Lymphoma Battle Worsens With Vitamin D Deficiency

December 7, 2009

Science News

By Nathan Seppa

A shortage of vitamin D may stack the deck against people fighting a common form of lymphoma, researchers reported December 5 at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology. The new study adds this cancer to the list of malignancies suspected of being more difficult to control in patients with vitamin D deficiency common in parts of the U.S. population.

From 2002 to 2008, the researchers analyzed blood samples from 374 newly diagnosed patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a fast-growing cancer of white blood cells called B cells. It mainly hits people over 50 and accounts for roughly 40 percent of lymphomas.

The study participants averaged 62 years of age. The blood tests revealed that half were deficient in vitamin D at the start of treatment, having less than 25 nanograms per milliliter of blood.

The scientists monitored the patients for an average of three years. During the follow-up, patients who were deficient in vitamin D were twice as likely to die, compared with patients who had adequate vitamin D blood levels at the outset. Patients with low vitamin D concentrations were also about 50 percent more likely than the others to have their cancer worsen, says endocrinologist Matthew Drake of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who presented the findings.

All patients received standard treatment, including chemotherapy, and the researchers accounted for differences between groups in age and other factors that might bias the comparison.

Vitamin D facilitates calcium absorption in the body, an essential function. While the minimum healthy blood levels of vitamin D are a matter of debate, many scientists draw the line at 25 or 30 ng/ml. Others suggest we need more vitamin D and suggest the minimum healthy level should be defined as 40 ng/ml. “I think right now it’s a moving target,” Drake says. He and his colleagues chose 25 ng/ml because that is the point at which the body starts leaching calcium from bone to maintain appropriate blood levels of calcium.

Drake says more study is needed before supplementation of vitamin D should be ordered for lymphoma patients. Part of his hesitation stems from the lack of clarity surrounding the link between cancer and a vitamin D deficiency.

Past evidence has shown that the vitamin can promote gene regulation, programmed cell death when necessary, and other critical cell functions. “Whether or not vitamin D deficiency plays a role in lymphoma, we really can’t say at this point,’ he says.

But vitamin D deficiency has been linked to cancers in past studies. Maps suggest that mortality rates from cancer are higher in the northernmost areas of the United States — notable because less sun exposure means less vitamin D production — and some studies have linked vitamin D deficiency with a worse outcome in people with cancer of the breast, colon and throat.

The link between a vitamin D deficiency and a worse outcome for this cancer is plausible, says Ola Linden, a medical oncologist at Lund University in Sweden. But the finding might still be influenced by genetic differences among the patients and other factors, and needs to be validated in a trial in which patients are randomly assigned to get vitamin D supplements or not, he says. If the results from such a test were similar to these, he says, oncologists would have another weapon with which to fight this cancer — free of charge.

Although fortified foods provide some vitamin D, these may be inadequate to maintain ideal health levels. While the recommended daily dose of vitamin D, currently set at 400 IUs, stops rickets, many scientists suggest that three times that amount would be useful and wouldn’t risk an overdose.

Vitamin D can be obtained in food or manufactured in the skin by exposure to ultraviolet B radiation from the sun. The vitamin can be stored, but during winter months in temperate zones the supply dwindles. For bone health, Drake recommends that people in the Upper Midwest take vitamin D supplements during winter months and get an hour to an hour and a half of sun exposure each week in the summer. “We’ve become a society where we spend the vast majority of our time indoors,” he says. “It’s very hard to find what I call ‘free-range humans.’”

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Lung Cancer Not The Only Cancer Linked to Smoke Exposure

December 4, 2009

U.S. News

By Amanda Gardner

Add colorectal cancer to the list of malignancies caused by smoking, with a new study strengthening the link between the two.

And other studies are providing more bad news for people who haven’t managed to quit: Two papers published in the December issue of Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a themed issue on tobacco, strengthen the case for the dangers of secondhand smoke for people exposed to fumes as children and as adults.

Inhaling those secondhand fumes may raise a woman’s odds for breast cancer or a child’s lifetime risk for lung malignancies, the studies found.

All of the findings, while grim, could be useful in the war against smoking, experts say.

“With the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], we’re hoping this will be a significant tool to controlling tobacco, although it could get bogged down in so many different ways,” said Dr. Peter Shields, deputy director of the Georgetown University Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and senior editor of the journal in which these papers appeared. “The FDA is going to have to make a lot of tough decisions about how to regulate tobacco, and the more science they have will help them.”

Is this latest round of revelations going to change current screening recommendations? Probably not, at least not yet, Shields added.

One study found that long-term smokers have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer, a finding that factored into the recent decision by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to assert that there is “sufficient” evidence to link the two, up from its previous “limited” evidence.

“It took a long time to figure this out because the relationship [between smoking and colorectal cancer] is not as strong [as for some other cancers],” said Dr. Michael Thun, senior author of the study and vice president emeritus of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. “The question was, is the association we’re seeing really caused by smoking?”

The researchers managed to adjust for other colorectal cancer risk factors, such as not getting screened, obesity, physical activity and eating a lot of red or processed meats. The issue is tricky because people who smoke are already more likely to engage in these types of behavior.

“When they took all of those other things out, smoking was still a small, elevated risk,” said Dr. Michael John Hall, director of the gastrointestinal risk assessment program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

“We already know that smoking is bad. That doesn’t change. A positive thing that comes out of this is that if you can stop smoking earlier, you eliminate your risk later on, but the more you smoke, the risk is higher.”

This large prospective study, which followed almost 200,000 people over 13 years, found that current smokers had a 27 percent increased risk of colorectal cancer and former smokers a 23 percent increased risk compared with people who had never smoked.

People who had smoked for at least half a century had the highest risk — 38 percent higher than never smokers — of developing colorectal cancer

The good news is that people who tossed their cigarettes before the age of 40 or who had not smoked for 31 or more years had no increased risk.

Two other studies focused on the risk of secondhand smoke, or passive smoking. In one, children exposed to secondhand smoke had a higher risk of developing lung cancer as adults, researchers from institutions including the U.S. National Cancer Institute found. In another, California researchers found that adult non-smoking women who had spent long periods of time in smoking environments upped their odds of developing postmenopausal breast cancer.

The breast cancer findings were seen mostly in postmenopausal women, with a 17 percent higher risk for those who had had low exposure, a 19 percent increased risk for those with medium exposure and a 26 percent increased risk for those who had high long-term exposure over their lifetime.

Adult exposure, such as spending time in smoking lounges where others were smoking, carried the most risk, with childhood exposure appearing negligible.

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Medical Myths About Appendix

November 16, 2009 

NaturalNews

By S. L. Baker

The appendix is a small, tube-like organ located in the lower right area of the abdomen and attached to the first part of the colon. Researchers have theorized this seemingly superfluous bit of our internal body is simply a remnant of the time when early humans ate a huge amount of plant matter. The appendix, the theory goes, once helped with fermentation and digestion of all that roughage ancient hominids consumed. But when it comes to modern-day humans, mainstream medicine says the appendix has no known function and is virtually useless. However, the latest research suggests it is this idea that should be thrown away — not the human appendix.

Sure, an appendix can sometimes become blocked and inflamed, a condition known as appendicitis. And if not treated, an appendix in this state can rupture and spread life-threatening infection into the body. So, following their belief the appendix is nothing but a potential liability, doctors are often willing and even enthusiastic about removing a perfectly healthy appendix.

A case in point: a study by University of Miami gynecologists and obstetricians, published in 2003 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology concluded the removal of an appendix (a procedure dubbed an appendectomy) at the time of “benign gynecologic procedures does not increase postoperative complication rates or length of hospital stay.” So, based on the fact cutting out a healthy appendix didn’t result in longer hospital stays or more immediate post-surgery problems, the doctors recommended routinely including appendectomies in all abdominal hysterectomies in order to avoid any possibility of appendicitis in a woman’s lifetime.

But what if the appendix has remained in humans for thousands upon thousands of years for a reason? What if your appendix helps sustain health? What if it is better to keep all your original parts — including organs — when possible, and that includes your appendix? There’s growing evidence the appendix isn’t just a useless piece of tissue. And new research is showing it could, in fact, play an important role in keeping the gastrointestinal tract healthy and the immune system strong.

Recently, scientists have found evidence the appendix may play a role in helping the immune system by maintaining internal flora found in the human gut known as symbiotic bacteria. These bacteria live in symbiosis (meaning they maintain a close ecological relationship) with other organisms in the digestive tract. For example, symbiotic bacteria may work together to help break down fiber containing foods and they may also help produce vitamins.

In a study published October 22nd in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, researchers from the University of Arizona College of Medicine and Arizona State University concluded that the appendix does have a purpose. It is a highly specialized organ that has been maintained in mammalian evolution for 80 million years or more. The reason? To harbor symbiotic bacteria essential for health. The scientists call the appendix a kind of “safe-house for symbiotic gut microbes” that probably evolved to preserve health-protecting internal flora during times of gastrointestinal infection. “This function is potentially a selective force for the evolution and maintenance of the appendix, and provides an impetus for reassessment of the evolution of the appendix,” the scientists stated.

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Gut Bacteria May Cause Obesity

November 12, 2009

Time

by Alice Park

If you have ever fought the battle of the bulge, then you are all too familiar with its key players: diet, exercise and your genes. The less you move (calories out) and the more you eat (calories in), the more fat you gain — an equation that may be heavily influenced by your particular genes. But scientists have long known that these three factors do not adequately explain every case of obesity, and now researchers are discovering increasingly convincing evidence of another important contributor to body weight, one that until recently has been almost completely ignored: the bacteria that live in your gut.

Technically, they’re known as the gut microbiota, a universe of tens of trillions of microbes, which live and thrive in the human intestinal tract and colon and most of which survive without oxygen. These microbes perform an enormous range of vital functions, including helping regulate the calories the body obtains from food and stores as fat. In other words, they may help regulate weight. And a new study published on Nov. 12 in Science Translational Medicine suggests that the particular type and balance of bugs you harbor in your gut may help push your body toward either obesity or leanness and that these microbe populations might even be manipulated to potentially change your weight.

The new study builds on previous research in mice that suggests that heavy bodies may have a different makeup of gut bugs than thin ones. The gut microbiota of obese mice has been shown to have significantly more of one main type of bacteria called Firmicutes and fewer of another kind called Bacteroidetes (both types populate human guts as well); in normal mice, the distribution is the opposite. Jeffrey Gordon at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., who conducted the previous research, experimented again with mice for the new paper. This time, however, he and his team used human microbiota to colonize mouse guts and then fed the rodents the equivalents of typical human diets to see how their microbes — and their weight — changed.

Researchers started with mice that were specially bred to be germ-free — with no gut microbiota of their own — and to be able to nurture human gut microbiota. Researchers injected the mice with samples of fresh and frozen human feces, the bacteria from which took hold and colonized in the gut of the mice. If that surprises you, it absolutely stunned the researchers. “We were surprised that so much of the diversity present in human microbial communities could be recaptured in mice,” says Gordon, who has been studying gut microbiota for more than five years.

The fact that the human gut flora flourished in the rodents was indeed an experimental coup. Since the mice were genetically engineered to be germ-free, lacking a functioning immune system, the scientists could be certain that any bug colonies that took hold in the mouse guts originated entirely from the human sample, not the mice. Being able to recreate the living human gut environment so faithfully in an animal was a welcome prize.

The main advantage was that Gordon and his team now had the cutting-edge DNA-sequencing capability to scan and analyze all the genes contained in those bacteria. That meant researchers could determine not only which species of bacteria were present and in what proportions, but also which genes these bugs were actively using in different conditions. Before such genomic-analysis technology became available, researchers could study only the gut microbes (animal or human) that could be cultured outside their intestinal home — something that not all of the oxygen-shunning bugs were amenable to — but never the complete microbiota of the gut. “We cannot recapitulate the entire microbial diversity that exists in these complex communities. We simply don’t know how to culture them, so we could miss a lot of diversity,” says Gordon.

That diversity and its impact came into plain view when the researchers started experimenting with the rodents’ diet. When one group of mice was fed a typical Western diet, high in fat and sugars, they tended to gain weight and grow more Firmicutes gut bacteria and fewer Bacteroidetes. In mice given a low-fat plant-based chow, the distribution of the two groups of bugs flipped and the animals remained lean. It’s not clear whether the balance of gut bugs causes weight gain or is a result of it, but the findings suggest that a “gut profile” could potentially serve as a diagnostic tool for identifying who might have a propensity for obesity. If, for instance, your gut environment contains a preponderance of Firmicutes, then your body may be predisposed to digest calories in a way that leads to greater fat storage. In fact, in Gordon’s earlier work with identical twins of different weights, he found that the obese twin tended to have more Firmicutes colonies than the leaner one.

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Colonoscopy Prep Pills Carry Kidney Risk

October 28, 2009

USA Today

By Rita Rubin

Anyone who’s ever had a colonoscopy knows the worst part is preparing for it, not the procedure itself. You have to make sure your colon is as clean as a whistle so your doctor can get an unobstructed interior view.

In the old days — the late 20th century, that is — you had to drink a gallon of a special salty liquid to cleanse your bowels in basically one sitting. So patients cheered when tasteless tablets that would accomplish the same thing became available in 2000.

But last week, the Food and Drug Administration tempered that joy by adding a “black box” warning — the sternest warning possible — to the two prescription bowel cleansers that come in tablet form. The new warning stems from reports of kidney damage in patients who took the pills, which contain sodium phosphate, in preparation for a colonoscopy.

Also, the FDA, which can require warnings only on prescription drugs, said no over-the-counter sodium phosphate products should be used for bowel-cleansing. That led C.B. Fleet Co. to announce a voluntary recall of Phospho-soda, a non-prescription laxative that in larger doses has been used for bowel-cleansing.

The FDA says prescription Visicol, approved in 2000, and its successor, OsmoPrep, approved in 2006, should be used with caution by people over 55; those who are dehydrated; those who suffer from kidney disease, acute colitis or delayed bowel emptying; and people on medicines that affect kidney function. Medicines include diuretics, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers and, maybe, ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

Indiana University gastroenterologist Douglas Rex says he’s been switching older patients to fluid bowel-cleansers that don’t contain sodium phosphate since the first reports of kidney problems came out in 2005. Rex serves as a scientific adviser to Salix Pharmaceuticals, maker of Visicol, OsmoPrep and MoviPrep, one of the fluid products.

No one knows how many people may have suffered damage from the sodium phosphate bowel-cleansers, because even those who’ve lost 75% of their kidney function feel fine, says Columbia University pathologist Glen Markowitz. Markowitz, a Salix consultant, was lead author of a 2005 report on kidney damage in 21 patients who had taken sodium phosphate bowel-cleansers. Even when detected, he says, a connection to the products could be missed.

Dallas gastroenterologist Lawrence Schiller says a patient who had an easy time with the pills wasn’t thrilled to learn of the kidney issue. Schiller left future choice of prep up to her, noting: “There’s a one-in-a-million chance you could end up on dialysis with (the pills).”

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My Recommended Cleanses

Whether you want to reverse the negative effects of taking in toxins through air, water, foods, or vaccines; OR if you’re just looking to feel better, a cleanse might be a good place to start.  But what specifically should you cleanse and which program works the best?  Here are some of my favorite cleanses for the colon, liver/gallbladder, kidney/spleen, heavy metals, parasites, candida, fat tissue, and two sites on the harms of metals in your mouth:

Colon Cleanse

15 Colonics in 30 Days
Be Pure Cleanse: http://healthfreedomusa.bepurecleanse.com/
Dual Action Cleanse: http://www.dualactioncleanse.com/
Rise and Shine: http://www.ariseandshine.com/

Liver-Gallbladder Cleanse

Dr. Schulze: https://web0.herbdoc.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
Dr. Sandra Cabot: http://www.liverdoctor.com/

Kidney -Spleen Cleanse

Dr. Schulze: https://web0.herbdoc.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Heavy Metal Cleanse

Zeolite: http://www.zeolite.com/
Oral Chelation: http://www.vitalityproducts.com/products/ORAL_CHELATION_w_EDTA_180_Capsules-51-3.html

Parasite Cleanse

Quantum Nutrition Center: http://www.qnlabs.com/
Dr. Hulda Clark’s ParaZapper: http://www.paradevices.com/
Arise and Shine: http://www.ariseandshine.com/antiparasitedietarysupport.aspx

Candida

Dr. Jeff McCombs: http://www.mccombsplan.com/
Threelac cleanse: http://www.candidasupport.org/3lac.html

Fat Tissue Cleanse

The Purification Program: http://www.clearbodyclearmind.com/overview.shtml

Anti- Silver Fillings

http://www.iaomt.org/
http://www.toxicteeth.org/