How You Can Help Raise Liver Cancer Awareness
While some forms of cancer get a high level of recognition, liver cancer isn’t one of them. The reasoning isn’t because it’s less important or detrimental to your health, but because not many people understand liver cancer and the impact it has on the body.
While liver cancer sounds like a type of cancer that simply occurs within the liver, the signs and symptoms extend beyond that. By learning more about liver cancer and the facts that surround it, you can do your part towards raising awareness.
Liver Cancer Facts
More than 4 million people in the United States alone are diagnosed with liver cancer. This number only includes those with an official diagnosis and doesn’t count those who are not yet diagnosed. This number grows every year, and more than 15,000 American’s with liver cancer die each year from its effects.
According to statistics, men are twice more likely than women to get liver cancer. Two additional factors that cause someone to be more likely to develop this form of cancer is genetics and obesity. Unhealthy lifestyle choices such as smoking cigarettes and excessive alcohol consumption are also two factors that make you more likely to develop liver cancer.
Most people think that liver cancer begins in the liver, but this is a false belief. While the exact cause for all forms of liver cancer has yet to be discovered, hepatitis C is one known cause of liver cancer, and when this condition goes without treatment, liver cancer will almost always follow.
If you’re at all familiar with hepatitis, you know that it causes a ton of stress on the liver, and those with it eventually need liver transplants due to the amount of damage that occurs to the liver.
Why Raising Awareness is Important
Awareness regarding liver cancer is important for a few different reasons. By properly educating yourself on liver cancer, you can spread the information to others and help them develop a further understanding of the topic.
Awareness also helps to create more treatment options for those with liver cancer. Things like drives can help raise money for research, which is needed to determine all of the reasons that liver cancer occurs.
When awareness doesn’t exist, there isn’t any movement on the subject, and things are at a standstill.
While creating awareness is beneficial socially, it’s also better for yourself. The more education you have on topics that may be new to you, like liver cancer, the better you will understand what a patient with this diagnosis is going through.
How to Raise Awareness
Raising awareness for liver cancer isn’t as hard as it may seem.
The first thing you want to do is gain all of the information that you can on the subject. Read everything you can find online.
If you know someone who has liver cancer, talking to them about it personally is one of the best ways to learn more about the subject. You can also find a lot of personal stories available online to help create a better personal understanding regarding liver cancer.
Getting involved is one of the most effective ways to create awareness. Once you’ve educated yourself, you can either attend a drive to help raise awareness and collect money for liver cancer or hold one of your own.
The Liver Foundation offers information on local events, along with information on how you can hold your own drive within your local area. They will even make it easier to get a lot of people to attend the event by helping to spread the word.