Cancer is the second most common cause of death and an estimated 610 million deaths were from cancer in 2023, according to Dr. Monica El-Masry.
In a mission to “empower your knowledge,” Keck Medicine of USC and Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital held CARE, Cancer Awareness and Resources, SCV on Saturday.
The expo allowed for anyone wanting to obtain more information and resources to do so from top experts in the field.
The following experts spoke at the expo in addition to El-Masry: Dr. May Lin Tao, Dr. Kelly Cude, Dr. Colin Champ, Dr. Anjali Date, Dr. Marjun Duldulao, Dr. Edwards Forsyth, Dr. Mostafa Tabassomi, Dr. Amanda Woodworth, Dr. Jodi Dalyai, Dr. Lisa Statner, Dr. Alison Ambrose, Marlee Lauffer (Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital Foundation president) and Virginia Carnesale, a breast cancer survivor.
The speakers covered topics such as empowering patients in their health care journey, early detection, screening, and active surveillance, nutrition and diet for cancer prevention, care and recovery and survivorship.
Cancer diagnoses had a direct relationship with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Up until about one year ago, there’s a substantial decline in new diagnoses early in the pandemic with a subsequent rebound, although still below the pre-pandemic numbers in period two,” said El-Masry. “The rebound continues in period three but is still significantly below pre-pandemic levels and prostate and breast in period three.”
With a period of quarantine, many went without testing and early resources to conquer cancer.
CARE SCV provided a hallway lined with outreach resources.
American Cancer Society, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, City of Hope, Sheila R. Veloz Breast Center, Henry Mayo Fitness and Health, Press Paws Ranch Retreat and the Michael Hoefflin Foundation all were present with booths, willing to answer any questions.
For those facing a cancer diagnosis, Champ shared the following recommendations and goals for cancer patients in their fight:
- Lose fat: Lowish-carb, whole food diet, removed sugar and grains. “I would try to minimize processed foods, packaged foods,” said Champ. “They’ve usually thrown some extra fat in there for stability, so I would avoid those. I would focus more on high quality.”
- Gain muscle: Resistance training.
- Stop bone loss: Heavy multi-joint lifts.
- Improve metabolism via diet.
- Reduce risk of falls: Heavy lifts, low reps to failure.
- Social.
- Education.
Future doctors were in the audience as well, absorbing all the information they could.
Lin Tao encouraged them to excel in their studies and look further into the topics that they are learning about, so that one day they can make an impact in the fight against cancer.
“One of the things, other than questioning and reading the information, is really trying to get a background in how you actually look at a study to know whether or not there are, what we call, confounders,” said Lin Tao, “which are basically things that get thrown into the mix that kind of like veer the result off to a side and you didn’t, because you didn’t account for that and really understand how to look at the information and ask those questions.”
