Are You Protecting Your Children from Future Deadly Skin Cancers (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)

Most people have heard of a skin disease called melanoma, a deadly cancer that can affect children and adults alike.   Do you know anything about what triggers this tumor and, more importantly, do you know how to lower your children's lifetime risk of ever developing this horrible disease? Stay tuned as we discuss all of this in this installment of Portable Practical Pediatrics Image by Pixabay Musical Intro Summer Means Fun in the Sun As I post this podcast, we just celebrated Memorial Day 2020, the beginning of summer when we start enjoying meals with family and friends, long summer days,  beach trips, and most significantly, the warmth of the summer sunshine.  All that sounds great but there is a darker side to the long days of sun, however. All that lovely sunshine may cause enough skin damage to initiate an extremely dangerous skin cancer called melanoma in your children- years after the sunburn-especially if the sun damage comes in the form of a blistering sunburn.  In fact, just one blistering sunburn in a young child doubles their chance of melanoma in their lifetime.  The more burns, the more risk. But while melanoma makes up just 10% of all types of skin cancer, it causes the overwhelming majority of skin cancer-related deaths. It is the gorilla in the room when it comes to skin cancer deaths, even in children.  So, let's explore this cancer a little closer, shall we? What is Melanoma: Skin cancers come in a variety of types, but the most deadly form is a cancer of the pigment producing cells in the skin called melanoma, the cells that give your children's skin color by producing a pigment called melanin. These pigment producing cells are located very close to the surface of your children's skin and are therefore quite susceptible to damage from the UV rays of the sun. You would think that children with darker skin, and therefore more melanin, would be more likely to develop melanoma, but the opposite is true. The children most likely to eventually develop melanoma are those that have