Anyway - back to the point, which is awareness ... if you're a woman, please remember to regularly check your breasts - if you find anything unusual go and see a doctor straight away ... if you are a man remind your wife/girlfriend/sister/mum/daughter ... and of course if you feel a lump in your partner/wife/girlfriend's breast, make sure she gets it checked out.

Here's what Breast Cancer Campaign have to say about being breast aware:

Being breast aware

To be breast aware means becoming familiar with how your breasts look and feel, whatever your age. Understand how your breasts may change at different times during the month (when you're having your period) and as you get older.

These are the changes to look for and if you are in any doubt, visit your doctor:

• A lump or thickening which is different to the rest of the breast tissue
• Continuous pain in one part of the breast or armpit
• One breast becomes larger or lower
• A nipple becomes inverted or changes shape or position
• Skin changes including puckering or dimpling
• Swelling under the armpit or around the collarbone
• A rash on or around the nipple
• Discharge from one or both nipples

Remember the breast awareness five-point code:

1. Know what is normal for you
2. Look and feel
3. Know what changes to look for
4. Report any changes without delay
5. Attend routine breast screening if you are aged 50 and over

from: http://www.breastcancercampaign.org/breastcancer/aware/

So it goes.

I sit in the by window of the bedroom, listening to him breathe. Noisy, rattly breaths. He wakes only occasionally now. To pee. To take a few sips. He knows us. He knows what's happening. He even makes the odd sarcastic one-worder (not having the energy for a full one liner).

But his voice is slurred and weak and he hasn't even the energy to get the blankets off him on his own. This is what the sickness does to you. Leaves people the shell of what they used to be. I've seen it happen before. Just not to him.

So it goes.

Not like we didn't know it was coming. Either from 4 months ago or even last year. We've thought about this. We've talked about this. We've planned for this. I don't mean it makes it easier. I don't know what it means. I'm not sure I have to.

Slowly (insidious as medics would say) he's gone down hill. As the cancer grows and robs more of his energy and leaves him with more and more nausea and kinks and twists in his gut. As tiny blood clots lodge in the blood vessels in his lungs. As his poor starved liver stops making protein and all the fluid collects wherever gravity will draw it to. Week by week he could do a bit less.

There was of course the odd notable exception. Like the day they went to Newcastle and he ate a steak sandwich. Or the day the palliative care consultant came to see him and he was outside cleaning the drains. As mum said to the consultant: "this is gonna look bad..." I told dad they'd take his Graseby off him.

We're grateful for what we had. He was glad to be here and we were glad to have him. I think that's changed now.

I am remarkably calm. Though that's not the right word. I'm not freaking out for some reason - I know I have done previously. The whole thing is a decidedly odd (and equisitely painful) experience.

4-10-08

And now he's gone.

In the same way I've watched them all go before. We looked after him at home. We did everything. No nurse cared more than we did (and the nurses were great), rarely have I been so proud of my family, doing what they've had no training or experience to do before. I do this for a living in many ways, it is completely foreign to them.

I could watch all the signs that go with the event of dying. All the medicalised aspects of it. Knowing that there wasn't enough blood and oxygen to his brain to deliver any kind of conscious awareness of what was going on. He was already gone. I knew this, but still... it's my Da. He looked like all the other poor dying souls I've watched, but still... this was my Da.

Watching someone die is a strange and profound enough experience to start with, never mind watching it happen to someone you love dearly. I think this is part of why it has such a profound experience on people, and perhaps why it didn't have such a big effect on me. His act of dying (the three or so hours form when he wouldn't wake up until he was gone) wasn't anything special. It was, as we've described it to people: "peaceful". The bit that gets you is the sheer finality of it all. That the eyes won't open again. That there'll not be the sarcastic comments and the steely determination.

Amazing how quick something can go from being someone you have an intimate relationship to an odd looking body that bears little resemblance to the man you once knew.

I don't understand emotion - I'm a man, none of us do apparently... But I mean on a physiological basis - the constriction at the back of your throat, such that you can't even swallow, the pain, the sheer physical pain in your chest, the headaches, the inability to complete sentences, the way your face curls up like (to quote dear Ronnie...) "a bulldog chewing a wasp". Why does loss affect us poor creatures so?

I wouldn't want to have kept him here. At least not the last week or two, they've not been pretty. In some ways there's this selfish desire just to keep them here, even if it's only for a smile and a word. But you think about it and then you realise you wouldn't want to keep them, not like this anyhow.

And then we were sitting there. With all that was left of Da. And what do you do. Where do you start? Simon phoned the doctor and all the important people, I sorted out Dad and all the medical stuff. Mum baked a pie. What else would you do? I was hungry. I don't know why, but I was hungry. It was the best pie I've ever eaten.

The undertaker asked us would the house be "open" or "private" - Though according to Ruth ,when it says "private" in the paper it actually means anyone can come to the house, but if it says "strictly private" then it's private. That seems perverse. But it is Norn Iron I suppose.

People started to turn up at the house. And then more people, and more people. And here's the difficult bit...

I am glad that so many people turned up to wish us well and grieve and tell stories. I am truly grateful for the hundreds of cups of tea and buns and sandwhiches. But there were frequent points when I was very close to standing up in the middle of the room swearing loudly "would you *&^%$£$% all go home and just leave us in peace..."

I didn't.

Instead I went out to the garage to stroke the dog. The dog is therapeutic. Safer and cheaper than drugs and booze. The dog helps us cope. The dog has been walked and stroked within an inch of its life in the past few weeks. The dog is the single most happy and contented thing/creature I have ever met. Like colin the robot in the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy after Ford has rewired its pleasure circuits (for those who've read Hitchhiker's then you're with me, if not please read it...) Dog's are good listeners. We could learn a thing or two...

I am sorry for thinking about such thoughts about such dear people who would come only to "pay respects" and encourage. In one of those odd ways I am both glad that you were there while at the same time I wished you weren't. I think i'm allowed such confusion.

We bury them quick in Ireland. Two days later. I like to think it's on the third day and all that... I don't know why we bury them two days later. Makes the whole thing a bit more intense, but I think it's a good idea none the less. Though how should I know, it's not like I do this a lot...

We had a short service in the house before the trip to the church. 25 of us - pretty much the whole family, well those of us old enough to know what was going on - packed into the living room. An unbreakable and terrible tension in the room. Me and Simon waited outside for the minister to come. Both of us in our suits, white shirts and ties, greeting mourners as they arrived. I remember thinking we looked like bouncers. Like a skinny, more weedy version of Max and Paddy.

And then we followed the hearse.

To the church, along the road that Dad walked every sunday afternoon when he was a kid, turning just before we passed the house he grew up in, up roads where he walked every sunday morning with the aging BB old boys.

To the church he'd gone to since he was a baby, that both his and mum's parents had gone to for all the generations we can trace. [And all of a sudden I realise why roots are so important. Da always said, as if stuck on repeat, "who you are, where you are from, to whom you belong..."]

Carried under the flags of the BB he'd been a founding member of, where he'd served for 40 years. Carried down the same aisle that he'd watched mum walk down on their wedding day so many years before. [Funny how funerals are so like, and unlike, weddings...]

To lie in his coffin at the front of the church filled with the 500 or so people who came to say that they knew and loved him.

To listen to the hymns that neither, me, Simy or Liz could even begin to sing without choking up on tears. We just stood as if the sheer volume and meaning from the crowd behind us could hold us up. ["From life's first cry to final breath.." is always a killer - i have watched lots of "life's first cry" waiting to resuscitate babies as they come out. I have watched my own Fathers "final breath" - this is a lyric with depth and meaning...]

To listen and watch as Dad's best friend gave a eulogy where we all got reminded who he was - someone who loved well and was first class when it came to taking the piss out of people. People got insulted - Da would've been happy, he wouldn't have had it any other way...

And then carried. By those who knew and loved him best, by those who were his family, as we walked behind, careful to look only at the coffin and not side to side, knowing that if we made eye contact we'd come to pieces. Odd that - on the one day designed for mourning, you spend the whole day trying to keep it together for the sake of those around you.

Then taken. Out into the pissing rain (good day for a funeral...) And me and Simy take the coffin, down the path to where we've buried the rest of his family. And I just repeat over and over in my head "thank you for the life you gave me, thank you for the happiness, thank you for the discipline, thank you for what you made me, thank you for everything... I'm gonna miss you."

This and the horrible practicality that if I have to walk much further on a slippy path in these shoes then I'm gonna drop the coffin.

I remember my Granda's funeral, the same grave, 15 years before. When, as they lowered the coffin they struggled to fit the coffin into the hole and I remember it being remarked that it was just "Billy (Da's Dad) - stubborn to the last..."

Dust to dust, just like every funeral.

[Liz is for being cremated- she says she's scared of enclosed spaces and scared of being buried alive. I'm being cremated to save space. Or possibly cut up into tiny pieces by inept medical students with my stolen fingers being used in tasteless pranks... I fugure if GOD raises the dead, then the spread of my individual molecules, atoms, protons, electrons and Higgs Bosons throughout the diaspora shouldn't pose too much of a challenge...]

As we walk away, the BB old boys gather round the grave to do what they always do, to do what I've done before, and "bury their own".

In the hall, there is tea. Cups of tea like you've never seen before. Trolleys of buns and huge vats of tea, all arranged and moving with military precision. There is nothing quite like dear church folk doing catering at a funeral.

We took up a position in the corner and waited for the onslaught. Two hours of handshakes, embraces and tears we were still there as the queue slowly diminshed. Most of it was a bit of a blur. People I had never met, hugged me, good country men shook my hand till the bones cracked. Almost everyone called me Simon. I developed a layer of foundation on my shoulder from all the embraces. It was, in the strangest way, enjoyable. Listening to people tell me stories about Da, from long before I was born.

You see, this is what I didn't get. I considere myself an authority on my own Da. I had reason to think so. But I forgot that Dad had this whole other life before I turned up. He had 20 years before he even met Liz. This life where he met and loved people and did all kinds of stuff that I knew nothing about. People knew Da in all kinds of ways that I didn't even think were possible. I am humbled.

For most of the time I was OK. I smiled and laughed and joked and practised our "funeral soundbytes" - it is impossible to say something original every time someone asks you a question about it so you come up with a few choice truths which somehow lose their depth of meaning with repitition.

But every now and again someone would appear in the queue who I hadn't quite expected or someone who didn't even know Da and had come solely for my benefit - and then I'd begin to wobble a bit. It goes down as one of the strangest experiences yet.

Your wedding day is cool cause you know and love everyone there, your funeral is the same, except you don't get to be there. Da would've enjoyed it. Just shame he wasn't there.

We only seem to get this many together if someone gets born, married or dies. Odd that. Odd, the traditions we have.

That night we all got letters from him. We knew we were getting letters. And that wasn't the easiest. To read his handwriting, with all the nice things and him taking the piss ("Andrew, you knew you were always meant to be a girl..." Cheers Da) and at the end he's signed it and I can't go downstairs and say thanks. That's the tricky bit...

Cheers Da.

Ronnie Neill

Born 29-3-48

Died 2-10-08

One of my saddest cases working as a nurse was on the oncology unit. I had a young woman as my patient (she was in her late twenties, only a few years older than I was at the time), and she had been diagnosed with end stage ovarian cancer. I had been working on the oncology unit for over a year, and many times patients came to my unit in the last few weeks or days of their lives, mostly so they could be given large doses of pain medication to keep them comfortable. Everyone knew these patients were coming in not to be cured, but to die. It was always hard and always sad, but this time the woman dying was so young.

Unlike many of my other patients, I would never get to know this woman. She would only live another few days, and during that time she would be mostly unconscious from all the medications. But even so, I will never forget her. What I remember most was the sadness that surrounded her, her family standing and sitting around the bed, just waiting for her suffering to finally be over. Among all of the darkness and grief, a little girl (maybe two or three years old) was happily playing and skipping in and out of her mother’s room, blissfully unaware. Every time I saw the little girl I thought how painful it must have been for her mother to know she would be dying and leaving her beautiful baby girl. How sad she must have been knowing she would miss all the important moments of her daughter’s life. And how sad it was going to be for that little girl, growing up without her mother, never getting to know her. How could something so unfair be happening to this family? It seemed unfathomable to me, but I was watching it happen with my own eyes, I couldn’t deny it. That was almost twenty years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I didn’t know it then, but only a few years later I would come eerily close to being in a similar situation as that young woman. And it was the thought of not being there for my children that was the hardest thing to deal with. The thought of not being able to see my babies grow up (my son was 3, my daughter just 4 months), of not being able to be their mother, not being there for their birthdays, their graduations, and their weddings, not being there to protect them from the world…Those were the thoughts that haunted me, even more than any fear I might have had of dying.

I would need to have surgery quickly and have the tumor removed, only then would I find out if the cancer had spread. Even though I was referred to the best oncologist in the area, I knew the outcome wasn’t good if it had spread. I don’t think anyone (unless you have personally been through it) can understand the horror of being put under anesthesia, knowing that when you wake up you might be told you are dying.

The last thing I remember just before I was put under, was my doctor telling me that because I was so young he would try to save my uterus and one ovary. I told him I was blessed to have two beautiful children, and that the only thing that mattered to me was being able to be a mom to my children. I pleaded with him not to take any chances, if there was even a remote chance it had spread, to please take everything and not leave anything behind. At this point, I was crying, and I grabbed the doctor’s arm before he turned away to let the anesthesiologist finish putting me under…and I said; “Promise me, promise me you won’t leave anything behind.” I don’t remember what he said…I just remember waking up in the recovery room. I remember calling out to everyone who walked by, “good or bad, good or bad, good or bad?” I said it over and over, but none of the nurses would tell me anything. Moments later my doctor was again standing over me, and he told me that he was able to get it all, and that I was going to be okay. I asked him if he was sure, and he said he was sure. I would be one of the lucky 19% of patients diagnosed early enough to survive, but even more importantly, I would get to be a mother to my children.

There will be 22,430 new cases of ovarian cancer in the United States this year, and 15,280 women will die. Maybe awareness of these few early warning signs will help raise the percent of women who can be diagnosed early, and be successfully treated.

I want to add something today, that I didn’t mention when I wrote this original post…

The only reason my ovarian tumor was caught early, was because I had complications with my pregnancy.  I had a history of ovarian cysts rupturing, and became pregnant right before I was scheduled to have a surgery to remove a large cyst on my right ovary.  Instead of surgery, the doctor decided it would be best just to monitor the size throughout my pregnancy, and only operate if needed.  About halfway through my pregnancy, they were unable to visualize the cyst.  I was told it either had gone away on it’s own, or was just being hidden by the pregnancy.   Since I was having no pain, I figured it was gone.  But, to be on the safe side, after my daughter was born, the doctor ordered an ultra-sound.

During the ultrasound I convinced the technician to tell me if the cyst was still there, and she said it was.  It wasn’t a big deal to me, I figured in a week or two the doctor would get the report and call me to tell me I had to have it removed.  But, when I finally got the call from the doctor, he said it was no longer there.  When I told him I thought the report he received might be wrong, because the technician had told me it was still there, he agreed to have the imaging company send him the pictures for his radiologist to review.  He was sure that the technician was wrong, and angry because she should have never told me anything.  Ironically, when he finally got back to me, it was the night I was going out to celebrate my birthday, September 22nd.  He told me he had bad news…The fluid filled cyst had become a solid mass, that was making malignant changes.

Here are other women blogging about Ovarian Cancer Awareness…

From Charming Chick…

Do you know the symptoms of Ovarian Cancer? Currently there is no specific test for Ovarian Cancer, so all women should be aware of the symptoms in order to increase early detection.

According to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, the most common symptoms include:
• Vague but persistent and unexplained gastrointestinal complaints such as gas, nausea, and indigestion
• Abdominal bloating, pelvic and/or abdominal pain, and/or feeling of fullness
• Unexplained change in bowel habits (constipation or diarrhea)
• Unexplained weight gain or loss
• Frequency and/or urgency of urination
• Unusual fatigue
• Shortness of breath
• New and unexplained abnormal postmenopausal vaginal bleeding

To read more about Ovarian Cancer symptoms and risk factors, check out the Johns Hopkins Ovarian Cancer Center Excellence.

Jackie Carlin wrote - Ovarian Cancer…Our Family’s Story

If you’ve planned a wedding, you know how stressful it can be.  Who’s sitting where? What do you mean hydrangeas are out of season? And a photographer costs HOW much?

Two-and-a-half years ago, I was in the throes of dealing with those very issues, which at the time seemed so huge, when our family was dealt a real issue.  After spending two months planning and executing the perfect bridal shower for me, my future mother-in-law just wasn’t feeling herself.  She was chronically exhausted, her stomach felt bloated and all of the sudden she had going-to-the-bathroom issues.

We all put it off to the stress of the wedding and the shower (she tended to stress out … A LOT!) but she just wasn’t getting better.  A trip to the family doctor didn’t do much to help.  He thought maybe she had developed irritable bowel syndrome or something similar.  But the problems not only wouldn’t go away, they became worse. Fast forward one month, and my fiance, his father and me were at the hospital awaiting the results of her hysterectomy. The diagnosis? Advanced ovarian cancer. She was just 66 years old.

I always considered myself lucky because not only could I tolerate my future mother-in-law, I truly loved and respected her and best of all, enjoyed being with her. But over the next 18 months, I came to admire her more than anyone else I’ve ever known in my life.  The courage, grace and dignity she showed in facing an unwinnable battle will stay with me forever.

The Shelton Family posted about The Ovarian Cancer Walk.

It was borderline chilly out there as the rain fell. It stopped about half way through, and after we all got to our cars it started back up and never stopped. Even rained all day today, too!

From Lis & D - Run For Her Life…

Saturday my mom, C, and I rolled out of bed to make it to the 8 am 2nd annual Susan Sandoval Run for Ovarian Cancer.

The Susan Sandoval Foundation for Ovarian Cancer was created to increase awareness of the signs, symptoms and risk factors for ovarian cancer as well as other gynecologic cancers (uterine, cervix, vulvar, vaginal and fallopian tube). The goals of the foundation are to educate and improve the care of women diagnosed with gynecologic cancers and focus on innovative research in this field. Susan Sandoval was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer in May 2005 and died May 2007, at the age of 50. She worked as a nurse at LDS and Primary Children’s hospitals for 21 years. She had many friends, talked passionately about patient care and rights, and had incredible strength within her to always look at the positive in life and make the best of every day.

Important Indicators Connected With Ovarian Cancer…

Cancer is the physical scourge of our era. Often a person who initially spots one or more early indications will scurry to a physician seeking a comforting diagnosis. If the news doesn’t come back as hoped, a discussion of treatments is initiated. Cancers that are particular to women (e.g. breast cancer, ovarian cancer) have drawn a lot of attention and research funds during the past couple of decades.

This is good because ovarian cancer can have such a high mortality rate, it’s important that women be vigilant to watch out for possible ovarian cancer warning signs.

Because so many of the symptoms and indicators of the disease are often associated with other ailments, they can go unnoticed, reducing the chances for early diagnosis until after the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

To learn more about symptoms and signs of ovarian cancer that you should watch out for, read on.

From Finding BonggaMom - Ovarian Cancer:  Know Your Body, No The Symptoms…

We’re all familiar with the pink ribbon symbolizing Breast Cancer awareness. But did you know there’s a teal ribbon as well? I’ve just found out that September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Why am I blogging about it? Because I’ve found out that lack of awareness is one of the two main factors contibuting to the late diagnosis of this “silent killer”. So join me and help spread the word:

* According to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, about 20,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with the disease — and about 15,000 women will die from it.

Ovarian Cancer and US

Cindy Melancon Spirit of Survivorship Award

Hailing from Novi, Michigan, Carolyn Benivegna will be this year’s recipient in honor of her persistent advocacy for promoting awareness for ovarian cancer. Carolyn is an ovarian cancer survivor and the founder of the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Florida-Gulf Coast. She then moved to Michigan when she made a great impact by working with Governor Jennifer Granholm to declare September as Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Carolyn and her husband were also recognized by The Henry P. Tappan Society from the University of Michigan for establishing an endowed Ovarian Cancer Research Fund at UM.

The Voice for Ovarian Cancer Research Award

Taking the trip from Woodbury, NJ will be Karen Mason. After being diagnosed at the age of 49, she quickly discovered that getting involved in the ovarian cancer community was a great coping mechanism. Last Fall Karen was invited to be a member of the Dept of Defense’s Integration Panel where proposals are chosen for funding by the Department of Defense’s Ovarian Cancer Research Program. She also serves as a patient advocate for the Fox Chase Cancer Center ovarian SPORE as a full participating member of their Institutional Review Board evaluating consent forms for clinical trials. Karen is continually involved with NED (no evidence of disease) and is a part-time ICU nurse, wife and mother of two sons.

Journey:  A Letter 2 Ovarian Cancer…

I spent most of today at a minority health fair in Orlando sponsored by Tom Joyner’s, Take a loved one to the doctor day. I worked with the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Florida, a wonderful group of woman who have made tremendous strides in spreading awareness all across central Florida..and for whom I am so glad I had in my corner.

Also See:

From Secret Women’s Business - New Treatment For Endometrial Cancer

An article in the Record published by Washington University In St. Louis today about a new approach to the treatment of Endometrial Cancer (Cancer that invades the uterine wall) is wonderful news for many women. Endometrial Cancer is the most common Gynecological cancers in the US. The article states that 40,000 women will be diagnosed with this type of cancer this year and 7,500 of those women will die of the disease according to the American Cancer Society.

From Laugh at Cancer Support…

Women of all ages….Listen to your body! Don’t forget to schedule
your yearly pap-smear appointment, if you haven’t done so already! Talk to your
doctor about screening you for ovarian cancer and cervical cancer. Too many
women are slipping through the cracks and GYN cancers are killing our grandmothers,
mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, and friends. Let’s stop it now! Tell
everyone you know, to schedule their annual checkups today. (Read more)

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
at BlogHer Health & Wellness, The Political Voices of Women, Care2 Election

I direkt anslutning till Metro-artikeln finns en annons om Kellog´s Special-K, som faktiskt är större än själva artikeln, och som är en skrytannons om att de skänker 2 kr för varje paket till Rosa Bandet-kampanjen (ja det är ju naturligtvis kunden som gör det). Vad finns det för koppling? Finns det något med Special-K som är bra ur cancersynpunkt? Nä, det finns det förmodligen inte eftersom den till övervägande del består av kolhydrater, som är sockerkedjor, samt tillsatt socker, och alltihopa blir till socker i kroppen (glukos). Är socker bra för att förebygga eller minska cancer?

I direkt anslutning till artikeln finns också en intressant graf som visar bröstcancerfrekvensen för kvinnor i världen. Några tänkbara orsaker till varför vissa delar av världen har ett högre insjuknande ges i bilden (underförstått livsstilsfaktorer), men man säger också att man inte vet så mycket om orsakerna. Det finns vissa likheter mellan den här grafen och resultaten från ett antal studier de senaste åren som kopplar frekvensen av cancer till mängden solexponering.

I grafen nedan gäller det frekvensen av njurcancer i olika delar av världen, och i studien "Global View Shows Strong Link Between Kidney Cancer, Sunlight Exposure" menar man alltså att det finns en "koppling" mellan solexponering, dvs egentligen vitamin D-halten i blodet, och njurcancer. Liknande resultat har kartlagts för andra cancertyper: äggstockscancer, cancer i livmodern, lungcancer, bröstcancer, och man har t o m hittat en koppling till förekomsten av diabetes typ 1 hos barn. Här måste man komma ihåg att det handlar om epidemiologi, en disciplin inom medicinforskningen som ska tas med en rejäl nypa salt. Epidemiologi bevisar ingenting, men kan peka på intressanta samband som bör studeras på annat sätt. Läs mer om Epidemiologins begränsningar i Gary Taubes utmärkta artikel "Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?". Den som vill läsa mer om vitamin D och cancer finner mycket material på Vitamin D Council.

Gary Taubes går i sin bok Good Calories - Bad Calories igenom forskningen på  hur cancer kan vara relaterat till kosten (sid 204 och framåt) och han menar att forskningen i stora drag har visat att fettet kan avskrivas som orsak, medan metaboliseringen av kolhydrater i högsta grad påverkar cancercellernas förmåga till tillväxt. Kopplingen mellan cancer och kolhydrater är minst sagt kontroversiell i forskningskretsar och vi rör oss fortfarande på epidemiologins domäner. Några exempel på studier finns här, här och här.  Hur det ligger till på cellnivå har varit känt i decennier, och grunden lades av Nobelpristagaren Otto Warburg (1931).

Rubriken på det här inlägget är inspirerat av bloggen BioHermit, och inlägget "Sugar and Cancer: A Match Made in Hell". Jag har gjort en helt brutal sammanfattning och översättning av inlägget:

Cellernas andning

Våra celler behöver energi för att leva och utföra sina viktigaste uppgifter. De genererar energi huvudsakligen genom metabolisering av syre och glukos (blodsocker). Glukos tas upp av cellerna med hjälp av insulin.

När det av olika anledningar inte finns tillräckligt med syre i en cell, är cellens sista utväg för att producera energi att byta från aerob till anaerob andning (utan syre). Det är inte cancern som får cellerna att gå över till anaerob andning utan tvärtom. Det är långvarig anaerob andning som gör normala celler till cancerceller.

När celler slutar andas på ett normalt sätt gör frånvaron av syre att glukos börjar jäsa i stället för att "förbrännas", och glukosen omvandlas därmed till mjölksyra. Det är på det sättet som cancerceller skapar sin egen energi. I och med glukosjäsningen måste cancercellerna arbeta mycket hårdare. För att en cancercell ska få samma energi som en normal cell måste den omsätta minst 18 gånger mer glukos. I själva verket omsätter maligna snabbväxande tumörceller 200 gånger så stor mängd glukos som normala vävnader.

Glukos är i själva verket cancercellernas primära energikälla, och cancerceller har så mycket som 10 gånger fler insulinreceptorer på cellmembranen för att få så många ingångar till glukos som möjligt. Cancerceller förbrukar 10 gånger mer glukos än friska celler, och de stjäl energi från kroppens normala celler. Det är ett av de främsta skälen till att cancerpatienter går ner i vikt allteftersom sjukdomen fortskrider.

Många känner till att insulin fungerar genom att sänka blodsockret. Men det är bara en av insulinets funktioner. Insulinet kontrollerar också cellernas intag av andra ämnen, som t ex fett. Insulinets viktigaste roll när det gäller cancer är att det ökar DNA-replikationen. Insulin stimulerar alltså celltillväxt och celldelning. Insulin driver utvecklingen av cancer, det gäller alla slags cancer, men framför allt bröst- och tjocktarmscancer. Insulin hämmar även celldöd.

Cancerceller tillverkar och utsöndrar sitt eget insulin så att de kan ha obegränsad tillgång till glukos. Insulinet de utsöndrar kallas insulin-like growth-factor, eller IGF, och det ger cancerceller en obegränsad drivkraft för tillväxt. Cancerceller har också tio gånger fler receptorer för IGF på sina cellmembran, på samma sätt som för insulinreceptorerna. Förmågan att binda insulin och ta in glukos ökar därför enormt.

Ju mer glukos i blodet, och ju mer insulin som används av kroppen, desto mer tillväxt och livskraft i cancern.

Det här är en mycket förenklad bild, men i stora drag är det så det fungerar. Så vad kan man göra?

Det finns ingenting som är mer effektivt än en riktig kost. Så, för guds skull, SLUTA ÄTA SOCKER! Men det gäller att veta att socker finns i många olika former*.

Träning, både aerobisk och anaerobisk, är viktiga i det här sammanhanget. Träning är en av de faktorer som bestämmer insulinkänsligheten och i vilken grad blodet kommer ut i musklerna. Genom träning ökar blodflödet och syresättningen samt insulinkänsligheten. Träning minskar alltså behovet av insulin och glukos i blodet.

* I princip blir alla kolhydrater till slut glukos (blodsocker) i kroppen. Undantaget är fruktos som av levern även kan omvandlas till triglycerider, alltså fett.

Raymond DuBois and his colleagues at the University of Texas have discovered that a key receptor (CB1) for cannabinoids is turned off in most types of human colon cancer. Without this receptor, a protein called Survivin, which stops cells from dying, increases unchecked and causes tumour growth.

It's key that we continue research using marijuana as a medicine. Make sure to vote in favor of medical marijuana November 4th.

I got home yesterday afternoon and I've been busy putting my ducks in a row ever since.....

I had my last Starbucks this morning.....and then another last Starbucks later this morning when I was out running errands.....

I've filled out my living will and had it notarized. Now I need to take it to the post office.....which is right across the street from Starbucks....

Pick up some dog food. Vaccinate, worm, and take photos of puppies. Do nails, ears and heartworm meds for adult dogs....

Unpack from trip and do laundry....

Wade through two weeks worth of mail and bills.....

Try to return e-mail and phone calls.....

Lesley has suggested one last glass of a really good wine.....Sequel, perhaps! :P Great idea, Lesley! I think that I can fit in a trip to the wine store.

Tonight I'll drive down to PLU to attend the Holden Evening Prayer Service with Amanda. It's a service that our church does each Wednesday night during Lent and it's a favorite of ours. The service is held every Tuesday evening at PLU and next week Amanda will lead the service. I'm hoping to be well enough to attend that service, too.

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and messages of support....they mean so much to me!!! I'm at peace with what lies ahead and actually anxious to see what they find and what they'll do. Amanda will be my "Guest Blogger" over the next week and will post news of my surgery tomorrow. I'll be admitted to Valley Medical Center (Renton, WA) tomorrow morning at 8:30 am and my surgery is scheduled for 10 am (PDT). The surgery is anticipated to last 1.5 hours.

As the atrocities of rich criminals increase, the tragic American coma intensifies

By a true patriot and a national treasure John Kaminski

I remember a childhood board game, in which a magnet beneath the surface pulled around metal shavings into any form you cared to make. It was fun to create faces, and, as I recall, easy to draw the devil, with his pencil-thin mustache and goatee, and pointed horns on top.

And I remember arguing with my father in the late '60s, insisting that money was not the most important thing in life, but that warmth and love and compassion were, and him vehemently disagreeing with me, and shaking his head at what a boob he thought I'd become — a misguided hippie idealist.

Now both memories meld together and come at me as I contemplate the suffocating chokehold mass media inflict on the American population, where so many people, morally imprisoned by their neurotic need to fit in at all costs, believe that nothing is really real unless they see it on television.

And I recall decades of TV news shows chronicling the evil of Hitler's Panzer divisions tearing up France and torturing its captured citizens, or of Japanese rape camps which the valiant allied troops battled to liberate and dismantle. Those of my generation were brought up with this legendary propaganda, and it made us feel good that Americans were the good guys, and we were Americans, always fighting on the side of freedom and justice.

I have a distant relative who spends much of his time watching these black-and-white documentaries of World War II troop movements, and relishing the role of the British, saving the world for democracy. Every time I visit him, I must always stifle the urge to say I wish he could get the Al-Jazeerah channel on his television so he could watch today's American troops "finishing off" wounded Iraqi freedom fighters, or sexually mutilating hapless captives inside Abu Ghraib prison while they explain they are fighting terror.

You would think — as a thinking, feeling human being who believes we are honest with ourselves — that American TV would tell you what's really going on. I mean, we live in a real world, we pay real bills, we have — if we're lucky — real people who love us. And we'd like to think the way we perceived the real world was accurate, that we had all the information we needed to make our judgments about what is right and what is wrong.

In fact, most Americans think they do. Unfortunately for you, me, and the world, they are very wrong. Painfully wrong.

The perverse panderers who determine the content of what's on TV have a very evil double standard. They are perfectly willing to publicize horrors by those whom they consider the enemy, but absolutely unwilling to apply these standards of journalism to their allies, those they consider their friends. Consequently, they have no integrity. And as a result, neither do we.

And also as a result, America has turned into a nation of psychopathic killers, abetted by a comatose populace which endorses these crimes by their sadistic inattention to them.

My reflections on these matters derive from a simple contemplation of today's American media performance. Most Americans think they know what's going on simply by watching the evening news, or reading a local newspaper. Some of the hipper folks think they get real perspective from public television or listening to National Public Radio — maybe they even read a Howard Zinn book now and then — and inwardly congratulate themselves on their savvy news acumen.

In fact, the volume of American war crimes and other atrocities that go unmentioned by American media has reached unprecedented proportions. And yet, with each new lie told by our leaders covering up new atrocities perpetrated by the American military, the American people are driven deeper into a self-inflicted coma — in large part because our media do not recognize these events as real, creating a situation in the minds of the American people that if they are not reported on television, then they must not really be true.

This is where evolution has taken us — to a totally brainwashed delusion.

And as many people now already realize, this is a sure formula for disaster, quite possibly for the end of the world. Because when you lie to yourself, you give up your chance of ever finding the truth.

Think about what hasn't been on television, but what you know to be real from what you've read by searching out alternative news sources on the Internet. The stolen election is the hot topic right now. There is no question that a nationwide network of highly-paid Republican flunkies skewed the voting process in a number of states. They made it as difficult as possible for black people to vote, sabotaged ballots in likely Democratic precincts, and took control of the electronic voting process so as to actually change the totals via computer in an absolutely untraceable way.

And the worst part of all, I think, was that the major opposition candidate was in on the fix, because he absolutely does not care whether the votes are recounted or not, and also ran on essentially the same platform as that espoused by the absolutely most dangerous and irresponsible president in the history of the country.

So, how concerned are you? And how much do you care to see? If you choose not to look, the penalty will be your life. But maybe even that isn’t enough to motivate a majority of socially lobotomized American androids.

All of this did not happen overnight. In fact, some could convincingly argue that this type of mass mental manipulation has always been going on.

But limiting our evidence to just recent events, ever since the first Kennedy assassination, the powers that be have known that they could get away with absolutely anything, as long as the media spun it in a way that made questioning the official version of the event an unpatriotic or unhip thing to do. So, since those string of assassinations in the Sixties, the atrocities have become progressively worse (we won't recount the list again here), and the public's retreat into reassuring but false media spin has become progressively more widespread.

To the point where now we have the obscene extermination of an entire populations going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and Colombia, and we have the majority of Americans willingly oblivious to it all, going merrily on their way with their Christmas shopping and Internet porn surfing. Despite the desperate rallying of radio talk show hosts and erstwhile peace activists, the perceptual coma that enshrouds the American people has never been more pervasive. Nor more dangerous to all life on this planet.

And with all due respect to you cyberdenizens who ply the Worldwide Web for unbiased news you know you can’t get on TV or in war machine propaganda instruments like The New York Times, I humbly submit that even you do not fully comprehend the depraved dementia being inflicted upon us all by a process so psychologically intertwined with what we perceive are our own best interests that we can’t even track down the events that got us to this sad point in the evolution of our self-destruction without needing some rejuvenating boost from Elavil, Maui wowie, salvia divinorum, or at least Jack Daniel’s.

Sure, you know the basic stuff: that the U.S. government is responsible for 9/11 because it provided a license for the military-industrial complex to invade the whole world, or that the war in Iraq is based on lies and as a result is as bad as the actions of any of the many demonic tyrants throughout world history. And this is your America I’m talking about!

Who cares? What’s on TV?

The worst, most vicious killers in history, bar none, and you still, in your heart, won’t admit it! American soldiers were told by their superiors to kill everyone in Fallujah, no matter how young or how old, but you didn’t see that on TV so you don’t believe it.

The blood seeping into the sand is not your problem, you think. They deserve it for what they did in New York, is a common line still heard among the great uneducated herd that poses as cultured America.

OK, enough of what most call politics. Because that’s just the superficial stuff. Now I want to talk about the really bad stuff, because if you don’t understand it, you won’t really understand just how dangerous a situation we are all in.

Which leads me back to one of my all-time favorite quotes, the one by Ralph J. Gleason. “No matter how paranoid you are, what they’re actually doing is worse than you can possibly imagine!”

Three recent stories — all of which were written by women and none of which will ever see the light of day in mainstream media — got my attention concerning the depth of depravity that we have created for ourselves in this rapidly disintegrating world of ours. (And I won’t even mention the New Zealand professor who said today that the human species could be extinct in as little as a hundred years based on what’s happening today.)

Recently, Mary Sparrowdancer sent me her sequel to her momentous piece, “The Battle for Darkness and Light,” which is about the implications of fluoride on your very own body. http://www.rense.com/general45/bll.htm

The new piece is titled “National Fluoride Database Launched by USDA,” located at http://www.rense.com/general60/nationalflouridedatabase.htm

She writes:

Now, with Americans thoroughly riddled with fluoride due to a sixty-year-old medical experiment that never produced its promised results — now, with most of the entire nation currently suffering from gastrointestinal complaints, mood and sleep disturbances, bizarre aches and pains, elevated blood pressure, bone density problems, cancers, heart problems, liver problems, kidney problems, dental problems, thyroid problems and obesity, attention is finally being paid to the cumulative effects of fluoridating the water supply.

You know, this is much more than some abstruse health story. The fluoride issue, which reverberates throughout the food chain, is really about blunting the process of evolution, about dulling the minds of billions of people and depriving them of their rightful hopes of having brilliant, evolved minds, and leading a new world into a bright and hopeful future, all sacrificed for a plan by evil rich men to dispose of a nuclear waste product and turn a vicious but hefty profit in their devil’s bargain.

Maybe the United States did not win World War II. Maybe, with the deployment of fluoride and radioactive substances into our air and food chain, the losers of that war made a last-ditch attempt at an evil last laugh with two doomsday substances that guarantee a future of slavery and sickness rather than the bright hope of a just and happy society.

And that second poison I mentioned, radioactivity, is the subject of a second recent story, as bleak a tableau as we can face in our modern world but one that is absolutely essential for us to know if we are to survive as a species.

Titled “Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets — A death sentence here and abroad” , it is the latest in a series of dispatches on the subject by Leuren Moret, a former Lawrence Livermore Lab scientist who now works with a group of independent scientists called the Radiation and Public Health Project. Together this group has written ten books on the health effects of low level radiation.

There can be no other conclusion on the part of the American public that depleted uranium ammunition is designed to kill not only large numbers of people in nations the U.S. has decided to conquer, but it also kills our own soldiers, and our government, which professes to value its military men and women, knows it kills them.

Moret writes:

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.

This week the American Free Press dropped a “dirty bomb” on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.

This is an astonishing war crime being conducted against our own soldiers, and not a peep about it from Dan Rather or The New York Times. It’s enough to make you sick. Please read the whole story in the link above.

In addition to killing hundreds of thousands of innocent residents of foreign countries over reasons that everyone in the world knows are lies, the American government is deliberately killing its own soldiers, the ones it professes to love.

I said three stories, didn’t I? You’d know, if you haven’t bolted to the bathroom to hurl your lunch by now, that I’ve saved the worst for last. It’s an old story, “Aerosol and Electromagnetic Weapons in the Age of Nuclear War,” written in June by Idaho Observer health reporter Amy Worthington, who has been monitoring the chemtrail beat for a long time. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/WOR406A.html

This is a story that will definitely scare you.

In their quest to remain top dog in the kill chain, the purveyors of perpetual war have deliberately dimmed earth's life-giving sunlight, and reduced atmospheric visibility with lung-clogging particulates and polymers. This ecological terrorism has severely compromised public health, according to thousands of testimonials. Years of mass appeals to legislators, media and military officials for information, and for cessation of catastrophic atmospheric degradation, have fallen on deaf bureaucratic ears. Public awareness of what befalls us remains as murky as our skies because those "in the know" are muzzled by national secrecy laws and Americans have no authority to challenge matters of national security.

Worthington writes about Operation Cloverleaf, a top-secret military program involving weather modification, military communications, space weapons development, ozone and global warming research plus biological weaponry and detection testing. She explains:

Dumping tons of particulate matter from aircraft has geo-engineered our planetary atmosphere into a highly charged, electrically-conductive plasma useful for military projects. The air we breathe is laden with asbestos-sized synthetic fibers and toxic metals, including barium salts, aluminum, and reportedly, radioactive thorium. These materials act as electrolytes to enhance conductivity of military radar and radio waves. Poisonous on par with arsenic and a proven suppressant of the human immune system, atmospheric barium weakens human muscles, including those of the heart. Inhaled aluminum goes directly to the brain and medical specialists confirm that it causes oxidative stress within brain tissue, leading to formation of Alzheimer's like neurofibrillary tangles. Radioactive thorium is known to cause leukemia and other cancers.

There’s more. High frequency microwaves, low ELF waves pulsed at frequencies known to affect human biological and mental functioning, and combinations of viruses, bacteria, fungi, mycoplasma, desiccated blood cells and exotic biological markers so that human, animal and plant responses can be observed.

So there we have just three relatively little known subjects among many others that are proven, life-threatening hazards being strewn all over the world by the corporate crazies in Washington. Worthington writes:

We continually witness bizarre meteorological occurrences as powerful electromagnetic devices manipulate both the jet stream and individual storm fronts to create artificial weather and climatic conditions. Black operations projects embedded within these aerosol missions are documented to sicken and disorient select populations with biological test agents and psychotronic mind/mood control technologies.

For God’s sake, this is what we should be teaching our kids in schools, because these are the most profound threats to our survival. But about fluoride, depleted uranium, and chemtrails, we hear not a peep in the mainstream media or in our college curricula. Other than the American political psychosis now casting its dark shadow around the world, these are the most important topics everyone in the world should be discussing constantly.

Instead, as with the true motives of the U.S. government regarding 9/11 and the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American people are stupefied and condescended to with a continuing barrage of insulting jibberish from the men who are supposed to be our leaders but are really the men who are destroying large parts of the world for many generations to come.

And these are only three examples of what we should be talking about, but what we’re not talking about. Mercury in the medicines, eunuch Godzilla genes in the seeds guaranteeing mass starvation some year in the very near future, lethal chemicals in the clothes we wear, poisoned soils, empty music, perverted video games that teach our children to kill ...

Listen to the national debate you hear on your electronic squawk boxes. Totally inconsequential trivia. Brought to you by the same men who are doing all these other things and making trillions by doing it.

The media leads us around like that childhood board game, where it was easy to draw the devil with a magnet. We’re the metal shavings being shaped into monsters of malign design by the magnet that is our misanthropic mass media.

We invented games, and let our world slip away.

http://web.archive.org/web/20041229100113/www.warfolly.vzz.net/theplot.html

For information go to: http://www.johnkaminski.info/

Source

My sister's insurance isn't covering all the bills and they are piling up fast and furious. They still have about 4-6 months of doctors visits and a surgery or two to get through. I am asking ANYONE to donate to a site my mom set up for her.

Even if you can only donate a dollar, that's enough. I swear this isn't a scam. You can see the pics of my sister and Jordyn on the site and you can also see the same people on my myspace page if you wish to verify that this is for real. My myspace link is

The link to donate is

Also, Jo is doing well. I've spoken with her a couple times and she's in high spirits, but being only almost 3, she doesn't fully understand what is happening.

All she knows is that she has a really cool "pirate patch"!

If you do chose to donate please post this thread on your page so others can see it also.

Jordyn is the most precious thing in my life and my sister is my closest friend. Everyone is just beside themselves right now over this. I moved from Eugene, OR as soon as I found out that my sister was pregnant. Sometimes I wouldn't mind moving out of Boise but I would never bring myself to do it because I can't imagine living anywhere on this Earth without my Jo. I even had the privilege of being a full time baby sitter for Jo so I spent a significant amount of time with her in her first year of life. Watching that little girl grow up has been an experience so wonderful I don't even have words for it. The most wonderful sound I will ever hear is when she yells "Aunty Anya!" and runs up to me and gives me a huge warm hug and a kiss.

Here's the story...

****************************************

I am sending you all a link to my grandbaby, Jordyn, website. Jo has a very rare disease called Retinoblastoma. Only 250 children, under the age of three, get this a year. What it is is a mutation of the genes that make the eyeball cells. The cells mutate and become cancer, which can be life threatening.

Jo went blind in her left eye and had to find a specialist immediately. There is no specialist here in Idaho, so Becky, my daughter, had to take Jo to St Louis Children's Hospital. On Wed Oct 1st they completely removed her left eyeball. Jo was already blind in that eye and it turned out that 97% of the eyeball itself was cancer.

The eye was donated to the lab that is testing it. This can be hereditary or not. If it is this will change many things for Jo. If they find the gene in both parents then Jo is strongly advised not to have children. It also can occur in the remaining eye. This type of cancer also goes to the brain then skips to the bone marrow. This cancer also opens the door to any form of cancer for Jo throughout her life.

Becky has had to take an indefinite leave of absence from work. In 6 weeks Jo will get her temporary prosthetic eye. In between now and then Jo will see the doctors weekly. Then in 3 months Jo will receive a handmade, by an expert artisan,prosthetic eye.

The good news is that Jo's optic nerve is still good. This means that they connect the prosthetic eye to the nerve so it will move exactly with the good eye! Amazing. This is a lot of doctor visits and Becky is looking at at least 6 months. Beck is trying to also maintain where she lives in Idaho so when this is over and she comes home she still has a place for her and Jo. We have also found out not all of this is covered on her medical insurance.

Therefore i have made a website with pictures of Becky and Jo asking for everyone's help. Whatever u can afford to donate and more than once in the upcoming months would be greatly appreciated. Most of you know me and know this isn't like me to do this but we have no choice.

I appreciate your time and help, as does Becky and Jo!!!!

Thank you ALL and much Love,
Debbie, Becky and best of all my lil Sweet Pea Jordyn Rae Marie
*******************************************************
[This part was written by a very old, very dear friend of mine who knows our family and was asking for help from her friends

Please repost this so we can all help this family!! I have never met Jo myself, but I love this family very much. I met Anya on the first day of kindergarten and we were instant friends. Her family is my family. Her mother was like a second mother to me while I was growning up. They are wonderful people and would be more than willing to help someone if they were in a similar position.
Please, please repost this and let's all pitch in to help baby Jo!!

Artigo publicado no blog Saúde Feminina, da Weruska, aborda a laserterapia, uma técnica pioneira que está sendo aplicada na Bahia para o tratamento do HPV.

Segundo o artigo, o Itaigara Memorial Hospital Dia é o único centro na Bahia a oferecer este tratamento, em Salvador. O tratamento é muito importante para prevenir o aparecimento de lesões pré-cancerígenas provocadas pelo HPV, responsável pelo câncer do colo do útero.

Em entrevista ao blog Saúde Feminina, a ginecologista Adriana Bruno disse que a laserterapia “é um método seguro com alta eficácia, mais conservador, feito freqüentemente em única sessão, com rápida cicatrização e preservação da anatomia do trato genital. Proporcionando às pacientes um rápido retorno às suas atividades normais”.

O artigo fala ainda sobre os tipos de HPV mais associados ao câncer cervical a ao aparecimento de verrugas, sobre a vacina contra o HPV, o exame de Papanicolaou, o exame de DNA do HPV e as formas de tratamento.

“A prevenção das lesões associadas ao vírus também é extremamente importante e deve ser feita através de exames preventivos, como o papanicolau. Este exame pode detectar lesões pré-malignas e assim tratá-las com sucesso, evitando a tempo o câncer de colo do útero”, declarou Adriana Bruno ao blog.

Leia artigos anteriores do blog Uniclabjor, sobre HPV:

SAIBA MAIS SOBRE O EXAME DE PAPANICOLAOU

ANVISA APROVA NOVA VACINA CONTRA HPV

CÂNCER DO COLO DO ÚTERO: AÇÕES DO MINISTÉRIO DA SAÚDE

HPV CAUSA CÂNCER DO COLO DO ÚTERO

I will admit that it is scary for me.  I never paid much attention to celebreties, but I have to say to see so many in one place that had been diagnosed with breast cancer scares to shit out of me.

Follow this link to see what celebreties have been diagnosed.

Warriors for the Cause

Imagine being told you have stage three cervical cancer after four misdiagnoses and that your chances of survival have dwindled down to 50 percent. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Well for Jade Goody, Britain's most infamous Big Brother contestant, this is a reality. In a recent interview with OK! Magazine, brave Jade said:

"There are people out there who think I deserve to be sick and to die, but I'd never wish this on anyone, not even Bin Laden, not that he has a womb.

I've started writing a will which kind of makes you realise that you are going to die. I have to think about what I'm going to leave my kids or who I'm going to leave them with.

The only person good enough for my kids is me."

Jade may have said some pretty shitty things on live TV, but that doesn't make her worthy of cancer, or those two little boys deserving of losing a mother. Keep on fighting, Jade.

: : : : : : : : : : :

"An antioxidant component in red wine may help to prevent lung cancer," said lead researcher Chun Chao, a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation. "The findings provide an impetus for future research to find out if there is something in red wine that may help to either prevent or treat lung cancer."

But the researchers cautioned that the findings don't mean that it's OK to smoke.

For the study, Chao's group collected data on 84,170 men who participated in the California Men's Health Study. Among these men, the researchers identified 210 cases of lung cancer.

The researchers found that there was, on average, a 2 percent lower risk of lung cancer associated with each glass of red wine consumed per month.

The greatest reduction was among men who smoked and drank one to two glasses of red wine a day. These men lowered their risk for lung cancer by 60 percent, Chao's group found.

The reduction wasn't as pronounced among nonsmokers who drank one to two glasses of red wine a day. And no reduction in risk for lung cancer was associated with white wine, beer or liquor, the researchers said.

Despite the findings, Chao warned against thinking that smoking and drinking red wine can actually prevent lung cancer.

"Men who smoke should stop smoking," she said. "Even men who drink one or two glasses of red wine per day still face a greater risk of lung cancer than do nonsmokers. This study should not be used as an excuse to drink more red wine. Moderation is always the best course."

The findings were published in the October issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society's deputy chief medical officer, doesn't think that one study proves that red wine will protect you from lung cancer.

"It's an interesting study, and it raises interesting questions about whether or not there is a cancer protective effect in red wine," he said. "It is important that this be looked at further to see if that association holds up."

Lichtenfeld noted that there have been previous reports of a benefit of red wine for cancer prevention that didn't pan out. "Before we get overly excited about this, we really need to see these effects replicated," he said.

"Clearly, we aren't recommending that smokers go out and start consuming large amounts of red wine as a potential protection from getting lung cancer," he added. "There are other research reports that show that any alcohol, including red wine, can increase the risk of other cancers such as breast cancer."

More information

For more on lung cancer, visit the National Cancer Institute.

SOURCES: Chun Rebecca Chao, Ph.D., research scientist, Department of Research and Evaluation, Kaiser Permanente Southern California, Pasadena; Leonard Lichtenfeld, M.D., deputy chief medical officer, American Cancer Society, Atlanta; October 2008, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

Last Updated: Oct. 07, 2008

Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

Related Links:

Colon cancer is the country's second leading cancer killer. Nearly 50,000 Americans are expected to die of colorectal cancer this year.  Yet, new government guidelines from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommend that most seniors, 75 and older, should stop getting routine colon cancer tests. Mature market experts, what do you think? This is a departure from the advice of many other medical experts. Is it good advice?

- Zita

Two years ago my aunt passed away from cancer, I haven't cried since. It was my first experience with death, it was horrific. The way the tears just burst out as I heard the news. The way I knew what words were about to fall out of my Father's mouth. The way my best friend knew what I had just heard without me even telling him just from my reaction as I was informed over the phone. It was unearthly.

A few months later it was my Grandmother's time to pass, I didn't cry, I let her go, her time had come. I just regretted that I didn't go talk to her the last time she visited, she was sleeping the whole time anyway, but that was no excuse.

So I toughened up I guess. Death took on a different meaning to me. I've yet to really think about what that meaning is. All I know is that I do not fear it, maybe because I do not know it? They say that cancer patients turn out to be some of the strongest people when it comes to dealing with death, albeit the weakest when it comes to their condition. So isn't that a good thing?

Why doesn't anyone ever look at the bright side of death? Why is it always associated with grim reapers and mourning and such? In darkness there is light, as in yin there is yang. You just need to look hard enough to find it, maybe that's the light at the end of the tunnel? In this case that would be a maze I guess. Nevertheless you have your light awaiting you at the end, don't worry.

Think of all the good things. At least they have the chance to repent, the time to make things right again, not all people have this luxury when their about to die. When death comes around you start to look at your life in a whole different light, and I use the word light for a reason. It shines a light on things, it makes it seem brighter. Phrases like "the good ol' days" and "the times of our lives" come in. Things change.

She's not handling it too well, this friend of mine. To me it seems like she's afraid. The family has vested it in her to inform him of his condition. I feel sorry for both of them, but not too much. She says she's close to him, so she should stand up and face the fact that he has to know. So I told her she needs to stop saying things like "easy for you to say" and "if you were in my position you wouldn't say that", to me that's just her cowering away. If she were to put herself in his position, God help her. Nothing is easy, ease is just an illusion, merely a veil. Everything is hard, everything is difficult. But nothing that is needed is impossible. If it must be done, there will be a way.

I told her to take it off her mind (impossible but at least try) and just talk to him about anything. And as it goes on she'll just have to say it as some point, or at least she'll know if she can do it or not. If she can't then she's not the right one. It's not her fault. I think he's a Buddhist, so if he believes in rebirth then there's where he can find comfort. In anything that he may believe in there must be some place where he will find it. There is always light among the dark. He needs to find it, and she needs to help him. In yin is yang, in death is life.

The above image is ©2007-2008 *angelreich

The author, Pamela Jouan writes, "I wrote a book for my mother last year that I just self-published. It was originally a gift to her for what would have been her 40th wedding anniversary on that Easter Sunday. I have since published it with all proceeds benefiting cancer research. My father passed away from cancer 3 years ago this September...I have been getting tremendous response from widows who identify with the story.

White Feathers is the story of what would happen if we were given one more day with someone we had lost. The main characters, a couple called Charles and Ruby, are modeled after my parents—most of the details of their lives are all based in fact, as well as a few extraordinary points. Needless to say, my book weaves faith and hope into a tale about lost love and dealing with that loss.

In an effort to do a little more, I decided to publish my book and contribute all proceeds to cancer research. It is currently available through www.amazon.com for purchase. I created a web site http://www.pamelajouan.com"> that talks more about my book and has a list of questions to base a book club discussion on."

The falling costs of cell phones and talk time is contributing to the growth of this industry and for cell phone companies it means beefing up of infrastructure. But we should say STOP! There are hundreds of cell phone towers in India and many of them are in residential localities as we have not had the regulation to prevent them from coming up within 50 meters of a residential area (this is now changing). But even this is not safe! And cell phones certainly aren't.

Time to ponder on the health aspect. That cell phone usage and cell towers cause/aggravate various health problems is now well known. Health problems can range from tumors, cancers, and infertility to memory loss, headaches, allergies and eye problems. Although the research available on the long term threats isn't sufficient, scientists are warning us about “unknown risks.” And really smart people are telling us that it’s better to be safe than sorry. In fact it is believed that small animals, insects and birds have been badly hit already.

Here’s what to do to protect yourself. Sources:[1], [2], [3], [4]

• Reduce talk time
• Don’t allow children to use cell phones as radiation penetrates their skulls more deeply
• Place cell phones as far away from your body if using a hands free device
• Wait for the call to connect before placing the phone near your ear
• Avoid using cells in an enclosed space as radiation higher
• Avoid using cells in speeding cars, buses, trains, planes as radiation levels higher. And yes, there is something called second hand radiation too which can harm those next to you.
• Avoid using a cell when signal is weak
• Avoid living near a cell phone tower
• Use a hands-free device, but new research is saying that blue tooths are not necessarily safe. Some blue tooths intensify radiation into the ear canal!
• Choose a phone with a low SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) but even this does not really keep radiation within safe limits, although it does reduce it.

Considering that the average Indian spends (December 06 data) "more time talking on his mobile than his counterparts anywhere else except the US," we certainly need to be careful. And add to this the fact that we are the third largest cell phone market after China and the United States.

Wonder what the future will bring. I think some serious protective devices will come up (there are a few already) and soon it might become compulsory to use them.

(Photograph is by me and copyrighted)

But as often is the case with health, a complex problem may lead to a simple solution. Coincidentally, in the middle of all our worry, a new study was published that shows the positive effects of touch.

*  A new study from Utah researchers published in Psychosomatic Medicine shows that warm touch decreases stress hormones and lowers blood pressure. The study looked at married couples ages 20 to 39 in their own environment and found that massage, touch, hugging, kissing, had these effects and also increased the calming hormone oxytocin. A key positive feature of this study was the non-laboratory setting. Criticism of previous studies on stress and touch have included concerns about the artificial environment of the laboratory.

*  According to the American Hospital Association 37 percent of hospitals in the U.S. use complementary and alternative treatments including touch therapy. This policy is growing, and may help improve disease outcomes.

*  Previous studies from Miami (Touch Research Institute) show that massage and relaxation therapies enhance mood and immune function for women with breast cancer. The institute has also published data revealing faster growth in premature babies, a better tolerance of pain, lower glucose level in diabetic children who were frequently touched.

*  Another interesting study from Virginia showed a decrease in fear, danger, and threat responses in the centers of the brain when women touched the hands of their husbands while experiencing pain.

* Petting dogs has been shown to be calming, to lower stress, and to have a positive impact on immune function and the fight against disease.

I am advocating touch as a treatment for stress, but there is a downside. Of course touch increases the risk of spreading many bacteria and viruses. And with cold and flu season right around the corner, I am compelled to add that while you are hugging and stroking to compensate for your worry, make sure to wash your hands afterward.

Dr. Marc Siegel is an internist and associate professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine. He is a FOX News Medical Contributor and writes a health column for LA Times, where he examines TV and movies for medical accuracy. Dr. Siegel is the author of "False Alarm: the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear" and "Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic". Read more at www.doctorsiegel.com

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/mobilecancer-link-denied/2008/09/27/1222217588450.html

Here's what he says just now - it's worth repeating in full:-

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Death's homework

I've been diagnosed with cancer - a treatable kind, but still I'm ruminating on God and mortality

All comments (31)

• PJ O'Rourke
• The Guardian,
• Tuesday October 7 2008
• Article history

I looked death in the face. All right, I didn't. I glimpsed him in a crowd. I've been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind. I'm told I have a 95% chance of survival. Come to think of it, as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound, my chance of survival has been improved by cancer.

I still cursed God, as we all do when we get bad news and pain. Not even the most faith-impaired among us shouts: "Damn quantum mechanics!", "damn organic chemistry!", or "damn chaos and coincidence!"

I believe in God. God created the world. Obviously pain had to be included in God's plan. Otherwise we'd never learn that our actions have consequences. Our cave-person ancestors, finding fire warm, would conclude that curling up to sleep in the middle of the flames would be even warmer. Cave bears would dine on roast ancestor, and we'd never get any bad news and pain because we wouldn't be here.

But God, Sir, in Your manner of teaching us about life's consequential nature, isn't death a bit ... um ... extreme, pedagogically speaking? I know the lesson we're studying is difficult. But dying is more homework than I was counting on. Also, it kind of messes up my vacation planning. Can we talk after class? Maybe if I did something for extra credit?

Why can't death - if we must have it - be always glorious, as in The Iliad? Of course death continues to be so, sometimes, with heroes in Fallujah and Kandahar. But nowadays, death more often comes drooling on the toilet seat in the nursing home, or bleeding under the crushed roof of a teen-driven SUV, or breathless in a deluxe hotel suite filled with empty drug bottles and a minor public figure whose celebrity expiration date has passed.

I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant haemorrhoid. What colour bracelet does one wear for that? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps it can be embroidered around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.

Furthermore, I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy's. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass ... well, I'll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung? No doubt death is one of those mysterious ways in which God famously works. Except, on consideration, death isn't mysterious. Do we really want everyone to be around for ever? I'm thinking about my own family, specifically a certain stepfather I had as a kid.

Then there's the matter of our debt to death for life as we know it. I believe in God. I also believe in evolution. If death weren't around to "finalise" the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas. We'd eat by surrounding pizzas with our belly flab and have sex by lying on railroad tracks waiting for a train to split us into significant others.

I consider evolution to be more than a scientific theory. I think it's a call to God. God created a free universe. He could have created any kind of universe He wanted. But a universe without freedom would have been static and meaningless - the taxpayer-funded-art-in-public-places universe.

Rather, God created a universe full of cosmic whatchmajiggers and subatomic whosits free to interact. And interact they did, becoming matter and organic matter and organic matter that replicated itself and life. And that life was free, as amoral as my cancer cells.

Life forms could exercise freedom to an idiotic extent, growing uncontrolled, thoughtless and greedy to the point that they killed the source of their own fool existence. But, with the help of death, matter began to learn right from wrong - how to save itself and its ilk, how to nurture, how to love (or, anyway, how to build a Facebook page), and how to know God and His rules.

Death is so important that God visited death upon His own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death for ever and live eternally in God's grace. (Although this option is not usually open to reporters.)

I'm not promising that the Pope will back me up about all of the above. But it's the best I can do by my poor lights about the subject of mortality and free will.

Thus, the next time I glimpse death ... well, I'm not going over and introducing myself. I'm not giving the grim reaper fist daps. But I'll remind myself to try, at least, to thank God for death. And then I'll thank God, with all my heart, for whiskey.

• PJ O'Rourke is a correspondent for the Weekly Standard and the Atlantic

© Los Angeles Times

Varför?
Jo, för att detta skyddar mot livmoderhalscancer..

Det är en viktig livförsäkring.

Varje år får 400 kvinnor livmoderhalscancer.. och Hälften dör

Vaccination är en vettig sak att göra eftersom cancern kommer av humant papillomvirus, HPV.

För flickor mellan 13 och 17 år ingår dessa i högkostnadsskyddet. Man betalar max 1 800 kronor för de tre sprutor med Gardasil eller Cervarix som krävs.

Medan tjejer som fyllt 18 får stå för hela kalaset själva.

Till denna kostnad kommer också läkarbesöket som kostar i vissa landsting.. alltså blir kostnaden ännu större för tjejen om hon nu vill vaccinera sig...

Varför ingår inte detta i det ordinarie vaccinationsskyddet?

Vet inte politikerna hur mycket det kostar om tjejen får cancer senare?

Då kan jag meddela att en dos med cytostatika kostar över 30 000 kronor.. och man får minst 6... Vilket blir 180 000.. och har man sen otur så kommer strålningen ovanpå det.. och vad kostar inte det.. för att inte prata om vad det kostar sjukvården om nu inte tjejen klarar sig.. i form av sängplats.. smärtstillande etc.

Fram för att det ska vara gratis att få både vaccination och cellprov..

För cellproven kostar också pengar i vissa landsting..
Jag får betala 100 kronor men jag anser att jag vill inte ha mer cancer..

Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om pysan, cancer, bröst, cellprov, vaccination, kondom, sex, tonåring, kille, tjej

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