Skin Cancer Prevention
- Price is Right’s Bob Barker, 96, says his numerous skin cancer diagnoses were caused by years of sunbathing.
- Sun exposure is the leading cause of skin cancer, but tanning beds pose just as much as a risk.
- It’s important to protect your skin year-round because exposure to the sun in the winter can still cause skin cancer.
Barker’s most recent bout with skin cancer was in April of 2005, where he had to miss Daytime Emmy Awards to get a cancerous lesion removed from his back. However, the Price is Right host has shared he’s battled the disease a few times throughout his life, and attributes it to a lot of sunbathing he did when he was younger. “I look much better with a tan. I've been known to tan for three hours at a time every day if I could,” Barker told Esquire in 2007. “I'd go swimming five or six times a day. I get skin cancers from my misspent life. I go in every three months to get precancerous things removed. But it was all worth it.”
Read MoreBarker’s battle with skin cancer wasn’t his first experience with the disease. In 1981, his late wife, Dorothy Jo, a smoker, passed away at the age of 57 after a six-month battle with lung cancer. Barker and Dorothy Jo’s love story reads like true fairytale. They started dating just when they were 15-years-old, and were married for 36-years-old before her passing. Barker never remarried, saying that there “should only be one Mrs. Bob Barker.”
Sun Exposure’s Link to Cancer
Sun exposure is the leading cause of skin cancer. Your risk of skin cancer goes up significantly the longer you’re exposed to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. However, tanning beds are certainly not a solution to limit your risk.
“We know that there is a direct correlation between patients who go to indoor tanning salons,” Dr. Anna Pavlick, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, tells SurvivorNet. “When you think about it, the UVA [and] UVB exposure that you get from a tanning salon is about 6 inches from the surface of your body compared to somebody who goes and tans on a beach and the sun is thousands of miles away.”
Dr. Anna Pavlick explains how tanning beds increase your risk of skin cancer
The best way to limit your risk of skin cancer is sporting a hat, wearing sunscreen, regularly checking your skin for any changes, and visiting a dermatologist for routine screening. However, there’s one important point that some people may not realize skin cancer doesn’t just happen in the summer. The season may be synonymous with sunshine, but skin cancer can still happen during the winter.
Protect Your Skin Year-Round
"It's a common misconception that people think they only have to protect their skin when they're in the bright, warm sunshine," said Dr. Dendy Engelman, a dermatologist and Mohs surgeon who practices in New York. "But the reality is, we can get sun damage at any time throughout the year … even in the cold, wintry months. If we're unprotected for even fifteen minutes a day. If we think about the cumulative effects that has on our skin over a lifetime, it's very real."
Related: Which Sunscreen Should I Choose To Prevent Cancer?
You may not be sunbathing during the colder months, but it’s still important to apply sunscreen all year round. Sun can still poke out during a cloudy day, and experts recommend you wear face moisturizer with built-in SPF.
Dr. Dendy Engelman explains why we need to protect our skin during the winter
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