To mark Men’s Health Week (10-16 June) we are considering the benefits for men of bowel cancer screening and asking whether attending for a colonoscopy could be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make.
Patients in England, Wales and Northern Ireland experience unnecessary stress and worry due to delays in bowel cancer diagnosis and treatment, says a new report coordinated by Cancer Research UK. Such delays could even affect the outcome of treatment warn researchers, who published their findings in BMJ Open.
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK. Around 42,000 people are diagnosed with the condition every year. If someone in your family is diagnosed with bowel cancer or has had the disease, understandably you may be worried about developing it yourself.
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK. Around one in 20 of us will develop the disease during our lifetime and rates are rising.
To mark Bowel Cancer Awareness Month we’re looking at the simple steps you can take to reduce your risk of developing the disease.
Having colonoscopy screening for bowel cancer every 10 years reduces the risks of dying from the disease by 88%, recent research has found.
Did you know that millions of microorganisms live in and on your body… so many, in fact, that certain scientists call them our “second genome”? Their genes outnumber ours by 150 to one and some scientists even consider them to be another one of our organs.
Research has shown a link between ulcerative colitis and an increased risk of colon cancer. If you suffer from this inflammatory bowel disease regular screening is recommended to monitor for polyps in the colon which can become cancerous over time.
Colonoscopy is the most effective way of screening for bowel cancer in the early stages when the disease is most treatable. The problem is that the procedure is invasive and uncomfortable and some people can be unwilling to have it.
All over the UK, normally clean-shaven men are growing a beard – and bearded men are dyeing, decorating or ditching their beards – in support of Decembeard, the Bowel Cancer UK campaign to raise awareness of bowel cancer.