Causes and Risk Factors:
As mentioned earlier, the exact cause of Sweet's syndrome is not known. However, there are certain factors which put you more at risk of getting it than others. Here they are: 

1. Gender: It has been proven that women are much more likely to get Sweet's syndrome than men.
2. Age: The young and the elderly are at a risk of getting Sweet's syndrome. However, if you are in between 30 and 60 years of age you are especially at risk.
3. Illnesses: If you have an upper respiratory infection or inflammatory bowel disease then you are more likely to get Sweet's syndrome compared to others. Flu-like symptoms also put you more at a risk of getting Sweet's syndrome compared to others.
4. Pregnancy: It has been seen that pregnancy increases your risk of getting Sweet's syndrome.
5. Drugs: As mentioned earlier, certain antibiotics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as well as azathioprine are all linked to Sweet's syndrome.

Symptoms-

1. Small Red Bumps: As mentioned earlier, the main symptom of Sweet's syndrome is that you will develop small red bumps on your neck, arms or head. The size of the bumps tend to increase quickly and then they spread into painful clusters.
2. Fever: A fever is also very symptomatic of Sweet's syndrome. The small red bumps usually appear abruptly after you get a fever.
3. Upper Respiratory Infection: The small red bumps also appear abruptly after you have got an upper respiratory Infection.

It should be noted that Sweet's syndrome is often associated with cancer and has commonly been linked to leukemia. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult a dermatologist.