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Letters | The other Cancer Awareness Month you should know about
- Readers discuss why liver cancer is often overlooked, and wonder about the sudden lack of interest in Ukraine
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You’ve probably seen pink ribbons representing Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is October. Brands and celebrities have made sure of it.
October is also Liver Cancer Awareness Month. You probably haven’t heard about it though because we don’t talk about our livers much, despite them being our largest internal organ. Cosmetics companies prefer breasts to livers (despite liver cancer taking more lives than breast cancer), and who can blame them?
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But cancer doesn’t discriminate and that’s why we need to talk about one of the common causes of liver cancer: excessive drinking.
Breast cancer is easier to talk about than liver cancer because the former seems so random, with possible contributing factors like genetics, menstrual cycles and hormones. Liver cancer, on the other hand, is something we can often control through lifestyle changes like drinking responsibly and eating healthily.
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Liver cancer has its own emerald-coloured ribbon, but you won’t see many celebs or TV anchors wearing one. Livers are much less sexy for society to speak about when we’re the leading cause of their issues.
The root problem here is how we define health. There is perhaps no better example of the mind-body connection – which some cultures treat as a central part of medicine – than excessive drinking. Someone is depressed or anxious, they could start drinking to excess, and that creates physical health issues like obesity or liver disease.
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