Encouraging Health

Spicy broccoli? It’s a great way to serve up those little green spears

Why? Because broccoli and red chili peppers fight two of the deadliest cancers.

Spice Is Nice
It’s early, in terms of research, but scientists were pleased to see that phenethyl isothiocyanate — a compound found in cruciferous veggies like broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower — stopped ovarian cancer cells from spreading in a recent lab study. Evading prostate cancer could be a little easier if you’d put more of these on your plate: cruciferous vegetables.

Turns out sulforaphane — the compound that makes the veggies in this family taste a little bitter and smell a little funky — can help disarm prostate cancer cells before they do any damage. Here’s the cruciferous lineup.

Team Green (and White)
There’s no surefire way to prevent prostate cancer. But your risk is greatly affected by your diet and everyday habits. For example, how much broccoli you eat. And how much cauliflower. These veggies — along with cabbage, kale, and bok choy — belong to the cruciferous family, and research shows that this family may put the kibosh on prostate cancer like no other veggie group.

Capsaicin, found abundantly in red chili peppers, showed similar effects on pancreatic cancer cells. It’s welcome news about cancers that are often not discovered until the later stages.

Find more cancer fighting articles right here, at Encouraging Health

broccoli, peppers, capsaicin, cancer, prostrate cancer

broccoli, peppers, capsaicin, cancer, prostrate cancer

Diabetes Patients May Get Help From Common Spice

Soaring blood sugar, diabetes and high cholesterol are all words most people don’t want to hear, but what if you could manage them simply by eating a common spice?

Barry Ballow told Baltimore television station WBAL that he is currently full of energy, but it hasn’t always been that way. He said he struggled with his blood sugar for years, and then his doctor told him he was a diabetic.

Ballow said he took medication and changed his diet and exercise routine, but said it wasn’t until he found the product Cinnergen that things really turned around.

“I became aware of Cinnergen, and I was happy to try that because there are no side effects. And it’s gotten me down to the normal range,” Ballow said.

Cinnergen is a liquid whole food nutritional supplement. The manufacturer said it is filled with antioxidants, amino acids, vitamins, minerals — and cinnamon.

Dr. Richard Goldfarb is from the Bucks County Clinical Research Center in Pennsylvania. He said his lab was paid to test Cinnergen and that he has a financial interest in the company that owns the product.

Goldfarb said clinical studies showed that cinnamon makes insulin work more efficiently.

“Cinnamon makes the insulin receptors very receptive to the circulating sugar that we take in our body,” he said.

Goldfarb said his studies show patients who drink the product have better insulin levels.

“We actually saw that their levels had dropped, and I believe it was 52 percent of the patients in the study could actually come off of their prescription meds by just taking Cinnergen,” he said.

Ballow is one of those patients. He’s said he’s currently doing testimonials for Cinnergen.

A 2003 Pakistan study found that a gram of ground cinnamon a day seemed to help lower blood sugar. According to one of the researchers, people can get that with a quarter- to a half-teaspoon of store-bought cinnamon twice a day or in cinnamon capsules that are sold over the counter. Another option is ground or stick cinnamon in hot water.

“There was nothing negative that I was concerned about,” said Dr. Rebecca Denison, a diabetes expert at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, who looked into the product.

Denison said she likes the ingredients of Cinnergen, but warned it’s not a quick fix.

“I just don’t want people to think they can do only that and not adjust their lifestyle, their food and their activity level,” she said.

Cinnergen or cinnamon products may not help people with the more advanced Type 1 diabetes, health experts said. Ballow has Type 2.

The Cinnergen study was small, but it also showed that cinnamon might help lower triglycerides and LDL, or bad cholesterol, even in healthy people. Check with your doctor first before trying it.

Researchers said to get the correct effect, you have to get just the right amount of cinnamon. One researcher said that too much won’t have any effect.

For more information on Healthy foods, browse Encouraging Health.

cinnamon, diabetes, triglycerides, LDL

cinnamon, diabetes, triglycerides, LDL

Global efforts to avoid tens of millions of preventable deaths by reducing tobacco use have been slow to take hold, and no country has fully adopted the World Health Organization’s recommendations, WHO said on Thursday.

Unless urgent action is taken, the health agency of the United Nations estimates tobacco could kill one billion people this century.

“As a global community we cannot allow this to happen,” Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, said at a news conference to launch the organization’s first comprehensive analysis of global tobacco use and control efforts.

Chan said the tobacco industry describes WHO as its No. 1 enemy.

“Today we intend to enhance that reputation,” she said in unveiling the “WHO Report of the Global Tobacco Epidemic” that for the first time analyzed tobacco policies of 179 countries.

The analysis found that only 5 percent of the world’s population live in countries that protect their people through any of the smoking reduction measures WHO has outlined.

It also found that 40 percent of countries still allow smoking in hospitals and schools.

“While efforts to combat tobacco are gaining momentum, virtually every country needs to do more,” Chan said.

Chan was joined by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose Bloomberg Philanthropies funds anti-smoking efforts and helped fund the report.

“As long as anyone is smoking, we have a job to do,” said Bloomberg, who through his philanthropies has committed $125 million over two years to programs to help people stop smoking.

ANTI-TOBACCO STRATEGIES

“The purpose of this report is to empower countries to take action,” Bloomberg said.

WHO outlined six anti-tobacco strategies through its “MPOWER” program that Chan said “when combined as a package, offer us the best chance of reversing this growing epidemic.”

The six strategies are to monitor tobacco use and prevention policies; protect people from tobacco smoke; offer help to quit tobacco use; warn about the dangers of tobacco; enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; and raise taxes on tobacco.

WHO said governments around the world collect 500 times more money in tobacco taxes each year than they spend on anti-tobacco efforts. It said significantly raising tobacco taxes would not only provide sustainable funding to carry out the anti-tobacco recommendations, but higher cigarette prices have been shown to cut smoking rates.

For more anti-smoking information, browse the 451 Press network.

anti-smoking, carcinogens, tobacco taxes

anti-smoking, carcinogens, tobacco taxes

Lidocaine, methyl salicylate, hydrocortisone. You probably don’t think twice about using over-the-counter creams with these ingredients when you need to soothe a sore muscle or bug bite, prep your legs before hair removal, or combat that vaginal itch. If the product’s available without a prescription, it can’t hurt you, right?

Wrong.

Take Arielle Newman, for instance, a New York City-area high school track star who died last year from a sports-cream overdose. She’d used large amounts of popular OTC pain-relieving ointments like Icy Hot and Ben-Gay on her sore muscles. The key ingredient in such products is methyl salicylate, which built up in Newman’s body, may have interacted with other aspirin-based meds she was using, and caused her to go into cardiac arrest.

Another case: In 2005, Shiri Berg, 22, of North Carolina died of a lidocaine overdose. Following the instructions she’d been given by the staff at a local hair-removal clinic, she generously applied a numbing gel to her legs, then covered them in plastic wrap. On her way to the clinic to get hair lasered from her legs, Berg passed out. She went into convulsions, then a coma. Eight days later, she was dead.

Women dying in the name of hair removal? Athletes putting themselves at risk by using mentholated muscle soothers? Extreme situations, to be sure. But with all the stuff each of us slathers on our skin (one study estimates that women apply 175 chemicals a day from cosmetics, creams, and toiletries alone), it’s no surprise that potential hazards are lurking.

Your skin is designed to protect you from countless insults: from air pollution to murky lake water, from dirty gasoline-pump handles to staph. Skin cells provide a physical barrier, sort of like bricks and mortar, to keep the bad stuff out — most of the time, says Francesca J. Fusco, M.D., assistant clinical professor of dermatology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “The cells aren’t as tightly packed as real bricks, though, which means things can squeeze by and pentrate.” That’s good news if you want, say, an antiaging wrinkle cream to wage war against your crow’s feet or an anti-itch product to tackle that exercise-induced rash on your inner thighs. Bad news when strong chemicals meet sensitive or thin skin, cause an allergic reaction, or dangerously flood your bloodstream.

For more information and articles on irritants, browse Encouraging Health.

medicated gel, medicated lotion, methyl salicylate, cardiac arrest

medicated gel, medicated lotion, methyl salicylate, cardiac arrest

More women opt to have both breasts removed

When Cheryl Lawrence got a diagnosis of breast cancer, her surgeon told her she could save her breast. But Lawrence decided to have it removed anyway. And then she decided to have the healthy one removed, too.

“I didn’t want to ever have to deal with this again,” said Lawrence, 40, of Olympia, Wash. “I just didn’t want to have to worry about it. For me, it was a matter of peace of mind.”

Lawrence is not alone: The proportion of breast cancer patients who are opting for double mastectomies when far less radical surgery would suffice has increased sharply, a trend that disturbs some experts. They say too many women may be taking the drastic step in the panic that often follows a cancer diagnosis, or with the mistaken belief that more aggressive surgery will improve their survival odds.

“I think this is a very high price to be paying for a sense of peace of mind,” said M. Carolina Hinestrosa of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, a D.C.-based patient advocacy group. “It’s turning back the clock and kind of giving up. That, in my mind, is not progress. It is draconian.”

But others argue that the trend may in some ways demonstrate women taking more control of their medical care.

‘Empowering patients’
“When I first heard this I was surprised. We’ve invested a couple of decades working on doing less surgery for breast cancer as opposed to more,” said Julie Gralow, who treats breast cancer patients at the University of Washington in Seattle. “But we’re empowering patients to make their own decisions as opposed to a few decades ago when we told women what to do. For women who have done their research and are making a very conscious, educated choice, it’s not a choice out of fear. It’s what’s right for them.”

Many women who choose this option, she noted, also undergo reconstructive surgery.

“Part of it may be that our plastic surgery options are better, so the thought of having a breast removed might for some women be somewhat less traumatic if they can have a reconstructed breast,” Gralow said. “Some women are fairly comfortable with their body image, and this is something that is going to help them sleep better at night.”

For years, women with breast cancer had one or both breasts removed in a procedure known as a radical mastectomy — an approach that eventually was abandoned as unnecessarily disfiguring. Research showed that many women are just as likely to survive if they undergo a lumpectomy, which involves removing only the tumor and a small amount of tissue around it, often followed by chemotherapy and radiation.

But in recent years, doctors started noticing that more women were opting for double mastectomies.

What’s your take on this radical surgery?

For more health articles, browse Encouraging Health.

Double masectomy, Breast cancer

Double masectomy, Breast cancer

Gov. Ted Strickland’s changes to the state’s mental health policies — mandating pre-authorization for doctors who prescribe psychiatric drugs and delaying proposed changes in a program for autistic children — have angered the families of those with mental illnesses and their advocates.

The revised drug policy requires general practitioners to be pre-authorized before they write prescriptions for psychiatric drugs covered by Medicaid. State officials estimate that general doctors write about 30 percent to 40 percent of those prescriptions.

Psychiatrists in community mental health centers will continue to be exempt from the requirement and patients who are considered clinically “stable” on a particular drug may continue to take it without pre-approval, said Dennis Evans, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

“The goal was to make sure that the drugs are being prescribed in the most effective manner,” Evans said.

The General Assembly included a provision in the state budget that would have prevented pre-authorization requirements but Strickland used his line-item veto to delete the language. Strickland argued that advance approval would save $20 million to $47 million annually.

The administration has also delayed a billing change that threatens to eliminate coverage of costly specialized treatment for autistic children under the state’s Medicaid program. The state will continue to pay for those services until July 1.

The change is necessary to comply with federal regulations, said Scarlet Bouder, spokeswoman for the Department of Job and Family Services. Also, county officials have complained that the services are too expensive, she said.

Officials want more time to meet with families of children with autism and determine how services can be continued, Bouder said. Parents and advocates worry that once treatment is lost, children will be forced to wait years before slots in other programs are available.

“All parties have acknowledged a desire for reasonable resolution that will allow children to receive services while ensuring the Medicaid system can serve as many children as possible,” she said.

Meanwhile…

Mercury from vaccines seems to disappear rapidly from the blood, returning to pre-vaccination levels in one month, according to a small study of children in Argentina.

The findings bolster the argument that a mercury-based vaccine preservative doesn’t cause autism in children, although it’s unclear from the study whether some mercury may linger elsewhere in the body.

The research addresses an unanswered question about the safety of thimerosal, a preservative that has been eliminated from routine U.S. vaccines, and breaks down as ethyl mercury in the body. It is still used in other countries, including Argentina.

Browse Encouraging Health for more health related articles.

autism, mental health policies, mercury

autism, mental health policies, mercury

Incidence rates likely due to increase in oral sex and decline in smoking

The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men, according to a new study.

The HPV virus now causes as many cancers of the upper throat as tobacco and alcohol, probably due both to an increase in oral sex and the decline in smoking, researchers say.

The only available vaccine against HPV, made by Merck & Co., is currently given only to girls and young women. But Merck plans this year to ask government permission to offer the shot to boys.

Experts say a primary reason for male vaccinations would be to prevent men from spreading the virus and help reduce the nearly 12,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in U.S. women each year. But the new study should add to the argument that there may be a direct benefit for men, too.

Studies suggest oral sex is associated with HPV-related oral cancers, but a cause-effect relationship has not been proved. Other researchers have suggested that even unwashed hands can spread it to the mouth as well.

Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. It also can cause genital warts, penile and anal cancer — risks for males that generally don’t get the same attention as cervical cancer.

Previous research by Gillison and others established HPV as a primary cause of the estimated 5,600 cancers that occur each year in the tonsils, lower tongue and upper throat. It’s also been known that the virus’ role in such cancers has been rising.

The new study looked at more than 30 years of National Cancer Institute data on oral cancers. Researchers categorized about 46,000 cases, using a formula to divide them into those caused by HPV and those not connected to the virus.

They concluded the incidence rates for HPV-related oral cancers rose steadily in men from 1973 to 2004, becoming about as common as those from tobacco and alcohol.

Link to oral sex?
Studies suggest oral sex is associated with HPV-related oral cancers, but a cause-effect relationship has not been proved. Other researchers have suggested that even unwashed hands can spread it to the mouth as well.

Gillison pointed toward sex as an explanation for the increase in male upper throat cancers. However, HPV-related upper throat cancers declined significantly in women from 1973 to 2004.

Government officials and the American Cancer Society say they don’t know yet whether the vaccine will be successful at preventing disease in men. No data from Merck’s study are available yet.

Indeed, it’s not clear yet that the vaccine even prevents the HPV infection in males, let alone cancer or any other illness, said Debbie Saslow of the American Cancer Society.

Merck plans to seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the vaccine in men later this year, meaning a government decision would be likely in 2009.

Browse Encouraging Health.com for more health articles.

HPV, oral cancer, men

HPV, oral cancer, men

Adults with epilepsy who have failed other treatments may be able to dramatically reduce their number of seizures by following a modified Atkins-like diet, Johns Hopkins researchers report.

The high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet has already been shown to be valuable in controlling seizures in children, and now results from a small study suggest that the diet also works for adults.

“There are a lot of adults with very bad seizures. There are a lot of adults who have failed medicines and are not candidates for other treatments,” said lead researcher Dr. Eric H. Kossoff, an assistant professor of neurology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

For the study, Kossoff’s team gave the diet to 30 adults who had unsuccessfully tried at least two anti-convulsant drugs and had an average of 10 seizures a week. The eating plan restricts patients to 15 grams of carbohydrates a day. Most of the calories come from fats such as eggs, meats, oils and heavy cream. In addition, patients are free to eat as much protein and no-carb drinks as they want.

“There was good news and bad news,” Kossoff said. “The good news was it worked. The bad news it was tough. About 30 percent of the patients stopped the diet. This happened even in patients who had good seizure control who thought the diet was still too tough to do.”

After a month on the diet, half the patients reported suffering 50 percent fewer seizures. At three months, about one-third of the patients cut the frequency of seizures by half.

However, by three months, one-third of the patients had dropped out of the study because they found the diet too restrictive, Kossoff said.

Browse Encouraging Health for more health articles.
Atkins diet, epilepsy

Atkins diet, epilepsy