A study published in the journal Cancer says that improvements in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer are making a difference and patients are living longer with the disease.

Researchers in Canada conducted a study evaluating 2,000 women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. The time periods in the study were broken up into four groups dating from 1991 until 2001. The researchers concluded that one year survival improved from 55 percent to 71 percent and two year survival improved from 33 percent to 45 percent.

The introduction of new chemotherapy drugs, new approaches to hormonal therapy, and new targeted therapy have been introduced over the period of time evaluated in the study.

Cancer cases are expected to more than double between the years 2000 and 2030, says the director of the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer.

This upward climb will occur primarily in poor countries due to an increase in population growth, longer life expectancy, more smoking, and a lack of health care in low and medium-resource countries.

"What's going to happen between now and 2030 is that the population is going to increase from about 6.5 billion to 8 billion in 2030," Dr. Peter Boyle reports. "So even if the risks remain constant at each five-year age group, because we've got more people around, we're going to have more cases of cancer.

It's the unfortunate successes for developed countries over the past 40 years, such as the export of cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, that have doomed poorer countries, says Boyle.

Consider this definition of doom: By the year 2030, there will be 27 million cases of cancer, 17 million deaths caused by the disease, and 75 million people living with cancer.

I'm a bit skeptical just reading the article titled A Laugh a Day Might Keep Death Further Away. In a recent Norwegian study, adults who have a sense of humor showed to outlive those who don't find life funny. I don't know about this -- I can think of a lot of miserable people who lived very long lives!

I love to laugh. Watching comedians is one of my favorite things to do, however I don't think that is going to make me live any longer than other breast cancer survivors.

The study said that the survival edge is particularly large for those with cancer. In this study the researcher claims that a great sense of humor cut someones chances of death by about seventy percent compared with adults with a poor sense of humor.

Sven Svebak, of the medical school at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, says that past studies have shown that humor helps people cope with stress and keep a healthy immune system during stressful times. He believes that could promote survival.

William Breibart, psychiatry chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York city, is skeptical also. Breibart says that in the twenty two years of treating cancer patients he met a lot of funny people who died of cancer pretty quickly. He says that stage of disease and aggressiveness of tumor matter far more than a person's sense of humor.

He did add that someone who can see humor in bad side effects of chemotherapy might stick it out more for treatment and that can be a way humor affects survival.

This sounds too much like -- you need to have a positive attitude -- cancer survivors are not particularly fond of hearing that our cancer came back because we didn't have a positive attitude or we didn't have a great sense of humor -- but laughter does make life more enjoyable!

My hair is not so short, not so dark, not so curly anymore. And the shock of what sprouted from my head following chemotherapy is not so startling anymore. I guess it's a combination of my getting accustomed to my new look and the fact that lately, my hair is a changin' -- once again -- and this has me somewhat numbed to all things hair-raising in my life.

I was born with straight, blond hair. And I wore these locks on my head for 34 years. Until cancer came a knockin', chemotherapy came a drippin', and my hair went a tumblin'. Bald brought quite an adjustment. And so did the stuff that replaced my pre-chemo hair.

For almost two years now, I have been peering in the mirror at short, brown, curly hair. It took some time, but I grew to like my new look. And now, just as I am feeling OK about my changed appearance, my hair is taking another turn.

Naturally, my hair is longer. That's what happens when chemotherapy becomes a thing of the past. So this is not so surprising. But as my hair grows and gets heavier, my curls are transforming into waves. And I wonder if my curls will continue to disappear as my hair continues to grow. Will my hair be straight again one of these days?

With each passing day, my hair also gets lighter as it slowly fades from dark brown to light brown with a tint of red and a hint of blond. Will my hair be blond again one of the days?

Someone once told me that cancer is temporary. Someone else told me this is not true -- there's nothing temporary about the way cancer changes a life forever. I think I agree. Because as I study my hair, I realize that all of its temporary phases are really just a sign of the permanence cancer has left branded on my body and soul.

A colonoscopy camera lets the physician check for abnormalities inside the colon. These can include cancerous or precancerous growths. The doctor guides a flexible scope though the colon, that can take about seven minutes, he then spends on average another six minutes withdrawing the scope evaluating inside of the colon.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that found colonoscopies that took a longer time to complete found more abnormal growths. Faster testing was shown to miss some abnormalities. Doctors who spent more than six minutes withdrawing the colonoscopy tube found more abnormal growths than those who withdrew it in less than six minutes.

The study did not have a conclusive answer as to exactly long physicians should spend withdrawing the tube. Other experts say to keep it in the range of six to ten minutes.

I know this is the last thing you want to say to your physician-- "Can you keep that up there a bit longer please?', but it might just save your life.

According to new research published in the British Journal of Cancer, younger women diagnosed with ovarian cancer have a greater chance of surviving the disease for five years or more. Researchers at Stanford University in California looked at the records of more than 28,000 American women diagnosed with ovarian cancer between 1988 and 2001.

They researchers found that:

• Women diagnosed under the age of 60 were more likely to survive at least five years than women over 60.
• Women diagnosed under 30 generally had better survival rates, although the disease is rare in this group.
• Women diagnosed under 30, 79 percent were still alive at five years.
• Women diagnosed between 30 and 60 years the survival rate for five years was 59 percent.
• Women diagnosed over the age of 60 had a 35 percent survival rate at five years.

The researchers are not sure of the reasons for the differences in survival at this point. It could be that the younger women had their cancer detected sooner or it could be due to biological differences. The researchers think that understanding the differences in survival for different age groups may help to improve survival for all age groups in the future.

It may be possible to learn happiness -- like we might learn to cook or learn to dance -- by merely taking a class. Some refute this idea and believe you can't actually pursue happiness. You either have it or you don't. But some psychologists are embracing a whole new approach to psychology -- they call it positive psychology -- and they say it focuses on training the mind to focus on the past as very positive. It's completely different from traditional psychology where time is spent trying to determine why someone is so horribly sad. This movement, invented by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman in 1998 when he was president of the American Psychological Association, provides a scientific validated set of exercises -- known as interventions -- that lead happiness seekers to their ultimate destination.

If you count yourself among the working poor, or one of the vanishing middle-class in a constant struggle to make ends meet, do not read this -- it is not going to cheer you up.

The most significant and unavoidable risk factor that increases the chance of being diagnosed with cancer is the aging process. The older we get, the more susceptible we are to developing cancer. Because of this fact, research into the aging process, how we age, and why we age -- even if the research is not specifically looking at the link between aging and increased cancer risk -- still might one day provide some insight into the potential for reducing cancer risks associated with aging.

Because we just published a post where we shared information that a good night's sleep in total darkness might aid in reducing cancer risks in Light is a risk factor for cancer, today's news regarding research study findings from the University of Chicago that found people are not getting the amount of sleep they think they are getting, grabbed my attention. Could it offer additional information into cancer risks and cancer prevention? As it turns out, not really, but I did learn that Paris Hilton not only lives better than most of us, but she is also more rested than many of us. How this applies to any one I know, I am not sure. However, I will slog on and share what I found out that might be relevant.

A new study found that combining the anti-inflammatory pain relief drug Celebrex, normally prescribed for arthritis, with the chemotherapy drug Tarceva, increased the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug in prolonging the lives of a lung cancer patients. According to the University of California researchers, Tarceva is found to be highly effective, but only for a small number of lung cancer patients. By adding Celebrex, the number of lung patients who benefit triples. This information comes from a small phase-one trial involving 22 lung cancer patients. However, the researchers stated that in their opinion, "Lung cancer is such a big killer that any improvement in treatment will affect many people. More than 173,000 new cases of lung cancer will be diagnosed in the United States alone this year and more than 160,000 people will die of it." I have to agree that any help is better than no help at all.