A few weeks ago, my GYN wanted me to have some routine blood work. It came back that my liver enzymes were high along with my cholesterol and triglycerides. She told me to IMMEDIATELY see my internist and have further tests done. It alarmed me since it involved my liver, so I followed her advice and saw my internist immediately. They ran further tests and eliminated fatty liver disease, which I thought I might have. All was perfect EXCEPT for my cholesterol and triglycerides. Just with watching what I’m eating and riding my bike a few times a week, my cholesterol has already dropped 80 points. I’ve started a very low carb/good carb, hardly no sugar diet and have to incorporate exercise into my everyday life. Finding the time is not always easy, but we’ve found something simple that will work for ANYONE, ANY WEIGHT, ANY AGE, ANYWHERE!

go here: http://www.healingdaily.com/exercise/rebounding-for-detoxification-and-health.htm

Bart and I bought one over the weekend at K-Mart for $39. It took 10 minutes to put it together with NO TOOLS and we can do it while watching TV. I’m starting it this morning. Will let you know how it works out.

Breast Cancer is affecting so many people these days. What we’re eating, drinking and breathing is so impoortant!

Watch this video: http://apps.facebook.com/thepinkribbon/invite.php

Novilase Treatment for Benign Breast Tumors Featured at Breast Surgeons Meeting

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A panel at the recent meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons included discussion of the advantages of a new laser treatment for fibroadenomas, the most common form of benign breast tumor. Novilase™ Breast Therapy makes it possible to treat these non-cancerous tumors while minimizing risks and maintaining the breast’s natural shape and feel.

Among the panelists was Kambiz Dowlat, M.D., a professor of surgery at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Dr. Dowlat pioneered laser treatment of small breast tumors. The procedure he developed is now performed with the Novilase™ Interstitial Laser Therapy device.

“With the X-ray guided laser technology we have today, lumpectomy is overkill,” said Dr. Dowlat. “Lumpectomy creates a significant scar and can deform the breast when you take the tumor out. Fibroadenomas can be precisely ablated with a laser, giving a superior result and less medical risk than lumpectomy. This is a great boon for patients because they can have their benign tumors treated without significant consequences for their health or appearance.”

Dr. Dowlat noted that breast health is moving toward treatments, such as Novilase, that are less invasive and have fewer side effects.

Tumors are now being detected at earlier stages when they are smaller. Because laser therapy is less intimidating for most women, the procedure provides them with a third treatment option besides surgery and a “watch and wait” approach, which may encourage them to take advantage of early detection.

Dr. Dowlat’s remarks emphasized several benefits of laser treatment over lumpectomy surgery, the traditional approach to treating fibroadenomas:

* Minimal scarring. Because no incision is made, laser treatment generally leaves only minimal scars.
* Natural shape and feel maintained. There is typically no “dimpling” with laser treatment because unlike a lumpectomy, the procedure does not remove tissue. In addition, the body’s natural healing process repairs the tumor site and restores the breast’s natural feel.
* Less risk of adverse reaction. Laser treatment can be performed using local anesthetic. A lumpectomy often requires IV sedation or a general anesthetic, which can be riskier.
* Less infection risk. The procedure involves the insertion of a laser probe and a thermal probe through two 1/8- inch skin nicks. The small size of the nicks keeps the infection risk extremely low. In contrast, a lumpectomy uses a 2 inch-to-3 inch incision, which creates a greater risk of infection.
* Faster recovery. A patient can resume normal activity within a few hours of the procedure. Recovery from a lumpectomy can take several days.

About 10 percent of all women will experience fibroadenomas during their lifetime. Although not cancerous, fibroadenomas can cause physical discomfort and also anxiety because of the association of lumps with breast cancer. Thus, after consultation with their physicians, many women with this condition request that their fibroadenomas be removed.

While Novilase is the first breast procedure to use direct laser therapy treat fibroadenomas, laser ablation has been successfully used to treat benign prostate tumors since the early 1990s. Novilase also uses the same image guidance that has been trusted for more than a decade for breast biopsy.

The Novilase device is made by Novian Health (Chicago, Ill.), a company Dr. Dowlat founded. For the initial use of the Novilase technology, Novian Health sought and received FDA 510(k) clearance for the treatment of fibroadenomas of up to and including 2 cm.

The 10th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons was held April 22-26 in San Diego.

About Novian Health

Novian Health is a Chicago-based, privately held company with proprietary technology for the treatment of tumors using Interstitial Laser Therapy. The company has developed, tested, and patented a minimally invasive procedure, Novilase Breast Therapy, which uses ILT (controlled heating) for the ablation of breast tumors. Novian Health has received its first FDA 510(k) clearance for fibroadenomas and anticipates it will commence a trial later this year in connection with seeking FDA approval for a malignant indication. Novian Health is commercializing its new technology primarily through independent breast centers, hospitals, and radiology groups, and secondarily through Novilase-branded centers of excellence in select markets.

To learn more about Novilase Breast Therapy, visit www.novianhealth.com.

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: April 21, 2009
Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

DENVER, April 21 — A couple of handfuls of walnuts a day could prevent breast cancer, a researcher said here.
Action Points

* Explain to interested patients that this study looked at the effect of walnuts in the diet of mice that were genetically engineered to develop breast cancer.

* Add that the study found a clear benefit, but caution that more research is needed before the results can be applied to humans.

* Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The finding comes from studies in transgenic mice, but should also apply to people, according to Elaine Hardman, Ph.D., of Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, W.Va.

“It is clear that walnuts contribute to a healthy diet that can reduce breast cancer,” Dr. Hardman said at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“I think any time (to eat walnuts) could be beneficial, even after diagnosis,” Dr. Hardman told reporters.

In the study she’s reporting here, mice engineered to be susceptible to breast cancer were fed small amounts of walnuts in their diet and were compared to similar animals that didn’t get the nuts.

At the age of six months, 100% of these animals usually have cancer, she said, but the incidence of malignancy was reduced by half in the animals who got the walnuts.

At the same time, in mice that got cancer anyway, the rate of growth of the tumor was reduced by 50%, compared with the growth rate of tumors in the control animals, she said.

In an earlier study — in which tumors were implanted in mice — the results were similar in terms of growth rate, she said.

In the current study, the time to the appearance of the first tumor was three weeks slower for the walnut-fed animals than it was for the control mice.

That’s about a 15% delay, she said. In women, that would translate to about a nine-year delay.

The mice were fed about four-tenths of a gram of walnuts a day, which for people would be about two ounces a day — or two handfuls, Dr. Hardman said.

But Dr. Hardman’s suggestion that humans eat more walnuts is going too far, according to Peter Shields, M.D., of Washington’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Such a leap is “outrageous” without more study, Dr. Shields said.

“We gave beta-carotene supplements to people based on animal and some [preliminary] human studies suggesting they reduce lung cancer,” he said.

“When we did the study in humans, smokers given beta-carotene got more lung cancer,” he said.

Dr. Shields was referring to pivotal studies, conducted in the 1990s, of the effects of beta-carotene supplements on some 29,000 male smokers in Finland. They found that, compared with patients taking a placebo, those who consumed a daily beta-carotene supplement had a 18% higher rate of lung cancer.

Dr. Hardman’s work, he said, “is a nice study that calls for more research. There needs to be a lot more understood” about how walnuts might prevent breast tumors.

“It might be worth it for epidemiologists to look at people,” he added.

The value — or risk — of various foods is a common theme at this meeting. In other research:

* Scientists at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health said eating well done and very well done meat may be associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. A preference for very well done steak was associated with a 95% increase in the risk of the disease, although the hazard ratio just missed statistical significance.
* For people with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a habit of drinking wine in the years before diagnosis may reduce the risk of death and relapse, according to researchers at Yale School of Public Health. The scientists said the finding may be controversial and needs to be replicated, but wine drinkers had 76% five-year survival compared with 68% of non-wine drinkers, while disease-free survival was 70% and 65% respectively.

The researchers did not report support or conflicts.

Primary source: American Association for Cancer Research
Source reference:
Ion G, et al “Walnut consumption decreases mammary gland tumor incidence, multiplicity and growth in the C(3)1Tag transgenic mouse” AACR 2009; Abstract LB-247.

Scientists have developed a fast new method to identify food additives that act as “xenoestrogens” — substances with estrogen-like effects that are stirring international health concerns.

They used the method in a large-scale screening, and discovered two additives with previously unrecognized xenoestrogen effects.

Xenoestrogens have been linked to a range of human health effects, including reduced sperm counts in men and increased risk of breast cancer in women.

The scientists used the new method to search a food additive database of 1,500 substances, and verified that the method could identify xenoestrogens. In the course of that work, they identified two previous unrecognized xenoestrogens — propyl gallate, a preservative used to prevent fats and oils from spoiling, and 4-hexylresorcinol, which is used to prevent discoloration in shrimp and other shellfish.

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

I’ve written about the dangers of endocrine disruptors such as bisphenol A, PFOA and phthalates many times. I like to consider xenoestrogens fake estrogens but their name literally means “foreign estrogens.” Either way they are synthetic chemicals that mimic natural estrogens, and have been linked to a wide range of human health effects.

There are so many of them, and they’re used in so many common consumer products that trying to avoid them may seem like a fruitless struggle.

For example, you come in contact with hormone disrupting chemicals through:

* Pasteurized dairy, which commonly contains bovine growth hormones
* Soy products, which are loaded with hormone like substances
* Plastics – many of which contain bisphenol A
* Personal care products that contain phthalates
* Cooking with Teflon-coated pots and pans

Now you can add certain food additives to the list – and some very common food additives at that.

Hormone-Mimicking Food Additives Recently Discovered

In the U.S., more than 3,000 substances can be added to foods for the purpose of preservation, coloring, texture, flavor and more. While each of these substances is legal to use, whether or not they are entirely safe for long-term consumption – by themselves or in combination – is a different story altogether.

The analysis published in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology actually found not just two, but 31 potential estrogen-mimicking food additives during their search.

Of those, propyl gallate was found to act as an antagonist, and 4-hexylresorcinol as a potent transactivator. Antagonists block the binding of an agent at a receptor molecule, and transactivators increase the rate of gene expression. In conclusion the authors’ state:

“Some caution should be issued for the use of propyl gallate and 4-hexylresorcinol as food additives.”

However, I don’t think we’ll see any of them removed from the market any time soon. Propyl gallate, for example, has been used since 1948 as a preservative to stabilize cosmetics, food packaging materials, and foods containing oils and fats. It can also be found in:

* Hair products
* Adhesives and lubricants
* Processed meat products and potato products
* Chicken soup base
* Chewing gum and candy
* Dried milk
* Baked goods, and more

Propyl gallate is frequently used in conjunction with BHA and BHT, which come with their own set of health hazards. These two additives also keep fats and oils from going rancid and are commonly used in processed food products such as cereals and potato chips, even though some studies have found they too, cause cancer in rats.

The other food additive mentioned above, 4-hexylresorcinol, is commonly used as an anti-browning agent in shrimp and other shellfish.

But it’s also used as a starting material to produce synthetic catecholamines, which have important physiological effects as neurotransmitters and hormones (such as epinephrine, adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopamine).

Additionally, you can find it in common consumer products such as:

* Pharmaceutical acne treatments
* Anti-dandruff shampoo
* Sunscreen lotions
* Antiseptic mouthwashes
* Skin wound cleansers
* Throat lozenges

Potential Health Dangers of Propyl Gallate

In addition to being an endocrine disrupter based on this latest analysis, the results in a previous study by the National Toxicology Program (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) showed that propyl gallate caused various types of cancer and other health problems in rats, including:

* Thyroid tumors in male rats
* Rare brain tumors in low-dose females
* Prostate inflammation
* Mostly benign tumors of the preputial gland (glands that produce pheromones)
* Pancreatic tumors
* Adrenal gland tumors in low-dose males

As you can see, in some instances the health effect only showed up in the low-dose groups but not in the high-dose groups, and only in either males or females – a perfect example of just how little anyone really knows about how these types of chemicals might affect your body, or the body of an infant, for example.

Potential Health Hazards of Common Anti-Browning Agent

The anti-browning agent 4-Hexylresorcinol is applied to shrimp and other crustacean seafood to prevent the development of black spots which may occur naturally.

A toxicology study by the School of Biological Sciences, University of Surrey, England, discovered that 260 mg/kg was lethal to all cats used in the study. Granted, that is a very high dose; however, based on their data, the researchers also concluded that 4-Hexylresorcinol was carcinogenic in both the 13-week and 2-year studies, and also caused a high incidence of nephropathy in mice (an autoimmune disease that affects your kidneys).

A 1984 study determined the probable lethal dose for humans to be anything above 500 mg/kg.

How to Protect Your Family

If you have children xenoestrogens are clearly something you will want to avoid. Here are some measures you can take to protect you and your children from common toxic substances that could cause them to go into puberty more than a decade before they were designed to:

* Store your food in glass containers whenever possible, as it is the most inert container you can use.
* Only use natural cleaning products in your home. Most health food stores will have these available or you can search online for them.
* Buy and eat, as much as possible, organic foods, especially mik which is frequently contaminated with bovine growth hormone.
* Avoid processed foods.
* Avoid artificial food additives of all kind, including artificial sweeteners and MSG.
* Avoid all varieties of unfermented soy.
* Switch to natural brands of toiletries, including shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants and cosmetics. Same sources as above for these, either your local health food store or you can search online.
* Review Our Stolen Future, probably the best resource on this topic

About 6,000 middle-aged or older women in the UK develop cancer each year because they are obese or overweight, a Cancer Research UK-funded study says.

The study, which looked at 45,000 cases of cancer in 1m women over seven years, says this is about 5% of such cases.

It is published online by the British Medical Journal and blames excess fat for 50% of cases of womb cancer and a type of esophageal cancer.

Last week an international study warned of the link between cancer and weight.

‘Bigger impact’

The World Cancer Research Fund warned that carrying excess weight significantly increased the risk of cancer.

Figures indicate that about 23% of all women in England are obese and 34% are overweight.

The latest study looked at how often cancers occurred in 1.2m UK women aged 50 to 64 over a seven year period. More than 45,000 cases of cancer and 17,000 cancer deaths occurred during that time.

Lead researcher Dr Gillian Reeves, from Oxford University, said: “We estimate that being overweight or obese accounts for around 6,000 out of a total 120,000 new cases of cancer each year among middle-aged and older women in the UK.

“Our research also shows that being overweight has a much bigger impact on the risk of some cancers than others.

“Two thirds of the additional 6,000 cancers each year due to overweight or obesity would be cancers of the womb or breast.”

Age difference

The research found that the link between weight and risk of cancer depended on a woman’s stage of life.

For example, being overweight increases the risk of breast cancer only after the menopause and the risk of bowel cancer only before the menopause.

Sara Hiom, from Cancer Research UK, said: “This research adds to the evidence regarding the impact of being overweight or obese on developing cancer and dying from the disease.

“While most people readily associate carrying extra weight with being a general health risk, many do not make a specific link with cancer.”

Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of the charity Weight Concern, said: “Whereas it was once thought there was little one could do to prevent cancer, it’s now clear that lifestyle impacts greatly on overall cancer risk.

“The message is clear. Invest in a healthier lifestyle today and we can reap the benefits of reduced disease risk and longer life tomorrow.”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7079799.stm

(Guy Rhodes/Sun-Times News Group)

The risk of breast cancer doubled for post-menopausal women who were on a once-popular combination hormone therapy for at least five years, according to a new analysis of the landmark study that established a clear link between hormone use and breast cancer.

The use of combined hormone therapy — estrogen plus progestin — in the United States plummeted after results from the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative trial were published. This was followed by a decrease in breast-cancer rates a year later.

The risk of breast cancer doubled for women who took the post-menopausal hormone therapy of estrogen plus progestin for at least five years.

But there was still some question as to why: Was it the hormone therapy, or was it changes in mammography, or something else?

“This is very strong evidence that estrogen plus progestin causes breast cancer,” said Dr. Marcia Stefanick, a Stanford University professor of medicine who is co-author of the new study, reported in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

The new study also found that breast-cancer risk dropped sharply within two years of stopping combined hormone therapy.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 15,000 women involved in the original trial, which was stopped early after increases in heart disease, stroke and breast cancer risks were found.