Genetic Research
Cancer
I'm drawn to this topic - though I'm not a doctor.
I'm the type of person who wonders why this kind of thing happens; how it does; and if it can be stopped. I just want to jot down things of interest I found just in articles today. The first article note relates to environment; the other relates to how do you stop the life of a tumor without ending the life of the patient (2 of many problems encountered in the treatment of cancer):
Cancer risk from SoCal smog declines
Danger from air pollution down 15 percent, new study finds
Scientists estimate that about 1,200 of every one million people in the region will get cancer linked to the dirty air if they live about 70 years. Health experts consider an acceptable level to be 10 cases for every one million people.
The study said high cancer risk areas include Burbank, downtown Los Angeles, Fontana, Huntington Park and Wilmington. The area with the lowest cancer risk was Anaheim.
Folkman discovered a protein called endostatin that kick-started a field of cancer drugs called angiogenesis inhibitors. They starve a tumor by stopping it from creating blood vessels to nourish itself.
Cancer
Hm, interesting stuff. I received an email pertinent of what you've included... here's a c&p of the content: (also, I have no idea of the legitimacy of this guys claims.)
Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins :
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.
3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.
CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc. are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.
b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells are being starved.
c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.
f. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.
g. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
h. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
i. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
j. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
CANCER UPDATE FROM JOHN HOPKINS HOSPITAL, U S - PLEASE READ
1. No plastic containers in microwave.
2. No water bottles in freezer.
3. No plastic wrap in microwave.
Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well. Dioxin chemicals causes cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don't freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic. Recently, Dr. Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital , was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It's just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.
Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.
Ginger may be useful for treating and preventing ovarian cancer
The spicy root not only has antioxidant and cancer-fighting properties, but the study also found that the ginger component gingerol exerts anti-inflammatory effects by mediating NF-KB, a protein complex that regulates your immune system’s response to infection.
In the study of cultured ovarian cancer cells, ginger inhibited growth and modulated secretion of angiogenic factors, which is a fundamental step in the transition of tumors from a dormant state to a malignant state.
The ginger also inhibited vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and interleukin-8 (IL-8), two compounds that are related to cancer growth.
Good uses of genetic research (IMO)
These are the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to work every day:
FDA approves genetic breast cancer test
WASHINGTON - U.S. regulators cleared a new genetic test on Monday that helps predict tumor recurrence and long-term survival in breast cancer patients with higher risk of the cancer returning.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the new test, which uses fluorescent probes to detect the activity of genes that may portend increased tumor activity.
More breast cancer patients can skip chemo
New gene test helps tell which patients can avoid the treatment, study says
178,000 new breast cancer cases each year
Breast cancer is the most common major cancer in American women. More than 178,000 new cases are expected this year. Most are helped to grow by estrogen, and hormone-blocking medicines like tamoxifen are used to treat those.
Missing molecules key to breast cancer spread
Restoring genetic material halted metastasis in mice, study says
Cancer spreads when bits the primary tumor break off and attack other organs. This process, known as metastasis, is what makes cancer so deadly.
Tavazoie, working in the lab of Joan Massague, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, set out to isolate the process that causes aggressive tumors to spread.
They found bits of genetic material called ribonucleic acid or RNA that suppress the spread of breast cancer to the lungs and bone. When they put those molecules back into breast cancer tumors in mice, the tumors lost their ability to spread.
They found that in certain aggressive cancers, some of these microRNAs are missing, allowing the aggressive spread of the cancer. When they restored these microRNAs to human breast cancers in laboratory mice, the cancer stopped spreading.