What exactly is 714X?

Just when I thought I had found all the alternative cancer treatments, I stumble on information about 714X and it is interesting indeed.

Please see the following links for more information

http://www.billybest.net/
http://naturalhealthline.com/newsletter/1june01/714x.htm
RedOrbit.com

I also picked up one of Kevin Trudeau's books - "The Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About" Despite the flagrant criticism of Kevin Trudeau by the mainstream medical people I think his message and information is quite valid. It syncs with others in the alternative health field and contains much common sense relating to health.. common sense that has been lost on most of us today in this pill-popping, junk food eating world we live in.

Breast Cancer Stem Cells Seem to Survive Radiation Therapy

Oh my God can I say "I told you so?" Can I? Please?

TUESDAY, Dec. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Breast cancer stem cells, a type of cell that scientists have recently discovered is difficult to kill, may be especially resistant to radiation therapy, a new study suggests.

In fact, the radiation can even increase the growth of these stubborn stem cells, report researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine.

"This population of stem cells is more radiation-resistant than are non-stem cells," said Dr. Frank Pajonk, an assistant adjunct professor of radiation oncology at UCLA and corresponding author on the study. "We are the first to report this."

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Yet I read this VERY thing in several books - most notably the World Without Cancer book by G Edward Griffin.. so they are NOT the first to report this. Bah humbug.. They are the first CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE place to report this.. I'll give them that.. I think also Dr Lorraine Day said this kind of thing. This is why after radiation they think it was successful when the tumor *shrinks* but what has been eliminated may only be the normal cells and the cancer cells live on in the smaller now exposed mass. The tumor capsule that is killed by radiation is actually protecting the body from the cancer! And then they go and remove that protection. Then, of course months later, the person comes back with an even worse case of cancer and a few OTHER side effects from the radiation.
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When Pajonk's team exposed the cells to a higher dose of 3 Gray, every day for five days, then stopped the treatment before what would be considered a full round, the proportion of stem cells actually increased.
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Breast cancer drop tied to hormones

Good news IF you were someone who stopped taking or never took hormones for menopause.
Seems they did not really test the use of hormones that well to me. .but to be fair, it is hard to test such a long term effect of hormones too. I just feel many of us are doing the testing on these drugs and therapies and I think most people are unaware of how much is unknown about the drugs they take.

Follow the title link for the full story.

SAN ANTONIO - The millions of women who quit taking menopause hormones after a big federal study found that the pills raised the risk of breast cancer now have more reason to be glad they stopped.

A new analysis reveals that U.S. breast cancer rates plunged more than 7 percent in 2003 and strongly suggests that the reason is less hormone use.

"It's a big deal ... amazing, really," said one of the researchers, Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. "It's better than a cure" because these are cases that never occurred, he said.

About 14,000 fewer women were diagnosed with the disease than had been expected, researchers reported Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Cancers take years to form, so going off hormones would not instantly prevent new tumors. But tumors that had been developing might stop growing, shrink or disappear, so they were no longer detected by mammograms, doctors theorized.

Cases dropped most among women 50 and older — the age group taking hormones. The decline was biggest for tumors whose growth is fueled by estrogen — the type most affected by hormone use.

In fact, when both factors were combined — older women with estrogen-positive tumors — the drop was 12 percent.

The decline was seen in every single cancer registry that reports information to the federal government, and no big change occurred with any other major type of cancer. These are strong signs that the breast cancer decline is no statistical fluke or error.

follow link for the rest of the article....

Dow Chemical tried to silence report that Bisphenol A plastic is harmful

Read full story at this link

This is shameful of DOW and shows that corporate greed prevails over concern for public safety hands down every time.

I think the most upsetting part is that this plastic has been used in the spill-proof toddler's cups for HOW LONG and they knew it could be harmful??? How about all the plastic food trays that Americans heat up in microwave ovens every single day??

I abandoned as much plastic as I could in my kitchen and switched to glass. If I buy frozen food I remove it from the plastic dish and put it into a glass dish and cook in the convection oven. I store nothing, cook nothing in plastic. However, I still use plastic water bottles so I probably need to find alternatives for those as well. I no longer use my microwave oven and I think the combination of microwaving and this deadly plastic are a HUGE factor in the drastic INCREASE in prostate and breast cancers in the industrialized world.

But guess where I found I may be exposing myself to this chemical without realizing it? My BRITA water jug. DOH! It is a very hard clear plastic jub but there is no recycle symbol. I did a search and found that it does indeed contain this chemical. Guess I'll be throwing THAT out now.

Excerpt:

University of Missouri, Colombia biological sciences professor Fred vom Saal is determined to show that plastics corporations are just as dangerous as tobacco companies, and reports that one major chemical company tried to persuade him to hold off on publishing his research to that effect.

The primary focus of vom Saal's research is bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that is found in polycarbonate plastics, which are used in steel food can linings, Lexan items, Nalgene bottles, baby bottles, spill-proof toddler's cups, plastic wrap, microwave-safe plastic dishware, and food containers. He says the chemical mimics powerful sex hormones and even small doses can cause brain damage, abnormal organ development, and hyperactivity. Vom Saal noted that many -- but not all -- products that have a 7 inside the recycling triangle symbol contain BPA, which he said is one of the biggest chemicals in production worldwide, with more than 6 billion pounds created and used annually.

Here is some more info on the harmful effects of BPA:

Suspicion Lingers Over BPA and Breast Cancer
Bisphenol A, a common industrial chemical claimed to speed the growth of human breast and ovarian cancers, retains its carcinogenic properties even after being modified by body processes, report Indiana University and University of California at Berkeley scientists in the Aug. 28th issue of Chemistry & Biology, a Cell Press journal.

"If our hypothesis is true about BPA, it's probably going to be the sum of effects of a lot of cancer-causing compounds that is responsible for the disease," Widlanski said. "We would not anticipate that BPA or any other single chemical is the only culprit here."

Plastics chemical BPA may Promote Breast Cancer

New research appearing in the journal Chemistry & Biology has shown that a chemical found in harder plastics -- such as those used to make water cooler jugs and CD cases -- may promote breast cancer.

Researchers from Indiana University studied how bisphenol-A (BPA) may be more easily absorbed by breast tumor cells than healthy cells. Experts have long assumed that since healthy cells do not readily absorb bisphenol sulfate -- one of the body's metabolized forms of BPA -- BPA is a harmless chemical. However, the Indiana researchers found that breast tumor cells, which vastly differ from normal, healthy cells, convert bisphenol sulfate back into BPA, which can be easily taken up into tumor cells.

Adams warns consumers to avoid heating food in plastic containers and to use glass, Pyrex or other non-plastic food containers whenever possible. He also urges consumers to read The Hundred-Year Lie to get the full story about the dangers of chemicals in foods, beverages, drugs and common kitchen items like storage containers.


Chemical used in food containers disrupts brain development

The chemical bisphenol A (BPA), widely used in products such as food cans, milk container linings, water pipes and even dental sealants, has now been found to disrupt important effects of estrogen in the developing brain.

A University of Cincinnati (UC) research team, headed by Scott Belcher, PhD, reports in two articles in the December 2005 edition of the journal Endocrinology that BPA shows negative effects in brain tissue "at surprisingly low doses."

Long known to act as an artificial estrogen, the primary hormone involved in female sexual development, BPA has already been shown to increase breast cancer cell growth, and in the January 2005 edition of the journal Cancer Research, another UC research team reported that it increased the growth of some prostate cancer cells as well. Warnings about other possible long-term health risks associated with fetal exposures to BPA have also been discussed in recent scientific literature.

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I found this great link on dangerous and safer plastics.

Widespread vitamin D deficiency may be cause of post-Winter flu outbreaks, scientists suggest

From this link at NewsTarget.com

by Ben Kage

(NewsTarget) A team of researchers is gathering data in an attempt to determine why flu outbreaks hit the Northern Hemisphere during winter months and tend to peak between December and March, and a new theory suggests it may be a lack of sunshine-produced vitamin D.

In the past, many theories have been put forward to explain the seasonal flu flux, but explanations such as cold air and the tendency of people to group together "remain astonishingly superficial and full of inconsistencies," said Dr. Scott Dowell, director of the Global Disease Protection Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Theories about a chill causing the disease's prevalence is upended by evidence from tropical locations, where flu remains common and follows a similar seasonal pattern to its cold-climate counterpart. The grouping theory is debunked by the fact that certain groups of people are stuck in small spaces together year round, with no greater likelihood of contracting flu than anyone else.

>Now, the Harvard-University-led team is investigating whether inadequate sun exposure during the winter may open people up to infection, since exposure to ultraviolet B radiation (UVB) radiation from the sun causes vitamin D production in the skin. If the lack of vitamin D and increased flu cases in the winter are connected, it could have a significant impact on public health, as an average of 36,000 people die from flu in the United States every winter, primarily the elderly or the very young.

R. Edgar Hope-Simpson published the first paper that identified a link between flu epidemics and the winter solstice -- usually indentified as the start of winter and the shortest day of the year -- in 1981, despite having no formal training in the field of epidemiology. Simpson noted that flu infections spiked just before and after the winter solstice, and theorized that solar radiation might cause a sort of "seasonal stimulus" in the virus, the host or both, although he could not identify the stimulus.

Simpson's work was largely ignored, according to Dr. John Cannell, a psychiatrist at the Atascadero State Hospital in California. However, Cannel and his Harvard colleagues suggest the stimulus to which Simpson referred may be vitamin D. Cannell began investigating the possibility when a flu outbreak hit Atascadero in April of 2005 and all the wards surrounding his were infected, Cannell's patients were not. All of his patients, he said, were taking high daily doses of vitamin D.

During the winter, people are outdoors less often and the skin has less opportunity to produce vitamin D, and the atmosphere during that season is adept at blocking UVB radiation. This is why some health experts warn that Americans may not be getting sufficient vitamin D, especially with the resurgence of the vitamin-deficiency-related bone disorder known as rickets.

In the report -- published in the December issue of Epidemiology and Infection -- the researchers posit that the vitamin D stimulated by sunlight may, in turn, cause the body to produce the infection-fighting peptide cathelcidin. No studies been conducted that to show whether cathelcidin effects influenza, but previous studies in the March issue of Science have shown it attacks a range of fungi, viruses and bacteria, including the bacteria that causes tuberculosis.

The tropical evidence that upsets the chill theory does not preclude the vitamin D theory, as Cannell and colleagues point out, as studies show that vitamin D deficiencies have even been recorded in equatorial locations. Additionally, a 2003 analysis of flu cases found they were greatest during the rainy season, when there is a significant cloud cover and reduced sun exposure.

Despite the evidence offered by Cannell and colleagues, some members of the scientific community remain skeptical about the theory.

"They have manipulated the literature -- some of it very bad literature -- to prove their points," said Dr. James Cherry, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. However, he added, "The hypothesis should be easy to prove or disprove with a controlled, blinded study."

Cannell, for his part, said he takes more than twice the recommended daily dose of vitamin D during winter months and reports he rarely gets sick.

Ultrasound Technique Helps Avoid Biopsies

From this link:

CHICAGO - An experimental ultrasound technique that measures how easily breast lumps compress and bounce back could enable doctors to determine instantly whether a woman has cancer or not without doing a biopsy.

In a small study of 80 women, the technique — called "elastography" — distinguished harmless lumps from malignant ones with nearly 100 percent accuracy.

If the results hold up in a larger study, elastography could save thousands of women from the waiting, cost, discomfort and anxiety of a biopsy, in which cells are removed from the breast — sometimes with a needle, sometimes with a scalpel — and examined under a microscope.

"There's a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of fear involved" with biopsies, said Susan Brown, manager of health education for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. "And there's the cost of leaving work to make a second appointment. If this can be done instead of a biopsy, there would be a real cost reduction."

Up to 1 million biopsies are performed each year on suspicious breast tissue detected by mammograms and self-exams, but as many as eight out of 10 of these biopsies find that the lumps are benign.

Biopsies can cost $200 to $1,000, depending on whether some fluid or an entire lump is removed, and it can take days or weeks to get the results. The cost of elastography is not yet clear, but some experts said the procedure might run $100 to $200. And it can yield results in minutes.

When checked against biopsies of women's breast tissue, the ultrasound technique correctly identified 17 out of 17 cancerous tumors, and 105 out of 106 harmless lesions. The findings were reported at a national radiology meeting in Chicago this week.

Scientists said the approach may also be used someday to rapidly diagnose damaged hearts and guide the treatment of prostate cancer.

The technique was pioneered during the 1990s at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston by Jonathan Ophir and his colleagues.

Ophir describes elastography as a way to measure and picture the elasticity of body tissue. In effect, it is an extension of one of the oldest tools in medicine, palpation, in which a doctor feels the shape and firmness of body tissue.

To explain elastography, Ophir likens the body to a box-spring mattress, but "a crazy mattress made out of millions of small springs and each one is a little different. Each is moving around at a different rate, depending on their individual stiffness." Cancerous tumors are like stiff springs. Normal tissue and benign lesions compress more easily.

Both traditional ultrasound and elastography use echoes from high-frequency sound waves to create pictures of what is going on inside the body, but elastography goes a step further.

In traditional ultrasound, a doctor or technician places a handheld device on the skin that sends high-frequency sound waves into the body. Organs and tissue reflect the sound back as echoes, which are sent to a computer that turns them into a picture. Many people have seen ultrasound images of fetuses in the womb.

Elastography, though, also gauges movement. As the doctor moves the handheld device against the breast, the device collects echoes before and after the compression or movement of the breast tissue. The resulting images show stiff tissues as dark areas and soft tissues as light areas.

Breast cancer shows up larger on an elastogram than it does on a traditional ultrasound image, perhaps because the elastogram can "see" the scar tissue around the cancer, Ophir said.

"It's like finding a marble in Jell-O," said Dr. Richard Barr, a professor of radiology at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine who reported his findings at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting. Germany-based Siemens AG provided the ultrasound equipment and software for Barr's study.

Ophir and other researchers said breast cancer diagnosis will be elastography's first real-world application.

"If it doesn't fly there, it won't fly anywhere," said Elisa Konofagou of Columbia University, who is testing elastography on animals and humans to determine the extent of damage after a heart attack. Uses in prostate cancer and thyroid cancer also are under study elsewhere.

Dr. Constantine Godellas, a cancer surgeon at Rush University Medical Center, said some patients and doctors would have trouble giving up biopsies, even if further research confirmed elastography's accuracy. Doctors may fear lawsuits if they do not order biopsies, he said.

"With the medical legal climate the way it is, that's a tough call to make," Godellas said. "It won't be until a lot more research has been done that people will really buy into it."

Dr. Ellen Mendelson, chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, predicted the technique will be used, but may not supplant biopsies, which are becoming less invasive.

"The goal of reducing unnecessary biopsies is laudable, but you don't want to miss a cancer," Mendelson said.