Tue May 13, 2008 4:06am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Women who breastfeed their babies longer are less likely to get rheumatoid arthritis, Swedish researchers said on Tuesday.
Mothers who breastfed for 13 months or more were half as likely to get the painful joint condition as women who never breastfed, said Mitra Pikwer and colleagues at the Malmo University Hospital in Sweden, who led the study.
“Although it is difficult to separate the effect of breast feeding from that of childbirth, our data suggest that rheumatoid arthritis is inversely associated with long-term breastfeeding, rather than with the number of children born,” they said.
The researchers said they wanted to see if a larger, community-based study would echo earlier studies on the links between breastfeeding or the use of oral contraceptives and the condition affecting about 20 million people worldwide.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease caused when the body confuses healthy tissues for foreign substances and attacks itself.
Some drugs to treat the condition seek to reduce inflammation directly while others tone down the immune system’s response, which can leave some patients vulnerable to infections and cancer.
The Swedish team compared 136 women with rheumatoid arthritis and 544 women of similar age without the disease. They also found that breastfeeding for between up to 12 months made women 25 percent less likely to get the joint condition.
The findings bolster previous research linking breastfeeding to a reduced risk of the disease. But, as with other studies, the Swedish teams said they did not know the exact reason why.
Breastfeeding is known to provide multiple benefits for the baby and studies have shown the practice may also protect mothers from breast and ovarian cancers.
The study published in the British Medical Journal’s Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases also suggested that oral contraceptives — thought to offer protection because they contain certain hormones — did not seem to make a difference.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn)
arthritis autoimmune disease breast cancer breastfeeding breast feeding british medical journal cancer childbirth complex carbohydrates hormones immune system inflammation osteo arthritis rheumatoid arthritis arthritis autoimmune disease breast cancer breastfeeding breast feeding british medical journal cancer childbirth complex carbohydrates hormones immune system inflammation osteo arthritis rheumatoid arthritisMon May 12, 2008 6:25pm EDT
By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research shows “alarming levels” of obesity in most ethnic groups in the United States, principal investigator Dr. Gregory L. Burke, of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina told Reuters Health. The study also confirms the potentially deadly toll obesity exacts on the heart and blood vessels.
“The obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further gains in U.S. life expectancy, largely through an effect on cardiovascular disease mortality (death),” Burke and colleagues warn in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
Among 6,814 middle-age or older adults participating in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or “MESA” study, researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one third to one half were obese.
Obesity rates were far lower in Chinese Americans in the study, with 33 percent overweight and just 5 percent obese, suggesting, Burke said, that high rates of obesity should not considered “inevitable.”
The investigators also found that obese adults, compared with normal-weight adults, had higher rates of high blood pressure (up to more than twice as high), abnormal lipids (two- to three-fold higher), and diabetes, despite a “huge number” being on costly medications to lower blood pressure and lipid levels and control diabetes, Burke said.
“As the obesity numbers increase further, we will spend an even larger amount of health care dollars just treating risk factors,” Burke said.
Obese adults also had more silent vascular disease (blood vessel disease that causes no symptoms); they had more atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and thicker heart walls, even after adjusting for “traditional” risk factors like high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.
Given the higher amount of silent blood vessel disease with obesity, Burke said “one could worry that this will cause us to reverse our 50-year decline in cardiovascular disease mortality due to the obesity epidemic.” This will likely be accompanied by an increase in diabetes, other heart disease risk factors, and silent disease - “on top of the aging of the baby boom generation.”
“Our findings support the imperative to redouble our efforts to assist in increasing healthy behaviors and to remove…barriers to maintaining a healthy weight,” Burke and colleagues conclude.
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, May 12, 2008.
archives of internal medicine blood vessel disease control diabetes costly medications disease mortality hardening of the arteries health health benefits health care dollars heart walls high cholesterol levels important news insulin resistance lower blood pressure obese adults obesity epidemic obesity rates overweight traditional risk factors wake forest university archives of internal medicine blood vessel disease control diabetes costly medications disease mortality hardening of the arteries health health benefits health care dollars heart walls high cholesterol levels important news insulin resistance lower blood pressure obese adults obesity epidemic obesity rates overweight traditional risk factors wake forest universityBy Lindsay Beck and Lucy Hornby
BEIJING (Reuters) - Evening exercise classes at the Nirvana fitness centre in Beijing are in high demand these days as young professionals whose mothers once counted ration cards seek to stay svelte despite lavish lunches.
China has gone from famine to feast in a generation and the health consequences for its citizens are only just beginning to be felt.
“Before there was nothing fun or interesting to eat, but now with GDP so high people no longer worry about basic necessities like food or clothes,” said Yang Bin, a trainer at Nirvana, as he rushed to a class.
The government of the world’s most populous country is in the unenviable position of having to deal with rural areas so poor that malnutrition is still a threat, while at the same time formulate health policies for well-to-do urbanites battling the bulge.
“On the one hand, a massive rural population still has low income and low caloric intake compared with urban populations where there is high caloric intake and rising weight,” said Matthew Crabbe, of research firm Access Asia.
“China is more like a set of regions, not one country, in that respect.”
And it’s not just how much the country’s citizens are eating, but what products are going into their shopping baskets that has many concerned.
James Watson, an anthropologist at Harvard University who has studied food cultures in Asia, points to rising dairy consumption in a country where cheese and butter were not traditionally eaten as a major culprit in diet-related illnesses.
Over the last two decades, Chinese have begun to eat more and more dairy, though lactose intolerance and limited refrigeration networks mean milk consumption still lags far behind the West.
“I’m personally convinced that that has as much or more to do with the obesity or health problems that are emerging as the usual scapegoat of fast food,” said Watson.
“There’s a big change in terms of taste when people want ice-cream throughout their lives,” he said. Ice-cream and chocolates are also becoming popular among China’s expanding middle class.
CHRONIC DISEASE
While malnutrition is still a problem in inland provinces that have been left out of the economic boom, the country also faces over nutrition and a rise in attendant chronic diseases.
In 2002, some 200 million Chinese adults were considered overweight by national standards and another 60 million were obese, more than double 1992 levels, according to a report published by the Asian Development Bank.
As a result, China is facing the dual challenge of malnutrition and over nutrition, and simultaneously dealing with communicable diseases common to poor countries and chronic diseases, such as diabetes, associated with the higher fat diets of the developed world.
“The PRC is thus at a critical juncture,” warned the 2005 ADB report, ‘Strengthening Public Nutrition Planning and Policy in the People’s Republic of China’.
“The combination of deep poverty in the past and rapid socioeconomic transitions together pose a ‘time bomb’ that threatens to disrupt, if not derail, continued socioeconomic development,” the report said.
Rates of breast cancer used to be five times lower in China than in the United States, but already in Chinese cities the gap is narrowing, as consumption of fatty foods rises, said Yibin Kang, a molecular biologist at Princeton University.
“When you see a change in diet and living standards it will take 20 years to manifest itself in cancer patterns,” said Kang.
PORK TO POULTRY
The average Chinese still eats about half the amount of meat a year as the average American — about 110 pounds (50 kg) versus 269 pounds (122 kg) — according to a paper by Daryll E. Ray, of the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center.
Traditionally, citizens of the two nations eat roughly the same amount of pork, while Chinese eat far less chicken and beef.
But these patterns are changing as pork prices in China hit record highs due to shortages, a result of disease among pigs and a growing reluctance among farmers to breed pigs.
China’s per capita poultry consumption is likely to triple in the next five years as high pork prices trigger a shift, according to recent estimates by Qingdao Chia Tai Co. Ltd, a unit of the world’s second-largest poultry producer.
Harvard’s Watson estimates that beef consumption will also rise as people become wealthier.
“As people have money they’ll pay for it, regardless of the price. It’s the status,” he said.
In a country where the older generation still remembers famine and deprivation, there is a tendency to shower children with love by giving them as much food as well as the richest foods possible regardless of the long-term health consequences.
“People still remember the poverty, so the fact that they can eat well now means they do. There’s the concept that you should live the good life while it lasts,” said Crabbe, of Access Asia.
(Editing by Megan Goldin)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
alternative and complementary medicine arthritis body weight gain breast cancer breast feeding cancer cholesterol food scientists inflammation osteo arthritis overweight alternative and complementary medicine arthritis body weight gain breast cancer breast feeding cancer cholesterol food scientists inflammation osteo arthritis overweight
In addition to adding vitamin K to your diet, these helpful tips on prostate cancer prevention and all-natural alternative treatments were given to me by former guest commentator Dr. Larry Clapp, author of Prostate Health in 90 Days Without Drugs or Surgery.
All types must eliminate:
Also incorporate natural lycopene foods such as:
When you adjust the environment of your body so that the underlying causes of cancer are eliminated, cancer can be defeated.
“In 2003 my husband was told he had a pancost tumor on his upper left lung. He began 6 weeks of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. On April 1st, 2004 he went thru a 10 hour surgery to remove the upper left lobe, parts of his ribs and the tips of the T3, T4 & T5 vertebrae.
“In May 2005 he was informed the cancer had returned in the lower left lung and on his spine causing compression fractures of the C2, T3, 4, 5, & T6 vertebrae. He refused chemo and radiation therapy. We studied the information on your site and began a regiment of detoxing, cleansing, and using several of the products and a complete life style change.
“The recent CT scan, PET scan, blood work and MRI came back cancer free. Thank God. He still has the issue with his back, but no cancer: We will continue taking the holistic approach using some of the products you suggest. Just to name a few: Oxy E, MSM, AFA Blue Green Algae, Ellagic Acid with Graviola, Elemental pH and more. Faith and prayer does work cause without it I would not have found you, many thanks. Our future looks brighter. Thank you…”
Patrick and Olga - August 1st, 2005“Hi- I will never be able thank you enough. 8 months ago my boyfriend, Pete, was given a few months to live- melanoma was spreading rapidly through his body and was proclaimed to have settled in the lymph nodes and liver. “Doctors” wanted to strip his lymph nodes and cut out a section of his liver, and then chemo him, again. I found your website, printed out all the info on cancer, and presented it to Pete. He agreed to follow the advice- he refused conventional treatment, [We are not advising that you refuse conventional treatments.] and immediately began a regiment of supplements to detoxify, cleanse, oxygenate, alkalinize, and support the immune system. He also made changes in diet and in mind-set. 8 months later he is free of cancer, as indicated in the recent PET scan! He has energy abound, no longer sleeps half the day, and is looking forward to living instead of preparing to die. Your information is well-presented, logical, factual, and in language a person can understand, AND, it saved a man’s life.” Leslie R.
Cancerous cells are always being created in the body. It’s an ongoing process that has gone on for eons. Consequently, there are parts of your immune system are designed to seek out and destroy cancer cells.
Cancer has been around as long as mankind, but only in the second half of the 20th century did the number of cancer cases explode. Contributing to this explosion are the excessive amounts of toxins and pollutants we are exposed to, high stress lifestyles that zap the immune system, poor quality junk food that’s full of pesticides, irradiated and now genetically modified, pathogens, electromagnetic stress, lights, and just about everything that wasn’t here 200 years ago.
All these weaken the immune system, and alter the internal environment in the body to an environment that promotes the growth of cancer.
Cancer is not a mysterious disease that suddenly attacks you out of the blue, something that you can’t do anything about. It has definite causes that you can correct if your body has enough time, and if you take action to change the internal environment to one that creates health, not cancer, while at the same time attacking cancerous cells and tumors by exploiting their weaknesses.
Cancer tumors begin when more cancerous cells are being created than an overworked, depleted immune system can destroy.
Constant exposure to tens of thousands of manmade chemicals from birth onward, chlorinated and fluoridated water, electromagnetic radiation, pesticides and other toxins, leads to the creation of too many free radicals and excessive numbers of cancerous cells.
Alone this would be enough to raise cancer levels, but combined with an immune system weakened by a diet of refined and over processed food, mineral depleted soils, and too much exposure to artificial light at night, the immune system at some point no longer is able to keep cancer in check, and it starts to grow in your body.
DID YOU KNOW? Research shows that the immune system needs 9 1/2 hours of sleep in total darkness to recharge completely — the authors of the book Lights Out explain. When was the last time you had this much sleep?
Because of this stress and the overload of toxins, you end up with a malfunctioning immune system, and a body that is not capable of destroying the excessive numbers of cancerous cells that develop. Some, sooner or later, survive and multiply. And then you have cancer. Of course, our diets loaded with sugar and refined carbohydrates don’t help. Refined carbohydrates digest so fast they act like sugar, and cancer cells love sugar. They have about 15 times more receptor cells for capturing sugar than healthy cells.
Overcoming cancer is a process of reversing the conditions that allowed the cancer to develop, and going after and killing cancerous cells.
The exact causes don’t have to be known, though certainly the more varied the approaches taken to correct those conditions, the more likely you are going to hit on what works best in a particular case. What you need to do is to strongly and dramatically interrupt and reverse the cancer-causing conditions in your body so that it becomes healthier, and stops breeding cancer.
The more cancer there is, the more serious the condition, meaning much more has to be done — fast. It may be too late, or it may not. No one knows where that cutoff point is as some people given only a few days to live have pulled through and conquered cancer when they applied these strategies.
About Treating Cancer
There was a woman whose daughter was in the advanced stages of brain cancer. She asked her oncologist if it was ok to give her daughter a superfood called blue green algae. Her doctor told her that it was no problem, that in fact a number of his patients had used that supplement with success in fighting cancer.
Naturally she wondered why he didn’t tell her about this product a year before when they came to him.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell her about this or any “natural or alternative health therapies” and stay employed. Insurance regulations would preclude such suggestions. And he could get into administrative trouble by recommending natural, non-drug treatments for cancer.
His advice is controlled by a large medical industry that makes mega money off expensive cancer fighting drugs and treatments. An industry that doesn’t look favorably on natural supplements or other cancer treatments as they cannot patent them to make high profits.
Fifty years from now, the current conventional cancer treatments used by doctors will on the whole be viewed in the same light that we view the old medical practice of using leeches to cure illnesses.
Chemotherapy and other treatments damage cells and tear down and weaken the immune system. But the problem in the first place is that your immune system is already weak, and that your cells are already damaged.
Even if tumors do go into remission, these treatments will have damaged other cells, which are more likely to turn cancerous. The immune system, unless it is supported by supplements and diet to help it recover, will be in worse shape then ever.
While it may have taken decades for cancer to develop the first time around, the second time usually takes a year or two.
Another reason why doctors ignore sensible, safe and healthy treatments for cancer, and recommend costly and illogical treatments instead — is human nature. They advise and prescribe what they know. Just what we all do.
You go to them and you get what they know. You assume they will do the best they can for you, while in fact they only do what the system teaches them, promotes and allows them to do.
A Doctor’s Shocking Closed-Door Confession …
In a survey of 79 oncologists from McGill University Cancer Center in Canada, 64 said they would not consent to treatment with Cisplatin, a common chemotherapy drug, while 58 oncologists said they would reject all the current trials being carried out by their establishment. Why? “The ineffectiveness of chemotherapy and its unacceptable degree of toxicity.” Philip Day, Cancer: Why We’re Still Dying to Know the Truth
This information is shocking to say the least. But consider this …
Doctors today are not very different than they were 150 or 200 years ago. Back then the common practice was for interns and doctors working on cadavers to walk down the hall to deliver a baby without washing their hands. Many women died from the subsequent infections.
Finally a doctor in charge of a clinic figured out what was happening, and had them wash their hands. The infections stopped. When he published his results, the medical profession was outraged. Good doctors could not be the cause of something like this. The doctor was ostracized and fired.
He went elsewhere and repeated the experiment. Again, deaths dropped. Again he announced the results, and again the medical profession rose up against him. The end of the story was, he lost everything, went insane from the tragedy of it all, and eventually killed himself.
Bottom line: Don’t expect a doctor working inside the system to buck the system. The risks are too great.
According to the National Cancer Institute, about 500,000 people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer this year. You may not know it, but cancer — NOT heart disease — is the number one risk of death for most everyone.
Chemotherapy works by killing all cells — throughout your body — that multiply and divide rapidly. This would include cancer cells, and other rapidly multiplying and dividing cells, that we need, such as:
Bone marrow, which produces blood
Digestive system
Reproductive system
Hair follicles
This overkill approach is one of the causes of an astounding overall failure rate of chemotherapy, as you’ll see below.
In 2004, the Journal of Clinical Oncology published a study about chemotherapy’s success rates when looking at how many cancer patients were still alive after 5 years. It states:
RESULTS: The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.
CONCLUSION: As the 5-year relative survival rate for cancer in Australia is now over 60%, it is clear that cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival. To justify the continued funding and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required.
You’d be hard pressed to find anything still being touted as your best shot at a cure with an average success rate of just over 2 percent, which chemotherapy has, if it wasn’t for the fact that big profits were driving the recommendation. For stage 4 cancers the rate is less than half of one percent.
Fundamentally, chemotherapy rarely works. Worse, some drug treatments also promote the spread of cancer. But somehow the rationale to avoid these agents because they might promote cancer does not apply when it comes to drugs.
– A Cancer Journal for the Clinician article concludes by stating:
“Pending the publication of suitable trials, clinicians must be guided by existing data in the context of a fundamental principle of medicine, “Primum non nocere.” (First do no harm.)
And yet, conventional cancer treatments can in no way, shape or form ever be considered harmless.
“…as a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incomprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good.”
Alan C Nixon, PhD, former president of the American Chemical Society
It is not all gloom and doom with chemotherapy. For two decades Dr. Perez Garcia has been using a treatment he calls Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT). It consists of giving a patient a dose of insulin followed by a tiny dose of chemotherapy.
Cancer cells have 15 times more insulin receptors than normal cells. The insulin dose helps to target chemotherapy into cancer cells because they have so many more insulin receptors. So small doses of chemotherapy can be used that cause little harm to normal cells. With Stage 1 or 2 cancer, IPT is, I read, about 80% successful, mixed results for more serious cancers. So after two decades of use, how many doctors were using IPT in the USA? 29. Hard to believe isn’t it.
Many oncologists make much of their income from the markup they make on chemotherapy drugs, and small doses don’t make big money.
You don’t have to avoid chemotherapy or radiation therapy to receive benefits from natural products and supplements. In fact, nutritional supplements are quite useful when used in conjunction with chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery. The best ones work to support the body so that radiation and chemo will actually work better. In addition, the immune system will be stronger, and better able to keep cancer from developing again.
It makes sense, doesn’t it, to supplement your chemotherapy or radiation treatments with other options that support your body and actually help it be much more effective in fighting cancer.
Many people only do chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and do not also support their body’s fight against cancer in other ways. All too often, the cancer is not destroyed, or comes back a short while later. And no wonder…
If the immune system has been wiped out by chemotherapy or radiation, cancer is bound to overrun the body even faster than before.
Seeking other options after the doctors throw in the towel and say there is nothing else they can do, is necessary. It makes more sense to correct the underlying causes of cancer early on when the odds are much better. Especially with natural supplelments that can do no harm.
Natural supplements won’t hurt you. They can only help. They won’t make chemotherapy or radiation therapy less effective. Instead they amplify the power of whatever cancer treatments you may be doing by attacking cancer in other ways, or supporting the health of the body and immune system. For example, research studies have shown that when you oxygenate cancer cells, radiation therapy is more effective at killing those cells. And beta glucan, when used in conjunction with some types of chemotherapy, produced marked improvement over chemotherapy alone.
Certainly some people beat cancer using chemotherapy or radiation therapy. But look at the number of deaths from cancer, and you see that to many people don’t. Not using natural supplements to fight cancer is like being in a life and death struggle, and choosing to fight with one hand tied behind your back.
Hit cancer hard. This is one fight you don’t want to lose.
The more support you give your body, the better you will be at handling any possible side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and the better your body will be at fighting cancer.
A natural approach to cancer is based on making your body healthier. To strengthen a depleted, worn out, under energized immune system that is not capable of killing cancer cells as fast as they are multiplying.
Use safe, natural supplements to change the body’s internal environment to one that does not support the growth of cancer, and to directly kill cancer cells.
invasive breast cancer vitamins and minerals invasive breast cancer vitamins and minerals
A leader in the Global wellness industry, has received a first-place award for research indicating bacteria from the human digestive tract can break down complex carbohydrates in the company’s glyconutritional supplements.
Home to nearly two-thirds of the body’s immune system, the digestive tract is a biological ecosystem that is still an enigma to medical science. While it is recognized that some plant-based carbohydrates are among the best-known immune system regulators, science knows little about whether the gastrointestinal (GI) tract can assimilate some of these complex substances or, once metabolized, how these substances might exert their immune-modulating effects.
The research showed that GI bacteria, indeed, are capable of breaking down these complex carbohydrates. Further research may lead to a better understanding of how complex carbohydrates, once metabolized by the body, can support the immune system.
Researchers presented its GI bacteria research in a poster that received a first-place award during the 4th annual conference on natural supplements sponsored by the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla, California. The research is scheduled to be published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
The complex functions of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract and the major impact these functions have on health are among the emerging topics in science. Since these bacteria primarily rely upon plant saccharides for food, scientists increasingly are spending more time determining how immune-modulating dietary saccharides are broken down by GI bacteria.
The research was a collaborative project with Hyperion Biotechnology, Inc., of San Antonio to determine if GI bacteria could break down stabilized aloe vera gel, larch arabinogalactan and advanced glyconutrient complexes, containing proprietary blends of plant-derived saccharides, including aloe vera gel and larch arabinogalactan.
This in vitro study assessed how bacteria normally found in the human intestinal tract broke down aloe vera gel, larch arabinogalactan and glyconutritional compounds. The study concluded that GI bacteria broke down these complex carbohydrates, suggesting that the carbohydrates could also be broken down within the GI tract itself.
“Although we weren’t surprised that gut bacteria can partially degrade these complex polysaccharides, we were very interested to learn that there was a great variation between the GI flora’s ability to utilize high molecular weight components in aloe vera gel,” said Dr. Robert A. Sinnott.
“Even more fascinating was finding that bacterial utilization of Advanced glyconutrient complexes was different than how the bacteria utilized aloe vera gel or larch arabinogalactan, generating an abundance of relatively small polymers. Something unique appears to be happening when the blend of ingredients found in Advanced glyconutrients interact with GI bacteria. We still have much to learn, and we are committed to finding additional answers by employing stringent research methods,” Sinnott added.
Carbohydrate research is growing throughout the scientific community. Recognizing that certain plant polysaccharides exert potent effects, Mannatech is focused on finding the most efficacious and powerful sources of immune-modulating saccharides found in nature.
Medical research acknowledges that certain sugars are needed at the cellular level for optimum cellular function.* Considering that most of these sugars are often lacking in modern diets, the company sought new and better sources of the nutrients.
aloe vera gel alternative and complementary medicine center for integrative medicine complementary medicine complex carbohydrates food scientists gastrointestinal tract gi tract global wellness glyconutrient glyconutritional human digestive tract journal of alternative and complementary medicine larch arabinogalactan natural supplements proprietary blends saccharides scripps center for integrative medicine wellness industry aloe vera gel alternative and complementary medicine center for integrative medicine complementary medicine complex carbohydrates food scientists gastrointestinal tract gi tract global wellness glyconutrient glyconutritional human digestive tract journal of alternative and complementary medicine larch arabinogalactan natural supplements proprietary blends saccharides scripps center for integrative medicine wellness industry