Sunny Health

Nov 26, 2008 - Vitamins are widely acknowledged to be beneficial to our well-being. Vitamin C, for example, has long been credited with strengthening immune systems, and staving off diseases like Scurvy. Vitamin D also has benefits in the area of cancer as well, according to a recent report in the Nov 17 Journal of Cell Biology.

The report is a result of a study on Vitamin D's effect on colon cancer cells, and results show that Vitamin D disrupts colon cancer cell actions by preventing from dividing, and prompting them to differentiate into epithelial cells that do not spread.

The study is the first to show that vitamin D's genomic and nongenomic effects integrate to regulate cell physiology.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117091614.htm

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Love handles - those flabs of fat that protrude from the sides of our abdomen - are generally perceived to be unattractive, a fact which has prompted many to try working them off.

Apart from the aesthetic benefit, there could be a health benefit in getting rid of these love handles as well.

According to results of a major European study, a thick waist almost doubles the risk of premature death

The research found that excess fat stored around the middle of the body is a major health risk even when someone is not considered overweight by statistical BMI standards.

There's more - every five centimetre increase in waist size may increase the risk of death by about 17 percent in men and 13 percent in women.

This should be an added encouragement for us to reduce that waistline!

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Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081113/tts-us-health-heart-972e412.html

One very hot topic that crops up frequently amongst both cigarette-smokers and non-smokers is this: why is it that some smokers can puff away and still remain disease-free whilst others do not? The usual explanation is that we are all different - we have different DNA, and have immune systems of varying strengths and so on. It is this explanation that sounds the most logical, but it looks like some Canadian scientists weren't satisfied with it and decided to do some research on it. Here's what they have to say:


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Why Only Some Former Smokers Develop Lung Cancer

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2008) — Canadian researchers are trying to answer why some smokers develop lung cancer while others remain disease free, despite similar lifestyle changes.

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/2008/11/081117103644.htm

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