Roundup exposure linked to brain disorders, Alzheimer's, reproductive problems, and cancer.

Monsanto's "Roundup" product linked to brain disorders, reproductive problems and a variety of cancers. Sources cited at bottom of page. 

below summary taken from Natural News. 

The immense dangers associated with exposure to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide are becoming incontrovertible, with the latest indictment of this deadly chemical cocktail coming from a new paper published in the open access, peer-reviewed journal Entropy. A scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her colleague found that, contrary to industry claims, the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, interferes with human digestion and the biosynthesis of nutrients, which can cause a host of fatal diseases.

Most of the chronic illnesses that plague Western society, in fact, are the same residual consequences that can arise due to exposure to Roundup. This stunning fact raises some serious questions about the safety of the general food supply, much of which is derived from or contains ingredients made from genetically-modified (GM) crops that are sprayed with Roundup. In other words, when the vast majority of today's most prevalent diseases can be traced to the same long-term side effects brought about by exposure to Roundup, we have a very real public health crisis on our hands.

To arrive at this conclusion, independent scientist and consultant Anthony Samsel and MIT researcher Stephanie Seneff evaluated a plethora of scientific research on glyphosate, including data showing that the toxin disrupts microbial balance in the gut; impairs the transport of sulphate; and suppresses the normal activity of various members of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) family of enzymes, which are used by the body to break down toxins and produce blood. And in the process of their quest, these two inquiring minds determined that the negative effects of glyphosate on mammals, which includes humans, have been greatly underestimated.

"Glyphosate's inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals," write the authors in their abstract. "Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat ... Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer's disease."

Roundup exposure linked to brain disorders, reproductive problems, and cancer

The discovery that glyphosate directly inhibits CYP enzyme activity is noteworthy, as this class of enzymes is responsible for regulating proper metabolism. When CYP enzymes are blocked from functioning as intended, in other words, a condition known as gut dysbiosis can result, which in turn can lead to inflammatory bowel disease and other chronic gastrointestinal disorders. Such disorders, as you may already know, are often linked to autism spectrum disorders and various other brain conditions.

Beyond this, glyphosate has also been shown to directly interfere with reproductive function. A known chelator, the spraying of Roundup on crops has been shown to not only deplete nutrients from crops, but also block their absorption from soil. When ingested, glyphosate and glyphosate residues can cause similar damage in humans, as it both depletes and decreases the bioavailability of important reproductive nutrients like cholesterol sulfate and zinc. Glyphosate has also been shown to cross the placental barrier and damage developing human life in mothers' wombs.

"Contrary to the current widely-held misconception that glyphosate is relatively harmless to humans, the available evidence shows that glyphosate may rather be the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies," explain the authors in their discussion.

"While glyphosate is obviously not the only environmental toxin to contribute to these diseases and conditions, glyphosate's ability to disrupt the gut bacteria, to impair serum transport of sulfate and phosphate, and to interfere with CYP enzymes, logically progresses to this multitude of diseased states, through well-established biological processes."

You can read the study's abstract here:
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

You can read the complete study here:
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416/pdf

Sources for this article include:

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416/pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040226_Monsanto_Roundup_glyphosate.html#ixzz2TBiDeS36

Consumption of Red Meat in diet linked to shortened life span.

 Recently featured on the Dianne Rheme show, and also mainstream media such as CNN and the New York Times, consumption of Red Meat has been linked to heart disease, and other significant causes of illness and death in humans.  

 With Processed Meats such as hotdogs and lunchmeats already linked with certainty to colon cancers and stomach cancer, this news, while alarming can serve to help individuals choose their diets more wisely and decrease the likelyhood of serious ailments later in life. 

From the Dianne Rheme Show 

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. An estimated 80 million Americans have one or more types of the deadly disease. For many years, numerous studies stressed the link between a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol with hardening of the arteries. But critics of these studies doubted they had found the true dietary cause. Now, new research from doctors at the Cleveland Clinic finds that a compound in red meat and supplements leads to higher heart disease risk. For our Mind and Body Series: the latest research on red meat and what it might mean for heart disease treatment and prevention.

From CNN 

Using data from two long-running studies of health professionals, researchers tracked the diets of more than 121,000 middle-aged men and women for up to 28 years. Roughly 20% of the participants died during that period.

On average, each additional serving of red meat the participants ate per day was associated with a 13% higher risk of dying during the study. Processed red meat products -- such as hot dogs, bacon, and salami -- appeared to be even more dangerous: Each additional daily serving was associated with a 20% higher risk of dying.

Based on these findings, the researchers estimate that substituting one daily serving of red meat with fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, whole grains, or low-fat dairy products would reduce the risk of dying in this stage of life by 7% to 19%. If everyone in the study had slashed their average red-meat intake to less than half a serving per day, the researchers say, 9% of deaths among men and 8% of deaths among women could have been prevented.

Poet Laureate using all options, and embracing alternatives to beat cancer.

Excerpt from San Antonio Publications / My San Antonio dot Com 

Tafolla, 61, wears a wig to meet societal norms. It's an easier concession for her than buying into mainstream medicine's approach to cancer treatment.

Still, she is halfway through six months of chemotherapy. Every three weeks, she prays it kills the cancer before it kills her. The tumor has shrunk by more than half.

Doctors have advised that she undergo surgery, a second round of chemo and radiation, too.

Tafolla has a doctorate in bilingual education and has read a lot of cancer research. She said her philosophy has been to “do the minimal” invasive care. So she will have surgery but nothing more, concerned that radiation and more chemo will increase the chances of a recurrence.

In January, Tafolla wrote a piece for the San Antonio Express-News in which she cautioned “mi querido pueblo,” her dear city, “that cancer is easier to avoid than it is to heal.”

Work is healing, too, so Tafolla continues to write.

Last summer, as she pondered her treatment choices, she wrote a poem that hinted at her health. “Lasso the chaos of your collapsing life like a lost steer, Wrangle it with this well-worn rope, made to survive the torrid heat.”

Tafolla's next book of poems is about San Antonio.

Late this month, she'll read in “Tex-Mex” at an international conference on inter-language at the Université Michel de Montaigne in France.

For six months after being diagnosed with a malignant tumor last June, Tafolla followed no conventional treatment for her Stage I cancer. She started a host of alternative therapies.

First and foremost, she left behind “the American diet,” cutting sugars, preservatives, processed foods and hydrogenated oils. She can speak with some authority about specific fresh vegetables and fruits that can help fight cancer. She eats organic meats, too.

“Our modern diet,” she wrote in January, “is basically a cancer-producing diet.”

Dietary and nutritional changes have boosted her immune system, she said, and lowered her blood pressure enough to get off medication for it.

Tafolla has taken various supplements, one of which she said increases production of white blood cells that fight cancer. A Romanian scientist's formula for it is under patent review in Germany, she said.

She has practiced Qigong, a meditation therapy, and pranic (or no-touch energy) healing. She has received intravenous, ultraviolet ozone therapy and high doses of Vitamin C, also intravenously, she said.

Tafolla has had cavitations (infections in her jawbone) repaired, a procedure outside mainstream dentistry.

She also has done a lot of “cleansing” that includes prayer and letting go of anger and resentment. “I didn't have a lot,” she said. “But what I had, I got rid of.”

All this has focused her body on fighting cancer, Tafolla said.

She is critical of U.S. medicine, which she said hasn't caught up with global trends toward alternatives.

“It's not fictional,” Tafolla said of those therapies. “It's not crazy, or shaman, or snake oil.”

Most scientific discoveries were seen as “alternative” at first, she said.

Before starting chemo in December (after a doctor warned a second protrusion on her breast caused by a biopsy would burst inside her), “I was in perfect health except for a little bit of cancer.”

Mainstream medicine supports “complementary therapies” — but not alternative therapies in lieu of traditional treatment.

Dr. Anand Karnad, an oncologist at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center, said there's no doubt some oncologists shy away from alternative therapies.

But the combined use of alternative approaches with mainstream treatment “is becoming the norm rather than the exception,” he said.

Some standard drugs have come from Chinese herbal remedies, Karnad said, adding, “they're curing leukemia.”

At the same time, Karnad warned some alternative therapies can come with risks, noting the use of Vitamin A for the treatment of lung cancer. “There were problems. It was not effective, and there were potential risks.”

Friends, acquaintances and public figures fighting cancer motivated Tafolla to speak out about conventional care.

“This is epidemic,” she said. “This is not acceptable to a well-educated, well-funded nation” to have such high rates of cancer.

In addition to her combination of therapies, she's motivated by her mother, Mary D. Tafolla, who survived two bouts of colon cancer, the first when the poet was 3.

The 95-year-old's mind remains sharp, her body healthy. In the 1950s and '60s, mainstream medicine said she'd die.

Tafolla paused a moment, blue eyes in steely gaze, and said, “She buried all the doctors.”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Poet-laureate-fighting-cancer-her-own-way-4325223.php#ixzz2N0TGsP2C

Study: Acupuncture Helps With Cancer Treatment Fatigue.

A new study shows the benefits from acupuncture to help reduce cancer & treatment fatigue.

The study published in October has been highlighted by many media outlets for showing promising results for women suffering with the chronic fatigue that comes with breast cancer and treatments. As many as 40 percent of breast cancer patients experience significant fatigue from moderate to severe during and after their cancer treatments. 

In the published study, the authors focused on more than 300 women with breast cancer who were being cared for as outpatients at one of nine health care facilities across the United Kingdom.

At the time of the study, participants had been diagnosed with either stage 1, 2 or 3 breast cancer, and all had been experiencing at least moderate levels of fatigue for an average of 18 months. Most were white, and their average age was 53.

For a six-week period, all patients continued to receive the same care they had been receiving before the study, and all were additionally given an information booklet that tackled the issue of fatigue management.

However, more than 200 of the patients also were randomly chosen to undergo weekly 20-minute acupuncture sessions that involved needle placement at three different entry points. By the end of the six-week period, those who had received acupuncture appeared to fare better on every measure of fatigue that the team assessed.

Specifically, those in the acupuncture group reported feeling notably better than the "usual-care" group in terms of overall fatigue, physical and mental fatigue, anxiety and depression levels, functional well-being, emotional well-being, social functioning, and overall quality of life.

from the Journal of Clinical Oncology

New Study: MammaPrint genetic analysis for breast cancer.

In a recent study, findings show that genetic analysis is effective for diagnosing cancer recurrence. 

Read more: 

The MammaPrint breast cancer test can dramatically reduce the number of women who need to undergo chemotherapy to treat the disease, according to a newly published study.

The prospective, outcome-based study of 427 breast cancer patients showed the genomic test, which analyzes 70 key genes, accurately determines which patients are at low risk of breast cancer recurrence and can therefore safely choose not to undergo chemotherapy.

Of the 219 patients in the five-year study who were determined to be "low risk" based on the MammaPrint test, 85 percent chose not to have chemotherapy. Of those patients, 97 percent were disease-free after five years. Of the 208 patients who were determined to be "high risk," 81 percent chose chemotherapy and 91% were disease-free after five years.

"MammaPrint correctly stratified patients into Low Risk and High Risk categories based on prognosis of a recurrence of the disease," said Prof. S.C. Linn, M.D., the principal investigator. "The outcome data generated in the study confirmed it was safe for the Low Risk patients to choose not to undergo chemotherapy and still have excellent outcomes."

The results of the peer-reviewed study, called MicroarRAy PrognoSTics in Breast CancER (or RASTER), conducted in 16 community-based clinics in the Netherlands, were published online by The International Journal of Cancer and will later appear in the journal's print edition.

The RASTER study is considered unique by its co-authors because it is the first and only study to prospectively evaluate the performance of a genomic breast cancer test by using outcome data -- in this case through follow-up of the patient cohort for five years.

"The study showed that incorporating MammaPrint results along with the traditional clinical parameters will significantly reduce the number of women who need chemotherapy, allowing them to avoid the side effects and toxicity of treatment, some of which can be permanent and debilitating," said breast surgeon Alison Laidley, M.D., FACS with Texas Breast Specialists, Texas Oncology (Dallas).

The study also showed that MammaPrint identified 30 percent more patients as Low Risk than traditional clinical parameters such as; tumor size, grade, patient age and lymph node status, which are often used in the U.S. to determine risk of recurrence. MammaPrint is a 70-gene, breast cancer assay performed on both fresh and FFPE tumor tissue, developed by Agendia.

"Of the prognostic tests commercially available for breast cancer, this is the first and only prospective validation to include outcome data," said David Macdonald, CEO of Agendia, the company that developed and provides the MammaPrint test. "MammaPrint can be administered to virtually all early-stage breast cancer patients, not just those with certain disease characteristics as with other tests limited to certain receptor and lymph node status. Finally, MammaPrint results benefit the physician by clearly categorizing all patients as high or low risk, eliminating the uncertainty of indeterminate scores reported by other genomic test methods."

Mistletoe as a treatment for colon cancer?

Extract of mistletoe could either assist chemotherapy or act as an alternative to chemotherapy as a treatment for colon cancer, researchers in Australia said.

For her honors research project at the University of Adelaide, student Zahra Lotfollahi compared the effectiveness of three different types of mistletoe extract and chemotherapy on colon cancer cells. She also compared the impact of mistletoe extract and chemotherapy on healthy intestinal cells.

Professor Gordon Howarth, a Cancer Council senior research fellow at the University of Adelaide, one of Lotfollahi's advisors, said mistletoe extract is already authorized for use for colon cancer in Europe, but not in other countries such as Australia and the United States due to a lack of scientific testing.

From Life Extension: 

"Mistletoe extract has been considered a viable alternative therapy overseas for many years, but it's important for us to understand the science behind it," Howarth said in a statement.

Lotfollahi found one of the mistletoe extracts -- from a species known as Fraxini, which grows on ash trees -- was highly effective against colon cancer cells in cell culture and was gentler on healthy intestinal cells compared with chemotherapy.

Significantly, Fraxini extract was found to be more potent against cancer cells than the chemotherapy drug, Lotfollahi said.

"This is an important result because we know that chemotherapy is effective at killing healthy cells as well as cancer cells," Lotfollahi said. "This can result in severe side effects for the patient, such ulcers in the mouth and hair loss."

Cigarette smoking shown to be immediately toxic, from the first puff.

In a new study, scientist find that smoking cigarettes is immediately toxic. 

The report, published in Chemical Research in Toxicology, shows that chemicals which cause cancer form rapidly after smoking.

Scientists involved in the small-scale study described the results as a stark warning to people considering smoking.

Anti-smoking charity Ash described the research as "chilling" and as a warning that it is never too early to quit.

The long term impact of smoking, from heart disease to a range of cancers, is well known. This study suggests the damage begins just moments after the first cigarette is smoked.

Sotry found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12193602

Will the wild tomatillo plant provide a medical breakthrough in cancer fight?

Oct. 07--For decades the native prairie plant with tomato-like vines, and marbled-sized fruit covered in thin husks, has sprawled across the Kansas prairie in relative obscurity.

But scientists from around the world are now noticing the wild tomatillo, and wondering if it might provide a major medicinal breakthrough.

"We've found compounds from the wild tomatillo that have strong anti-cancer properties against breast cancer, skin cancer, thyroid cancer and brain cancer in our early studies," said Mark Cohen, cancer physician and research scientist who has been working with the plant for more than two years.

"It's very exciting because not only do those compounds occur naturally, but they're more potent than some drugs currently on the market for these diseases."

Cohen said initial research has been done against human cancer cells in laboratory containers and mice. Things are progressing well enough that human-based trials could begin in about two years, he said.

It seems the deeper the botanists, medicinal chemists and cancer researchers dig into wild tomatillos, the more promise the prairie plant holds.

"We've found 15 new molecules in the plant previously not known to science," said Barbara Timmermann, University of Kansas medicinal chemistry chair. "Nobody knew they existed and several of them are so active against cancer."

And it's not like this is some super-delicate plant from some far away corner of the Amazon.

Wild tomatillos, Physalis longifolia, are a tough, prolific prairie plant currently thriving over much of the central United States.

(They're related to a domestic variety of tomatillo, but scientists don't know if it has similar characteristics.)

But promised funding was abruptly cut less than halfway through the five-year research project.

"We are having fantastic data, and things are moving so well, then they just pulled the rug out from under us," Timmermann said, of money from Heartland Plant Innovations. "It's very unfortunate, and very disappointing."

The Native Medicinal Plant Research Program began in 2010 as a joint venture using the strengths of the Kansas Biological Survey, the KU School of Pharmacy and the KU School of Medicine.

Timmermann and Kelly Kindscher, a biological survey senior scientist, have long seen the Kansas prairies as a potential pharmacy waiting to be explored.

"Everybody has been going to the rain forest and other exotic places for research," said Timmermann, who has about 30 years of experience researching medicinal plants, "but we knew the Midwest had so many plants nobody had ever really looked at."

Kindscher, a noted expert on America's prairies, had also learned that for centuries native tribes were utilizing a number of plants for medicinal purposes before the state was settled.

"They weren't collecting them randomly," Kindscher said. "They'd learned what to use, and used them in many cases fairly effectively."

He said modern research has shown most do indeed work.

Click to read more ...