New research: vitamin K protects against non-Hodgkin lymphoma

(NaturalNews) Non-Hodgkin lymphomas belong to a large group of immune system cancers involving lymphocytes (white blood cells). In 2009, according the National Cancer Institute (NCI) about 65,980 Americans were diagnosed with this form of cancer and almost 20,000 died from the disease. But now scientists at the Mayo Comprehensive Cancer Center in Minnesota think they’ve found a way to prevent a huge number of these malignancies. The key is a nutrient found in many leafy, green vegetables — vitamin K. For their study, the first ever to investigate vitamin K and non-Hodgkin lymphoma risk, the Mayo researchers enrolled 603 patients who were newly diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma as well as 1,007 matched cancer-free research subjects who served as controls. The participants answered a food questionnaire about their usual intake of over 120 food items during the two years before they were diagnosed with cancer or they enrolled in the study as a member of the cancer-free control group. They were also asked about their use of vitamin and mineral supplements. The findings of the study, which were recently announced in Washington, D.C., at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), showed that the risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma was slashed dramatically — by 45 percent — for the study participants who had the highest vitamin K levels compared to participants with the lowest levels of the vitamin. This association remained even after the Mayo research team investigated factors such as age, sex, education, obesity, smoking, alcohol use and consumption of foods with high amounts of antioxidants. Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin found in certain plants or formed by bacterial synthesis. The Mayo study involved intake of the plant form of vitamin K from diet and/or supplement use. The most common food sources of vitamin K include leaf lettuce and spinach, with smaller amounts found in other vegetables such as onions, bell peppers, asparagus and alfalfa sprouts and some fruits, including strawberries. Consuming a lot of vitamin K was associated with a lower risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma whether the vitamin came from natural food sources or from supplements. However, very high intakes of vitamin K from supplements did not cause a further reduction in risk. “These results are provocative, since they are the first work we have done on the connection between vitamin K and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and this is a fairly strong protective effect,” the study’s lead investigator, cancer epidemiologist James Cerhan, M.D., Ph.D., said in a media statement. “Whether the protective effect we observed is due to vitamin K intake, or some other dietary or lifestyle exposure, cannot be definitely assessed in this study. But these findings add to a lot of other data that support a diet that includes plenty of green leafy vegetables in order to prevent many cancers as well as other diseases.” Well-known as essential for blood clotting (the name of the vitamin is derived from the German word “Koagulations”), vitamin K has also been found in recent years to be important for other functions in the body, including putting a damper on inflammation and regulating cell growth — and this might explain its apparent ability to protect from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. For more information: http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2010-rst/5739.html http://www.nutrientreference.com/vitamin_K.html

Vitamin and calcium supplements slash breast cancer risk

(NaturalNews) It’s common for mainstream medical doctors to declare there’s no reason to take nutritional supplements. After all, this line of reasoning goes, you are supposedly getting all the nutrition you need from a typical American diet. However, evidence continues to mount disproving this idea. And scientists are documenting that an optimum intake of nutrients can, in fact, have enormous benefits to health. A case in point: a new study indicates taking multi-vitamins and calcium supplements can dramatically slash the risk of breast cancer. Scientists at the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico investigated 268 women with malignant breast tumors and 457 healthy controls to look for possible causative factors for breast cancer. The results, which were recently presented by Jaime Matta, Ph.D., at the American Association for Cancer Research’s 101st Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C., showed vitamin supplements reduced the risk of breast cancer by about 30%. “It is not an immediate effect. You don’t take a vitamin today and your breast cancer risk is reduced tomorrow. However, we did see a long-term effect in terms of breast cancer reduction,” Dr. Matta, who headed the study, said in a statement to the press. “We’re not talking about mega doses of these vitamins and calcium supplements, so this is definitely one way to reduce risk.” Dr. Matta explained that his research team’s findings also suggest that calcium supplements help protect against breast cancer because they enhance DNA repair capacity. This is important because DNA repair is a complex biological process involving more than 200 proteins that, if disrupted, can cause malignancies, including breast tumors. “This process involves at least five separate pathways and is critical for maintaining genomic stability,” Dr. Matta noted in the media statement. “When the DNA is not repaired, it leads to mutation that leads to cancer.” Although breast cancer is a disease women tend to fear, the new study is one of many that gives credence to the idea women can take control of their health and use natural therapies, including nutrition, to help prevent and even treat breast cancer. For example, NaturalNews recently reported that a vegetable commonly eaten in China and India, bitter melon, stops breast cancer cells from growing (http://www.naturalnews.com/028256_bitter_melon_brst_cancer.html). In addition, a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits and vegetables, fish, and olive and sunflower oils has been found to reduce the incidence of post-menopausal breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/027598_Mediterranean_diet_brst_cancer.html). Two more documented breast cancer fighters: eating beans and getting adequate vitamin D through supplements or sunshine exposure (http://www.naturalnews.com/025614.html). For more information: http://www.aacr.org/ http://www.naturalnews.com/028119_vitamin_D_brst_cancer.html

Want some cancer with that burger? Eating meat linked to bladder cancer

(NaturalNews) No one wants cancer served up with their steak or hamburger. But that’s just what you may be getting. As NaturalNews has previously reported, numerous studies have linked meat consumption with cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/024966_inflammation_cancer_meat.html). Now comes evidence from scientists at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center that eating meat frequently, especially meat that is well done or cooked at high temperatures, significantly raises the risk of developing bladder cancer. These research cancer findings, recently announced at the American Association for Cancer Research’s 101st Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C., indicate that heterocyclic amines (HCAs), substances formed when meat (including beef, pork, poultry and fish) is cooked at high temperatures, may be what links meat to malignancies. Earlier research found strong evidence that 17 types of HCAs contribute to cancer. “It’s well known that meat cooked at high temperatures generates HCAs that can cause cancer,” study presenter Jie Lin, Ph.D., assistant professor in M. D. Anderson’s Department of Epidemiology, said in a statement to the media. “We wanted to find out if meat consumption increases the risk of developing bladder cancer and how genetic differences may play a part.” The M.D. Anderson researchers studied 884 patients with bladder cancer and 878 people who were cancer-free. The research subjects were matched by age, gender and ethnicity and followed for about 12 years. Using a standardized questionnaire designed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the scientists documented each participant’s dietary habits. Those who ate the most red meat had about one and a half times the risk of developing bladder cancer than the research subjects who ate little or no red meat. Beef steaks, pork chops and bacon raised bladder cancer risk the most. People who consumed a lot of well-done meat were at about twice the risk to develop bladder cancer as those who preferred rare meat. Even chicken and fish significantly upped the chances of getting cancer — but only if they were fried. The M.D. Anderson researchers also found that people with the highest estimated intake of three specific types of HCAs were more than two and a half times more likely to develop bladder cancer than those with a low intake of HCAs. In addition, the researchers analyzed study participants’ DNA to see if there were genetic variations that would make some people particularly more likely to develop cancer if they ate red meat. The results showed that people with seven or more specific genotypes who consumed a diet full of red meat had five times the risk of bladder cancer. “This research reinforces the relationship between diet and cancer,” lead author Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., professor in M. D. Anderson’s Department of Epidemiology, said in the media statement. “These results strongly support what we suspected: people, who eat a lot of red meat, particularly well-done red meat, such as fried or barbecued, seem to have a higher likelihood of bladder cancer. This effect is compounded if they carry high unfavorable genotypes in the HCA-metabolism pathway.” For more information: http://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/news-releases/2010/well-done-meat-may-increase-bladder-cancer-risk.html http://www.naturalnews.com/025547.html http://www.naturalnews.com/025974_cancer_health_colon_cancer.html

Taking a mid-day nap boosts brain power

(NaturalNews) Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that people who take naps during the day are helping to improve their overall brain function. Among the 39 healthy adults who were evaluated in the study, those who slept for an hour and a half during the day performed better on a post-nap cognitive exam than did those who remained awake. All participants were initially assigned a “hard learning” morning task for which all performed roughly the same. Half the group then took a nap while the others stayed awake. Following the nap, all were given a repeat exam and, this time, the group that napped performed better than the group that stayed awake. Scientists have long been trying to figure out whether or not mid-day naps are beneficial. This study seems to suggest that naps help a person to process short-term memories into long-term ones, clearing the temporary storage portion of the brain so that new information can take its place. The team came to this conclusion by analyzing the nappers’ brain electrical activity. They observed that sleepers were in a sleep phase somewhere between deep sleep and dreaming sleep. During this time, temporary memories move from the hippocampus to the pre-frontal cortex. Dr. Matthew Walker, lead author of the study, explained the situation in terms of an e-mail inbox that becomes full. Until a person sleeps, or takes a nap, all the new information received since the last sleeping period remains in hippocampus. Once it is full, no new information can be readily processed, inhibiting that person from fully functioning throughout the entire day. “Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap,” he explained to the group in attendance at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego. Not everyone agreed with the results, however. Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, the Director of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre in the U.K., believes that there is not necessarily a clear advantage to sleeping more than once in a 24-hour period. He explained that, outside of the lab in the real world, it is difficult to assess whether or not taking a mid-day nap provides the type of cognitive benefit observed in the laboratory. It may simply help someone who was tired to have more post-nap energy and brain functionality. Sources for this story include: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8524549.stm

Metal hip replacements in pregnant women leach chromium and cobalt into babies

(NaturalNews) Between 200,000 and 300,000 hip replacement operations are performed each year in the U.S., mostly in people over the age of 60. However, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), five to 10% of these procedures are in patients younger than 50 — including women of childbearing age. Now comes a disturbing report that suggests women who have the metal-on-metal type of artificial hip joint and become pregnant could be putting their unborn babies at risk. A study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center recently presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons held in New Orleans revealed that expectant mothers with metal-on-metal hip implants pass metal ions to their offspring during pregnancy. The ions, it turns out, result from wear and tear as well as from corrosion as the parts of the artificial joint, called prosthesis, rub against one another. Dr. Joshua Jacobs, professor and chairman of orthopedic surgery at Rush University Medical Center, and his research team investigated three women who had metal-on-metal hip implants and gave birth two to six years after their surgeries. Blood samples from the mothers as well as umbilical cord blood samples were obtained at the time of delivery and tested for blood serum concentrations of titanium, nickel, cobalt and chromium. The researchers used inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry , a highly sensitive technique that can detect even minute amounts of metals in biological samples. The results showed that the moms with metal-on-metal implants and their babies had significantly higher levels of two metals — chromium and cobalt — compared with a control group of seven women who did not have metal hip replacements and their offspring. In addition, the levels of the metals in the blood of mothers with implants correlated with the levels of metals identified in the umbilical cords. The amount of cobalt found in the newborn babies was about half that in the mothers’ blood; chromium was about 15 percent as high in the infants as the levels in their mothers’ blood. The lower levels in the umbilical cords showed that the placenta stopped at least some of the transfer of metal ions from mother to fetus, although it was obviously not a complete barrier. “We don’t know whether metal ions pose any health risks for pregnant women and their babies but as metal-on-metal implants increase in popularity and use, especially among young, active patients, women of child-bearing age and their doctors need to be aware of these findings when considering options for hip replacements,” Dr. Jacobs explained in a statement to the media. While there’s no absolute proof the metal ions are dangerous for moms or babies, previous research concerning these metals should raise some concern. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the EPA have all determined that chromium metal compounds are known human carcinogens. In addition, based on animal studies, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined that cobalt and cobalt compounds could possibly cause cancer in humans. Bottom line: women who plan on having children would be wise to consider natural and less invasive alternatives to metal hip replacement surgery. For example, keeping weight under control and appropriate exercise such as yoga can often help ease symptoms of osteoporosis, a condition that can lead to hip replacement surgery. For more information: http://www.rush.edu/webapps/MEDREL/servlet/NewsRelease?id=1359 http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts7.html http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts33.html

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