CANCER IS A FOUR LETTER WORD!

ACID is an acronym which stands for:

A = acidic food and drink, attitudes and activities C = compromised internal acidic environment I = illness, disease, and dis-ease D = desire for more acidic foods, drinks, attitudes and activities.

And the cycle repeats itself.

Dr. Otto Warburg, two-time Nobel Prize winner, stated in his book, The Metabolism of Tumors that the primary cause of cancer was the replacement of oxygen in the respiratory cell chemistry by the fermentation of sugar. The growth of cancer cells is initiated by a fermentation process, which can be triggered only in the absence of oxygen at the cell level. What Warburg was describing was a classic picture of acidic conditions. Just like overworked muscle cells manufacture lactic acid by-products as waste. Cancerous cells spill lactic acid and other acidic compounds causing an acidic fluid pH. Read more

Broccoli May Ward Off Serious Stomach Ailments

(HealthDay News) -- Eating 2.5 ounces a day of broccoli sprouts appeared to reduce the risk of stomach ulcers and probably stomach cancer in a Japanese trial.

Gastric cancer thus joins a long list of malignancies for which studies have shown a reduced risk associated with a diet that contains broccoli -- including cancer of the esophagus, bladder, skin and lung, among others.

"I have to be careful about how enthusiastically I state the case," said Jed W. Fahey, the faculty research associate at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine whose research led to the Japanese study. "This was a small trial. But the evidence is all pointing toward broccoli or broccoli sprouts being able to prevent cancer in humans."

The chemical in broccoli responsible for the protective effect is sulforaphane, Fahey said. His group first described it as a potent antibiotic against Helicobacter pylori in 2002. The Japanese study, reported in the April issue of Cancer Prevention Research, was designed to show whether eating broccoli sprouts, which are rich in sulforaphane, resulted in lower levels of H. pylori, a bacterium that is closely associated with the risk of stomach damage and gastric cancer.

The study was done in Japan because the rate of H. pylori infection there is high. Though about 25 percent to 30 percent of Americans are infected, "in Japan there is infection at levels approaching 90 percent because of crowding and poor economic conditions," Fahey said. The bacterium is spread by person-to-person contact.

The study included 48 infected people. Half ate 70 grams a day of broccoli sprouts, and the others ate alfalfa sprouts, which do not contain sulforaphane. After eight weeks, tests showed significantly lower levels of H. pylori infection in those who ate broccoli sprouts, with no reduction among the alfalfa sprout eaters.

"H. pylori is a known carcinogen," Fahey said. "The fact that we were able to reduce the effects of an infectious agent that is also a carcinogen gives us hope that if someone were to eat broccoli sprouts or broccoli regularly, it would reduce levels of H. pylori and, over a period of many years, reduce the chance that they would get that cancer. It is not proven, but the results are highly suggestive."

Fahey is a co-founder of a company licensed by Hopkins to produce broccoli sprouts. He has no equity in the company.

Broccoli and sprouts are both important, said Dr. Steven H. Zeisel, director of the Nutrition Research Institute at the University of North Carolina.

"Specifically, the sprouts before broccoli becomes a plant are rich in sulforaphane," Zeisel said. "It is formed only when broccoli or sprouts are macerated, chewed on. When you break the cell, the chemical is formed."

Sulforaphane then causes the liver to produce an enzyme that is important in deactivating cancer-causing agents, Zeisel said. "People who eat more broccoli tune up their liver and other cells to destroy cancer-causing agents," he said.

Garlic has the same effect, he said, and so "increasing the amount of plants in the diet -- broccoli is good, broccoli sprouts even better -- causes production of a valuable bioactive chemical."

That is good advice, Fahey said, but inevitably some people will try a shortcut, taking a sulforaphane pill rather than eating what's good for them.

"I have come to the resigned conclusion that we will not be able to persuade everybody to change their diet," Fahey said. "A pill would be better than nothing, but that doesn't mean that I'm advocating it or promoting massive pill-taking."

Just two or three ounces a day of cooked broccoli would have a protective effect, he said.

Zeisel added that people who try the pill-taking shortcut might well lose any benefit.

"It's probably a combination of ingredients in the plant that is responsible," he said. "When you try to extract them out to make a pill, it usually doesn't work."

More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has information on diet and cancer.

Integrative Medicine in Cancer Care. Dr. Daniel Vicario and Dr. Paul Brenner

Integrative Medicine in Cancer Care. Dr. Daniel Vicario and Dr. Paul Brenner.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gQCu4d1nkY

Normal Cells May Predict Cancer Virulence

(HealthDay News) -- Characteristics of normal cells which are present long before any tumor appears may determine how virulent a particular cancer is going to be, new research suggests.

Such cells may travel early on to distant sites in the body, residing innocently there until certain cancer genes are turned on.

"It's definitely conceptually very profound," said Dr. Katrina Podsypanina, a senior research scientist at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "Our data seems to point toward the inherent decision that is made when the tumor is formed whether it is highly malignant or not. Moreover, since the characteristic might be dependent on the normal cell status, one might imagine that they might be different between individuals."

The study's senior author is Harold Varmus, who won the 1989 Nobel Prize for his work in cancer genetics and later went on to become director of the National Institutes of Health.

The finding implies that treatments that only target malignant cells may not be effective.

So far, however, the findings have only been shown in mice, and the research involved certain processes that were imposed which wouldn't normally occur in the human body.

"This does suggest that cells can sit for a long time, then be activated," said Dr. Claudine Isaacs, director of the clinical breast cancer program at Georgetown's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. "But these cells were injected into the circulation. Normal breast cells are not supposed to be in the circulation."

Also, the normal cells didn't form tumors until activated.

Conventional medical wisdom holds that the spread of a cancer occurs relatively late in the life of a cancer, happening only after cells from the primary tumor have undergone enough mutations to switch on different cancer genes.

Podsypanina and her colleagues performed a series of experiments in mice.

First, they injected normal mammary cells that contained cancer-inducing oncogenes, which could be switched on and off. These cells migrated through the bloodstream to the lungs, residing there for four months. They did not begin to grow aggressively until the oncogenes had been turned on, but they did so without first going through the stage of being a primary tumor.

Next, they injected normal cells without manipulating any oncogenes.

"Cells that did not have any oncogenes in them and do not transform spontaneously as per all published studies, we could see little colonies of these cells when we inspected the lungs," Podsypanina said. "At no point, never, did we see a solid vision that would resemble metastatic colonies, [but] it appears that every time we looked at the animal, the colonies appeared to be larger."

When these normal ectopic cells were injected back into a new generation of mice, they developed into normal mammary glands.

"It's a beginning," Podsypanina said. "It's an important step to show whether or not the first step of the metastatic cascade is something a normal cell can accomplish."

More information
Visit the American Cancer Society for more on oncogenes.

Mistaken Beliefs About Cancer Abound

(HealthDay News) -- People throughout the world have major misconceptions when it comes to what causes cancer, new research suggests.

Results from a survey released Aug. 27 at the International Union Against Cancer's (UICC's) World Cancer Congress in Geneva, found that people tend to inflate the threat from environmental factors and minimize the threat of behaviors that are well-established cancer risk factors.

Researchers interviewed 29,925 people in 29 countries last year to compare data on perceptions about cancer risk factors among high-, middle-, and low-income countries.

Among their findings was the fact that people in high-income countries were least likely to believe that drinking alcohol increases the risk of cancer, when, in fact, cancer risk rises as alcohol intake increases. Specifically, 42 percent of the people in the high-income countries said alcohol does not increase the risk, compared with 26 percent of those in middle-income countries and 15 percent of those in low-income countries.

Another finding was that people in high-income countries felt that not eating enough fruits and vegetables was more risky than drinking alcohol. The truth is that the evidence supporting the protective effect of produce consumption is weaker than the evidence that alcohol intake is harmful.

In addition, people in rich countries thought that stress and air pollution were greater risk factors than alcohol intake, even though stress is not recognized as a cause of cancer and air pollution is a minor contributor compared with alcohol intake.

The people in middle- and low-income countries were more likely than those in high-income countries to say that "not much can be done" to cure cancer or that they didn't know whether anything could be done. And a surprising 75 percent of survey respondents in low-income countries preferred for their doctor to make all their cancer treatment decisions, while 72 percent of the people in high-income countries said that the decisions should be made between the doctor and patient, or by the patient alone.

Finally, people in all countries were more ready to accept that things they could not control (e.g., air pollution) were risk factors than things they could control (e.g., overweight, which is an established cancer risk factor).

The researchers hope that their data will be used to put into action cancer education campaigns that address some of these misconceptions.

"This survey reveals that there are some big unheard messages. These kind of data help us to quantify the differences between countries and to highlight where additional efforts are needed. Some of these countries have rarely had any population survey data to help their programme planning efforts," researcher David Hill, president-elect of UICC and director of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, said in a UICC press release.

The survey was conducted by Roy Morgan Research and Gallup International on behalf of the UICC.

More information
The National Cancer Institute has more about cancer.

Long-Term Exposure to Incense Raises Cancer Risk

(HealthDay News) -- Exposure to burning incense over long periods of time raises the risk of developing cancers of the upper respiratory tract, a new study shows.

Interestingly, the practice did not increase the overall risk of lung cancer.

"Given that our results are backed by numerous experimental studies showing that incense is a powerful producer of particulate matter and that incense smoke contains carcinogenic substances, I believe incense should be used with caution," said study author Dr. Jeppe Friborg, of the department of epidemiology research at Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. "That is, frequent use in rooms where people live should be minimized, or at least sufficient ventilation should be secured. In our study, we find the increased risk of cancer to be present in individuals reporting frequent use of incense for many years, thus, repeated exposure for years should probably be avoided."

Others echoed the thought.

"The American Lung Association is going to add it as a risk factor," said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the association. "It's not nearly the danger of smoking a pack a day for 20 years, but it's a danger."

Not only is incense burned regularly as part of daily life in large swaths of Asia, the practice is also popular among certain segments in the West.

Incense burning produces particulate matter and is known to contain possible carcinogens such as polyaromatic hyodrcarbons (PAHs), carbonyls and benzene.

There have also been reports linking the burning of incense with cancer but the results have been inconsistent.

For this study, researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with more than 61,000 Singapore Chinese aged 45 to 74 who were cancer-free at the beginning of the study.

Incense burning almost doubled the risk of developing squamous cell upper respiratory tract carcinomas including nasal/sinus, tongue, mouth and laryngeal. There was an increased risk both in smokers and in nonsmokers, pointing to an independent effect of incense smoke.

There was no overall increased risk of lung cancer, but it did heighten the risk of squamous cell carcinoma of the lung.

Will incense go the way of tobacco? Not necessarily, said some experts.

"Certainly I think bathing yourself in particles is probably not the smartest thing in the world . . . but I think very few people fill up their room with incense," said Dr. Arthur Frankel, a professor of medicine at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and director of the Cancer Center, Cancer Research Institute and Division of Hematology/Oncology at Scott & White in Temple.

The findings, which are in the Oct. 1 issue of Cancer, might also point researchers toward other household practices that should be investigated.

"It's a population-based study, which means that you can make an association but not necessarily a conclusion," said Dr. Erin Fleener, a clinical assistant professor in internal medicine at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and an oncologist at the Bryan-College Station Cancer Clinic. "It probably promotes more work in the area of routine household items and things we need to be looking at more prospectively to make a clear cause-and-effect relationship."

In general, though, it's not a bad idea to avoid environmental pollutants of various types.

"Anything that affects air quality negatively is not a good thing," said Dr. Len Horvitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "Burning in general and the release of smoke, these things are certainly to be avoided. At the very least, chemical irritants will set off asthma, and that's reversible. Cancer is not reversible."

"This is not unlike the type of risk that one experiences from secondhand tobacco smoke," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "At the end of the day, people who use incense casually, I don't think that's a cause for major concern, but those cultures which embrace incense as part of their daily lifestyles have to consider this has a real potential risk for cancer."

More information
Visit the National Cancer Institute for more on respiratory cancers.

Vitamin B, Folate Supplements Won't Help Heart

(HealthDay News) -- A study to determine whether folic acid and vitamin B supplements help the heart has been cut short, because the pills weren't doing any good and might have even caused participants harm.

"This confirms what a lot of recent studies have found -- no benefit of taking vitamin B supplements to reduce the risk of heart disease, and it raises a few red flags," said Alice H. Lichtenstein, Gershoff professor of nutrition at Tufts University, Boston.

In the new study, reported in the Aug. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, physicians at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway, enrolled almost 3,100 volunteers. Three-quarters of them took various doses of vitamin B and folic acid (which is chemically a B vitamin), while the others got a placebo, an inactive substance.

The study was ended early, after an average follow-up of 38 months, because "we could not detect any preventive effect of intervention with folic acid plus vitamin B12 or with vitamin B6 on mortality or major cardiovascular events," the researchers reported.

They did find a slight reduction of stroke, but also a slight increase of cancer in those taking folic acid, but neither of these results reached statistical significance. The study was ended, because another Norwegian study of folic acid and vitamin B supplementation has also hinted at an increased incidence of cancer among users.

But the real bottom line here, according to Lichtenstein, is that "there is no evidence that individuals should take B vitamins to decrease the risk of heart disease, and there may be some evidence that they shouldn't."

The trials were initiated, because observational studies did link high blood levels of a protein called homocysteine with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. In the new study, homocysteine levels did go down by 30 percent over the course of three years in people taking folic acid and vitamin B. However, there was no related effect on the risk of cardiovascular events.

So, "the observational data was great, but the interventional studies were negative," Lichtenstein said.

Food in the United States is routinely fortified with folic acid, because it reduces the incidence of a specific class of birth defects called neural tube defects. Folic acid is a synthetic form of folate, a B vitamin found in many fruits and vegetables.

"We have been optimistic about the role of antioxidants such as vitamin B in preventing heart disease, yet many of these large trials have shown that there is no benefit," said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

It's hard to say whether the reduction in cardiovascular disease seen in some observational trials was caused by vitamin supplementation or because "people taking the supplements have good lifestyles in general," Steinbaum said.

It is also possible that the benefits of vitamin supplements show up only after many years, Steinbaum said. She does recommend a daily multivitamin pill. "But at this point, it is certainly hard to recommend extra supplements when we don't have proof of benefit," Steinbaum said. "What we can recommend is a diet with fruits and vegetables that have antioxidant vitamins in them," she said.

More information
There's more on folic acid supplementation at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Don’t Tell Me to Stop Squeezing My Boobs!

By Anne Krueger

No doubt you’ve seen the headline: Breast self-exams (BSEs) to check for breast cancer don’t work.
I was pretty annoyed to find out that not only was the occasional halfhearted boob mauling that I did a waste of medical and diagnostic time, but worse, the guilt I felt over not mauling regularly was totally unnecessary too. Read More

Cancer Survival Depends on Where You Live

(HealthDay News) -- Your odds of surviving cancer depend on which country you live in. And, in the United States, it also depends on whether you're black or white, a new study finds.

Economic differences among countries, access to health care, and the availability of cancer treatments feed the disparities in survival, the report said.

"There is a very wide global range in the odds of survival after a cancer diagnosis," said lead researcher Michel Coleman, a professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Great Britain. "Some of the range is understandable on the basis of the relative wealth of these countries," he added.

The study also confirms the disparity in cancer survival among blacks and whites in the United States, Coleman said. "The differences are large across the U.S.A., and even in different metropolitan areas," he said.

Coleman believes the differences among countries -- and within regions of countries -- is directly related to access to health care. "This is not a question of the competence of doctors in any particular country," he said. "This is an issue of the overall effectiveness of health services."

The report was published in the July 17 online edition of The Lancet Oncology.

For the study, called the CONCORD study, Coleman's team collected data on 1.9 million cancer patients in 31 countries. Using cancer registries from each country, the researchers compared the five-year survival rates for breast, colon, rectal and prostate cancer.

The United States has the highest rates of survival for breast and prostate cancers, while Japan has the highest survival rates for colon and rectal cancers among men. France has the highest survival rates for colon and rectal cancer among women, the report found.

In addition, Canada and Australia also have very high survival rates for most cancers. The lowest rate of survival among both men and women was seen in Algeria.

In the United States, the lowest survival rates are in New York City, except for rectal cancer in women, where Wyoming scores worse. The best survival rate for cancer in the United States is in Hawaii, the researchers found.

Idaho also has a high survival rate for rectal cancer, and Seattle has the highest survival rate for prostate cancer.

But, there's a big disparity in cancer survival rates between whites and blacks in the United States, and it favors whites. The differences range from 7 percent for prostate cancer to 14 percent for breast cancer. This disparity is most likely due to differences in the stage of cancer when it is diagnosed, the researchers said.

There's also a significant difference in cancer survival rates between the United States and Europe, with survival rates 10 percent and 34 percent higher in the United States for breast cancer and prostate cancer, respectively, the study found.

In Europe, France has the highest survival rate for rectal and colon cancers. Sweden has the highest survival rate for breast cancer, and Austria has the highest survival rate for prostate cancer.

The worst performing European countries are Poland and Slovakia.

Coleman said he hopes that political leaders will use the findings to provide better cancer diagnosis and treatment.

"Where the system is either slow in diagnosis, has too few doctors, has very few radiotherapy machines or in some countries, none, you would expect differences in outcome, and that's what these overall survival estimates are helping us provide," he said.

Dr. Elmer Huerta, president of the American Cancer Society's National Volunteer Board of Directors, said the study provides evidence for what has long been suspected -- namely, that where you live plays a role in cancer survival.

"The world needs to wake up to the fact that cancer is the second leading cause of death all over the place," he said. "Policymakers don't really put the weight to cancer care."

Huerta thinks more emphasis needs to be placed on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

"The world needs to smell the coffee and realize cancer can be prevented, and cancer can be cured if found early," he said.

More information
For more on cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.

Lots of Sex May Prevent Erectile Dysfunction

(HealthDay News) -- Frequent sexual intercourse may cut down on a man's chances of developing erectile dysfunction, Finnish researchers report.

"This is the same as any other part of the body. It's what we in vascular surgery refer to as the 'use it or lose it' concept," said Dr. Hossein Sadeghi-Nejad, an associate professor of urology at UMDNJ New Jersey Medical School Hackensack University Medical Center. "Sexual activity will promote maintenance of normal erectile function down the line."

The report was published in the July issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

In the study, led by Dr. Juha Koskimaki, from Tampere University Hospital's Department of Urology, researchers collected data on 989 Finnish men aged 55 to 75 years old.

The researchers found that men who said they had sexual intercourse less than once a week had twice the risk of developing erectile dysfunction, compared with men reporting having sexual intercourse once a week.

Among men who had sexual intercourse less than once a week, there were 79 cases of erectile dysfunction per 1,000 men. That number dropped to 32 cases per 1,000 among men who said they had sexual intercourse once a week, and it dropped even further, to 16 per 1,000, among men who said they had sexual intercourse three or more times a week, the researchers reported.

The frequency of morning erections was not associated with the incidence of moderate erectile dysfunction, the researchers noted.

However, the development of complete erectile dysfunction could be predicted from the frequency of morning erections. Among men with less than one morning erection a week, the risk of developing erectile dysfunction was 2.5-fold greater than among men who had two to three morning erections per week.

"Regular intercourse has an important role in preserving erectile function among elderly men, whereas morning erection does not exert a similar effect," Koskimaki said in a statement. "Continued sexual activity decreases the incidence of erectile dysfunction in direct proportion to coital frequency."

Sadeghi-Nejad said there is a scientific basis for this finding, and it also has implications for rehabilitation of patients after prostate cancer treatment.

"What is very hot these days is what we can do to rehabilitate people who develop erection problems after prostate cancer surgery or radiation therapy," Sadeghi-Nejad said. "Anything you can do to increase oxygenation in the penis will help get patients back to normal."

If one can naturally engage in behaviors that increase blood flow to the penis, it will have a positive effect in preventing erectile dysfunction, Sadeghi-Nejad said.

Sadeghi-Nejad noted that the study only addressed intercourse, and not masturbation. "This is essentially the same concept," Sadeghi-Nejad said. "Anything you can do to bring blood to the penis is beneficial," he added.

More information
For more about sexual dysfunction, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Barefoot Lifestyle Has Its Dangers

(HealthDay News) -- Going barefoot is one of the simple pleasures of summer, but some who doff their shoes and socks suffer injuries such as cuts and puncture wounds. In some cases, those injuries develop infections that require surgery.

If you do go barefoot, check out these safety tips from the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons:

• Make sure you're vaccinated against tetanus. Teens and adults should get booster shots every 10 years.
• Apply sunscreen to the tops and bottoms of your feet to protect them from sunburn. Rare, but deadly, skin cancers can develop on the feet.
• Wear flip-flops or sandals around swimming pools, locker rooms and beaches. They'll help protect against cuts and abrasions from rough anti-slip surfaces and sharp objects hidden in beach sand, and prevent contact with viruses and bacteria that can cause athlete's foot, plantar warts and other foot problems.
• Use common sense. Every year, people lose toes while mowing the lawn barefoot and others suffer serious burns from accidentally stepping on stray campfire coals or fireworks. Remember that murky rivers, lakes and ponds can conceal sharp objects underwater.
• People with diabetes should never go barefoot, even indoors, because they may not "feel" a foot injury.
• If you suffer a puncture wound in your foot, see a doctor within 24 hours. A puncture wound must be cleaned properly and monitored throughout the healing process to avoid complications such as tissue and bone infections or damage to tendons or muscles in the foot.
• Inspect your feet on a routine basis for skin problems such as warts, calluses, ingrown toenails, suspicious moles, spots or freckles. The sooner a condition is detected, the easier it is to treat.

More information

The American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons has more about puncture wounds.

Doctor-Patient Talks Affect Use of Breast Reconstruction Surgery

(HealthDay News) -- A lack of patient-doctor discussion may contribute to socioeconomic, age and race-related disparities in the use of breast reconstruction after mastectomy, says a study by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

The study also found that breast reconstruction was more likely to occur after a surgeon discussed options with a patient, which suggests the need to increase and improve these conversations, the researchers said.

They analyzed data on 626 patients who underwent mastectomy for breast cancer. Of those patients, 253 (40.4 percent) received breast reconstruction, and 249 (39.8 percent) had a documented discussion about the option with a doctor.

About 70 percent of those who had a discussion about breast reconstruction had the procedure. But the researchers found that increasing age and lower levels of education were associated with lower rates of a documented discussion. Hispanic patients, those born outside of the United States, and those whose primary language wasn't English were less likely to undergo reconstruction after discussing it with a doctor.

The study was published in the April issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

The decision to have breast reconstruction is a complex one that's influenced by access to care, patient preference and a doctor's interaction with the patient, the researchers noted.

"Patient preferences should be respected, but an informative discussion of reconstruction is required to help patients understand and weigh the risks and benefits of this procedure," Dr. Caprice C. Greenberg, Instructor of Surgery in the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and the Center for Outcomes and Policy Research at Dana Farber, said in a prepared statement. "We learned that physicians need to improve communications with all women undergoing a mastectomy, regardless of age, race or socioeconomic status."

She and her colleagues said doctors should systematically address the issue of breast reconstruction with all patients undergoing mastectomy. Doctor-patient discussions could include interpreters and educational materials to ensure an informative discussion regardless of a patient's primary language, ethnicity or education level.

More information

Roshini Raj, MD, Explains Common Flu Symptoms on the "Today" Show

"Health" contributor Dr. Raj on the "Today" show Feb. 13, discussing tips on fighting the flu
by Ross Weale

In the following segment, Roshini Raj, MD, of Health magazine describes flu symptoms and talks about whether you can still get that shot.



DR. ROSHINI RAJ
Roshini Raj, MD, a Health magazine contributor and part of the magazine's Health Expert Network, is board-certified in gastroenterology and internal medicine with degrees from the New York University School of Medicine and Harvard University. Currently Dr. Raj is an attending physician at NYU Medical Center's Tisch Hospital in New York City. She also serves as an assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine, and she has a special interest in women's health and cancer screening. She has also published several research articles on colon-cancer screening.

Dr. Raj has discussed health topics on numerous television outlets including NBC's Today show, ABC's Good Morning America, CNN, FOX News, and Discovery Health. She has been quoted in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Men's Health, Women's Health, and Fitness on the state of health care and other health news of the day. Dr. Raj is often called upon to explain and demystify complicated health topics.

more discussion: Forum· Addiction Forum · Ask the Doctors Forum · Ayurveda Forum · Ayurvedic & Thai Herbs Forum · Colon Cleansing Forum · Dental Forum · Diabetes Forum · Diet Forum · General Cleansing Forum · Hepatitis A, B. C Forum · Integrated Medicine Forum · Live Blood Analysis Forum · Ozone-Oxygen-Forum · pH - Alkaline - Acidity Forum · Weight Loss Forum

5 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism and Lose Weight

Magnesium, interval training, and other tricks to burn more calories
by Ross Weale

Health magazine contributor Samantha Heller shows how to burn more calories, during an interview on the Today show, March 10.



SAMANTHA HELLER

Samantha Heller, RD, is the nutrition coordinator at the Fairfield Connecticut YMCA. A certified dietitian/nutritionist and exercise physiologist, Heller earned her master's degree in nutrition and applied physiology from Teachers’ College, Columbia University. She served as the senior clinical nutritionist and exercise physiologist at NYU Medical center in New York City for almost a decade and created and ran the outpatient nutrition program for the NYU Cardiac Rehabilitation Program. She has also been a fitness instructor for 15 years. Heller specializes in nutrition, wellness, stress management, and fitness for people who are fighting heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity.

A contributing editor to Health magazine, her writing has also appeared in numerous other magazines, including Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, and Glamour, as well as sites such as Fitness.com.

Will Your New House Make You Sick?

The one we almost bought harbored cancer-causing gas and toxic mold. What buyers must check before their dream home turns into a nightmare
by Amy O'Connor

It was love at first sight. My husband and I couldn’t believe our luck. We met The One so early in our home-hunting process; the house was everything we’d ever dreamed of and more: neat and tidy, wrapped up in a bow.

Or so we thought when we offered asking price and had it accepted. We even bonded with the sweet little-old-lady seller, whose grandmotherly demeanor filled us with confidence about our impending purchase. I envisioned our closing date through a Vaseline-coated lens, complete with baked-from-scratch chocolate chip cookies provided by her and a group hug with both attorneys. Continue reading »

A Bone Marrow Disease With a Brighter Prognosis

(HealthDay News) -- Blood is life. And the rare disease known as aplastic anemia robs the body of life by robbing the body of blood.

The aplastic anemia patient's blood thins as the bone marrow slows its production of blood cells. The results can range from chronic fatigue to heart disease or from endless infections to cuts that won't clot, depending on the type of blood cells that are lacking.

But there's hope: Considered fatal as recently as two decades ago, aplastic anemia is becoming a far more manageable disease. Advances in drug therapies and improvements in the field of transplantation have slashed the death toll, allowing patients to live longer, fuller lives.

"We are getting better at treating aplastic anemia, either in getting rid of it or treating its symptoms," said Dr. Jaroslaw P. Maciejewski, with the Cleveland Clinic's Department of Hematologic Oncology and Blood Disorders.

And those advances are helping doctors gain greater insights into other, more prevalent, health conditions, such as heart disease and leukemia.

An estimated 50,000 people develop aplastic anemia in the United States each year, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. (A related blood disorder, myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, occurs when the bone marrow begins to produce poorly functioning or immature blood cells. About 20,000 to 30,000 new cases of MDS occur each year.)

It's important to note that many symptoms of aplastic anemia, such as fatigue and infection, can also be caused by other diseases, said Dr. Ronald Paquette, a blood disease researcher with the University of California, Los Angeles' Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"If everyone who was fatigued thought they had aplastic anemia, we'd be swamped," Paquette said.

Bone marrow -- the spongy material inside bones -- produces stem cells that normally develop into the three main types of blood cells -- red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.

"Essentially, the bone marrow is a factory of blood," Maciejewski said.

In patients with aplastic anemia, the stem cells have been damaged, slowing or stopping the production of all blood cells.

The cause of the damage to stem cells remains unknown in more than half of people with aplastic anemia. Some research has suggested that stem cell damage occurs when the immune system attacks the body's own cells by mistake, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Aplastic anemia has also been linked to exposure to toxins such as pesticides, arsenic and benzene. Some infectious diseases also can cause the disorder, including hepatitis, Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, parvovirus B19, and HIV, as well as autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Finally, some genetic disorders have been linked to it.

Symptoms vary depending on the type of blood cells in shortage:

• Too few red blood cells can mean not enough oxygen is carried to the body, according to the NIH. People who have a low red blood cell count often feel tired. Because the heart has to work harder to pump blood to get enough oxygen to the body's organs and tissues, heart disease can develop over time.
• Too few white blood cells weaken the body's defense against infection. The patient may become ill more often, and the illness can be severe.
• Too few platelets hamper the blood's ability to clot. Patients with a low platelet count may bruise or bleed easily, and their bleeding may be hard to stop.
• Once aplastic anemia is detected, swift treatment is essential, Paquette said. "Because it's a rare disease, it's important to be treated at a specialized center," he said. "The most important thing is to be seen by someone with a lot of experience treating the disease early on."

For patients younger than 30, stem cell transplantation is often the preferred treatment. For those with a matched sibling donor, stem cell transplantation replaces the defective bone marrow with healthy cells, and as many as 80 percent of patients enjoy a complete recovery, according to the Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation Inc.

Advances in stem cell research and anti-rejection drugs have meant that transplantations from unrelated donors also are becoming more successful, Paquette said.

One promising avenue of treatment involves transplantation using stem cells harvested from the umbilical cord of new mothers. "The cells can be cryopreserved [frozen] and saved, then given to unrelated donors," Paquette said. "It's quite encouraging."

For these patients, again, speed is of the essence. "The data show the earlier you do a transplant, the better the outcome," Paquette said.

Patients whose transplants fail, or for whom transplantation is not an option, often receive successful immunosuppressive therapy with agents like anti-thymocyte globulin and cyclosporine. Response rates typically range from 70 percent to 80 percent, according to the Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation Inc.

Blood transfusions from matched donors also are used to keep blood counts high and help relieve symptoms, although they are not an effective long-term treatment.

"Whether we cure the disease or not, patients are getting better across the board," Maciejewski said. "We now can maintain life, keep these patients alive longer."

More information
To learn more, visit the Aplastic Anemia & MDS International Foundation Inc.

Pain Relief for Osteoporosis Patients With Fractures

(HealthDay News) -- In osteoporosis patients with spinal fractures, vertebroplasty provides significant pain relief and helps decrease disability, according to a new study.

Vertebroplasty involves injection of medical-grade bone cement into a fractured vertebra to shore up the fracture and provide pain relief. It's used to treat painful vertebral compression fractures that don't respond to conventional medical therapy with analgesics or narcotics.

The study followed 884 patients for five years who were assessed before and after vertebroplasty. Their average pre-treatment pain score on an 11-point scale decreased from 7.9 (+/- 1.5) before treatment to an average of 1.3 (+/- 1.8) after treatment.

The patients' ability to manage everyday tasks such as washing and dressing was measured using the Oswestry Disability Questionnaire. The patients' scores went from an average of 69.3 percent (+/-13.5) a month before treatment to 18.8 percent (+/- 6.9) a month after treatment.

"These data provide good news for physicians and osteoporosis patients. Many osteoporosis patients with compression fractures are in terrible pain and have a greatly diminished ability to perform basic daily activities, such as dressing themselves," Dr. Giovanni C. Anselmetti, an interventional radiologist at the Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment in Turin, Italy, said in a prepared statement.

The study also found that vertebroplasty didn't increase the risk of fracture in nearby vertebra.

"Vertebroplasty is already known to be a safe and effective treatment for osteoporotic vertebral fractures. Osteoporosis patients remain susceptible to new fractures, which often occur in the contiguous vertebra to an existing fracture. Our large-scale study shows that vertebroplasty does not increase the risk of fracture in the level contiguous to previously treated vertebra and that these new fractures occur at the same rate as they would in osteoporosis patients who did not have vertebroplasty," Anselmetti said.

The study was to be presented Tuesday at the annual scientific meeting of the Society of International Radiology.

Osteoporosis affects about 10 million Americans and causes about 1.5 million vertebral fractures each year, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Multiple vertebral fractures can cause chronic pain, disability, loss of independence, stooped posture, and compression of the lungs and stomach.

More information
The American College of Radiology/Radiological Society of North American has more about vertebroplasty.

One in 4 Teen Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease

(HealthDay News) -- More than 3 million teenaged girls have at least one sexually transmitted disease (STD), a new government study suggests.

The most severely affected are African-American teens. In fact, 48 percent of African-American teenaged girls have an STD, compared with 20 percent of white teenaged girls.

"What we found is alarming," Dr. Sara Forhan, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a teleconference Tuesday. "One in four female adolescents in the U.S. has at least one of the four most common STDs that affects women."

"These numbers translate into 3.2 million young women nationwide who are infected with an STD," Forhan said. "This means that far too many young women are at risk of the serious health effects of untreated STDs, including infertility and cervical cancer."

These common STDs include human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus and trichomoniasis, Forhan said.

Forhan announced the results as part of the CDC's 2008 National STD Prevention Conference, in Chicago.

"These findings are really giving us a lot of pause about how we provide care to adolescent girls who are sexually active," said Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City and chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Section of Adolescent Health of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "The numbers are really astonishing."

Forhan noted that most of the burden of STDs falls on young African-American women. "Among African-American teenagers, about one in two were affected compared to one in five white teens," she said.

In terms of the racial disparity, "it's what we've always seen, which is very unfortunate," Alderman said.

In the study, Forhan's team collected data on 838 girls aged 14 to 19 who took part in the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The study did not include syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV, as earlier studies found very low prevalence of these diseases in this age group.

HPV and chlamydia are the most common STDs found among teenage girls, Forhan said. "Almost one in five overall had a strain of HPV associated with cervical cancer or genital warts," she said.

"We need to be screening adolescent girls who are sexually active and providing them with HPV vaccine," Alderman said. "The recommendations are to screen sexually active girls, but many girls don't disclose to their health-care provider that they are sexually active, even when asked," she said.

As for chlamydia, 4 percent of teenaged girls had this STD, Forhan said. "The majority of chlamydia infections do not have symptoms. If left untreated, it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which leaves these young women at risk for atopic pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain or infertility," she said.

In addition, the study found that 2.9 percent of young women had trichomoniasis, and 2 percent were infected with genital herpes, Forhan said.

According to Forhan, about 50 percent of the teens reported having sex, and the prevalence of STDs in this group was 40 percent. "Even for young women with only one reported lifetime sexual partner, one in five had an STD," she noted.

"If you choose to be sexually active, you need to protect yourself and be screened for these infections," Alderman said. "And all girls between the ages of 11 and 26 should get vaccinated for HPV."

Among women with an STD, 15 percent had more than one infection, Forhan added.
"These data provide a clearest picture to date of the overall burden of STDs in adolescent women in the United States," Forhan said. "The study also underscores the importance of addressing racial disparities in STD rates among young women."

Race itself is not a risk factor for STDs, Forhan said. However, factors such as limited access to health care, poverty, community prevalence of STDs, and misperceptions about individual risk are some of the reasons that STD rates are particularly high among African-Americans, she said.
More information
For more on STDs, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Earlier Colon Cancer Screens Urged for Smokers

(HealthDay News) -- Smokers and people with significant exposure to secondhand smoke should start getting screened for cololon cancer five to 10 years earlier than the current recommended age of 50, a new study says.

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York analyzed the cases of 3,450 colon cancer patients and found that current smokers were diagnosed with the cancer an average of 6.8 years earlier than people who never smoked, while former smokers who'd quit less than five years before were diagnosed 4.3 years earlier than people who never smoked.

People who'd quit more than five years before were the same as never-smokers.

People who started smoking before age 17 and those who were heavy smokers (one pack or more a day) were most likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer at a younger age.

The study also found that people exposed to secondhand smoke, especially early in life, tended to be younger when they were diagnosed with colon cancer.

The findings were published online in the Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology.
"The message for physicians and patients is clear: When making decisions about colon cancer screening, you should take into account smoking history as well as family history of disease and age," study author Luke J. Peppone, a research assistant professor of radiation oncology, said in a prepared statement.

Smoking has long been recognized as a major risk factor for many kinds of cancers, but it's only been recently that researchers have linked smoking with colon cancer, which is one of the most common kinds of cancer in the United States.

More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about colorectal cancer screening.

Born to Be Obese?

(HealthDay News) -- The brain circuitry that controls appetite might be wired differently in some people, and that could predispose them to obesity, California researchers suggest.

The study was conducted in rats, not humans, and yet it could ultimately lead to novel obesity treatments, said Philip Smith, director of the Office of Obesity Research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

"It is not just about drugs that modify short-term appetite," he said, "there may be drugs that stimulate development of the appropriate neural pathways. So, it is an exciting, but very early, time in this field."

The study was published in the February issue of Cell Metabolism.

Sebastien Bouret, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and his colleagues examined neural circuits emanating from the appetite, hunger and body-weight control center of the brain -- the so-called arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (ARH) -- in a series of rats bred to be either prone to, or resistant to, obesity.

The team found fewer neural connections projecting from the ARH in obesity-prone animals than in their leaner counterparts. Surprisingly, Bouret said, this deficiency developed very early in life, before the animals became obese, and appeared to extend into adulthood.

"Somehow, these animals are programmed to become obese," Bouret said. "The obesity is hard-wired into the brain."

When the researchers then looked at why the brains of obese rats differed from their normal-weight counterparts, they found that the neurons from obesity-prone animals were less responsive to leptin, a hormone that controls the development of these circuits, and which also signals the body's energy status and controls metabolic rate.

"This paper presumes to say, these animals must be leptin-resistant, and that is why the pathways are not developing," said Smith.

But that doesn't mean they are doomed to a life of severe obesity, said Dr. Barbara Kahn, chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. How they live their lives also matters.

"It is important not to 'blame' the obese person or imply that he/she is responsible for being obese," Kahn noted. "Having said that, reasonable, healthy caloric restriction and a safe and sustainable program of physical activity can help limit weight gain and often bring about some degree of weight loss. In addition, healthy eating and regular exercise can reduce the complications of obesity such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease."

At the same time, she added, not everyone can wear a size 4.

"There is a certain aspect of genetics that sets somebody in a certain range of possible body weights, and then how that person lives his or her life will determine whether they are at the bottom or top of the range," she explained.

Human obesity has both genetic and environmental roots. The rats used in this study, like most humans, developed obesity when fed a high-energy diet. On a normal diet, they were heavier than normal rats, but not yet obese.

"This is quite an exciting paper," said Smith, "because it links more closely to human behavior than most rodent models we have seen."

The findings also suggest a possible therapeutic approach to combating human obesity. If drugs could be designed to influence the formation of neural circuits during development and targeted to at-risk pregnancies, Smith said, "there is a good likelihood we could have successful interventions that improve the health of the mother, and which have a major impact on disease risk for the infant, during pregnancy."

A related study from Boston University researchers in the same journal found that bulking up muscle mass can lead to a general metabolic improvement in obese individuals. "Interventions designed to increase skeletal muscle mass in at-risk human populations may prove to be critical weapons in the fight against obesity and obesity-related comorbidities, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension and cancer," an accompanying editorial stated.

More information
For more on obesity, visit the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.