Tag Archives: cancer

Aspirin…not just for heart disease

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As I pointed in my first book, “The Zone,” more than 15 years ago, aspirin remains a wonder drug because of its ability to reduce inflammation (1). The medical community now uses aspirin for the prevention of strokes and heart attacks, but a recent study may extend its anti-inflammatory benefits to cancer survivors.

A study pre-published online from The Lancet examined various clinical trials comparing the long-term mortality of those individuals who used aspirin or didn’t (2). This meta-analysis study indicated that relatively low-dose aspirin (about 75 mg or a baby aspirin a day) reduced cancer deaths in various long-term cancer survivors by about 20 percent. So should all of us be taking a baby aspirin daily? Possibly, but aspirin does have side effects, especially in terms of bleeding.

But one thing you can do with total safety is to boost your intake of fruits and vegetables. It turns out that fruits and vegetables contain salicylates, the group of compounds that represents the major active ingredient in aspirin. In addition, fruits and vegetables also contain other anti-inflammatory polyphenols (the chemicals that give plants their color). Since plants don’t have access to the local pharmacy to protect themselves from microbial invasion, they have to synthesize their own “drugs”. By consuming fruits and vegetables, we are constantly visiting our “food” pharmacy. Their defense mechanisms now become our nutritional allies in silencing inflammatory gene expression that is turned on when certain food components (such as omega-6 and saturated fats) fool the most primitive part of the immune system (the innate immune system) to think it is under microbial attack.

Most of the inflammation that drives cardiovascular disease and cancer starts with this type of cellular inflammation induced by our diet (3). It’s taken new breakthroughs in molecular biology to finally understand that what’s good for the plant is also going to be great for us if we want to live a longer and better life.

References
1. Sears B. “The Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (1995)
2. Rothwell PM, Fowkes FG, Belch JF, Ogawa H, Warlow CP, and Meade TW. “Effects of daily aspirin on long-term risk of death due to cancer: analysis of individual patient data from randomized trials.” Lancet, Early Online Publication, 7 December (2010)
3. Sears B. “The Anti-Inflammation Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (2005)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Does eating fat make you fat?

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The 1990s brought with it an era of people fearing fat. After all, “if no fat touches my lips, then no fat reaches my hips”. Harvard took charge of this debate and declared war against fat, especially saturated fat. Manufacturers created everything from fat-free yogurt to cookies. Overall, fat intake did decrease nationwide during this time, but the waist lines of the U.S. population continued to expand. Despite recent reports about the Mediterranean diet and the benefits of monounsaturated fats, the low-fat craze still has many hardwired to think that eating higher-fat foods will make them fat. Although calorically speaking, fat is more energy dense than carbohydrates and protein, a recent study may help to ease people’s preconceived notions on the role of fat and weight gain.

There have been inconsistent findings in the literature on whether the type of fat consumed influences weight change. Even studies in which poly and monounsaturated fats have been substituted for saturated fat to lower cardiovascular disease were equally wishy-washy (1). In fact, a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition questions whether dietary fat played a role in future weight gain (2). Of the more than 89,000 men and women studied, overall fat consumption ranged from 31.5 percent to 36.5 percent. No matter the total fat intake or the type of fat consumed, there was no effect on weight gain over the long term in either men or women. Maybe fat doesn’t make you fat.

This only proves you can always tell a Harvard man, you just can’t tell him very much.

1) Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Saturated fat, carbohydrate, and cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Jan 20.

2) Forouhi NG, Sharp SJ, Du H, van der A DL, Halkjaer J, Schulze MB, Tjønneland A, Overvad K, Jakobsen MU, Boeing H, Buijsse B, Palli D, Masala G, Feskens EJ, Sørensen TI, Wareham NJ. Dietary fat intake and subsequent weight change in adults: results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohorts. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Dec;90(6):1632-41.

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Study: High-dose, high purity omega-3 oil lowers breast-cancer risk

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Breast cancer accounts for more than 25 percent of all female cancers. Breast cancer is also strongly linked to obesity. This means as our obesity crisis accelerates, we can expect breast cancer rates to follow. The reason that breast cancer and obesity are linked is due to cellular inflammation caused by the diet.

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Biomarker shown to predict Alzheimer risk

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The study of the human genome and the potential for routine genetic testing down the road has brought many hotly debated topics to the table. If your genetic make-up predisposed you for a certain disease whether it is cancer or Alzheimer’s, would you want to know? A study published in the August edition of the Archives of Neurology may bring us closer to having to ask ourselves these tough questions. The study measured a specific protein known to be present in those with Alzheimer’s and looked at the amounts of this protein in the cerebrospinal fluid of individuals with Alzheimer’s, those with mild cognitive impairment, and those having normal cognitive function. Without knowing the clinical diagnosis of the individuals being studied, the detection of this protein was accurately able to classify which individuals had Alzheimer’s or mild cognitive impairment and was able to show the presence of this protein even in those who had normal cognitive function, suggesting that it could be detected prior to showing symptoms (1). The question becomes if you had the option to know you might have a disease despite having no symptoms and despite the fact that treatment options may only slow the disease versus curing it, would you want to know? Tell us what you think.
1. De Meyer G, Shapiro F, Vanderstichele H, Vanmechelen E, Engelborghs S, De Deyn PP, Coart E, Hansson O, Minthon L, Zetterberg H, Blennow K, Shaw L, Trojanowski JQ; for the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Diagnosis-Independent Alzheimer Disease Biomarker Signature in Cognitively Normal Elderly People. Arch Neurol. 2010 Aug;67(8):949-956.

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Omega-3 fatty acids may reduce breast cancer risk

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The list just keeps growing for the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids and overall health. The newest to the list is breast cancer. A study just published in the journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention surveyed approximately 35,000 postmenopausal women, ages 50 to 76, for their use of various specialty supplements (1). The 24-page summary took into account past and present use of supplements as well as frequency (days/week) and duration (year). Individuals taking high purity omega-3 oil had a 32 percent reduced risk of developing breast cancer, whereas other supplements typically taken to reduce menopausal symptoms (e.g., black cohosh, dong quai, soy, or St. John’s wort) had no association. Although further research needs to be conducted, this again adds to the growing body of evidence on the benefits of omega-3s for disease prevention.

Of this survey didn’t answer the question about if they had taken more, would they have seen even better results? This is because cancer like all chronic diseases is driven by silent inflammation coming from increasing levels of Toxic Fat (i.e., arachidonic acid). High purity omega-3 oil dilutes Toxic Fat, but only a strict anti inflammatory diet can actually reduce Toxic Fat. Follow an anti-inflammatory program consisting of a strict anti inflammatory diet, ultra-refined high purity omega-3 oil concentrates and anti-inflammatory polyphenols to reduce the driving force for virtually all chronic disease.
1. Brasky TM, Lampe JW, Potter JD, Patterson RE, White E. Specialty supplements and breast cancer risk in the VITamins And Lifestyle (VITAL) Cohort. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2010 Jul;19(7):1696-708.

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Women can reduce stroke risk with physical activity

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A few weeks back we blogged about the Journal of the American Medical Association’s new guidelines for physical activity being raised for women. The study suggested that for women to be successful in maintaining normal weight and gaining fewer pounds, they need to exercise for about 60 minutes per day of moderate-intensity activity (1). That’s a whopping 420 minutes per week! It always seems like the more chaotic our lives get, the harder it becomes to implement guidelines like this within it.

The good news is that it doesn’t take as much activity or even the same moderate intensity to reap the benefits of lowering your risk of chronic disease. A study published this month in the Journal Stroke involved 39,315 healthy women who took part in Women’s Healthy Study. It examined their activity levels and risk of stroke. Over an average follow-up of approximately 12 years, 579 women had a stroke. Although there was no association between vigorous physical activity and stroke risk, there was an inverse relationship between walking time and pace with the risk of having a stroke (2). For women who walked more than two hours per week at a brisk pace (3 to 3.9 mph), there was a significant reduction in their risk of suffering a stroke (3). Almost twice as many women in the United States die of heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases than from all forms of cancer (4). This becomes something simple women can do to lessen their risk and can even be broken up into 10 to 15 minute increments a day to make it more realistic to implement.

1. Lee IM, Djoussé L, Sesso HD, Wang L, Buring JE. Physical activity and weight gain prevention. JAMA. 2010 Mar 24;303(12):1173-9.

2. Sattelmair JR, Kurth T, Buring JE, Lee IM. Physical Activity and Risk of Stroke in Women. Stroke. 2010 Apr 6. [Epub ahead of print]

3. Brisk Walking Reduces Stroke Risk. Available at:
http://www.webmd.com/stroke/news/20100406/brisk-walking-reduces-stroke-risk. Accessed: April 6, 2010

4. Women, Heart Disease and Stroke. Available at:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4786. Accessed: April 12, 2010.

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.