A monkey wrench into your thinking

So do you remember when they said that nuns were more likely to have breast cancer because they didn't have children and didn't breast feed? So I believed that. In fact, when I got pregnant with son number three and nursed him till he was a year old, I figured I had some magic insurance against breast cancer. But alas that did not happen. I am now hearing of more and more young women in their 30's and early 40's getting cancer when they have had children and have breast fed or have newborns at the breast. I think it was not science but an assumption as to why this was happening and not really knowing the reason why nuns were getting breast cancer. I am friends with the sisters at the Abbey of St. Walburga. They wear the old time habits and are completely covered each and every day. I believe it has to do with sunshine and vitamin D. There is no way the sisters are getting sunshine except on their faces and likely only the ones that are outside in the garden or on the farm. Other orders do not wear the habits but all of them are covered up in some fashion. They do not sunbathe. So it has all been a lie I think or at least ignorance about really the cause. Of course am I doing the same thing making such an assumption. I would like to say this is my hypothesis. The other day I heard that drinking alcohol increases your breast cancer risk so many fold and then they added they do not know why but assume it is because alcohol increases estrogen. I can't for the life of me understand how alcohol increases estrogen and feel this is also likely a lie in a way. What I believe is that alcohol reduces the magnesium in your body especially alcoholic drinks like beer which increase urination and depletion of minerals in your body. A deficiency in magnesium causes the body not to absorb vitamin D which a deficiency in causes inflammation and potentially the root cause of cancer? It also causes a decrease in folic acid which is also related to an increase in breast cancer. They say this is science. Folic acid is needed to repair DNA and a screwed up DNA is part of the basis for cancer. I really don't call it that. It is insanity what is being put out there as gospel. I am amazed that it is all like flavor of the month. This year or month we doctors or researchers are saying this and then boon they change their mind and now say it is completely different all the while never apologizing to those who heeded your poor advice.

Per the vitamin D council: Studies show women with low levels of vitamin D have a 222% increased risk for developing breast cancer. Ecologic studies have shown an inverse correlation between breast cancer mortality and sun exposure and dietary vitamin D intake. Blood levels of vitamin D at the time of diagnosis of breast cancer accurately predict a woman's survival. The cancer is much more aggressive in those with low serum vitamin D levels: they are 94% more likely to have the cancer metastasize and 73% more likely to die within 10 years of diagnosis.

What does this mean to you? I went on a vitamin D supplement last year and had my D tested in June of this year. After supplementing with 2000 units a day I was still deficient per the Vitamin D Council which recommends one has 50 to 100 units in the blood. I had 41. When I brought this up with my oncologist. The response was that there is interest in this. I asked if they were testing all new breast cancer patients and the response was no. With this in mind, I know I was deficient at breast cancer. I tracked in the early spring how much sunshine I was getting and it was minuscule. The above information concerns me as I didn't begin D supplementation until about 18 months after my cancer diagnosis. What are the mortality rates of one who begins supplementation? Did I catch it in time?

This kind of pisses me off. We trust doctors to know about things and advise us but do they really? I remember my OBGYN telling me to not bother drinking milk but just take a calcium chew or eat a tums. Tums deplete other things. And if I had consumed milk perhaps I would have had some D in me.

D and me or dang - do I have a brain tumor?

I have been moving along in my study of what I am eating and how it effects my body. Thought I would update you on my experiments on myself. Remember I told you my thoughts about inflammation and cancer. Okay, so my sister in law was sick for several years with a litany of symptoms. No one could figure out what was wrong with her. So she checked herself into the hospital and had every test imaginable conducted without finding an answer. Well the answer given to her was, "You are crazy and need an anti-depressant". Hell, I would be depressed and crazy if I were sick for three years with no diagnosis. Funny, she is a psychologist and could easily prescribe something for herself. She kept looking for an answer and one day a new endocrinologist (she had some thyroid issues) said they ought to check her vitamin D level. And bingo.... it was practically non-existent. Let me add that her C-reactive protein was something like 65, supposed to be less than 1. So they put her on 50,000 units of D3 a week and with that was able to raise her D levels to 75. With that, all of her symptoms disappeared and her C-reactive protein dropped dramatically. Back to me. So one of my new sites I look at all the time is the Vitamin D Council - these researchers are university people not the corporate machine cronies. I noticed on their site some information regarding breast cancer and D. For an experiment, I kept track of when I might be out in the sun and how much milk and oily fish, like sardines or whale blubber I consumed for two weeks. Whale blubber was not on sale that week. I came up with - nil. Hmmm. So I started to supplement with 1000 units of D3. I then went to 2000 units per day just because I couldn't find 1000 units. I have tried to spend more time out in the sun this summer. I read from the Vitamin D Council's newsletter that you probably need 5000 units a day for your body to operate like a fine tuned working machine. Six months later I had my D tested. This was my New Years resolution and so was tested at the beginning of July. And remember June was a cloudy month. I was at 41 versus the optimal level of between 50-100. So that means... I was deficient at cancer. I am now on 5000 units a day and will be retested at the end of the year. Let me say that I am doing this all on my own. My family doc says take only 1000 units a day and that 41 is good enough. My oncologist says...so and would you like some chemo? I know that 50,000 units a week isn't killing my sister in law but causing her to thrive, lose weight and reduce her thyroid medicine to practically nothing. Duh, you probably need D3 and maybe not that thyroid medicine. She told me that she began to lose weight when her levels hit above 50 so that is what I am watching now. She tested all of her patients that she was treating for depression and you guessed it - all were D deficient. I have the whole family on D except for Devin who is spending a lot of time out in the sun with minimal sunscreen. I will put him on a supplement this fall. So all you who say I am giving my son skin cancer need to review what people are saying about melanoma now. I won't let him get a sunburn but he is getting sun. By the way, Brian had been on an anti depressant and now is off and takes 5000 units of D3 a day. He is not out in the sun very much. He's doing well. Being D deficient is like hibernation syndrome. Many of the symptoms Debbie had was like a bear going into hibernation. Debbie's illness coincided with her starting her private practice and probably not being out in the sun as much due to her schedule. Plus she is a light skinned black woman. But she used to be darker because she went out in the sun. Is our weight issue in this country related to this? Is our increase in clinical depression related to this as well? Is cancer related to this deficiency? Newsflash, just out - 70% of all children are D deficient. Here's one for you. What if cells that are not receiving their dose of Vitamin D on their receptors, which is a hormone, decides to survive by utilizing other hormones that are available such as estrogen? How would that effect that cell that is now just screwed up? For a while survival is more important but then what? Per the Vitamin D Council, "Technically not a "vitamin," vitamin D is in a class by itself. Its metabolic product, calcitriol, is actually a secosteroid hormone that targets over 2000 genes (about 10% of the human genome) in the human body". Is this one of mechanisms that cause the cells to become genetically flawed. And then the mitochondria can't do their job of killing if off because of our other nutrition shortages? I'll let you know in December how the continuing experiment went. Oh by the way my C-reactive protein was . 75. I am not very inflamed but I will put money on the fact that I was likely inflamed two years ago at cancer. I have also upped my omega 3's quite a bit.

Okay on to another experiment. I am on aspirin therapy for my heart thing. I take a baby aspirin a day. But I got lazy and cheap. So I came across this bottle of aspirin - 325 mg in the cabinet. Well first I cut them in quarters and then I thought well just cut them in half. Lazy me - take a whole pill. Lots of old folks do for arthritis. One day after doing this for a while, I developed a strange metallic taste in my mouth after eating or drinking. Of course I googled strange metallic taste and the results were - first brain tumor. And I went around for a couple of days thinking, crap, do I have brain tumor now? Second entry was a zinc deficiency. Am I taking enough zinc with my multi? More research. What causes zinc deficiency? Aspirin. So thinking that if I did in fact have a brain tumor, one week of experimentation couldn't hurt. So off the aspirin for a week, up the zinc with one little pill a day. Guess what? The metallic taste went away. So now I am back to baby aspirin and every couple of days I throw a zinc into the vitamin mix. And I figure by now if I had a brain tumor, I'd have more symptoms that my strange sense of humor. My mom said that my dad during chemo had a strange metallic taste in his mouth. They told him to not use metal utensils to eat with - use plastic. Is this because chemo depletes your zinc and the funny thing ( it really isn't funny) is that zinc is needed for a healthy immune system which is exactly what you probably need to fight cancer.But hell, you're fighting it with chemo right? In my dad's case, after chemo he was better for a while and then cancer came back like gangbusters. His immune system was compromised. He died. Regarding the immune system. New research on the horizon regarding using your immune system for fighting cancer. Johns Hopkins is doing something like this for pancreatic cancer.

Your B's and Q's

Otto Warburg. How many of you know who he is? He was a Nobel Prize winner back in the 1920's who insisted that cancer was caused by the lack of aerobic cellular respiration. In his later years, Warburg came to be a bit of an eccentric in that he was convinced that illness resulted from pollution; this caused him to become a bit of a health nut. He was said to bring his own tea bags for tea when he was out and about. I think he was a genius and a man before his time.

So this is what he said. Cancer cells generally use glycolysis rather than respiration or oxidative phosphorylation for energy. This is an anaerobic, without oxygen, process. This is a result of the shortage of oxygen or hypoxia that exists in tumors and damaged mitochondria. Usually dangerously damaged cells kill themselves via apoptosis, a mechanism of self-destruction that involves mitochondria, but this mechanism fails in cancer cells. According to the Warburg hypothesis of cancer growth, though cancer is caused by mutations in the genome of the cells, it is allowed to progress because of the metabolic changes in mitochondria without which the cell would apoptose or self destruct. Hence and according to Warburg, cancer should be interpreted as a mitochondrial dysfunction. This is called the Warburg Effect. Now my question is how many doctors remember this as part of their basic biology studies?

In 1961, scientists saw that people with cancer had little CoQ10 in their blood. They found low CoQ10 blood levels in people with myeloma, lymphoma and cancers of the breast, lung, prostate, pancreas, colon, kidney, and head and neck. Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a natural energy producing nutrient involved in a wide range of body systems. CoQ10 is located in the mitochondria, tiny power plants found in every cell in the body, and effectively supports their energy producing pathways to help fuel the body's daily activity. A potent antioxidant, CoQ10 also defends cells against harmful free radicals. Thus CoQ10 plays an important role in generating cellular energy and works inside a cell's mitochondria to provide the supplies necessary for energy production. CoQ10 is an electron/proton carrier that helps the mitochondria to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the body's energy source. This is vitally important because mitochondria must continually generate ATP to support every cell in the body. CoQ10 somehow helps this process by enabling the mitochondria to use oxygen and thus aerobic cellular respiration.

Our bodies can manufacture CoQ10 but we make less of this as we age. Secondly, the B vitamins, niacin (B3), folic acid, and pyridoxine (B6) are required for the body to manufacture this nutrient, and most people don't get enough of these B vitamins or they are depleted through prescription drug use, stress, alcohol, coffee etc... Allow me to add now how statin drugs, which every older person is now on, depletes B’s and thus CoQ10. But also contraceptives, anti-inflammatories and the list goes on and on. And the body needs some fat to help this work, and you guessed it….omega 3’s are the fats to do so.

Coenzyme Q was first discovered by Professor Fred L. Crane and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Enzyme Institute in 1957. In 1958, chemical structure was reported by Professor Karl Folkers and coworkers at Merck, the pharmaceutical company. Can you say follow the money trail? Fast forward to the University of Alberta’s DCA study showing that the mitochondria in cancer cells have just been turned off and can be restarted with the use of something called DCA. And once the mitochondria are back in action, they seem to be able to kill the cancer cells. There is a small clinical trial of DCA going on through the University of Alberta in Canada right now. Go to their website for more information at http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/

So here’s what I think. We are in a pathetic nutritional state, controlled by the corporate machine or the medical institutions that claim to be there for us, the patient or the consumer. We eat processed food high in Omega 6’s and nothing really green except for that piece of iceburg lettuce on your McBurger. We have reduced the B vitamins in our bodies via stress and then reduce it further by what we do for stress, like not sleep well or enough, drink one too many Starbucks, have one too many Margaritavilles. Then we take meds that our doctors prescribe to us, thinking they are helping us but in fact are depleting our stores of what we barely take in of B vitamins. Statin drugs or high cholesterol drugs are all the rage like a new fashion trend. These deplete our B’s and our CoQ10’s. We don’t exercise daily to rev up our respiration. Lack of B’s equals lack of our bodies producing CoQ10. And lack CoQ10 equals the mitochondria not getting the oxygen they need to do their job.
I find it interesting to note that cancer is historically linked to smoking and smoking depletes oxygen to the cells and as well as yet again depletes B’s. Another note to add. Many people I have spoken to who have had cancer say they were stressed in some way before cancer and remember how stress or what we do for stress depletes the old B’s. Here’s one, being tired is a symptom of cancer and in fact the only symptom my grandmother had when diagnosed with advanced cancer at 91. Those little mitochondria are not working right for energy. Another one for you. Studies have shown that people who are prayerful and meditative either recover better from cancer or don’t get it because…lack of stress.

So let’s say, there is some genetic change in the cell from an outside environmental source or toxin. In my case, that would be too much estrogen I consumed from all the animal products I ate. I used to eat a lot of non organic red meat and dairy. For a while, my mitochondria are doing their job. They are killing off these bad cells. Barely keeping up. But then I got very stressed and I didn’t sleep well and I drank too much wine and then consumed coffee in the morning because I was tired. I am short on my B’s. Can’t produce the CoQ10. I stopped taking even the multi and forget ever adding more B’s or something called CoQ10. Did you miss that memo too? I didn’t exercise. So my mitochondria turned off because of this lack of CoQ10 and the subsequent oxygen it was looking for. The bad cell is not destroyed. The cell wants to live and can now do that without sentry CoQ10 in charge and finds a way to grow without the oxygen that the healthy cell uses. So people who already have cancer probably further deplete the B’s and CoQ10 with all the drugs they take for chemo. I’d like to mention that nutrition was barely mentioned in my cancer journey last year. I guess it was something I could have explored then if I had the sense to ask someone. The only nutritional thing mentioned was increase your protein with radiation. But no why. So I did and I also increased my zinc with a tablet for the short term as longer term will raise your cholesterol. Protein equals meat and meat equals zinc and zinc equals your tissues regenerating. No one told me that. Oh maybe it was in that large packet each cancer patient is supposed to read while navigating the insurance nightmare we all face. Trying to meet with doctors and make decisions. Try to maintain your sanity all the while trying to maintain your home or your job. Oh yeah, I had time to read that 300 page packet of info. Mostly it was chemical related and not nutrition.

What does all this mean in the daily grind of what to do? Review the Stinkin’ Armpit entry and first of all get rid of toxins in you and around you. Remember the world around you is a corporate machine and no one is going to help you except you in regards to this. They want you to buy and don’t care about your health. And remember the government is not really looking out for your best interest. We hope your doctors will but none of them seem to know anything about nutrition and seem to be on an auto pilot cruise control with a chemical agenda. Sweat! And now I’m thinking maybe hot flashes are a great way to get rid of toxins. So ladies, when you’re feeling like an atomic bomb just went off and you are soaked, think I am ridding my body of toxins. Yeah!

Second reduce your stress and take supplements and try to eat right. For some reason this makes more sense to me when now I know how this works at a cellular level versus the doc telling me again and again, to exercise and eat right. Take a B complex in addition to your multi. Take CoQ10 in addition to your B. You could make sure you eat sardines and kale everyday but somehow I doubt that you will change your diet that drastically but consider it. I have to add here that I read an article that asked a bunch of doctors what did they do to stay healthy. The commonality was they all took an extra B. Has your doc ever told you to do that? Rev up the heart once a day even if you just run up and down the stairs. I do not know if once you have cancer if this will turn those mitochondria back on. But I am thinking if there is a wayward cell roaming around my body, I’m sending out the guard with refreshed mitochondria filled with oxygen and CoQ10. I am thinking of a couple people right now whom beat cancer but then it came back. One woman I am thinking of is now going through an ugly divorce. Stress. I am thinking of Lance Armstrong who certainly took in lots of oxygen but per his book didn’t lead a healthy and stress less lifestyle before cancer. And now here is something to contemplate.

There is now talk of how high blood glucose levels -- even before they reach the level needed for a diagnosis of diabetes -- may signal an increased risk for cancer, according to a new study being published in the March issue of Diabetes Care. Again it is related to how our cells metabolize energy. I saw a commercial the other day about a new diabetes drug and all I could think of was how fat the people were in the commercial. Lose weight because will the drug like most drugs have side effects? Will the drug deplete necessary nutrients that you actually need to stay healthy?

The cure is in the prevention and don’t get to the point of cancer. Review what you are doing wrong and make it right. And if your mitochondria are still knocking out bad cells, great but feed your mitochondria with all they need to keep you healthy.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

I wanted to post a couple things for you and haven't had the time to write it all down but wanted you to know they are coming. Here are some topics I am working on:

You are what you eat
-A listing of the foods and supplements I now take and my magnificent obsession with nutrition

Your B and Q's
-The connection between B vitamins and Coenzyme Q10 and cancer

Check out this maverick idea for cancer treatment from the University of Alberta:

http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=8153

I sent this article to Australia and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. The Ludwig Institute will play a big part of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre's clinical research programs. They were interested and I have been emailing them and they actually email me back. The National Institutes of Health here in the United States said, "Thanks and now we will create a new drug." Actually it was a form letter. No further communication. Can you say follow the money trail?

So here is a link to a youtube mini film called “Portrait of a Survivor”. It has been entered in a first-ever film festival devoted to raising awareness about breast cancer.The Breast Fest Film Festival will be in Toronto, Canada in November. And you can review the films on line then and vote for your favorite. Can you find me in the film? Hint, I have the biggest mouth and am pretty animated. I've never been exactly quiet. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf23m77NQsA

Your Stink'in Armpits

Oh where or where have I been? Summer. Kids. Playtime! So after a summer of an experiment regarding deodorant, I thought I pass along the less then stinky results.
So how did this all start? It actually started the fall before breast cancer, fall 2006, when I got this wild hair to forsake the antiperspirant and give deodorant a try. So I tried them all and my armpits were stinky. If allowed to sweat, they reaked. Then something changed where as the left armpit didn't smell and the right one did. For your information, breast cancer was on the right side. Fast forward and after the cancer diagnosis and onward ho to radiation, I really smelled. In fact, both sides smelled and I had to apply deodorant several times a day. I always apologized for the stench in radiation but then I figured these ladies are probably looking at parts of unmentionable body parts so what's a little odor? So I continued and sometime in the late fall, I no longer smelled. I figured it was because it was cold and I wasn't really sweating. So now the real test has come this summer. I admit that I have not even worn deodorant on some days and I'm sweating. No smell. So what does all this mean? There are the nay sayers who would swear on a bible that antiperspirant doesn't cause cancer and I would agree. That applying the aluminum chlorhydrate to your armpits to prevent sweating doesn't cause Alzheimer's or contaminates the lymph nodes. What I believe is that we need to sweat and that sweating allows toxins out of our bodies and that these toxins accumulating is something to seriously consider. I find it very interesting that my effected armpit smelled whereas the other armpit didn't after some time, that I really smelled with the radiation and now I do not. So, go throw away your antiperspirant and give the old deodorant a try. I use Tom's of Maine and Burt's Bee Spray. Both work very well if you haven't gotten beyond the stinky point. Aahh. Man I'm sweaty.

Do you know about Parabens?

So, do you know about parabens? No. Well neither does your doctor and that is a shame. I went for my check up at radiation oncology the other day and brought in my little piece of paper I found regarding parabens. Okay, let me tell you what they are:

Parabens are a group of compounds widely used as anti-microbial preservatives in food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics products, including underarm deodorants. Parabens are absorbed through intact skin and from the gastrointestinal tract and blood. Measurable concentrations of six different parabens have been identified in biopsy samples from breast tumors. The particular parabens were found in relative concentrations that closely parallel their use in the synthesis of cosmetic products. Parabens have also been found in almost all urine samples examined from a demographically diverse sample of U.S. adults.

Parabens have been shown to be weak estrogen mimickers, binding to the cellular estrogen receptor (ER). They also increase the expression of genes that are usually regulated by estradiol and cause human breast tumor cells (MCF-7 cells) to grow and proliferate in vitro.

See below for a table of cosmetic chemicals, including parabens, linked to increased breast cancer risk.

PS - this is from the site, www.breastcancerfund.org. And I told my doc this. I didn't get it from some organic weed site. This is legit.

The doctor and the nurse did not know about this. I mentioned to them the lotion they are prescribing to radiation patients, Aveeno. First I said remember when you told me not to put any alcohol on the radiated area. Have you looked at the ingredients for Aveeno? No, they said. Who made the decision to apply Aveeno? We don't know, they said. There are two forms of alcohol in Aveeno and also basically vasaline which is also on the breast cancer fund list as a carcinogenic. Do not put vasaline on your baby's ass. Confession time and I confessed to my s'sters there that I never applied Aveeno to my breast but only pure aloe vera gel and jojoba oil. And they wondered how my breast healed so quickly. Regarding that healing time, I added an extra zinc supplement for a short time ( too long can raise you cholesterol) and I truly believe the mineral content of the ocean helped. Okay, I'm digressing.

Parabens have been in everything. I found them in an older bottle of shampoo and rinse the other day. And it was like...oh no... get them out of here!!!! Invasion of the body snatchers. Don't fall asleep, parabens might get applied. They are in your make-up, your lipstick, your hair products, lotions, creams, deoderants. You name it. So I told them this and then they looked at my effected breast, that I had scratched because of dry skin, and offered me, you guessed it another cream or lotion. No thanks...

So then the day before my trip to the doctor, I recorded a 30 minute thingie for Live Strong Day, part of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They offered me water in a bottle that had a strip of paper wrapped around it promoting the PVH Cancer Research and Treatment Center. I refused and I think they thought I was insane. When I told them that I didn't know where that bottle came from nor where it has sat, in this warehouse or on truck, heated up, they looked at me again like I'm nuts. I said haven't you heard about the issue of the chemicals in plastic leaching into the water if the bottle has been exposed to heat? No. Okay. Lance Armstrong was engaged to Sheryl Crow who had breast cancer who brought this issue up on Oprah. This has been in the media. I don't even watch Oprah but I know about this.

Don't the people who are treating us the cancer patient and survivor read anything? Do they all have tunnel vision? Can they think out of their little chemical box? As I have said in the past, you need to be your own advocate and if can't do it, find someone who can. So just to mess with them and for them to think I was really was crazy, I said I drink my water out of a glass dairy bottle I carry around or an old army canteen. The look that I got ....priceless. Actually I have a stainless steel water bottle and drink from a glass pitcher that I let sit out to evaporate the chorine, at home.

Now what does this all mean to you. Number one. You are your best advocate. Educate your self and trust your gut. The doctor is not necessarily smarter than you. Number two. Go now and look at all the products you put in your hair or on your skin and if there is any paraben, throw it away. No, no...not later....NOW!!!!!