Sunny Health

Don’t give yourself excuses not to go for a cancer screening, or to embark on a healthier lifestyle. According to research from Harvard University, these have greatly helped to lower cancer mortality rates by 13 percent since 1990.

Focusing on mainly lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers, the research was performed by David Cutler, an Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

His research found that screening and behavioral changes have contributed both equally and substantially to the decline in cancer mortality rates. For lung cancer, behavior changes, which include smoking cessation, has had the most impact.

Cutler said that while screening is expensive, “…it has led to significantly longer life expectancy for those diagnosed with colorectal or breast cancer.” For colon cancer, Colonoscopies have had a major hand in preventing its formation.

On the whole, cancer treatment was the least effective in cutting cancer mortality rates.
Cutler said: “A health care system working for cancer would prevent people from getting it, catch it early, and then treat people accordingly. If our healthcare sys-tem was focused in this way, there could be a huge benefit."

Source: ScienceDaily; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081202133224.htm

W.

The human mind is both complex and unique. It is also extremely powerful. Think about the placebo effect, which is generally believed linked to our psychological ability, and has resulted in people healing themselves by simply believing that they are in better health. That goes to show how much we can accomplish when we untap the full potential of our mental strength.

This ability to harness the power of our mind to overcome any obstacle cuts across all areas, including cancer. In fact, here's an article that shows how it can work:

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Intervention Program Boosts Survival In Breast Cancer Patients

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — A new study provides the best evidence to date that a psychological intervention program designed for breast cancer patients not only improves their health – it actually increases their chance of survival.

Researchers at Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center found that patients participating in an intervention program reduced their risk of dying of breast cancer by 56 percent after an average of 11 years.

Participants in the program, which taught strategies to reduce stress, improve mood and alter health behaviors, also reduced the risk of breast cancer recurrence by 45 percent.

“The results suggest that we can help breast cancer patients make positive steps that may help them live longer and make recurrence less likely,” said Barbara Andersen, lead author of the study and a member of Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and professor of psychology.

“We already knew a psychological intervention program could help breast cancer patients to handle their stress, function more effectively, and improve their health. Now we know it does even more.”

In addition to improving survival and reducing recurrence, the intervention program had other positive effects, said Andersen.

Among patients who died of breast cancer, those who participated in the intervention program lived longer – an average of 6.1 years for program participants versus 4.8 years for those who were simply assessed.

Intervention participants were also less likely to die from causes other than breast cancer, such as heart disease or other cancers. For those who died of any cause, participants in the intervention lived an average of 6 years compared to 5 years for those who didn’t.

“Many of the strategies patients learned in the intervention program, such as stress reduction, may have protected them from heart disease and other causes of death,” said Andersen, a member of Ohio State’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.

Andersen said this study was unique in several ways. In the 1980s and 90s, two separate studies found higher survival rates for cancer patients who participated in intervention programs; one study involved breast cancer patients whose disease had already recurred, and the other study included newly diagnosed melanoma patients. But these studies were not designed to look at how the interventions affected survival rates. When other researchers tried to replicate these results, they found no effect for intervention programs.

This new study, though, was designed to look specifically at recurrence and survival rates, Andersen said. In addition, the intervention program is different and so are the participants in the study.

Participants in the Ohio State study had Stage II and III breast cancer, which means their chance of survival were better than those with Stage IV cancer (which means the cancer has spread to other parts of the body), but not as good as those diagnosed with Stage I.

“We wanted those patients in the middle, where we felt we had the most chance of influencing their future course with the disease,” she said.

How did the intervention program help cancer patients?

“We believe the significant psychological improvements and behavior changes may have been critical,” according to Andersen.

For example, the researchers found that patients in the intervention group who had the greatest reductions in distress and physical symptoms were those who practiced progressive muscle relaxation most frequently. They also understood and remembered that continued stress could hurt their health and now knew several ways to reduce stress.

“We found a strong relationship between patients’ use of the intervention strategies we taught them and better health,” she said.

Previous research with the same women in this study showed that women in the intervention showed signs of improved immune function compared to those who did not participate. That is most likely related to the lower levels of distress they felt, Andersen said.

Overall, the results show a promising new way to help treat cancer patients, she said.

“If psychological interventions to reduce stress are delivered early, they can improve mental health, health, and possibly even their odds of survival.”

Source: ScienceDaily; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117082040.htm

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Could this be proof that we can rope in a natural, free resource -that of our sheer mental capacity -in our fight against cancer? It might very well be. In any case, keeping a positive attitude about life everyday is the best thing to do. At the very least, it will allow you to stay happy no matter what you do, or what condition or place you are in!

W.

I previously reported on a team of cancer scientists doing some research on how to stop cancer by starving them. It looks like they're not alone in this approach, as another team of Belgium scientists are trying something similar, though in a much different way:


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Preventing Tumor Cells From Refueling: A New Anti-cancer Approach?

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — New data, generated in mice, by Pierre Sonveaux and colleagues, at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, have identified a potential new target for anticancer therapeutics.

Not all cells in a tumor are equal, for example, some are in regions rich in oxygen, whereas others are in regions deprived of oxygen (hypoxic regions). It had been thought that the tumor cells in these two regions used the same type of fuel to generate energy, specifically glucose.

However, Sonveaux and colleagues have now shown that although hypoxic tumor cells use glucose to generate energy, well-oxygenated tumor cells use a different fuel, lactate. Further, the lactate used by the well-oxygenated tumor cells as a fuel was released from the hypoxic tumor cells as a waste product of the chemical reactions that burned glucose to generate energy, leading the authors to suggest that the different tumor cells exist in symbiosis.

More detailed analysis revealed that well-oxygenated cells took up lactate via the protein MCT1 and that inhibiting MCT1 made the well-oxygenated cells switch to using glucose as a fuel to generate energy. This disrupted the symbiotic relationship between the hypoxic and well-oxygenated tumor cells and in two mouse models of cancer led to decreased tumor growth, as the hypoxic tumor cells became deprived of glucose, and rendered the remaining cells sensitive to irradiation.

As MCT1 expression was detected exclusively in nonhypoxic regions of human cancer biopsy samples, the authors suggest that MCT1 is a potential new target for anticancer therapeutics.

In an accompanying commentary, Greg Semenza, at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, discusses this concept further as well as other therapeutic implications.

Results were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die from lung cancer than any other cancer type. In fact, according to 2004 data, more people died from lung cancer than breast, prostate and colon cancers combined.

Smoking is the biggest risk factor for developing lung cancer, even after quitting for long periods of time. "More than 50 percent of newly diagnosed lung cancer patients are former smokers," said Emily A. Vucic, a graduate student at the British Columbia Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, B.C. "Understanding why some former smokers develop lung cancer is clearly important to the development of early detection, prevention and treatment strategies."

The researchers studied how DNA methylation contributes to lung cancer development in former smokers. Methylation is an important event regulating gene expression during normal development. As we age and in cancer, proper patterns of DNA methylation become deregulated throwing off the tight control of gene activity that normally exists.

Using an endoscope, Vucic and colleagues collected bronchial epithelial cells, which are cells that line the lungs, from 16 former smokers. The participants quit smoking more than 10 years ago. Eight participants had surgical removal of non-small cell lung cancer; eight were disease free.

Their results showed differences in methylation levels in lung epithelial cells between former smokers with and without lung cancer.

"Alteration to DNA methylation might potentially explain why some former smokers sustain additional genetic damage resulting in lung cancer," Vucic said. "As methylation is a reversible DNA modification, this knowledge could prompt the development and application of chemopreventive agents and unique therapeutic strategies that target DNA methylation in these patients."

Exposure to cigarette smoke is a major culprit in disease development. "In addition to DNA sequence mutations, cigarette smoke also causes widespread errors in DNA marks, such as DNA methylation, used to regulate gene function and genome stability," Vucic said.

Cigarette smoke exposure has been shown to activate genes that promote cancer and deactivate genes that stop tumor growth, she said. "Studies examining tumors at all levels of DNA disruption will identify events involved in lung cancer development in former smokers."

The researchers are pursuing additional studies to confirm their initial results, Vucic said.

Source: ScienceDaily; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081120171319.htm

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How many ways are there to starve something? Not enough, apparently, and as it applies to cancer cells, that's always a good thing.

W.