When you say "on the soft itssue above my [uvula]", I presume you mean the soft-palate (soft part of the roof of the mouth, posterior to the hard-palate).

Well, you had me on this one, so I did a little research. At this time I will plug a little more info for the layperson (I intend on slipping this stuff in all over the place). A particularly good website for researching information for yourselves is the patient section of uptodate . com. The doctor end of this website is becoming the world leader in condensed medical information. Its my first source (then I go through many other sources as needed). Both ends are written by world experts on the topics they write.

In this case, the research didn't change what my approach would be regarding this one (it confirmed that some fears were warranted, and that no easy "better diagnosis" was immediately obvious to the specialists).

This is a case where having eyes-on is very important. Its what determines is on the differential diagnosis and what is not. But, let me tell you, when a medical student comes to me with this sentence:

"My patient is a daily cigar smoker who occassionally drinks alcohol and has noticed persistent non-painful papules to his soft-palate over [insert timeframe here...months? years?]" then the first thing that should come to my mind is cancer. In fact it is what we call a an UPO diagnosis (until proven otherwise). Now, don't freak out to much. Its probably not cancer. But, I would want to be 100% comfortable with being able to say "its not cancer" before I would be so bold. Maybe in your case having a brief look at it would make a physician comfortable that, indeed, it is not. Otherwise, a biopsy would be in order.

Keep in mind, that the majority of mouth mucosal cancers start out as "pre-cancer" lesions and stay like that for a very LONG time. Only if ignored long enough, combined with a large amount of bad-luck do they transform into cancer. A biopsy would tell you if it were pre-cancer or not, and give plenty of time to cut it all out and aim for cure.

Finally, many of these mouth/throat cancers are conditions of chronic exposure over LONG periods of time. I assume you may be fairly young (sounded like you were talking about university life, so likely you are fairly young). If that is the case, then the invincibility of youth is on your side (in that you probably haven't been exposed to daily cigar smoke for 20 years), providing you take the steps to rule it out.
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Thanks for the tip. I'm 23 I've only been smoking for barely two years and didn't drink till I was 21. That was my fear when I went to the doc but he assured me not to worry just figured I'd see what you thought on the whole thing.
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There are 5 crucial questions to ask when you are playing with thoughts of oral cancers:

Bleeds? (mouth, nasal)
Skin changes? (in the mouth, around the mouth)
Throat/ear pain?
Obstructions?
Voice changes?
Enlarged lymph nodes?

Well that's six, but really two of them fit together in my mind. And of course, answering yes to these doesn't mean cancer (a sinus infection could have you answering yes to 5 of them), but it does sharpen your focus.
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Thank you John for providing information.
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Yes thank you!

Something I neglected to mention is that they are almost unnoticable anymore and the thing my doc said he would attribute them to most likely is my horendous allergies. But I must tell you, everything you have said are the samethings my doc and I talked about. Just wanted to see what another doctor had to say. :-) hope I gave your noddle the jog you were looking for, and I will deffinatly keep an eye on it :-)
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Glad you caught it the way I pitched it. I was feeling a little anxious cutting you the straight deal over an online forum like this. The C word is not one I like to throw out there and leave festering on its own.
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Nope, no worries. It'd be different had I not already had it checked out.
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Hmm...very interesting. Mrs. Fumes is a grad student and has been spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on a very worn out couch with her laptop and several large stacks of papers. I suggested that she get up and stretch occasionally, but oh no, there's too much work to do and no time. I would expect that sitting in an ergonomically inappropriate position for extended periods of time might be a trigger for back spasms.

This was quite enlightening! Thanks for taking the time, John.
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I read and hear alot about the hunter gatherer diet, and how with the agricultural revolution we started consuming high amounts of grains and carbs that threw off our bodies.

What is your opinion on this?
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Well, I had never formally heard of "the hunter-gatherer diet" AKA "paleolithic diet" until you mentioned it here.

And, I can't say that 15 minutes later I am an expert on the topic.

But, it seems to push a high meat content, followed by wild grains, foraged plant materials etc. The big push regarding this diet is the proposed lack of signs/symptoms of cardiovascular disease, with some bandwagoning in "diabetes, ... cancer, auto-immune diseases, obesity".

From what I see so far there isn't any smoking gun. Unfortunately, some of the websites I have perused do seem to take on a fervor that makes me concerned for what lays beyond.

The claims regarding ridding yourself of these disease really does not have much foundation on which to stand. I would doubt that the studies could really control for enough variables to determine what the causation was. Hunter-gathering leads traditionally to expending lots of energy to obtain the food and probably not gathering an abundance of food. Its the agriculture evolution that probably was one of the first steps to allowing humans to start advancing in population and technology, as food became easy. I think the evidence is really pooling in that a calorie restricted diet may be one of the most effective ways to live as long as possible, at least in animal models. But that leads to emaciation, lethargy and generally a "not fun" life. Your metabolism probably slows down so much that you live longer, wishing you were having fun. Animals don't mind much as they are really just worried about surviving one second to the next. So, lack of food availability probably takes care of obesity, diabetes and by extension cardiovascular disease. I was not able to find any relavent sources, but I do imagine the life expectancy was pretty low in hunter-gatherer eras. Trauma, starvation, infection probably killed most humans then. Only once food was easy to get did we live long enough to die from cancers. Auto-immune diseases? I think that is a red herring. While they are interesting and shocking, they are relatively rare. Including them would only be for the shock value and probably a complete fiction.

I don't think that grains and carbs are the route of dietary evil. I do think that they are cheap and easy to produce and thus are highly utilized in food products. Combine that with overeating and you are almost guaranteed to be eating too many carbs. But that will probably be true for fats as well, not so much protein. For some reason protein doesn't factor high into a poor (which commonly coincides with cheap) diet.

I like to stay active, otherwise I would seriously consider the calorie-restriction thing (isn't the Bernstein diet like this?). But, then, a week in, I would probably hunt down a kid in my neighbourhood and eat them. So, reasonable diet is for me.

If one wanted to be a full thinker in designing a diet, they would first start with what their calorie requirement is. I think mine is about 2400 a day just to live (I am a big guy) then add my exercise expenditures (probably 1200-1500 a day, 10km+ a day). If I wanted to loose weight I would come in under that sum. Otherwise, aim for that sum.

Then decide what the required protein is. I believe the researched requirement per day is approx 0.76 gram/kg body weight for grams of protein a day. Alot of people round that up to 1gram/kg. This is the type of numbers when the dieticians calculate out diets for hospital patients with dietary components to their treatments. It is based on various rigorous studies that I trust (but don't have references to anymore). Then subtract out the calories from that protein (4 cal/gram protein approx). Then calculate the fat. I think its 30% calories from fat, no more than 30% of your fat being saturateds. Fat is 9cal/gram. Then the rest can be carbs. Include at least 30gram fibre into your carbs every day.

Include an exercise program that involves 40 minutes cardio/aerobic (pace that leaves you breathless if you try to converse while doing it) 3 times a week. With that, you are probably sitting on about as healthy a diet as need be.

All the micro-nutrients (vitamins/minerals) will probably be easily satisfied with any balanced food sources you choose (BALANCED, no excluding groups) and you won't have to worry about deficiencies (despite the absolute non-truths spread onto the public) except maybe vitamin D if you don't get enough sun, folate for fertile females, iron for females with heavy cycles.

No nutritional therapies will "boost the immunity" (unless you are actually correcting a true vitamin deficiency). You cannot boost the immunity. The only thing that "boosts the immunity" is inflammation and infection....and that's more a case of stimulating the immune system you already had. You may develop immunity from a particular pathogen that attacked you, but you will not have a "stronger/more potent" immune system. The only diseases that can realistically be treated with dietary therapies are those that involve dietary abnormalities (obesity, diabetes, cholesterol). Cancer will laugh at your dietary changes. If anything, better nutrition will strengthen a cancer, by strengthening you maybe, and thus freeing up more resources the cancer can use up. That being said, don't kill a cancer by killing the host.

I have kind of gone all over the place with this post, and in turn, only touched very briefly on many topics. Hopefully I have hit some of the important ones at a useful level of detail.

Cheers

John
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What does it mean if in the last year you went from drinking like a camel to getting hang overs that last several days after moderate drinking?

Not me, my girlfriend. It's quite curious, shes been thinking of going to the doctor, but she decided it was easier to just become my all time designated driver :-)
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Cy:

What are your thoughts on human growth hormone and testosterone treatment on people over 35 years of age?
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This is another creative answer that should be taken as only a hypothesis only.

If indeed this is a rational correlation (eg alcohol is always sufficient to cause the "hang over" and also required to attain this "hangover"), then my initial thoughts would be:

for some reason, this person has had a significant decrease in their ability to clear/metabolize alcohol or its metabolic by-products. Alternatively, it could represent a decreased tolerance in the effects of alcohol.

Maybe new/changed medications (assume caffiene in here, or other physiologically active substances)? Decreased liver/kidney functions, decreased hydration (due to long standing behavioural change?), maybe a there is a possible deficiency? It would be reasonable to consider vit B12 (females need lots but typically have lots, due to menstrual reasons, but this also has an effect on nerve/brain function....run a little anemic, use up some more B12, run into changes in nerve function).

I am speculating wildly here.
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That one deserves some research. I will get back to you on this one in a couple of days (right now I am "on duty" for walk-ins for my whole base, and then I work a clinic for rest of night....and then the Friday shift starts)
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My interest in the palio diet is more from just living healthier, not so much trying to get rid of disease like you mention.
I am reading a book “The Palio Diet” and in the introduction it talks a little bit about some points you talked about. In the small amount of studies that have been done on indigenous populations, aka hunter-gathers they all seem lean, muscular, and fit. Some of that can be attributed to having to fight for their food, but some has to be accounted for in diet don’t you think? In all of the few studies they found almost no heart disease and High Blood Pressure was unheard of. Two of the studies mentioned were of the Yanomamo Indians of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, and the Greenland Eskimos.
It talks about commercially grown meat being much fattier than the meat of the animals hunted down by the hunter-gatherer. About the hundreds of percentage increase in the amount of grain that we consume since the Agricultural Revolution. And how maybe, our bodies were not designed to process that much grain and carbohydrates.

I am not sold yet, but it does ‘make sense’ when you start thinking about it and how the body works. I heard a trainer talking about the diet to someone else about it and decided to take a look. Since I have found several of my co-workers who have been living this lifestyle for several years. None of them are super workout freaks (or even work out at all) and they all are very fit and trim. One of my co-workers said that since he switched his diet, his high-blood pressure and high cholesterol are gone, 4 years now he has been on the diet and he had cholesterol in the high 200’s before. He says he Palio’s during the week and then will kind of carb load on the weekend, or at least one day a week.

It all seems very interesting.
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If you want to make dietary change that is really going to make a difference in your life, check out Food Combining. A few colonics and adjusting to this style of eating will turn you around in no time! Between Food Combining and not eating like you have two arses, you'll see changes very quick.

There's a ton of free stuff on the web that will get you eating "correct".

Food combining
'Food combining' refers to the combination of foods which are compatible with each other in terms of digestive chemistry. Food combining is a basic component of optimal nutrition because it allows the body to digest and utilize the nutrients in our foods to their full extent.

The discomforts of indigestion are so common in today’s society that indigestion is almost considered normal. The fact that over 2 billion dollars are spent each year on antacids is proof of this.
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To be honest, any "diet" that is balanced (meets the requirements to sustain life) and is itself not excessive, is probably a good diet. This would be no exception. I just wanted to caution against some of the claims I had read being propogated about this diet as well as offer some rationale towards deciding on what one's "diet" (dietary habits) should be.

Over time I have cut out alot of refined products, first as an attempt to "get more healthy" and now its just because the taste is more satisfying (for instance, white bread just tastes gross now) and I feel more satieted in general.

If the paleo diet is implemented as a balanced option, it looks rather interesting (from the little I know about it).
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got a question for you, other than the obvious answers (fire alarm or intruder), is it dangerous or harmful to sleep with earplugs on?
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I can't answer from a doctors standpoint, but from a construction workers standpoint having earplugs in for long periods of time tends to let wax build up in the ear.
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That's the stance I would go on as well. Also realize that long-standing presence of earplugs may compromise the integrity of the skin in there and lead to infection. I have seen plenty of "benign"-ish looking foriegn bodies in ears causing ulcerations in the canal that subsequently get infected.
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