The Surest Way to Prevent Skin Cancer as You Age

Summer is almost here. And that means it’s time for a lot of people to be concerned about AKs. AKs, short for actinic keratoses, are those scaly skin lesions that appear on the face and hands of men and women with fair skin.

AKs are caused by ultraviolet radiation from the sun. And here’s the problem with AKs. Not only do they look bad, they also can turn into two different kinds of skin cancer.

So, how do you prevent AKs? The prevailing wisdom is with sunscreen. But, as you will see, that’s far from a perfect approach. So, let me tell you about several other natural and safe ways to stop these nasty skin lesions from ruining your day.

AKs are very common. They are the second most common skin disorders dermatologists see. And 60% of those who are treated for AKs are over 65 years. That’s because, as we get older, it becomes harder for our immune systems to stop the formation of AKs. As I mentioned above, the real problem with AKs is that they can develop into skin cancers.

One kind of skin cancer is called basal cell carcinoma. And other than being a cosmetic nuisance and sometimes requiring surgical treatment, these cancers are only very rarely a serious problem. Not so, however, with the other kind of skin cancer that can come from AKs – invasive squamous cell carcinoma. As the name implies, this cancer can spread and be life threatening. And the more AKs you have, the greater your risk of squamous cell carcinoma. So, what should you do if you get these nasty little skin lesions?

If you go to your local dermatologist, he/she will do two things. One, tell you to stay out of the sun and apply sunscreen regularly. Two, come in every six months and get either liquid nitrogen treatments or some topical chemotherapy to “get rid of them.” But there are some problems with this approach.

First, sunscreen is not very effective. According to one review, “Sunscreen has shown to be an effective AK prevention method reducing up to 24% AK lesions over time.” This, of course, means that it doesn’t work 76% of the time. And what about the nitrogen/chemo treatments? They are even less effective. The studies show that 60-80% of the time an AK is treated with one of these methods, it comes right back again within nine months. That’s precisely why the doc tells you to keep on coming back. I think sunscreen and liquid nitrogen make sense, but there are natural treatments that work better. The first one involves a common B-vitamin, niacinamide (also known as nicotinamide).

A recent study shows how amazingly effective nicotinamide is for the prevention of AKs. To do the study, researchers enlisted the help of 35 healthy men and women who had four or more AKs. They gave half of them a placebo, while they gave the other half a 500 mg nicotinamide tablet to take twice a day. The study went on for four months. Here are the startling results.

In only four months, the number of AKs had decreased by 35%! And it gets better. The researchers did another study in which they used 500 mg of nicotinamide half as often, only once a day. In that study, the number of AKs were reduced by only 15%. As I’ve told you before, when you see this kind of dose-related effect on anything, it means it is treating the cause. I can only imagine what the results would have been if the therapy had gone on for one to two years. But niacinamide is not the only natural treatment for AKs that’s effective.

Green tea contains polyphenols which have several properties that protect the skin from the damaging effects of ultraviolet radiation. The most active polyphenols are the catechins. And the most potent of all the catechins is epigallocatechin-3-gallate, known mostly by the acronym EGCG.

The first indication that green tea polyphenols might protect against solar-induced skin cancer came from animal studies. In these studies, researchers noticed progressively increasing doses of green tea in the drinking water significantly reduced sunburn, reversed the immunosuppressive effects of ultraviolet radiation, and delayed tumor development when the animals were exposed to excessive ultraviolet radiation.

Follow up studies showed that the active ingredient was EGCG. A similar level of protection also happened when the tea was applied topically. Well, that’s all well and good if you’re a mouse on the Riviera, but what about humanoids?

One study looked at the effects of various extracts of green tea when they were applied to the skin of volunteers before excessive ultraviolet exposure. When the researchers looked at biopsies of the skin, they discovered that one green tea component decreased the inflammatory response, decreased cancer-causing free radical formation, reduced the number of sunburned cells, and protected the skin’s immune cells called Langerhans cells from the DNA damage that usually happens. This is just what you want to see if you are trying to prevent AKs. If you guessed the component was EGCG, you were right.

And not only did EGCG protect the skin, just like the niacinamide, the more that was used, the greater the protection. According to the authors, “Polyphenolic extracts of green tea are effective chemopreventive agents for many of the adverse effects of sunlight on human health and may thus serve as natural alternatives for photoprotection.” And, then there’s genistein.

Genistein is an isoflavone found in high amounts in soybeans. Genistein is a potent antioxidant with both anticancer and anti-inflammatory effects. The authors of a recent review stated, “Diets high in soybean products are associated with a reduced incidence of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and certain cancers. Animal studies show that genistein suppresses activation of tyrosine phosphorylation as well as prostaglandin production. These actions block acute ultraviolet inflammation, inhibit ultraviolet-induced skin cancer, and reduce photoaging. Topical genistein also inhibits ultraviolet erythema [sunburn] in humans.”

The authors of a recent study had previously reported that genistein prevents ultraviolet radiation from causing cancers in mice. So, they set out to find out why. They discovered that ultraviolet radiation damaged skin cell DNA due to free radical formation. And the longer the skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, the more DNA damage occurs. But all that changed when the researchers treated the animals with genistein.

The researchers pretreated the mice with either topical or oral genistein one hour prior to ultraviolet exposure. Both treatments inhibited free radical formation so effectively that the authors concluded that the cancer-causing effects of ultraviolet radiation “can be substantially inhibited by the isoflavonoid genistein through either direct quenching of reactive oxygen species or indirect anti-inflammatory effects.” “These studies,” they say, “demonstrate that genistein, either topically applied or orally supplemented, sufficiently inhibits UVB-induced skin carcinogenesis [cancer production].”

Well, that’s fine for mice, but what about human skin? In another study, researchers exposed human skin to increasing levels of ultraviolet radiation and found the same thing. The more genistein they applied to the skin before exposure, the less DNA damage happened. They concluded, “The implications of our findings serve as compelling validation to our conclusions that genistein may serve as a potent chemopreventive agent against photocarcinogenesis [cancers caused by ultraviolet light radiation].”

Another natural substance that can protect the skin against AKs is lycopene. Lycopene is a bright red nutrient that occurs naturally in tomatoes, watermelon, pink grapefruit, guava, papaya, and rosehips. Epidemiologic studies have shown that the more lycopene you eat, the less likely you are to die from prostate, breast, lung, and colon cancers. Animal studies have shown that when researchers applied lycopene to the skin of animals before ultraviolet radiation, they were much less likely to get skin cancers.

A recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study published in the British Journal of Dermatology looked at the effects of oral lycopene on ultraviolet skin damage. They enlisted 20 healthy women with type-1 skin, the kind of skin that is most sensitive to the effects of ultraviolet radiation.

Before the experiment they determined the smallest amount of ultraviolet radiation that was able to produce sunburn. Then, they gave them either two ounces of tomato paste or a placebo every day for three months. They used tomato paste because it concentrates lycopene 400%. Two ounces of tomato paste contains about 26 mg of lycopene.

They found that when the women took the lycopene, they were 50% less sensitive to ultraviolet radiation. They discovered that the lycopene also significantly decreased markers of tissue damage and DNA damage. The authors concluded, “Tomato paste containing lycopene provides protection against acute and potentially longer-term aspects of photodamage.”

So, if you have a tendency to get AKs, do two things. One, see the dermatologist and have them treated appropriately. And then, just to make sure you don’t have to go through this procedure indefinitely, give your dermatologist some help. Add these natural treatments to the equation, and prevent the AKs from forming in the first place instead of just treating them when they show up.

You can get topical niacinamide on Amazon. It’s called, NiaSerum 12% Topical Niacinamide Serum. You can get the topical genistein online at: https://thegoddessline.com/products/durga-lotion. It’s called Durga Lotion. You can get the green tea extract for topical use at https://www.greenbush.net/product/green-tea-liquid-extract. Here’s what you do.

Apply the NiaSerum first, then the green tea extract, and then the Durga cream. Do this twice a day for the first 9 months. That should be adequate to prevent any more AKs. Then you can decrease to once a day as a maintenance. In addition, take 500 mg of niacinamide before bedtime and when you wake up in the morning. When you are going to be in direct sunlight for any extended period of time, also use some sunscreen.

As for the lycopene, there is one product that stands out. It’s Natural Tomato Extract With Lycopene. You can get it at Amazon. Each pill has 5 mg of lycopene. So, you should take 5 pills per day. A less expensive way to go would be to buy pure lycopene pills. But the problem with this is that there might be something in tomato paste besides lycopene that’s important. So, it might be better to take the tomato extract.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD