Health & WellnessS


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Call for Ban on BPA Chemical in Baby Bottles

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Google Images
Seven leading scientists have sent a letter to the United Kingdom's Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, urging him to ban the use of the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) in products intended for use in feeding infants.

"We urge you now to adopt a standpoint consistent with the approach taken by other governments who have ended the use of BPA in food contact products marketed at children," they wrote.

BPA is used to make hard, clear plastics for products such as baby bottles, food containers and water bottles. It is also used to make resins that line cans of food and infant formula.

Numerous studies have linked the chemical to reproductive harm, especially in fetuses and infants. It has also been shown to increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and to cause cognitive damage and abnormal behavior. The Canadian government has banned its use in baby bottles, a number of retailers throughout North America have pledged to stop carrying infant products that contain it, and some North American manufacturers have voluntarily ceased using it.
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New Research: Vitamin K Protects Against Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00 UTC
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© NaturalNews
Non-Hodgkin lymphomas belong to a large group of immune system cancers involving lymphocytes (white blood cells). In 2009, according the National Cancer Institute (NCI) about 65,980 Americans were diagnosed with this form of cancer and almost 20,000 died from the disease. But now scientists at the Mayo Comprehensive Cancer Center in Minnesota think they've found a way to prevent a huge number of these malignancies. The key is a nutrient found in many leafy, green vegetables - vitamin K.

For their study, the first ever to investigate vitamin K and non-Hodgkin lymphoma risk, the Mayo researchers enrolled 603 patients who were newly diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma as well as 1,007 matched cancer-free research subjects who served as controls. The participants answered a food questionnaire about their usual intake of over 120 food items during the two years before they were diagnosed with cancer or they enrolled in the study as a member of the cancer-free control group. They were also asked about their use of vitamin and mineral supplements.

The findings of the study, which were recently announced in Washington, D.C., at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), showed that the risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma was slashed dramatically -- by 45 percent -- for the study participants who had the highest vitamin K levels compared to participants with the lowest levels of the vitamin. This association remained even after the Mayo research team investigated factors such as age, sex, education, obesity, smoking, alcohol use and consumption of foods with high amounts of antioxidants.
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Half of breast cancer patients 'suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder'

Kate Devlin
The Telegraph
Sat, 08 May 2010 23:18 UTC
breast cancer
© Unknown
Almost half of breast cancer patients suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder even years after diagnosis, according to a new study.

The debilitating disorder is often characterised by agitation, anxiety, depression, nightmares, flashbacks, and mood swings.

It is more often associated with soldiers returning from battlefields who have been shell-shocked by their experiences.

But now doctors have found that a similar effect can be found in women told that they have breast cancer.
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Biologists Link Gut Microbial Equilibrium to Inflammatory Bowel Disease


Science Daily
Mon, 10 May 2010 22:05 UTC
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© Courtesy of Arya Khosravi and Sarkis Mazmanian/CaltechCross-sectional image of a mouse colon stained for cell proliferation (green), and epithelial cell nuclei (blue). Cell proliferation occurs at the base of the colonic crypts, where progenitor stem cells divide and daughter cells migrate to the surface of the epithelium.
We are not alone - even in our own bodies. The human gut is home to 100 trillion bacteria, which, for millions of years, have co-evolved along with our digestive and immune systems. Most people view bacteria as harmful pathogens that cause infections and disease. Other, more agreeable, microbes (known as symbionts) have taken a different evolutionary path, and have established beneficial relationships with their hosts. Still other microbes may be perched somewhere in between, according to research by biologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that offers new insight into the causes of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colon cancer.

A paper about their work appears in the April 22 issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
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Health

What Exactly is a Food Allergy?

Elizabeth Landau
CNN
Tue, 11 May 2010 20:50 UTC
Stethoscope
© CNN
Heidi Bayer knows all too well that diagnosing food allergies isn't clear-cut.

When her daughter Phoebe Carney was 2½, her doctor did a skin test and said that she would be fine drinking milk. Hopeful, the mother gave Phoebe rice cheese with casein, a dairy product.

Suddenly, the toddler began coughing, and the color drained from her face. The mother gave her an antihistamine, but the child's entire body turned red. That's how they ended up in the emergency room.

"I think the tests are inconclusive, and that obviously there's going to be instances where it looks like there has been an outgrowing of an allergy when there actually hasn't," said Bayer, of Brooklyn, New York. "It's an inexact science at this point."

It turns out that the term "food allergy" has no universally accepted definition, nor are there well-accepted criteria for diagnosis, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

That means that while children like Phoebe may have life-threatening reactions to foods that don't respond to tests, others who think they have allergies may be unnecessarily avoiding foods. There is no cure for food allergies, and doctors are unclear on why some people develop them.

"It's a limiting diagnosis; it's difficult socially, it's difficult nutritionally, and so really trying to nail down whether or not you truly have an allergy is a really important thing," said Dr. Jennifer Schneider Chafen at Stanford University School of Medicine, lead author of the study.
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Rats on Junk Food Pass Cancer Down the Generations


Dr. Mercola
Tue, 11 May 2010 16:14 UTC
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When pregnant rats were fed a fatty diet, both their daughters and granddaughters proved to be at greater risk of breast cancer. In fact, even if the daughters of the first generation of rats ate healthily, their offspring - the third generation - were still at greater risk of disease.

According to the New Scientist:
"... a fatty diet may cause "epigenetic" DNA modifications that can be passed on to future generations."
If this is also true for humans, it means that genetics could be only one of several reasons why a family history of breast cancer increases your risk for the disease.

Sources:

New Scientist April 20, 2010
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Presidential Cancer Advisors Find Courage to Warn About Environmental Risks of Cancer Chemicals

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Tue, 11 May 2010 00:00 UTC
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© NaturalNews
When a government panel of experts finds the courage to tell the truth about cancer, it's an event so rare that it becomes newsworthy. Late last week, a report from the President's Cancer Panel (PCP) broke ranks with the sick-care cancer establishment and dared to say something that natural health advocates have been warning about for decades: That Americans are "bombarded" with cancer-causing chemicals and radiation, and if we hope to reduce cancer rates, we must eliminate cancer-causing chemicals in foods, medicines, personal care products and our work and home environments.

In a directive to President Obama, the report states, "The panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase healthcare costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."

When I first read that, I just about fell out of my chair. Government-appointed experts are really saying that there are cancer-causing chemicals in our food and water? That simple fact has been vehemently denied by the cancer industry, processed food giants, personal care product companies and of course the fluoride lobby -- all of which insist their chemicals are perfectly safe.
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Terminal Cancer Patients Spend Final Days Suffering from Radiation Therapy That Does Nothing

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Tue, 11 May 2010 00:00 UTC
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© NaturalNews
A new analysis just published in the journal Cancer concludes that a significant proportion of terminally ill cancer patients spend most of their final days and weeks subjected to grueling radiation therapy (radiotherapy). What makes this extra heartbreaking and downright outrageous is that irradiating dying cancer patients does absolutely nothing for the vast majority -- except to cause more end-of-life suffering and to keep countless people in the hospital, instead of allowing them to die at home.

When mainstream medicine runs out of treatments to try for long-term cancer control, so-called palliative radiotherapy is often ordered for end-stage cancer patients. The rationale? It's supposed to control cancer-related pain and other symptoms by reducing the number of cancer cells. That, in theory, can relieve pressure and bleeding and give patients a better quality of life in their final months and days.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Finally, in their new paper, Germany researchers have documented just how dismal the results of palliative radiotherapy really are.
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Curcumin and Black Pepper Combine to Stop Breast Cancer Tumor Cells

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Tue, 11 May 2010 00:00 UTC
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© iStockphotoCurcumin
Natural chemicals found in the spices turmeric and black pepper appear to stop the growth of breast tumors, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.

Researchers applied a solution containing both curcumin, found in turmeric, and piperine, which makes black pepper spicy, to breast cancer cells in a laboratory, using concentrations 20 times higher than those found in the human diet. They found that the solution hampered the ability of stem cells to propagate but did not affect the differentiation of normal breast cells.

"This shows that these compounds are not toxic to normal breast tissue," lead author Madhuri Kakarala said.

Cancer stem cells are the cells in tumors that allow it to keep growing without limit. Current chemotherapy treatments are unable to affect stem cells, which is part of the reason that cancers can spread and recur even in those undergoing treatment.
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Behind the Label: Talcum Powder

Pat Thomas
The Ecologist
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:28 UTC
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Keeping your baby's bottom soft and dry shouldn't mean exposing it to a potentially harmful and environmentally costly substance

Talcum powder is a traditional mainstay of freshness. We use it liberally on babies' bottoms and to absorb perspiration on hot summer days and nights. A few of us are old enough to remember our mothers having special dishes of talc in the bathroom which had big inviting powder puffs to help you dust your body, and most of the bathroom floor, with the stuff.

But time marches on and the benign image of talc has taken a something of a knock.

In recent years considerable doubt has been cast on the safety of powders containing talc, particularly when used on babies. Indeed, some baby powders now include a warning on the label to keep the powder away from the child's nose and mouth.
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