22 QUEENS TOP DOCTORS • JANUARY, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com TOP DOCTORS Lung cancer Thankful for every moment while living with lung cancer As a busy mother of two sons, Ivy Elkins shrugged off her sore neck and elbow pain for months. She thought it was probably from the extra hours spent planning a bar mitzvah for her oldest son. After all, a middle-aged woman who never smoked doesn’t fit the typical profile of a lung cancer patient. “To say that I was shocked and in disbelief is an understatement,” Ivy recalls. “I didn’t have a cough. I didn’t have any trouble breathing. I didn’t have any of the symptoms that I would associate with lung cancer. I didn’t know that someone like me could get lung cancer.” It’s a common misconception that lung cancer is a burden borne by smokers alone. While smoking remains the major risk factor for lung cancer, never-smokers may also develop the disease. In women, up to 53% of lung cancers may not be caused by direct smoking. In these patients, the underlying cause of lung cancer is often a genetic mutation, a permanent alteration in the DNA FOR sequence BREAKING that makes NEWS up VISIT a gene.www. qns.To identify com MARCH 3, 2016 • HEALTH • The queens Courier 11 mutations, patients undergo “biomarker testing” at the time of diagnosis. Doctors and patients then use the test results to Healthy kids make for healthy adults By sam eriCkson It’s no secret that there’s an obesity epidemic in this country. Experts say this is the first generation in American history whose life expectancy could be shorter than their parents’. This puts a premium on good fitness and nutrition habits for kids. Once established, those habits can help children make new friends and maintain a healthy weight for the rest of their lives. These are just a few of the ways that you can instill healthy habits in your kids that will stick with them through adulthood. Be a good role model. It’s very tough for children to hear they should be eating broccoli and tofu when their parents are eating cheeseburgers and pizza. Remember, you can eat just about anything you want, as long as it is in moderation. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional treat or a special celebratory evaluate treatment options. After Ivy was diagnosed with late stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of lung cancer, she underwent biomarker testing. She learned that she has a specific type of mutation in the EGFR gene. EGFRs are structures that exist on cell surfaces. When mutated, these structures can cause cells to multiply at a rate that is out of control, driving tumor growth. Ivy was more optimistic about her treatment when she learned about her mutation status. “I knew that it likely meant that I could be a candidate for treatment with a targeted therapy, as opposed to having traditional chemotherapy.” After her healthcare team learned more about her specific type of EGFR mutation and discussed treatment options, she started taking a targeted therapy. Now, because she had the biomarker testing, Ivy urges fellow patients to take this advice: “It’s vitally important if you’re diagnosed with lung cancer to have biomarker testing done, to help determine the best treatment option for your cancer.” Courtesy BPT ▶health feast, but feasting on a regular basis instills bad habits in kids. You can also serve as a role model when it comes to exercise. It might be very difficult to come home from work, take care of the kids and then engage in some physical exercise, but even a few minutes of a game or playing outside can solidify these habits in children. Another way to instill good fitness habits is to get kids started in physical activities when they are young. Most cities have a variety of youth sports leagues to join at minimal costs. If they aren’t into team sports, there are individual activities like tennis they can start. There are also things like dance classes, swimming lessons and even parkour for kids these days. Physical activity releases hormones in the body that naturally make people feel good, and children are no exception. Many adults see activity as a chore, but if children can learn to see it as something fun and amusing, they are much more likely to continue it. Stay away from proc e s s e d and fast f o o d . Given the tremendous advertising campaigns from fast food companies, it can be difficult to keep kids away, and their ubiquitous presence in the American landscape makes them the easy choice. For those dealing with single parenthood or extremely busy schedules, these prepared foods are an attractive option. The problem is that they have less nutritional substance than homecooked meals. Frozen pizza has higher fat and salt content than pizza made at home, for example. If you make these fun foods at home, you can control the amount of bad ingredients that go into them, and you might even be able to get your kids to help you out in the cooking process. There are many ways to go about keeping kids healthy, but the basic idea is that the trends established in childhood will be the trends that people follow as adults. If they get most of their meals from processed or fast food and exercise very little, those habits will be much harder to break as an adult. Of course, the opposite of that is true as well. Good fitness and nutrition habits created in childhood will endure. YOUR PROMOTIONS SUPERMARKET
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