Frankincense used to treat bladder cancer

 FRANKINCENSE, an aromatic tree oil and in Christian tradition one of the three wise men’s gifts to the baby Jesus, may be a helpful treatment for bladder cancer, according to a study published today.

US scientists tested an enriched extract of the frankincense herb boswellia carteri on both human bladder cancer cells and normal bladder cells in laboratory experiments.

The oil suppressed cancer growth and activated mechanisms which kill the dangerous cells, they said.

“Frankincense oil can discriminate bladder cancer cells and normal urothelial cells in culture. The oil suppresses cell survival and induces apoptosis in cultured bladder cancer cells,” said the study.

Lead researcher Doctor Hsueh-Kung Lin of the University of Oklahoma said: “Frankincense oil may represent an inexpensive alternative therapy for patients currently suffering from bladder cancer.”

The study noted that the oil originated from Africa, India and the Middle East and has been “important both socially and economically as an ingredient in incense and perfumes for thousands of years”.

According to the Bible, it was presented to the infant Jesus by the three wise men, along with gold and myrrh.

The study was published in the online British Medical Council journal Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Full Article and Credits

Spa Health Cancer, Health Concerns Alternative Treatments, Bladder Cancer, Frankinscense

Turn a bit red when you drink a mere half bottle of beer? If you’re of East Asian descent, consider that a warning: You may be at higher risk of alcohol-caused esophageal cancer. Researchers reported the link Monday in hopes of increasing awareness that the inherited flushing trait — found in about a third of people from Japan, China and Korea — offers valuable health information.

Alcohol is a known risk factor for a variety of cancers, including esophageal, and heavier drinking is considered riskier than light drinking.

Lots of people turn slightly red if they imbibe too much. At issue here is facial flushing from a small amount of alcohol. It’s due to a deficiency in an enzyme that helps metabolize alcohol, called ALDH2.

People with a severe deficiency of the enzyme usually don’t drink because it makes them feel too bad; in addition to flushing they feel nausea and a rapid heartbeat.

But people with a partial deficiency — they inherited one bad copy of the enzyme-producing gene instead of two — may put up with the flushing. A series of studies by Dr. Akira Yokoyama of Japan’s Kurihama Alcohol Center found that those people are six to 10 times more likely to develop esophageal cancer than people who drink a comparable amount but aren’t enzyme-deficient.

“Somehow the message just hadn’t gotten out,” said Dr. Philip J. Brooks, who researches alcohol and cancer at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

So he paired with Yokoyama and others to review the link for PLoS Medicine, a journal published by the Public Library of Science.

Without enough of that enzyme, alcohol breaks down into a DNA-damaging chemical similar to formaldehyde but it doesn’t go the next step and turn into yet another chemical that’s non-toxic, said Brooks. Don’t drink, and the flushers aren’t at increased risk.

Esophageal cancer is fairly rare, but it’s also hard to treat. Worldwide, anywhere from 12 percent to a third of people who develop it survive five years.

Up to 8 percent of the world’s population has the enzyme deficiency, meaning if even a small number of the at-risk avoided alcohol, esophageal cancer deaths could drop substantially, the review concluded.

In the U.S., most esophageal cancer is a type called adenocarcinoma that is linked to chronic, severe heartburn. The flushing-linked type is squamous cell carcinoma, less common here than abroad.

Full Article and Credits

Spa Health Cancer Alcohol and Cancer

Daily Red Meat Raises Chances Of Dying Early
Study Is First Large Analysis Of Link With Overall Health

The new study says, “If people want to be healthy and live longer, consume less red and processed meat,” global nutrition professor Barry Popkin said. 

Eating red meat increases the chances of dying prematurely, according to the first large study to examine whether regularly eating beef or pork increases mortality.

The study of more than 500,000 middle-aged and elderly Americans found that those who consumed about four ounces of red meat a day (the equivalent of about a small hamburger) were more than 30 percent more likely to die during the 10 years they were followed, mostly from heart disease and cancer. Sausage, cold cuts and other processed meats also increased the risk.

Previous research had found a link between red meat and an increased risk of heart disease and cancer, particularly colorectal cancer, but the new study is the first large examination of the relationship between eating meat and overall risk of death, and is by far the most detailed.

“The bottom line is we found an association between red meat and processed meat and an increased risk of mortality,” said Rashmi Sinha of the National Cancer Institute, who led the study published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

In contrast, routine consumption of fish, chicken, turkey and other poultry decreased the risk of death by a small amount.

“The uniqueness of this study is its size and length of follow-up,” said Barry M. Popkin, a professor of global nutrition at the University of North Carolina, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “This is a slam-dunk to say that, ‘Yes, indeed, if people want to be healthy and live longer, consume less red and processed meat.’ ”

There are many explanations for how red meat might be unhealthy: Cooking red meat generates cancer-causing compounds; red meat is also high in saturated fat, which has been associated with breast and colorectal cancer; and meat is high in iron, also believed to promote cancer. People who eat red meat are more likely to have high blood pressure and cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease. Processed meats contain substances known as nitrosamines, which have been linked to cancer.

Although pork is often promoted as “white meat,” it is believed to increase the risk of cancer because of its iron content, Sinha said.

Regardless of the mechanism, the research provides new evidence that people should follow long-standing recommendations to minimize consumption of red meat, several experts said.

“The take-home message is pretty clear,” said Walter Willett, a nutrition expert at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It would be better to shift from red meat to white meat such as chicken and fish, which if anything is associated with lower mortality.”

The American Meat Institute, a trade group, dismissed the findings, however, saying they were based on unreliable self-reporting by the study participants.

“Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet, and studies show they actually provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness that can help with weight control. Proper body weight contributes to good health overall,” James H. Hodges, the group’s executive vice president, said in a written statement.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from 545,653 predominantly white volunteers, ages 50 to 71, participating in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. In 1995, the subjects filled out detailed questionnaires about their diets, including meat consumption. Over the next 10 years, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died.

After accounting for other variables that might confound the findings, such as smoking and physical activity, the researchers found that those who ate the most red meat — about a quarter-pound a day — were more likely to die of any reason, and from heart disease and cancer in particular, than those who ate the least — the equivalent of a couple of slices of ham a day.

Among women, those who ate the most red meat were 36 percent more likely to die for any reason, 20 percent more likely to die of cancer and 50 percent more likely to die of heart disease. Men who ate the most meat were 31 percent more likely to die for any reason, 22 percent more likely to die of cancer and 27 percent more likely to die of heart disease.

In contrast, those who consumed the most white meat were about 8 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who ate the least, the researchers found. Poultry contains more unsaturated fat, which improves cholesterol levels, and fish contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are believed to help reduce the risk of heart disease.

The risk also rose among those who consumed the most processed meat, which included any kind of sausage, cold cuts or hot dogs. Women who consumed the most processed meat (about an ounce a day) were about 25 percent more likely to die overall, about 11 percent more likely to die of cancer and about 38 percent more likely to die from heart disease, compared to those who ate the least. The men who ate the most processed meat were 16 percent more likely to die for any reason, about 12 percent more likely to die of cancer and about 9 percent more likely to die of heart disease.

Experts stressed that the findings do not mean that people need to eliminate red meat from their diet, but instead should avoid eating it every day.

“You can be very healthy being a vegetarian, but you can be very healthy being a non-vegetarian if you keep your red-meat intake low,” Willett said. “If you are eating meat twice a day and can cut back to once a day there’s a big benefit. If you cut back to two or three times a week there’s even more benefit. If you eliminate it entirely, there’s a little more benefit, but the big benefit is getting away from everyday red-meat consumption.”

In addition to the health benefits, a major reduction in the eating of red meat would probably have a host of other benefits to society, Popkin said: reducing water shortages and pollution, cutting energy consumption, and tamping down greenhouse gas emissions — all of which are associated with large-scale livestock production.

“There’s a big interplay between the global increase in animal food intake and the effects on climate change,” he said. “If we cut by a few ounces a day our red-meat intake, we would have big impact on emissions and environmental degradation.”

Full Article And Credits

Spa Health Cancer, Health Concerns, Health and Wellness, Heart Disease, New Research, health nutrition Meat and Cancer, Meat and Heart disease, Red Meat and Health

Attention red wine drinkers: Drinking moderate amounts of any kind of alcohol (including wine, beer, and liquor) is associated with a slightly increased breast cancer risk — and the rosy-hued beverage is no exception.

Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol (wine, beer, and liquor) is associated with increased breast cancer risk.

That’s the conclusion of a new study that dashes any hope that red wine is less likely than other alcohol-containing drinks to increase breast cancer risk, or that it might even protect against the disease.

“If a woman chooses red wine, she should do so because she likes the flavor, not because she thinks doing so will reduce her breast cancer risk,” said Polly A. Newcomb of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington, who led the research. “It might be good for other things, but it definitely is not conferring any protection against breast cancer.”

There’s good evidence showing that women who consume alcohol have a slightly greater risk of breast cancer than teetotalers, and the risk is higher with heavier drinking. But research in animals and some human studies had suggested that red wine might not carry the same risks as other forms of alcohol or could even be protective.

This is certainly possible, Newcomb and her team noted in their report in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, because red wine contains more potentially beneficial plant chemicals, such as resveratrol, than white wine does.

To find out if this was true, the researchers looked at 6,327 women with breast cancer and 7,558 women who did not have a a cancer diagnosis. Risk rose with the amount of alcohol consumed, no matter whether it was wine, beer or liquor. The heaviest drinkers — women who reported having 14 or more drinks a week — were 24 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than nondrinkers. Health.com: For even healthy men, alcohol seems to lower heart attack risk

In comparison, smoking can increase the risk of breast cancer by 32 percent, and having a close relative (mother, sister, or daughter) with the disease is associated with a 200 percent higher risk.

Lighter drinkers who consumed about a drink or two a day (7 to 13.9 drinks per week) were 11 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than women who didn’t drink at all, but there was no greater breast cancer risk when alcohol intake was less than four drinks per week. And neither white wine nor red wine drinkers had a lower risk of breast cancer than nondrinkers, Newcomb and her colleagues found. Health.com: 10 celebrities who battled breast cancer

“It really looks as if the pattern is far more important than the beverage,” said Dr. Arthur Klatsky, an adjunct investigator with Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s research division who has long studied the relationship between alcohol and health. In a large study released in December, Klatsky and his colleagues also found a steady rise in breast cancer risk with alcohol consumption, with no difference in risk between wine, beer, or liquor.

While Klatsky said he thinks having three or four drinks a week seems unlikely to increase breast cancer risk, he added that there also doesn’t appear to be any “threshold effect,” meaning a minimum level of consumption that’s entirely safe.

“The findings from this study do show that alcohol itself is important, and there doesn’t seem to be a strong difference between the types of drinks you consume,” said Naomi Allen, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Allen and her colleagues are following 1.2 million UK women 50 and older participating in the Million Women Study.

Alcohol use — why moderation is key
This month, they are reporting findings that echo those of Klatsky and Newcomb and their colleagues: moderate to heavy drinking boosted risk of breast cancer, with the same risks seen for women who drank wine and those who drank other types of alcohol.

“The message is pretty simple,” Allen said. “Moderate drinking increases breast cancer risk, and it seems that the more you drink the higher the risk.”

There are a handful of things women can do to modify breast cancer risk, Newcomb noted, including maintaining a healthy weight and not using hormone replacement therapy. And alcohol consumption looks like another breast cancer risk factor that’s under women’s control, she added. Health.com: 5 simple ways to cut your breast cancer risk

“We found that recent alcohol consumption was very relevant in terms of determining breast cancer risk, so reducing alcohol consumption or eliminating it probably is going to impact upon a woman’s future risk of the disease,” Newcomb said. “This is something that you can do today to reduce your future risk.”

Full Article and Credits

Spa Health Breast Cancer, Cancer, Health and Wellness Breast Cancer, Wine and Wellness