The long-awaited spring sun, which gives us the warm rays that we usually miss during the winter, can be deadly. Excess sunbathing frequently leads to neoplastic diseases of the skin.
When people bask under the warm spring sun after a long winter season, they are less likely to think about the threat of skin cancer. Meanwhile, prolonged sunbathing is the main cause of the disease. In many countries, the number of cases is increasing.
This is due to the growing flow of tourists to the sunny resorts and the neglected use of protective creams. Well, who of us would think to put sunscreen on the face and hands before going out in the street when the sun shines brightly? However, it is sufficient to spend a couple of hours in the sun, and the body already starts to develop dangerous processes that may eventually lead to skin cancer.
People often mistakenly perceive the disease as something frivolous, and the treatment of skin cancer seems something like removing a birthmark to them. But this disease kills. The number of those affected by skin cancer in the world reaches hundreds of thousands per year.
Most often, people have the least aggressive skin cancers, such as basal cell carcinoma, which develops in the deep layers of the skin and looks like redness which won’t get healed. There are also cases of squamous cell carcinoma, penetrating the top layer of the skin and making it look scaly. But the greatest danger is caused by malignant melanoma, which is the most aggressive type of skin cancer leading to death. Malignant melanoma is spread by metastasis to other organs of the body pretty quickly.
The fact of the skin being exposed to sunlight causes damage to DNA cells. The human immune system is trying to cope with the problem. But sometimes it is overloaded and cannot handle the damage. DNA anomalies persist, and after some time, this leads to the formation of cancer cells.
We should not think that skin cancer develops only in the people who suffer from sunburns. Prolonged exposure to the sun without sunburns can also cause the disease, so it is important to always use sunscreens.
