You should know: Asbestos causes cancer

More and more, it’s becoming clear that lifestyle and environmental factors play a role in the development of cancer. That’s why I’m doing my best to eat right, exercise right, and stress less—research says these practices can keep me healthy and just might prevent breast cancer from paying me a return visit.

I’d be wise to avoid contact with asbestos for the rest of my days too, because according to The Asbestos and Mesothelioma Center, the stuff is deadly.

Asbestos is a hazardous material, used in the insulation of homes and buildings until the 1980s and still existing in countless products and homes across the country. Contrary to popular belief, asbestos is not a banned material, and a frightening number of manufacturers still use it—a CSI: Fingerprint Investigation Kit toy purchased at Toys “R” Us was recalled earlier this year for exceeding dangerous levels of asbestos. Sadly, there is a 15-60 year latency period from exposure to diagnoses, which means it takes more than a decade before we can realize the effects of such products on our health.

What can you do? Take proper precautions when performing DIY renovations on older homes, for one. And check the materials used in the products that you buy, especially cosmetics and toys.
Here’s why you should pay attention to asbestos: The inhalation of its fibers can lead to asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma—a terminal cancer only proven to be caused by asbestos exposure. For more about mesothelioma, hop on over here.

Enter The Asbestos and Mesothelioma Center—created to promote education and awareness for those suffering from asbestos-related illnesses. Check out their website here. It features more than 2,000 articles covering the latest news on asbestos-related cancers, as well as breakthrough medical procedures, alternative healing methods, and medical directories that can benefit individuals affected by all forms of cancer. Need free services and counseling? This is your place. Want information about products that may contain asbestos and safety information for properly discovering and removing asbestos in your home? Also your place.

Yes, what we do in our lives and how we do it can affect our risk for developing cancer. Smoking might do it. Lugging around a heavy body might do it. And buying contaminated toys might do it. That’s why I’m doing my best to avoid all risk. I hope you are too.

Scientists Identify Genetic Contributor to Colorectal Cancer Risk

Researchers at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and Northwestern University's Cancer Genetics Program have found a definitive link between an inherited genetic variation and colorectal cancer risk. The variation, which occurs on a gene known as TGFBR1, significantly increases a person's lifetime risk of getting the disease.

"This is a very exciting study," said Durado Brooks, MD, American Cancer Society Director of Prostate and Colorectal Cancer. "This represents a tremendous opportunity to intervene with intensive colorectal cancer screening and could also have near-term implications for developing new approaches to prevention and treatment."

The variation in question affects the receptor for TGF-beta, a protein that slows cell growth. The researchers found that this genetic variant makes the cell less sensitive to TGF-beta, so the cell doesn't get the signal to stop growth. If a person had colon cancer, those cells could proliferate more easily.

Researchers analyzed genetic samples and clinical data from 242 colorectal cancer patients (90 had a family history of the disease), and 195 cancer-free people who agreed to participate in the trial. All of the participants were white, and the average age fell in the mid-50s.

Ten percent to 20% of cancer patients showed a decreased production of a receptor for TGF-beta. Only 1% to 3% of healthy participants showed lowered numbers. The lifetime colon cancer risk of the patients with the genetic variation could be as much as 9 times that of those without the variation.

"This probably accounts for more colorectal cancers than all other gene mutations discovered thus far," said Boris Pasche, MD, one of the study's authors and Director of the Cancer Genetics Program at the Feinberg School and The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University.

While their findings still need to be tested in larger groups and in other racial and ethnic groups, the researchers hope to soon develop a clinical test that can be used to identify people who have the gene variant.

"We will be able to identify a large number of individuals that are at risk of colorectal cancer and in the long term, maybe decrease the cases of colorectal cancer and of people dying from it by being able to screen them more frequently," said Pasche.

While most colorectal cancer occurs in people who don't have a family member with the disease, up to 20% of people who get the disease have a family member who is affected. If you have a family history of colorectal cancer, you should talk to your doctor about colorectal screening before age 50, especially if you have a first-degree relative (parent, sibling, child) with the disease.

Cancer and Common Questions about Lymphoma

If you or a family member has just been diagnosed with lymphoma, there probably are many questions you have. You will get all those answered eventually, however you first should know a little bit about cancer itself. Here we answer some of the questions to help you understand better what is going on inside your body.

What is a Cancer? Cancer is a condition in which certain of your bodys cells become abnormal and grow uncontrollably, beyond the ability of your body to destroy these rogue cells. Your natural body defenses become insufficient to fight off this rapid growth of cells. Typically these cells then group together in a mass form called a tumor.

Your body is comprised of millions of cells, all working together in balance within your body for its proper function. Blood cells, for example function in homeostasis; your body must have red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets for you to live and breathe.

These cells each have a life span and age in your body. When they near the end of their life span they are destroyed, and new cells form to replace the lost ones. The process takes place continually, but for some this process doesn’t work properly.

Cells may be formed too soon and not reach maturity, or be destroyed prematurely. When this happens cancer can be the root cause of the process not functioning as it should.

What is Lymphoma? Lymphoma is cancer of the lymphatic system. What occurs is that lymphocytes are not maturing as they should, and are not becoming normal white blood cells. When such abnormal cells start taking over they will replicate faster than normal white blood cells and live longer than normal lymphocytes. They are able develop in many parts of your body, such as the spleen, lymph nodes, bone marrow, and blood. There are two major types of cancer of the lymphatic system; Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, others exists as well but these are the main two.

What is a Lymphocyte? White blood cells which help the body fight off infections and other foreign entities in your body. Lymphocytes are manufactured in the bone marrow, spleen, and lymph nodes, and flow through your body in the lymph system. You have two main types of lymphocytes.

Scientists to test if cancer cure can work in humans

American researchers will soon start a human trial to determine whether a treatment that can eradicate cancer in mice will do the same in people.

The treatment will transfuse specific white blood cells, called granulocytes, into patients with advanced forms of cancer. The granulocytes will come from healthy young people with immune systems that produce cells that have high levels of anti-cancer activity.

In the animal studies, white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice cured all lab mice who had malignant tumours. The cells have also been able to kill cervical, prostate and breast cancer tumour cells in Petri dish tests.

"All the mice we treated were 100 per cent cured," lead researcher Dr. Zheng Cui told CTV News. "So that was very surprising for us."

Cui, an associate professor of pathology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, will announce the study Saturday at the Understanding Aging conference in Los Angeles.

Granulocytes account for about 60 per cent of all white blood cells in the human body. The scientists already know, via a small study of human volunteers, that granulocytes from people under the age of 50 are most effective at killing cancer cells.

The study will begin with 22 cancer patients for whom conventional treatment has been unsuccessful. The researchers say that they will know within three months if the treatment will work in humans.

Cancer researchers worldwide will be watching the tests closely.

"Certainly in the mouse, being able to do these things is quite remarkable and very exciting," said Dr. Ronan Foley of the Juravinski Cancer Centre in Hamilton, Ont. "Oftentimes when it is translated into the human situation it doesn't work as well. But that doesn't mean it isn't going to work."

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

Since the original publication of this article we have been inundated with responses from the public at all walks of life. It is important to note that research is ongoing with DCA, and not everyone is convinced it will turn out to be a miracle drug. There have been many therapies that were promising in vitro and in animal models that did not work for one reason or another in humans. To provide false hope is not our intention. There is a lot of information on DCA available on the web, and this column is but one opinion on the topic. We hope you will do your own research into the situation. So, we have added links to resources at the end of this column. If you are arriving here form a linking website like Fark, then those links will not appear because they tend to grab only the text. For those visitors, here is a link to the original research: www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca

END NOTE
Scientists may have cured cancer last week.

Yep.

So, why haven't the media picked up on it?

Here's the deal. Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada found a cheap and easy to produce drug that kills almost all cancers. The drug is dichloroacetate, and since it is already used to treat metabolic disorders, we know it should be no problem to use it for other purposes.

Doesn't this sound like the kind of news you see on the front page of every paper?

The drug also has no patent, which means it could be produced for bargain basement prices in comparison to what drug companies research and develop.

Scientists tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body where it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but left healthy cells alone. Rats plump with tumors shrank when they were fed water supplemented with DCA.

Again, this seems like it should be at the top of the nightly news, right?

Cancer cells don't use the little power stations found in most human cells - the mitochondria. Instead, they use glycolysis, which is less effective and more wasteful.

Doctors have long believed the reason for this is because the mitochondria were damaged somehow. But, it turns out the mitochondria were just dormant, and DCA starts them back up again.

The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can't be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.

With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn't break down and seed new tumors.

Here's the big catch. Pharmaceutical companies probably won't invest in research into DCA because they won't profit from it. It's easy to make, unpatented and could be added to drinking water. Imagine, Gatorade with cancer control.

So, the groundwork will have to be done at universities and independently funded laboratories.

But, how are they supposed to drum up support if the media aren't even talking about it?

All I can do is write this and hope Google News picks it up. In the meantime, tell everyone you know and do your own research.

Acupuncture to Reduce the Side-Effects of Chemotherapy

This article focuses on acupuncture and how it helps to reduce the side-effects of chemotherapy.
In a review published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, certain types of acupuncture-point stimulation may relieve chemotherapy-induced nausea or vomiting.

Last year the Journal of the American Medical Association also published a study which reported: patients receiving high-dose chemotherapy found that electro-acupuncture treatments combined with anti-nausea medication were more effective than medication alone in controlling their chemo-related vomiting.

According to cancer experts, this particular study adds to the evidence that non-traditional therapies can be helpful to patients suffering side-effects of chemotherapy. As a result, an increasing number of well-designed studies are now focusing on complementary and alternative therapies.

Additional support for acupuncture to assist in alleviating the side-effects of chemotherapy was also offered at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December 2000.

David Rosenthal, MD, Chair of the American Cancer Society's national advisory committee on complementary and alternative medicine says that 'patients are finding that acupuncture can sometimes be effective in dealing with pain, nausea and treatment of mucositis'. He adds that acupuncture treatment is being provided at many cancer centres in the US, including the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston where appointments are totally booked up.

Cancer Killer Found In The Ocean

It's estimated that over 1.4 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and for more than 500,000 it will be fatal. But now, scientists have found a new weapon against it. The ocean! You run in it ... play in it ... splash in it ... but what’s found at the bottom of it can kill cancer!
"This bacteria makes a really potent anti cancer agent," Bradley Moore, Ph.D., marine biochemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Calf., told Ivanhoe.
The bacterium was discovered in 1991, but just recently researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography unlocked the genomic sequence, revealing this bacteria's cancer fighting potential.
"That’s how new drugs are discovered. We really have to go out there and grow bacteria, look at the genomes," Dr. Moore said. "What we've recently been able to do is take the enzymes out of the cell, put them in a test tube, and then play God and manipulate these enzymes and make new chemistry."
And make new drugs. "There's a major search underway for better drugs to treat cancer and one way to find these new medicines is to look to nature," Paul Jensen, Ph.D., associate research scientist at Scipps Institution of Oceanography, told Ivanhoe.
And unlike most of the drugs used to fight cancer today -- this bacterium is not found on land.
"When you look at a globe ... there's more blue than there is land," said Dr. Moore.
Revealing that our oceans maybe an even more valuable resource than we realize. A clinical trial is already underway. A San Diego pharmaceutical company is using it to treat patients that have a form of bone marrow cancer -- and it could soon be tested to treat other cancers.