Drowning in soda: America’s health problems made far worse by massive soda consumption

(NaturalNews) The booming popularity of sugary soft drinks has led to 6,000 more deaths, 14,000 more cases of heart disease and 130,000 new cases of diabetes in the past 10 years, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of California-San Francisco and presented at the annual Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention conference of the American Heart Association. “We can demonstrate an association between daily consumption of sugared beverages and diabetes risk,” researcher Litsa Lambrakos said. “We can then translate this information into estimates of the current diabetes and cardiovascular disease that can be attributed to the rise in consumption of these drinks.” The researchers found that sugary soft drinks also contributed to the loss of 21,000 life-years, plus an increase of 50,000 in the life-years spent suffering from heart disease. “We probably underestimated the incidence, because the rise is greatest among the young, and our model focuses on adults 35 and older,” researcher Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo said. The analysis included juices with sugar added but excluded 100 percent juice. “Juice from fruit itself is nutrient-rich, and its nutritional value goes beyond the carbohydrate content,” said Robert H. Eckel of the University of Colorado, a former president of the American Heart Association. The findings may build new support for the growing push for a soda tax. According to policy experts, a tax of just one cent per ounce would reduce soda consumption by 10 percent. “The reason why there is a current debate about a tax is that scientific evidence in populations has consistently shown that more than one drink a day increases your risk,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “The finding suggests that any kind of policy that reduces consumption might have a dramatic health benefit.” A single serving of soda or other sweetened soft drink contains between 120 and 200 calories of sugar, equivalent to a man’s recommended intake for a full day and exceeding the recommended daily intake for a woman. Sources for this story include: http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/636642.html ; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7376295/Sugary-soft-drinks-lead-to-diabetes-research-finds.html.

Fish oil reduces risk of breast cancer by a third

(NaturalNews) When you look at statistics about breast cancer, it’s no wonder that the very mention of the disease causes dread in many women. After all, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) says about 210,000 Americans, almost all females, will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and about 40,000 will die from the disease. However, although it’s rarely reported in depth by the mainstream media, there’s actually a lot of good news accumulating about specific ways to stop breast cancer from ever developing in the first place. For example, a mounting of body of data shows cruciferous vegetables like broccoli fight breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/028822_broccoli_brst_cancer.html) and six studies have shown eating an apple a day can reduce the risk of breast cancer, too (http://www.naturalnews.com/025685_cancer_brst_apples.html). Now comes word of yet another natural substance that helps keep breast tumors away — scientists have discovered that fish oil can slash the chance a woman will get breast cancer by approximately a third. How fish oil works to prevent breast cancer The new study, just published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention , a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, was conducted by a research team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. They investigated 35,016 postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 76 with no history of breast cancer who were participating in the Vitamins and Lifestyle cohort study (dubbed VITAL, short). The woman was asked to complete a 24 page questionnaire about their use of supplements other than vitamins and/or minerals. After six years of follow-up, 880 of these women had been diagnosed with breast cancer. However, those women who reported regularly taking fish oil supplements, which contain high levels of the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, were found to have a 32 percent reduced risk of invasive ductal breast cancer — the most common type of breast cancer. The use of other specialty supplements, such as the herbs black cohosh and dong quai which are often taken by women to relieve symptoms of menopause, was not associated with raising or lowering breast cancer risk. As NaturalNews has previously reported, fish oil has been found to have a host of remarkable health protective properties. For example, a study published in the European Heart Journal concluded that consuming fatty fish and the marine omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil protects men from heart failure. And fish oil has been shown to be helpful in preventing mental illness, too (http://www.naturalnews.com/026130_heart_failure_fatty_fish_health.html). For more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20615886

95 percent of "preventive" mastectomies offer no benefit, study finds

(NaturalNews) A new study shows that the increasingly popular practice of “preventive mastectomy” in non-cancerous breasts provides no benefit to the vast majority of women. “It’s important for women to understand that, except for one subset of breast cancer patients, they don’t need to do this,” said lead author Isabelle Bedrosian of University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. “Hopefully, it’ll reassure patients wondering if they should.” Approximately 40,000 women die from breast cancer in the United States each year, and another 200,000 cases are diagnosed. Because cancer in one breast is known to increase the risk of cancer recurrence in the other breast, doctors are increasingly recommending that cancer survivors opt to have both breasts removed as a “preventive” measure. And women are opting for it in huge numbers, seeking the peace of mind that it is said to offer. The number of preventive mastectomies in the United States increased two-and-a-half-fold between 1998 and 2003. Today, 11 percent of all women undergoing a mastectomy on a cancerous breast choose to have the non-cancerous breast removed as well. Analysts have attributed this increase to more advanced screening techniques that detect cancers smaller and earlier; popularization of genetic screening and the idea that some genes may predispose families to breast cancer; and wider public acceptance of plastic surgery combined with advances in reconstructive technology. Yet while it has been strongly established that elective mastectomy does reduce the risk of breast-cancer recurrence, there has been no research to suggest that it actually lengthens a woman’s life span. “We have not had real data to guide us,” Bedrosian said. “We can’t sit down with a woman and say, ‘If you do this, this is your expected benefit.’ And when we don’t have those data, then biases become the big drivers of decision making.” In the new study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute , Bedrosian and colleagues analyzed the records of 107,106 women in the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results registry. All the women had undergone a mastectomy to treat breast cancer of Stage III or lower; 8,902 had chosen to have a healthy breast removed, as well. After controlling for other risk factors, the researchers found only a small difference in survival rates between women who had chosen to have two breasts removed and women who had chosen to have only one removed. Upon further analysis, they discovered that this benefit was only present in women under the age of 50 with estrogen receptor-negative, early-stage tumors. In this group, elective mastectomy increased the survival rate by 4.8 percent, amounting to just under five lives saved for every 100 surgeries. Elective mastectomy provided no survival benefit to women outside this demographic. The researchers believe that even when cancers recur, most women will not be killed by them but will instead die of other causes first. Only in women whose cancers lack estrogen receptors and who would otherwise have long lives ahead of them does recurrence appear to pose a serious threat to survival. The most effective breast cancer drugs on the market are those that lower the body’s production of estrogen, which fuels the growth of many cancers. Tumors that lack estrogen receptors do not depend on the hormone for their growth, however, meaning that women with these cancers cannot use the most effective drugs and tend to have higher mortality rates. Breast-cancer specialist Larry Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City expressed skepticism about the study’s methodology and cautioned against doctors and patients giving it too much weight. “This is an observational study, and hence it is impossible to control for confounding variables,” Norton said, “and should not be used for individual clinical decisionmaking.” Norton admitted, however, that ethics make it impossible to perform a true controlled study on the question, since such an experiment might end up increasing cancer mortality in one group of participants. Bedrosian disputed Norton’s criticism, noting that the researchers used rigorous statistical analysis and controlled well for interference from other variables. She believes that the conclusions are, in fact, strong enough to help women make better-informed decisions about elective mastectomy. “We looked at this in multiple different ways, and we got the same answer every time. And the results make good clinical sense. That adds another level of reassurance,” she said. “Our hope is that when women hear the numbers, they will take a second look and decide not to go forward with a preventive mastectomy [in their healthy breast] if it won’t give them a survival benefit.” Victor Vogel, national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society, said the results suggest that women should wait a full year before going through with the removal of a healthy breast. “In a younger woman with [estrogen receptor]-negative disease, an [elective} mastectomy may be considered," he said. "In the vast majority of women older than 50 with ER-positive disease, prudent waiting is probably the most appropriate." Bedrosian said that the point of the study was not to impose "a uniform mandate" that women should never get the procedure, but that their decisions must be well informed. "This is still a decision to be made by the patient after talking with her doctor," Bedrosian said. "We hope this study helps women make better decisions [and] provides some reassurance that perhaps a [preventive] mastectomy is not necessary, perhaps overly aggressive and perhaps a bit too much.” Sources for this story include: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6885581.html http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/180769.php; http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1968122,00.html.

Childhood cancer survivors have 10 times greater risk of heart disease (because radiation damages the heart!)

(NaturalNews) Survivors of childhood cancers are nearly 10 times more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease as adults than people who did not have cancer as children, according to a study conducted by researchers from Emory University and published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention . Researchers remain unsure of the exact reason for the increased risk, but the effects of radiation therapy appear to play a significant role. “Mechanistically, we are not yet sure why this is, but the association is definitely there,” said researcher Lillian R. Meacham. Using data from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, researchers compared data from 8,599 cancer survivors with data from 2,936 of their cancer-free siblings. They found that cancer survivors had a 60 percent higher chance of being on cholesterol medicine, a 70 percent higher chance of suffering from diabetes and nearly a 100 percent higher chance of being on blood pressure drugs. They were no more likely that their siblings to suffer from obesity, however, suggesting that something more than lifestyle factors are at play. “These risk factors are manifesting at about age 32, which is much younger than a non-cancer survivor would exhibit signs of cardiovascular risk factors,” Meacham said. “Some have suggested that when you are a cancer survivor there are parts of you that wear out early, so we need to be vigilant about our follow-up of these patients in order to find these late effects early and intervene.” Physical activity increased a cancer survivor’s risk of suffering more than one symptom by 70 percent compared with cancer free siblings. Being older when the study was conducted increased survivor’s risk by 8.2 times compared with their siblings. Radiation therapy was also strongly associated with cardiovascular risk, with those who had undergone chest and abdomen radiation suffering from 2.2 times the risk of cardiovascular risk factor clustering as those who had not undergone the therapy. Total-body radiation increased the risk by 5.5 times. Sources for this story include: www.businessweek.com; www.sciencedaily.com; www.telegraph.co.uk.

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

Over 130,000 cases of diabetes now linked to soda consumption, HFCS

(NaturalNews) For years, advocates of natural health have been hammering away at the message that soda causes diabetes and obesity . The soda industry, meanwhile, has remained in denial mode, mirroring the ridiculous position of the tobacco industry that “nicotine is not addictive.” Soda doesn’t cause diabetes, the industry claims, and it’s perfectly safe to consume in essentially unlimited quantities. The Corn Refiners Association has joined the denial with its own spin campaign that seeks to convince people High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is totally natural and completely harmless. HFCS is, of course, the primary sweetener used in sodas and soft drinks. Now comes new research presented at the American Heart Association’s Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention annual conference in San Francisco. This new research reveals that over the last decade, soda consumption has conservatively caused: • 130,000 new cases of diabetes • 14,000 new cases of heart disease • 50,000 more “life years” with heart disease over the last decade “The finding suggests that any kind of policy that reduces consumption might have a dramatic health benefit,” said senior study author Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo (associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco). The American Beverage Association, meanwhile, says this study hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal yet and therefore it doesn’t count. Soda consumption doesn’t cause diabetes or heart disease, they claim, because “…both heart disease and diabetes are complex conditions with no single cause and no single solution.” It’s silly logic, of course: Diabetes obviously has a cause . It’s not some spontaneous disease that appears out of nowhere. And when you go looking for the cause, you obviously have to look at dietary factors since diabetes is a disease related to the consumption and metabolism of dietary sugars . Once you do that, sodas immediately raise a red flag because they’re liquid sugar in a highly-concentrated form that does not exist naturally in nature. HFCS doesn’t grow on trees, in other words. Nature provides sugars locked into insoluble fibers that slow digestion and lower the effective glycemic index of sugars that are consumed. In nature, sugars are always combined with minerals, too, and many of those minerals help prevent diabetes and heart disease. But High-Fructose Corn Syrup is stripped of virtually all those minerals. It contains no fiber and no healing phytonutrients that you might encounter in plants. As a result, HFCS — sometimes dubbed “liquid Satan” — might be called a dietary poison that causes disease while contributing to nutritional deficiencies that accelerate disease. Bone loss Interestingly, this new study did not look at loss of bone density , which is another side effect of drinking soda. Due to the extremely high acidity of the HFCS sweetener combined with the phosphoric acid used in sodas, people who drink sodas often lose bone minerals and end up being diagnosed with osteoporosis (even at a relatively young age). Other people end up with kidney stones due to all these minerals passing through the kidneys and contributing to the built up of mineral deposits there. Long-term soda consumers may even suffer from pancreatic cancer due to the extreme stress placed on the pancreas following the consumption of liquid sugars. In all, soda consumption is linked to at least six serious diseases: #1) Diabetes #2) Obesity #3) Heart disease #4) Cancer #5) Osteoporosis #6) Kidney stones That’s why taxing sodas is more than merely a way to raise money through soda sales; it’s also a way to dramatically reduce the cost of treating these diseases. It’s no surprise that several U.S. states are now starting to seriously consider slapping new taxes on sodas and other “junk” beverages. That’s not the way I would prefer to see the situation handled, actually. The better option, in my view, would be to ban all soda advertising by effectively stripping Free Speech rights from corporations. Such rights belong only to individuals, not multi-billion-dollar corporations. Corporations whose products physically harm the health of the population at large should not be allowed to openly advertise and promote those products to the public. They can still sell them, they just can’t advertise them. This is the real solution to the problem: Take away the advertising of sodas and consumer consumption immediately plummets. It’s all the advertising that keeps the soft drink sales machine churning out disease and suffering in the name of corporate profits. Soda companies, of course, will argue that they have a Free Speech right to advertise their products even if they do promote disease. That’s an argument to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, of course. But let there be no mistake about it: The continued tolerance of soda advertising is creating a nation of diabetes, obesity and heart disease . There will be a price to be paid for all this, and I fear it will be a price far beyond what society is able to pay. To raise a nation on sodas and processed foods is to ultimately doom that nation because failed health will ultimately lead to a failed nation . You cannot built a healthy nation upon the backs of a diseased population, and thanks to the soda companies and junk food companies, the United States of America is now a nation of diseased, diabetic, obese consumers who continue to poison themselves every single day with the dangerous chemicals found in heavily advertised food, beverage and personal care products. If I were the health advisor for a country, I would outright ban all advertising of harmful consumer products (foods, beverages, personal care, cleaning products, etc.), and in their place I’d run public service announcements teaching people about nutrition, disease prevention, vitamin D and commonsense self-care. Within one generation, that nation would be the healthiest in the world, with the lowest rates of disease and affordable health care coverage for all. The junk food and soda companies, of course, would go broke, and the economy would rearrange itself to open up new jobs in healthier and more productive industries rather than the “disease industries” that dominate America today. Sugary beverages, you see, aren’t just a disease upon those who regularly consume them; they are a disease upon the very nation that threatens its economy and compromises its future. Sources for this story include: http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/636642.html

Sugary soft drinks linked to pancreatic cancer

(NaturalNews) A 14-year study of 60,000 people in Singapore found that those who consume two or more sweetened soft drinks per week have an 87 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer . Published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention , the study was led by Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota who said, “The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth.” Nearly 38,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the United States each year, and over 34,000 die from the disease each year. This research points to what may be the common culprit of all those preventable deaths: Sugary soft drink consumption. Poison in a can NaturalNews has warned readers for years about the dangers of consuming soft drinks. The sweetener used in most beverages — high-fructose corn syrup — is linked to both diabetes and obesity. The phosphoric acid found in soft drinks is highly acidic, stripping minerals from bones and promoting osteoporosis. At the same time, soft drinks can cause kidney stones , too. For those who consume diet sodas, the health risks may be even worse: Aspartame causes neurological side effects that include blindness, headaches and impaired cognitive function. The beverage industry, of course, denies any links between soda consumption and negative health effects. It wants consumers to naively believe that liquid sugar, phosphoric acid and pressurized carbon dioxide are all good for you! But experience tells us otherwise: Look at the people you know who consume the most soft drinks and ask yourself this simple question: Are they the healthiest people I know? Probably not. Most likely, if they’ve been drinking sodas for many years, they’re suffering from obesity, diabetes, kidney stones and perhaps even pancreatic cancer. Sources for this story include: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN07113352

New study confirms bisphenol A found in plastic is linked to heart disease

(NaturalNews) According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the U.S. Various forms of the disease take the lives of over 80 million Americans a year. And while we’ve all heard about the risk factors for cardiovascular disease — including smoking, being overweight, high cholesterol and lack of exercise — it appears it’s time to add bisphenol A, better known as BPA, to that list. This chemical has been used for decades in polycarbonate plastic products including refillable drink containers, plastic eating utensils and baby bottles as well as the epoxy resins that line most food and soft-drink cans. Now a new study just published in the journal PLoS ONE provides the most compelling evidence so far that BPA exposure is dangerous to the cardiovascular system. Using 2006 data from the US government’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), researchers from the Peninsula Medical School at the University of Exeter in the UK studied urinary BPA concentrations and found a significantly strong link between BPA exposure and heart disease. In 2008, these same scientists discovered that higher urinary BPA concentrations were associated with a long list of medical problems in adults, including liver dysfunction, diabetes and obesity. This research team was also the first to report evidence that BPA was linked to cardiovascular disease — and their new research offers further confirmation of a strong connection between BPA and heart ailments. Despite the fact the new study found that urinary BPA concentrations were one third lower than those measured from 2003 to 2004, higher concentrations of BPA were still associated with heart disease. “This is only the second analysis of BPA in a large human population sample. It has allowed us to largely confirm our original analysis and exclude the possibility that our original findings were a statistical ‘blip’,” David Melzer, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Peninsula Medical School and the research team leader, said in a statement to the media. “We now need to investigate what causes these health risk associations in more detail and to clarify whether they are caused by BPA itself or by some other factor linked to BPA exposure. The risks associated with exposure to BPA may be small, but they are relevant to very large numbers of people. This information is important since it provides a great opportunity for intervention to reduce the risks,” added scientist Tamara Galloway, Professor of Ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter and senior author of the paper. As NaturalNews has previously reported, BPA exposure has been shown in other studies to be associated with neurological problems (http://www.naturalnews.com/025801_BPA_plastics_health.html), diabetes and aggressive behavior in little girls (http://www.naturalnews.com/027382_BPA_plastics_pregnancy.html). Unfortunately, the FDA has demonstrated little ability or interest in taking decisive measures to protect consumers from this chemical (http://www.naturalnews.com/024593_the_FDA_BPA_health.html).Your best strategy to avoid BPA? Eat natural, fresh foods and stay away from cans, bottles and other plastic containing products that are not certified BPA-free. For more information: http://www.pms.ac.uk/news.php?id=85 http://www.naturalnews.com/BPA.html