Health Spectator

On Tuesday, August 30 actress and activist Daryl Hanna was arrested in front of the White House for sitting in against the Keystone XL oil pipeline. That pipeline, if built, would transport oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands fields to Texas at the Gulf of Mexico.

What does that have to do with our health? you might ask. Indeed, that is a logical question.

First, the oil in question is extremely dirty crude oil. Its carbon content is exceedingly high. In fact, tar sands oil produces 82 percent more greenhouse gas than conventional crude oil. So not only is it much more expensive to convert to, say, gasoline than conventional crude, it also has a far worse effect on the environment even if it doesn’t spill.

But when it spills, it spells disaster. Residents of Michigan can tell you about that. An existing pipeline extends from these same oil fields to refineries in Oklahoma. Now barely a year old, that pipeline has leaked twelve times in twelve months. In July 2010 it spilled one million gallons of tar sands crude into a Kalamazoo River tributary. Forty miles of river are still contaminated with the oil more than a year later. In part, that’s because tar sand sinks in water. Of course, it still coats and kills fish and wildfowl.

So if you don’t want crude oil contaminating your waterways and drinking water or excess carbon, sulfur and mercury polluting your air and soil, there must be cleaner energy alternatives. Or maybe we just have to cut back on our use of energy and our miles of driving, perhaps using electric cars (which still require us to produce that electricity in the first place—we know).

But that soil, air and water pollution don’t really affect us, right? Breast cancer is still on the rise wordwide. Of course, that’s because of “Western” lifestyles, right? According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there will be 20 million new cases of cancer per year by 2030, up from 12 million new cases in  2008. But if the cause were simply our Western lifestyle as so much of the media assure us, shouldn’t the cancer rate reach a steady state, at least in the U.S.? How do we blame a continuing increase in cancer rates worldwide on our Western lifestyle? Has life changed that radically in India and Southeast Asia?

Incidentally, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) reports that the current increase in cancer translates into approximately 56% more cancer in men and 22% more cancer in women over the course of a single generation. The NCI reports that one in two men or women will experience cancer in their lifetime. And it expects the cancer rate to double by 2050. In Ireland, a report just out states that cancer cases have risen 50% since the 1990s. Has Ireland become that much more “Westernized” since 1990?

If this is purely the result of a Western lifestyle, which presumably means inadequate exercise and a diet of processed foods, why do the rates keep rising? Once one does not exercise and one’s diet consists entirely of processed food—which is, unfortunately, the case for many of us—how can you justify further increases in cancer?

The only explanation, we believe, is a continuing deterioration in our environment, with subsequent ill effects on our health. And the  Keystone XL pipeline is one more giant step in that direction.

There is evidence that the polyphenols found in green tea may slow the progression of prostate cancer, according to a study published recently in Cancer Prevention Research,¹ a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

According to researcher James A. Cardelli, PhD, professor and director of basic and translational research in the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center, LSU Health Sciences Center, Shreveport, LA, men with prostate cancer who consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression.
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We reported more than a year ago on a study that claimed to show a link between consumption of red meat and various cancers, including breast and colorectal cancers. That study came from the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) in collaboration with its parent institution, the World Cancer Research Fund, and was controversial because of its findings.

Now, a new study based on the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study shows no correlations between consumption of meat and postmenopausal breast cancer. (more…)

Just when vitamin D was beginning to look like the cure-all where cancer is concerned—many studies have proclaimed it instrumental in preventing or slowing cancers of the skin, colon, breast, and prostate, to name a few—a new study announced by the U.S. National Cancer Institute says increased vitamin D consumption does not correlate with reduced cancer mortality. The one exception, according to the study’s authors, may be cancer of the colon.

The study did not involve new research. Rather, it analyzed data for 16,818 subjects who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which inducted participants between 1988 and 1994 and followed them through 2000. Participants were given blood tests to establish a baseline at the beginning of their enrollment; it was from these blood tests that the level of vitamin D (as 25-hydroxyvitamin D) was tested against decreased cancer mortality and found to be lacking. In the case of colorectal cancer, however, the study found a 72 percent reduced risk of death when vitamin D levels were sufficiently high.

The study, authored by D. Michal Freedman, Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues, was published in this month’s Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The authors believe it is the first study to test vitamin D blood levels—as opposed to supplement consumption—against cancer mortality.