Announcements at this year’s American Association for Cancer Research Event included the findings that there is a connection between vitamin supplementation and breast cancer rates.

If you have been taking vitamins and calcium supplements, there is good news concerning your risk of getting breast cancer!  New findings about breast cancer prevention were announced at this year’s American Association for Cancer Research 101^st Annual Meeting. The event took place April 17-21^st in Washington DC.  The meeting attracts over 15,000 attendees each year.

This year one of the presentations included conclusive information that vitamins and calcium supplements have been shown to be effective in reducing the risk of breast cancer.  This new research involved 457-control group and 268 women with breast cancer.  The study showed that vitamins reduced breast cancer risk by about 30%.  Calcium supplements, on the other hand, actually reduced the risk by 40%.

One of the people presenting this information was Jaime Matta PhD from the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico.  Matta stated, “This process involves at least five separate pathways and is critical for maintaining genomic stability.  When the DNA is not repaired, it leads to mutation that leads to cancer.”  Apparently, calcium supplements enhance DNA repair.  If this complex repair process is interrupted it can lead to cancer.

In addition to supplements reducing the risk of breast cancer, there are also different superfoods that are effective at fighting breast cancer as well. These superfoods include fatty fish, beans, berries and tomatoes.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
women.webmd.com

Hey, fellas: Lower your risk for bladder cancer by eating these vegetables.

When it comes to bladder cancer, men are three times more likely to develop it than women.  One way to decrease this risk is to do the very thing that your parents told you to do since you were a youngin’:  Eat your vegetables.

Now, if you were anything like me when you were young, you didn’t give two hoots about vitamins and minerals.  All you cared about was when you could be dismissed from the table so you could go back out and play.

But now that you’re older—and hopefully a bit wiser—you’re taking advantage of the things you didn’t fully appreciate when you were a young whippersnapper.  You’re eating better, trying to get as much exercise as possible, and doing you’re darndest to avoid devastating diseases.  And as researchers from Australia have found, you’re decreasing your risk for bladder cancer by eating right.

Researchers from the Cancer Council Victoria in Australia reviewed the eating habits of about 565 people, approximately half of whom had previously been diagnosed with bladder cancer.  The remaining participants were healthy adults that served as controls.

These healthy controls had a lot in common, though.  Besides being the only ones in the study without bladder cancer, they were also considerably higher in specific nutrients.  And these nutrients were associated with a protection from bladder cancer.

For example, blood work analysis found that the people that had the highest concentrations of vitamin E were 34 percent less likely to develop bladder cancer.  But that was nothing compared to people who had high concentrations of phosphorus.  For them, the bladder cancer risk was reduced by 51 percent!

Other vitamins and minerals that had protective properties included vitamin D, niacin, and carotenoids.  Carotenoids are naturally occurring pigments found in brightly colored fresh fruits and veggies.  They’re a form of vitamin A.

The study was published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control and was funded in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute at the US National Institutes of Health.

Fortunately, these vitamins and minerals (with the exception of vitamin D) aren’t hard to find in the food supply.  But if you’re looking for a specific vegetables for specific minerals and vitamins:

Phosphorus sources:  Chickpeas, lentils, garlic, soybeans

Vitamin E sources:  Spinach, broccoli, wheat germ

Niacin sources:  crimini mushrooms, asparagus, romaine lettuce

Sources:
naturodoc.com
nutraingredients.com
ods.od.nih.gov
whfoods.org

Vitamin K deficiency contributes to age-related diseases, analysis shows.

If you’re like me, someone who’s always looking for the latest in health news, then you know that vitamin D has dominated the health news cycle.  The reason?  People are deficient in this all-important vitamin, so the RDA (recommended daily allowance) for the sunshine vitamin has been increased.

The vitamin D publicity parade continues, but a new parade is coming up the street, and vitamin K is the drum major.

Like vitamin D, vitamin K is another vitamin the average American is lacking in.  A lack of vitamin K puts people at greater risk for a plethora of problems, most notably blood disorders like hemophilia or bone issues like osteoporosis.  But it also puts people at greater risk for age-related diseases, like cancer, heart disease, and dementia.

Drs. Joyce McCann and Bruce Ames from Oakland, California’s Children’s Hospital Research Institute discovered this after poring over hundreds of studies and completing a series of tests that assessed the accuracy of their “triage theory,” first developed in 2006.

This so-called “triage theory” is a little convoluted, so stay with me if you can.  In its basic form, the theory says that as man evolved over time, cellular mechanisms developed that produced age-related diseases as a response to vitamin deficiencies.  These age-related diseases include cancer, heart disease, and dementia, hence the term “triage.”

To test the veracity of their theory, Ames and McCann used field mice with inactive proteins, proteins that typically absorb and rely on vitamin K to perform blood clotting functions.  Among the 16 inactive proteins, a little less than half of them depended on vitamin K to blood clot properly.  In other words, without vitamin K, the proteins are unable to clot, likely resulting in a blood disorder like hemophilia.

The other proteins weren’t as involved in blood clotting, so vitamin K wasn’t as crucial for clotting function.  But the lack of vitamin K was detrimental to other functions, like arterial, skeletal, and immune system function.  In fact, they found an increase incidence of “spontaneous cancer” among the mice.

The study is set to be published in the October issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

While more research needs to be done before truly definitive conclusions can be made regarding vitamin K supplementation, the findings support McCann’s and Ames’ theory that vitamin K insufficiency expedites the occurrence of age-related diseases.

Nutrition analysis indicate the majority of Americans aren’t getting enough vitamin K, so Ames and McCann hope health officials will increase the recommended vitamin K intake for men and women (120 mcg/d for men; 90 mcg/d for women).  That fact, combined with their findings, will hopefully make that increase a reality.

Vitamin K is found primarily in green vegetables, like broccoli, spinach, kale, asparagus and Brussels sprouts.  Vitamin K is a fat soluble vitamin.  Traditionally, fat soluble vitamins are toxic in large quantities.  It’s possible that vitamin K can be toxic in high doses as a result of this fact, but at present, there’s no such thing as vitamin K overkill.

Translation:  the more vitamin K coursing through your veins, the better off you are in avoiding age-related diseases.

Sources:
thedoctorwillseeyounow.com
nutraingredients.com
sciencedaily.com
eurekalert.org

Just about every store in the world these days has a website from which consumers can purchase products online. The Vitamin Shoppe is no exception. I literally spend thousands of dollars at the Vitamin Shoppe every year – both online and in-store – for they sell great products that I use regularly. But I came upon something the other day while perusing their website that rubbed me the wrong way.

I think it’s reasonable to expect that a store’s in-store prices will be the same as the products they offer for online purchase. If not, that information is usually made available. So you can imagine my irritation when some of the products I buy regularly in-store at Vitamin Shoppe would have cost me less had I bought them online.

For example, a 16.9 ounce bottle of Carlson’s Liquid Fish Oil. In store: $39.95. Online: $22.89! That’s a 43 percent difference in price!

I’ll give you another: 120 capsules worth of Cholestene (one of the best supplements on the market to help naturally lower cholesterol). In store: $19.95. Online: $13.82. Again, that’s a sizeable difference in price – 31 percent!

And trust me, those aren’t the only two.

When I approached one of the salespeople from The Vitamin Shoppe for some explanation as to the huge disparities in price, all I got back was, “Sorry, but that’s corporate policy.”

Well, like I said to the salesperson, Vitamin Shoppe’s “corporate policy” is a corporate rip off! The least they could do is advertise in newspapers or on the products themselves as to whether or not a product is cheaper online as opposed to in store. I don’t think that’s asking much. Good grief!

I don’t want this to come off as a scathing indictment of the Vitamin Shoppe. As I said, I spend thousands of dollars in one year alone; what they offer is generally very good at pretty reasonable prices. But in today’s economy, where people are literally living paycheck to paycheck yet want to maintain their supplementation and healthy living lifestyle, every little bit counts when it comes to stretching the average dollar.

To avoid spending more than you need to, you can always check online before checking out the store. But consumers shouldn’t have to go to do this. The onus ought to be put on the business itself, and that onus is driven by consumers’ demands. So get in touch with the Vitamin Shoppe and their website and respectfully ask them to make consumers aware of products that are less expensive online as opposed to in-store. They’ll be crazy not to implement some kind of informative policy because, ultimately, it’s a win-win scenario: consumers’ get what they need at a less expensive price, while Vitamin Shoppe turns a profit one way or another. Failure to do will hurt them more than anyone else, as consumers – yours truly included – can always seek out alternatives stores whose policies are more consumer friendly.

Contact Details for Vitamin Shoppe

http://www.vitaminshoppe.com/content/en/support/feedback.jsp

The Vitamin Shoppe
Customer Care Department
2101 91st Street
North Bergen, NJ 07047

Domestic Callers: (866)-293-3367
International Callers: (201)-868-5959

Update: Over the weekend, a representative of my company had a chance to speak with one of the District Managers at Vitamin Shoppe regarding this issue. She informed me that the District Manager was very cooperative and will honor our request for matching the in-stores prices with the online prices, even without bringing in the printout of the online prices. This means I will continue to purchase supplements at the Vitamin Shoppe. I encourage you to check with your store to make sure they do the same for you.

I am aware that a “brick and mortar” store incurs more expenses than an “online” store, which may contribute to higher prices. However, I feel that consumers should be informed of the higher priced in-store items. That’s why I published this alert. A consumer should be aware of all the facts to make an informed decision. In this case, that decision could mean a big difference for some.