Battling Cancer with Whiskey
By Charlene Nuble

Some scientists believe that whiskey may be one of the keys to preventing the Big C.

For a quite a number of years, liquor has been known not only to bring destructive intoxication and addiction upon its patrons, but also as deterrent to a healthy lifestyle. But as a potential weapon against cancer? Sounds controversial.

Rumors that single malt whiskey may be a tool to combat cancer have begun circulating recently. Whether it actually holds any water has yet to be proven. According to one of the theory’s proponents, a consultant to the whiskey industry, Dr. Jim Swan, the antioxidants present in whiskey, particularly ellagic acid, can reduce the risk of developing cancer, since this acid fights the unstable atoms that aid in rapid cell replication. He added that the more cells were produced, the more likely that rogue cancer cells will be born. “Whiskey can protect you from cancer and science proves it,” he said, speaking at the EuroMedLab 2005 conference in Glasgow. Dr Swan explained that ellagic acid, which is in greater concentration in whiskey than in red wine, breaks down the harmful free radicals present in our body.

However, Cancer Research UK remains unconvinced. The agency has raised concerns that what Dr Swan and his supporters are pushing might mislead consumers into drinking excessive amounts of whiskey just to avoid cancer. Cancer Research noted that liquor intake can eventually lead to certain kinds of cancer, such as those in the esophagus, throat, mouth, bowel and liver. Dr Swan’s idea that whiskey can prevent cancer also received criticism, owing mostly to an absence of population data supporting them. Contrariwise, according to the agency’s head of cancer information Lesley Walker, there exists evidence that high alcohol consumption does increase cancer risks. Ms Walker noted that while ellagic acid is a formidable antioxidant and may greatly aid in the fight against cancer, its presence in whiskey is not reason enough for people to begin drinking up, especially as ellagic acid can also be found in certain fruits.

The concept that a certain type of alcohol may help deter cancer is novel and, for frequent drinkers, even noble. What liquor patron would ignore this theory? But, still, Dr Swan’s ideas remain untested and there does not exist any known positive link between whiskey and cancer. If there would be something that suggest this is true sometime in the future, then it will be considered revolutionary. However, in the absence of adequate information at present, whiskey as a deterrent to cancer is a dubious thought. While we all hope and pray that an alternative treatment to cancer will surface soon, this is probably not the time to become this optimistic about whiskey’s alleged benefits.

Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR'S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.

Charlene J. Nuble 2005. For up to date links and information about cancer, please go to: http://cancer.besthealthlink.net/ or for updated links and information on all health related topics, go to: http://www.besthealthlink.net/

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Cancer Curing Using Human Brain Power; Just a thought
By Lance Winslow

Is the brain and the body in combination strong enough to rid itself of cancer if it is subconscious is trained to do so using electro impulses. I believe it is. Many times people have cancer and are able to beat it, this is happening more and more. Often it happens due to superior strong will, belief and luck. For those researchers trying to figure out a break though maybe there is something in this idea that you might use as a puzzle piece?

I believe there are better ways than nuking the body and seeing which dies first the cancer or the person to combat this problem. This idea may lead to another thought, maybe it is all dead ends, but dead ends are just another discovery of a material that will not work like tungsten on your way to illumination. Failure of a test is actually a success in disguise, example; Edison.

It appears to me that our quest to find power in the brain to win the war on cancer is on to something, in our research we found two very well respected people who are researching a similar idea and have adequate funding to look into this idea. Part of this idea has to do with a diet of the right things to assist the body in assisting itself to beating the cancer war within itself. Now then is it possible to come up with a high-powered diet and neuron nutrients to power up the maximum capacity of the brain for this purpose, all-natural?

For instance I am a former athlete and long distance runner and a long distance runner packs in complex carbohydrates the day before the event, this works good and improves the chances of beating the hills. Winning, visualization, proper training and will is good in bike races or cancer as Lance Armstrong has clearly shown the world. We also know that the stomach takes away energy from the body, so the power level of the brain for fighting cancer must occur when the body is fueled but not using the energy for digesting. This is a significant factor and there have been reports in Mayo Clinic Newsletter and also in the Berkeley Medical Journal with this topic. Can we boost the bodies system and will to win within our own bodies using an increased sports like attitude? Something to think on?

By Lance Winslow

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Benzene Related Diseases
By Todd Going

Benzene Related Diseases - Leukemia

There have been documented dangers of benzene for well over a century now. Even though benzene exposure often leads to leukemia, there are also many non-cancerous diseases that have been shown when exposed to elevated levels of benzene. Some of these other diseases include:

Myelodysplastic syndromes: also called ‘pre-leukemia’, this is a collection of diseases resulting in diminished blood production and can weaken the immune system. This can result in leukemia.

Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: this is a disease affecting the lymphatic systems and shares many similarities with leukemia. It can eventually affect the bone marrow in addition to other organs.

Aplastic Anemia: this is a condition where the marrow in the bone stops producing enough blood cells to replace lost ones.

Even though these diseases are not leukemia, they have strikingly similar resemblances. The victims who suffer from them many times can’t tell the difference. Even with proper care and treatment, victims of these diseases face an uphill battle exposed to pain and suffering.

To learn more about leukemia please visit our website at http://www.resource4leukemia.com

This article may be freely reprinted as long as this resource box is included and all links stay in-tact. Please visit our Leukemia information site at http://www.resource4leukemia.com

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Ain't Got Time to Die
By Carole Neal

It’s 8:00 a.m. in the central design office at Rifton, a New York firm that manufactures equipment for the disabled, and Carole Neal is at her computer, reviewing assembly documentation and revising drawings of parts for new products. Above the desk is a large painting of a beach, and a colorful sign: "Carpe diem!" For her the slogan (Latin for "seize the day") has special meaning: she often wonders how many more she’ll have. Three years ago, this mother of three was diagnosed with breast cancer. A first round of chemotherapy resulted in remission, but now the cancer has returned—with a vengeance.

Plough: What was your first reaction on learning that you had this thing?

Carole: I guess from the very beginning, before anything, I was just terrified, because I have always been terribly afraid of death. But that only lasted a few minutes after I heard the diagnosis. In fact, I felt somehow relieved—I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I had always been afraid of dying, and all of a sudden there it was—cancer—and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Sure, I’ve gone to pieces over it since then. After the first bout of chemo, I was sitting there and I felt this lump under my arm, and I just fell apart. I guess I still hadn’t really faced the possibility of terminal cancer, not at that point anyway …

This is going to sound really dumb, but it’s the truth: I’ve been almost frantically afraid of cancer all my life, but then when it came, right there, square in my face, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I don’t like to use the word "gift" because it’s overused, but that really was a gift. My husband, Dale, and I looked at each other, and we said, "Here it is. Now we’re in God’s hands." Of course, we’re in his hands the whole time. Where else—what better place—could we be?

Dale even joked about it when we found out that I had cancer; he said it would be a terrible shame if I died of something else, since I had worried so much about cancer all my life.

Plough: How has your attitude toward time changed? Has it changed?

Carole: Well, you saw that "carpe diem" thing above my desk. I guess it sort of expresses what I’ve been feeling more each day.

You know, we spend a lot of our time dealing with petty problems and thinking petty thoughts, and I’ve come to see that that just has to go. There’s anger, envy, every kind of emotion you have in a relationship with anybody. People hurt each other, and get hurt over little things. I’ve come to see that it’s stupid—just plain stupid—to waste time on those things.

With cancer you begin to realize that you have to make use of every day; each minute becomes precious. Dale and I have talked about how we’ve probably wasted years of our lives carrying little grudges and things that we couldn’t work out, or struggling to find enough humility to confront a problem, or apologize, or whatever.

The present moment—the time we have right now—is the same for you as it is for me or for anyone. It’s all we have. We tend to think, "I’ll do that tomorrow;" or "I’ll wait till I have time to follow through on that …" But we actually don’t have tomorrow. None of us does. We only have today and we only have each other—the person next to us, the person we live with or work with. Seeing this has been a tremendous challenge to me.

Each of us has a life to live—and once we’ve found it, we ought to live for it. We need to be ready to give up everything—our plans, absolutely everything, in order to go after what we’ve found. I’m not saying we all have to be intense or energetic. It’s not a personality thing. But to really live demands all our fire…

Plough: Where do you draw the line between accepting the fact that you have cancer, and fighting it off?

Carole: Well, obviously you don’t just lie down once you know you’ve got cancer. You don’t just fold up and crash. You fight to keep living with everything you have. That’s why I thought chemotherapy was the answer at first, because I felt I was really fighting the disease with everything I had. I was going to take the most explosive kind, you know—whatever it took.

Then I found out it was a hopeless cancer; that people just didn’t survive it. I think they told me the survival rate was basically nil, 1 to 99. But I hadn’t asked, and I didn’t care. I already knew from my sisters’ death [of the same cancer] that the statistics were pretty bleak. That’s when I said, "Forget the numbers. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in bed, sick and vomiting and everything else. I’m going to live with everything I’ve got."

Plough: So it’s more about living with cancer, than dying of it?

Carole: Yes. That’s exactly where it’s at. And I think that’s why I just can’t handle these sweet songs that are sometimes sung around the dying or seriously ill. I’m not saying I prefer silly, superficial stuff, but I do love Mary Poppins, piano music from the 1940s, Ray Charles, black Gospel music …

I’ll be honest: when "the time comes," I hope no one starts singing those hymns about floating around in heaven. I’d think I was already descending into my grave. You know, the words of those songs may be deep, but for some reason, hearing them sung reminds me of all the most depressing things in life. I know it shouldn’t be that way, but it is … I need energy, strength for the fight. The fight for life. And I can get that straight from the Gospels.

Dale and I start each day by reading the Gospels; we’ve read them over and over and over during the past few years, and Jesus—this most radical, revolutionary lover of life—absolutely blows my mind every time I read his words. He pulls me to where I want to be, in life or in death. He had this unheard-of compassion for the weak and sinful, yet he shouted at the strong and powerful (though he loved them as well), and he had a deep reverence for God, his father, our father. But he wasn’t pious. I’ll bet he had a whale of a time in everything he did.

Now, you’re going to think this is weird, but to me the battle has been like an adventure, the adventure of my life: the necessity of fighting something that is absolutely deadly. I felt from the beginning that I wasn’t going to let any part of this disease take me over. And I didn’t want to hear about suffering; I didn’t want to know about dying; I didn’t want to read about heaven and angels and all that kind of thing.

Again, in reading through the Gospels, I feel I’ve gotten a really good picture of Jesus. To me, that is where life is. Jesus fought everything, and did and said just what he felt, straight out. He loved everyone without reservation: the rich and the poor, everyone. And at the same time he tackled people so vigorously when they sinned—with compassion, but incredible straightforwardness. Not that I could ever do that. But that’s how I’ve wanted to live my life, with that kind of fervor.

Plough: Have you thought much about the actual day of your death?

Carole: Yeah, I guess so. It’s really the thing that scares me the most. It depresses the heck out of me to think of everybody standing around singing and looking all morbid or something. I don’t know; I guess every death is different. I hope there’s lots of basketball on the court outside my window when I go, and some hefty music coming up from Ruben’s corner downstairs. Thank heaven we’re all different, and I hope we can allow each other to experience death in different ways, just like we all look at life in different ways, and run with that.

Now, about the day I die: each one of us has to die. I guess it seems more significant, more pointed when somebody is dying at a younger age than you’d think they should, but it’s part of life. So I die today; somebody else dies thirty years down the road.

I guess I’ve been hit more and more by the fact that each day is all I have. I can remember yesterday, but I can’t relive yesterday, and I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. All I have is just right now.

Yesterday I didn’t think I was going to live another day, and the doctors and my family didn’t think so either. Today I don’t feel that close to death. But that’s what is so exciting, because it forces you to live in the right-now, in the present. It might seem crazy that I’m still coming here to the office every morning, but you have no idea how much it means to me. At work I run into all the people I love. I don’t want to be at home staring at four walls—I want to be around people, joking and laughing and sometimes crying too. I definitely couldn’t stand being alone in bed.

You know, ever since I was a child I’ve felt that hell—if you can define it—is separation, isolation. Being cut off, being alone. Not feeling connected with others. But it’s odd: just during the times when I’ve felt most alone, I’ve sensed the power and strength of the community as it prays for those who are sick or weak or struggling, and I’ve felt carried by those prayers and that love.

Plough: What advice would you have for the family of a dying person, or for caregivers? You don’t want to be alone, or in a hospital, but you also don’t want to be surrounded by mourners.

Carole: I don’t have any advice for anybody. I only know what I wish for myself. And I’m leery of any emphasis on the hereafter, on some other world that we really don’t know anything about. Even if you read and read and read, you still won’t really know anything about it. The best way to face death, I think, is to live. I guess I do ask God each day what he would have me do today, and I try to do it. But you know, you can get so enthralled in a prayer, and then the next minute you’ll go out and have a heated argument with someone. It’s terrible! So I say, forget the holy prayers. Of course, I do hope to follow God’s will in my life. I do wish for it.

I don’t know how to say it … eternity sometimes seems very close. Yesterday I was really discouraged—I’ve hardly ever had a day like that. I was thinking how much I’d miss Dale and the children, and wondering what it would be like to be separated form them. Then Dale said that the closest we’ll ever be is when we’re all together in eternity. That brought me so much peace and so much joy, when I thought about it, that I could just like back, and I asked God, "Please take me now," because I had had such a wonderful, happy thought.

Plough: But he didn’t. And today you’re at work.

Carole: Yeah, shucks, I thought I was going to go yesterday! I could hardly lift my head, and I was getting down, but then I said to myself, "I’m not going to give into this. I want to be with the people I love." So that’s what I did today. I got up at six and took a shower, and invited a child from the neighbors over to breakfast. It’s wonderful to be able to live just as if you’re going to keep going. I guess that’s the advice I’d give anybody: to go on a long as you can, in whatever way you can.

You may reprint this article free of charge providing you use the following credit box:

Carole Neal was a member of the Bruderhof - an international communal movement dedicated to a life of simplicity, service, sharing, and nonviolence. (http://www.bruderhof.com/).

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How Diet Influences Cancer Risk
By Alex Fir

Diet is a double edged sword. Improper diet increases the risk of cancer but a proper, well balanced diet reduces the cancer risk.

Diet is one of the most important lifestyle factors and has been estimated to account for up to 80% of cancers of the large bowel, breast, and prostate. Diet affects the risk of many other cancers, including cancers of the lung, prostate, stomach, esophagus and pancreas.

Prostate Cancer:

High consumption of meat, especially red meat, substantially increases the risk of prostate cancer.

Vegetables, especially cooked tomatoes, reduce the risk of prostate cancer. In one clinical trial, the role of Vitamin E as a prostate cancer reducing factor was established. In this study there was a 32% decrease in prostate cancer incidence and 41% decrease in prostate cancer mortality in people receiving Vitamin E supplements when compared to controls.

Breast Cancer:

In Japan, people consume Tofu, a soya product. It contains isoflavones that moderate the estrogen receptors in the body such as breast tissue. The incidence of breast cancer is low in Japan when compared to Western women; only 1/4th of the mortality rate of Western women. Japanese women's low fat diet, high fish consumption and drinking green tea also decrease their breast cancer risk.

One case control study found that regular consumption of soy foods was associated with a marked decrease in breast cancer risk in premenopausal women. No effect in post-menopausal women.

A Japanese case-control study also found that tofu intake (3 times/wk compared with less than 3 times/wk) was associated with decreased risk of breast cancer in premenopausal women. Again, soy intake was not protective against post-menopausal breast cancer.

In one study conducted in America, the relation between soy intake and breast cancer risk found that tofu consumption was protective in both premenopausal and post menopausal Asian women.

Lung Cancer:

Lung cancer risk is substantially decreased by a variety of carotenoids. Carotenoids act as antioxidants and thus minimize cell damage.

One study in Boston focused on the effect of different types of carotenoids on lung cancer risk. It was observed that lung cancer risk was significantly lower in subjects who consumed a diet high in a variety of carotenoids. This was especially true with non-smokers who had 63% less risk.

One study conducted in Hawaii reported further evidence for a protective effect from certain carotenoids against lung cancer and that greater protection was afforded by consuming a variety of vegetables compared to only foods rich in a particular carotenoid.

Stomach Cancer:

Nitrates in food and other preservatives added to food including meat are converted into 'nitrites' in the human stomach. The nitrites undergo nitrosation to form 'nitrosamines' and 'nitrosamides'. This increases the risk of stomach cancer in people eating vegetables from nitrate rich soil.

In one study, Vitamin C appeared to protect against the risk of stomach cancer by inhibiting formation of nitrates in stomach.

Cancer of the stomach is 5 times more common in Japanese people compared to Western populations. When Japanese people migrated to the United States, they progressively acquired the low incidence of the US due to changes in their diets.

In one study conducted in Hawaii that involved both Japanese and Caucasians, the stomach cancer risk was associated with consumption of rice, pickled vegetables, and dried/salted fish, and a negative association with vitamin C intake.

One ecological study in Belgium showed a relation between the nitrate and salt consumption and stomach cancer. The analysis of this model showed that the significance of nitrate as a risk factor for stomach cancer mortality increased markedly with higher sodium levels.

Dietary habits and stomach cancer risk was studied in Shanghai, China. According to this study, risks of stomach cancer were inversely associated with high consumption of several food groups, including fresh vegetables and fruits, poultry, eggs, plant oil, and some nutrients such as protein, fat, fiber, tea and antioxidant vitamins.

By contrast, risks increased with increasing consumption of dietary carbohydrates, frequent consumption of preserved, salty or fried foods and hot soup/porridge, with irregular meals, speed eating and binge eating. This provides evidence that diet plays a major role in stomach cancer risk.

No single food can completely prevent cancer but a balanced combination of different groups can help. Appropriate diet can prevent 3-4 million cancers each year.

Cancer is One of the Main Causes of Death Among Humans. Visit Cancer Information, FREE web site for those who want to learn more about taking control of their health.

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