A recent presidential study has concluded that the carcinogens in the environment are contributing to high cancer rates.

As time goes on and on, more sources point to the fact that cancer is caused by carcinogens in the environment.  In fact, a new report was just released that was completed by a expert panel that currently advises Barack Obama. This panel, called the President’s Cancer Panel (or PCP), was set up in the 1970’s.

This 240 page report, which is available for the public to download, is called “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now.”  The report concludes that the known carcinogens in the environment are increasing, and they need to be dealt with by the government.

Dr. LaSalle D. Lefall, Jr. chairperson of the PCP stated, “There remains a great deal to be done to identify the many existing but unrecognized environmental carcinogens and eliminate those that are known from our daily lives – our workplaces, schools and homes.”  According to the report, people are exposed to up to 80,000 chemicals each day and many of them are completely unregulated.  These chemicals include radon, formaldehyde, and benzene.  Oftentimes people are completely unaware that they are being exposed to these cancer-causing chemicals.

The panel urged the government to take better steps to reduce people’s exposure to toxins by doing things like improving the understanding about these toxins, developing a better policy towards them and raising awareness. These are just a few of the suggestions made by the PCP.

The good news, however, is that researchers are learning more all the time about natural ways to treat cancer.  For example, exercise is an easy and effective way to fight cancer.  Additionally, turmeric is an extremely powerful herb that can actually kill cancer cells.  Turmeric contains the chemical curcumin.  Recent tests by the Cork Cancer Research Center show that curcumin can actually destroy cancer cells.

Sources:
news.bbc.co.uk
medicalnewstoday.com

Study says exercise may improve brain function after being treated with radiation.

Ladies and gentlemen, as much as I’ve discussed exercise and its healing power, there’s yet another aspect to it that can’t go unmentioned:  It may reverse the damage that results from radiation treatments.

As has been documented here, I’m not crazy about traditional cancer treatments.  Whether its radiation or chemotherapy, they’re both used to kill as many cancerous cells as possible.  If I were forced to choose one over another, I’d choose radiation, because it’s a more localized treatment (i.e., It’s effective for only certain cancers, and it doesn’t attack as many healthy cells as chemotherapy does).

Nevertheless, radiation does adversely affect healthy cells, particularly brain cells when used for brain cancer.

But researchers from Duke University found that may be a thing of the past after the brains of rats treated with radiation were every bit as good as those rats that weren’t irradiated.

To test their mental mettle, the researchers irradiated one group of mice and provided them with food, water, and a wheel that they could run on and off as they pleased.  The other group of mice was also irradiated, but they had no access to a wheel, only access to their food, water, and other furry friends.

They then tested the rats’ mental ability and agility, letting them loose in a maze that assessed their spatial memory and recognition.  This was used as a sort of guideline for the researchers, helping them to know how quickly they could get through the maze after irradiation treatment.

Throughout the next several weeks, they had the same groups of rats go through the same maze they had at the start of the study, but this time the researchers discovered something most unexpected.  They found that the rats that were irradiated and had opportunity to exercise performed just as well as rats that were never irradiated in the maze.  In other words, their brain function was normal.  They were expecting to find a decline in the irradiated rats’ mental function, but the only rats that showed a progressive decline in brain function were the irradiated rats that didn’t have access to the rat wheel.

The findings led one of the researchers to conclude how “powerful” exercise is and that it can “provide and even restore” mental function after radiation therapy.

More research needs to be done before researchers can say with any definitiveness that exercise provides a similar benefit to humans given whole brain radiation treatment, but the results sure seem promising.  They believe the benefit of exercise on brain function is likely due to the increased flow of blood to the part of the brain responsible for cognitive function (i.e. hippocampus).

Again, these findings may not translate to humans, but this study piggybacks on a separate study performed last year in Germany, which found that exercise improves stem cell growth in the brains of rats affected by radiation.  In that study, the researchers were more inclined to suggest that the findings would translate to humans, saying “irradiation-induced damage in children with brain damage could be reduced if the child under guidance is given stimulating and fun exercise.”

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com