What is Mouth Cancer?

Cancer can occur in any part of the mouth, tongue, lips, throat, salivary glands, pharynx, larynx, sinus, and other sites located in the head and neck area. These mouth cancers have a higher proportion of deaths per number of cases than breast cancer, cervical cancer or skin melanoma.

What is Cancer?

Cancer cells are very similar to cells of the organism from which they originated and have similar (but not identical) DNA and RNA. This is the reason why they are not very often detected by the immune system, in particular if it is weakened. Cancer cells usually have an increased ability to divide rapidly and their number of divisions is not limited by telomeres on DNA (a counter system to limit number of divisions to 40-60). This can lead to the formation of large masses of tissue and in turn may lead to disruption of bodily functions due to destruction of organs or vital structures.

Dry Mouth Signs

Most cancers of the mouth can be cured if caught early. By doing regular oral screening you can bring any changes in your mouth to the attention of your dentist at the earliest possible stage.
Try this your self: This 'at-home' oral screening should take only 3-5 minutes, once a month.Look for the following signs or symptoms that may appear in the mouth, on your tongue or on the lips:
-White or velvety Red patches that will not rub off.
-Sores or swelling that last longer than 2-3 weeks.
-Repeated bleeding with no apparent cause.
-Numbness or pain in any area.
-Difficulty in Chewing, swallowing, or moving your tongue or jaw.
-A mouth sore that bleeds easily or fails to heal.

Types of Moth Cancer

Ninety percent of mouth and tongue cancers are squamous cell carcinomas. The remaining ten percent of mouth or tongue cancers are caused by lymphomas, adenocarcinomas, and other, less common, forms of cancer.Although cancer of the larynx and salivary gland cancer affect the oral cavity, they are considered diseases separate from mouth cancer.

Mouth Cancer Symptoms

Tongue and mouth cancers are often advanced at the time of diagnosis. In part, this is because both mouth cancer symptoms and tongue cancer symptoms are difficult to detect in their early stages. Often no pain is felt and very few visual symptoms are apparent until the cancer is well advanced. In some cases, swollen lymph nodes in the neck are the first sign of mouth or tongue cancer.

Mouth Cancer Diagnosis

Early mouth cancer and tongue cancer diagnosis improves both prognosis and survival rates. Mouth cancer diagnosis requires examinations by a medical doctor or dentist, whose expertise in mouth diseases extends beyond teeth and gum care. In any case, diagnosis of oral cavity cancers usually begins with the health professional taking a detailed dental history.

Mouth Cancer Survival Rates and Prognosis

Mouth, tongue, and oropharynx cancers generally have a poor prognosis. Approximately 8,000 Americans die every year from some form of oral cavity cancer. The overall five-year survival rate for mouth cancer is 55 percent, a statistic that has not improved in thirty years.Mouth and tongue cancer are often well advanced at the time of diagnosis, and have often metastasized beyond the oral cavity. If metastasis has occurred, the prognosis for oral cavity cancer treatment is poor. Additionally, mouth and tongue cancer have high primary tumor recurrence rates. After a successful initial mouth cancer treatment, the chance of a second oral cavity tumor developing is as high as twenty percent.

Medical Records

The more complete the questionnaire, the better your results will be. Therefore, the mouth cancer treatment tool also provides you with templates you can use to assemble your medical information, including a request for copies of your medical records from your doctor. Maintaining a copy of your medical record for you own files is a good idea, anyway.

Treatment of Tounge Cancer

Treatments for tongue cancer and oral cancer vary depending on the stage of the disease at the time of diagnosis. Surgery, chemo therapy, and radiation therapy are all used to treat mouth cancers.

Traditional Treatment of Cancer

Cancer can be a very scary thing. The survival rates of some cancers is very low and treatments are not very effective, if one uses traditional medicine (one estimate puts it at 3%). On top of that, cancer is demonized as this scary thing which is growing in you and is going to kill you. Many people feel helpless and put blind trust in traditional medicine for treatment.
Traditional medicine is very good in detecting and monitoring cancer but it is very poor and ineffective in the treatment of cancer. Detection is good and aided by imaging techniques such as NMR, CT-scan, ultrasound, PET, etc. and many other chemical, genetic, tissue, etc. tests. Below a few conventional medical treatments techniques are mentioned:
Radiation therapy
Attempts to locally destroy cancer cells with the various types of radiation such as X-ray, Gamma-ray, particle beams, isotopes, ultrasound, etc. Beams of radiation are focused mainly on the cancer growth and doses are calculated to minimize the collateral damage to surrounding tissues, which nevertheless occurs. This kind of treatment increases the entropy of the organism, suppresses the immune system, destroys healthy cells and potentially forms new mutated cells some of which could become cancerous (and possibly more dangerous than original cancer cells).
Chemo therapy
This aims to destroy the cancer cells with various types of chemicals. The substances used are supposed to target mainly the cancer cells (sometimes via direct injection to cancer tissue) and doses are calculated to minimize the collateral damage to surrounding tissues, which nevertheless occurs. This kind of treatment increases the entropy of the organism, suppresses the immune system, forms a toxic cell environment, destroys healthy cells and potentially forms new mutated cells some of which could become cancerous (and more dangerous than original cancer cells).
Surgery
is another very invasive technique. Underlying logistics is to locally remove cancer cells with as few healthy cells as possible. This in turn should stop any further growth, since there are no cancer cells left in the body. This is a wrong assumption, since it is very difficult to find the exact boundaries of the cancer growth and remove all cells. Besides that, cancer cells can enter the blood stream and lymphatic fluid during an operation and spread to other parts of the body. This kind of treatment also increases the entropy of the organism, suppresses the immune system and destroys healthy cells and organs.All mentioned above methods are very invasive, destroy healthy cells and suppress the immune system. This approach leads to an increase of entropy of the organism and lowers the chances of recovery from cancer. All these methods are designed to treat symptoms (cancerous growth), not the cause of cancer (non-functioning immune system and factors contributing to cancer cells formation). Since the cause of cancer is not addressed and treatment is not provided, cancer will, in the majority of cases, spread and recur (the 5-year survival rate for conventional treatments quoted by The American Cancer Society is 63% and it is much lower for longer periods of time one estimate puts it at 3%). Very often cancer patients in hospitals are consuming poor quality food with hydrogenated fats, which are very unhealthy and dangerous. This only illustrates that a holistic approach is not considered or followed.Cancer treatment is a very good money making machine/system and the patients' welfare is largely ignored. The described above methods are primitive and barbaric. As a result, millions of people die prematurely while suffering (according to WHO, the World Health Organization, 7.6 million people died of cancer in the year 2005). There is also a great effort, burden and expense which is put on the families and society at large. The only explanation for this state of affairs is total scientific incompetence, greed and lack of integrity and moral standards on the part of the majority of cancer researchers and people and organizations who deliver cancer treatments (and consume billions of dollars in public funding in the process).

Identifying Risk Factors and Preventing

Oral Cancer Certain factors increase the chance of developing oral or tongue cancer. Most cases of tongue or oral cancer occur over age forty, with the highest incidence after sixty. Men are twice as likely as women to develop tongue cancer, and African-American men are at greater risk than Caucasians.

New Research in Cancer Treatment

Genetically engineered bacteria and virusesSome new promising research uses genetically engineered bacteria and viruses to infect and destroy cancer cells. This could be useful when cancer is already advanced and there are large masses of cancer cells. The potential drawback of these methods is the generation of large amounts of toxins from dying cancer cells, which in turn can suppress the immune system or even kill the patient.Also bacteria and viruses very often mutate which in turn can lead to infection and attack on healthy, non-cancerous cells.
Anti-cancer vaccines Anti-cancer vaccines or even custom-made anti-cancer vaccines for a particular patient and cancer type are also a very promising line of research. By providing fragments of cancer cells to the immune system, one can potentially get the immune system response to destroy live cancer cells. Cancer markers another promising line of research is related to chemical substances which could be used to mark cancer cells. This in turn will allow easier recognition of these cells by the immune system.
Cancer growth retarders / inhibitors This line of research is related to the use of chemical substances which could retard / inhibit the growth of cancer cells. An interesting research topics are the substances blocking activity of telomerase, the enzyme responsible for the management/elongation of telomeres. Telomerase is found in high concentrations in 80% of tumors and allows tumor cells to gain "immortality" by removing restrictions on the number of cell divisions. This enzyme may also be useful in extending the lifespan of healthy cells and in turn extend the lifespan of the organism (cancer cells and their growth may hold much valuable information about fountain of youth and immortality). All the above mentioned methods show some promise.
However these methods by themselves do not provide reliable cancer treatment. It is possible that some of them in conjunction with the non-traditional treatment of cancer (listed below) will become the standard cancer treatment, in the 21st or 22nd century

"World Cancer Report" by Who

WHO (World Health Organization, division of UN) estimates that only 4% of all cancers are inherited /genetic and that the majority of cancers are preventable ("World Cancer Report", IARC Press, Lyon 2003). According to this report, various cancers are strongly linked to lifestyle and the environment. It lists many of these factors and carcinogens. Cancer world maps shown in the report illustrate that the majority of cancers are in developed countries - which indicates again a strong link between cancer, lifestyle, diet and environment. This statistical data is very consistent with the cancer model outlined in this paper."World Cancer Report" by WHO