Mice in the study were genetically altered to grow the human prostate cancer cells. Then half were treated with green tea and red wine polyphenols. The treated mice showed reduced cancer growth.

Scientists believe they now know exactly why polyphenols, potent antioxidant compounds found in red wine and green tea, inhibit cancer growth.  The discovery, published online in the FASEB Journal, is crucial because it may lead to the development of drugs that could stop or slow cancer progression, or improve current treatments.

The antioxidants produce a combined effect to disrupt an important cell signaling pathway, known as SphK1/S1P, necessary for prostate cancer growth.  “Not only does SphK1/S1P signaling pathway play a role in prostate cancer, but it also plays a role in other cancers, such as colon cancer, breast cancer, and gastric cancers,” said Gerald Weissmann, MD, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal. “Even if future studies show that drinking red wine and green tea isn’t as effective in humans as we hope, knowing that the compounds in those drinks disrupts this pathway is an important step toward developing drugs that hit the same target.”

Scientists conducted in vitro experiments which showed that the inhibition of the SphK1/S1P pathway was essential for green tea and wine polyphenols to kill prostate cancer cells.  Next mice that were genetically altered to grow the human prostate cancer cells were either treated or not treated with the green tea and red wine polyphenols.  Mice treated with the polyphenols showed reduced cancer growth.  In a second experiment with mice and polyphenols, healthy mice were divided into three groups and then given one of the following three substances:  plain drinking water, drinking water with a green tea compound known as EGCg, or drinking water with a different green tea compound, polyphenon E.  Human prostate cancer cells were then implanted in all the mice.  A dramatic decrease in tumor size was noted in the mice drinking either the EGCg or polyphenon E mixtures.

“The profound impact that the antioxidants in red wine and green tea have on our bodies is more than anyone would have dreamt just 25 years ago,” says Weissmann. “As long as they are taken in moderation, all signs show that red wine and green tea may be ranked among the most potent ‘health foods‘ we know.”

Fruitz watches, which represent a dazzling array of real fruits, from Watermelon to Lychee, have proven health benefits, according to a study conducted by PeaceLove Art.  A cross section of first hand experiences of wearers of Fruitz watches demonstrated that the fun and fashionable timepieces also have the power to promote better concentration, more focus, better sleep and less stress.  Study participant fourteen-year-old Kathie said that she “was not tired…and paid attention in math class” as a result of wearing her Fruitz watch.  Similarly, ED, an eight-year-old boy, reported that he “felt less anxious and fidgety” as a result of wearing his Fruitz watch.  Likewise, a 39 year old male reported that he feels “anxious now when…[he] doesn’t have it on, it really helps…[him] relax” and BC, a 65 year old female, said that her Fruitz watch helps her “relax and focus on the task at hand”.  Similar reactions were felt by many of the study participants.

Each Fruitz watch is embedded with a natural frequency technology disk, infused with the earth’s natural frequencies (seven to nine hertz), which are said to communicate with the energy field of the watch wearer, and inform their body to relax.  The impact of the natural frequency technology disk is felt by the wearer, whether or not it touches his or her skin, as long as there is no barrier between the case back and the skin.

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When it comes to loneliness quality rather than quantity of relationships is key.

In 1993, the movie “Six Degrees of Separation” popularized the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on earth, so that a chain of “friend to friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.

In the movie, rich NYC art dealers, the Kittredges, are at first entranced and then stunned when a young con man claiming to be a friend of their son’s at Harvard regales them with tales of his life. Though his lies are exposed, the couple remains irrevocably touched by his impact and try desperately to find him when he disappears.

It seemed their perception of what he brought to their lives outweighed the deception. And so it is with loneliness in two fascinating new University of Arizona studies: the research team found that above all, loneliness is a matter of perception. In this era of instant messaging, Facebook and Twitter, when it does seem as if we all share some universal connections, what matters, according to researchers is not how many Facebook friends we have, whether we live near loved ones or even if we are partnered up, but how we feel about the relationships we have.

“Loneliness is the discrepancy between your achieved and desired level of social contact, and that has important implications,” says Chris Segrin, the UA Communication Department Head and lead author of the study. “The portrait of a lonely person is very difficult to paint because what is really important is what is in your head.”

Segrin and Stacey Passalacqua, who recently earned her UA doctorate in interpersonal and health communication, decided to study individual perceptions of stress and social support to understand ways loneliness may be linked to health.

In a study of 265 adults ages 19 to 85, Segrin and Passalacqua found that stress plays a crucial role for those who reported being lonely. They found that lonely people were prone to have fewer close connections, were less apt to manage daily stressors well and tended not to keep up on their health. Also, lonely people did not get adequate sleep.

So while people can experience the same stressors – be they financial or relationship problems or just life’s annoyances – lonely people will have different responses according to an article “Functions of Loneliness, Social Support, Health Behaviors, and Stress in Association With Poor Health,” the pair published in a June issue of Health Communication.

Of particular interest was the fact that even people with large social networks experience loneliness, and that quality, not quantity was the decisive factor when it comes to relationships.

Segrin also collaborated with Tricia Domschke, a doctoral degree candidate in communication, on another study “Social Support, Loneliness, Recuperative Processes and their Direct and Indirect Effects on Health,” which has also been accepted for publication also in Health Communication.

Segrin and Domschke found that lonely people did not get as much of a recharge from activities like going on vacation or getting a good night’s sleep as those who were happy with their relationships. What both studies suggest is that people need to care for themselves and a crucial way of doing this is nurturing relationships.

“Perceptions are all it takes, and when you experience stress, it has a physiological effect on the body,” she added. “The mind has such a powerful effect on the body and, really, our perceptions are going to shape our world,” says Passalacqua.

Thousand of accident victims bleed to death before reaching the hospital. A study shows using the drug, TXA, could save as many lives as mandatory seat belt laws or tougher drunk driving measures.

A cheap, commonly used drug that stops bleeding during elective surgeries could save the lives of tens of thousands worldwide if administered within eight hours of a bleeding injury.

The drug, tranexamic acid, or TXA, was given to more than 10,000 adult trauma patients in 40 countries who received the drug within eight hours of being injured. Researchers compared those patients’ outcomes to more than 10,000 accident victims who got a placebo treatment.  Doctors initially worried that TXA might increase side effects such as blood clots or strokes in patients who received it, but the study showed no such effects.

The study found that patients who got TXA had a 15 percent lower chance of dying from a hemorrhage than those who didn’t get it. Dr. Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and lead researcher for the study stated, “When people have serious injuries, whether from accidents or violence, and when they have severe hemorrhage, they can bleed to death. This treatment reduces the chances of bleeding to death by about a sixth.”

Patients who received the drug also had a 10 percent lower chance of dying from any other cause, including organ failure and head injuries, versus patients who didn’t receive TXA. The study was paid for by the British government and published online in the medical journal Lancet.

TXA is not patented and is manufactured generically by several companies.  It costs approximately $4.50 a gram with a typical dose being 2 grams.  Because it is generally given via an injection, it would be easy to introduce, even in developing countries, according to experts.

“The option to use tranexamic acid should be available to doctors treating trauma patients in all countries,” said Roberts and Haleema Shakur, also of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who are petitioning to have the drug listed as essential by the World Health Organization (WHO).  Once a drug is on the WHO’s essential list, organizations such as UNICEF will often purchase it for use in developing countries.  More than 90 percent of trauma deaths occur in countries where access to medicines is often restricted by poor infrastructure and few resources.

The drug also has major applications here in the United States where according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) accidents are the fifth leading cause of death.  Thousands of people needlessly bleed to death before they reach the hospital.  Experts say that using TXA could save as many lives as mandatory seat belt laws or tougher drunk driving measures.

According to Roberts, roughly 600,000 people bleed to death each year. “It’s important to remember that deaths from injuries are increasing around the world and that they usually involve young adults, often the main breadwinner in the family. The impact on the family is devastating,” he added.

Study researchers estimate that 13,000 lives could be saved in India and 12,000 in China annually by increased use of TXA.  In the U.S., they estimate that some 2,000 lives could be saved by using the drug.

Studies show yoga improves sleep, reduces dependence on sedatives and helps cancer patients resume the activities of normal life, benefits that may lead to insurance coverage for yoga classes such as this one.

Yoga, long associated with Eastern mysticism and tony health clubs, is actually quite egalitarian.  Once someone learns the moves and breathing techniques, no special equipment or clothing is required.  What doctors have long suspected and scientists are now proving, is that yoga is remarkable effective in treating the side effects of the most egalitarian of all diseases – cancer.

According to a 410 participant study highlighted at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Annual Meeting in June, yoga was shown to improved sleep, reduce dependence on sedatives and help cancer patients resume the activities of normal life.  “Clinicians should now feel pretty comfortable prescribing gentle Hatha yoga or restorative yoga for their patients,” said Karen Mustian, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the department of radiation oncology and preventive medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Doctors were particularly interested in yoga’s ability to clear mental fog and ease the fatigue that can afflict cancer patients for years after they are cured. The Rochester study focused on cancer survivors with half of the patients were assigned to yoga classes twice a week for one month. At trial’s end, 31 percent of yoga patients no longer had the sleep disruptions, twice the recovery rate of the control group. Yoga practitioners also reported a 42 percent reduction in fatigue, compared with a 12 percent reduction for those who didn’t take classes.

Dozens of smaller studies show similar results, yet health insurers and government programs won’t pay for yoga. It is hoped that this research in addition to more than $5 million in additional studies funded this year by the National Institutes of Health may provide enough evidence to allow coverage.

So promising is the idea of mind-body intervention into disease that the National Cancer Institute awarded its largest grant ever, $4.5 million, to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  Researchers there will compare yoga to meditation and to stretching and will analyze the economic benefits from increased productivity at work. “Once we can show an economic impact, you’ll start to see changes,” Lorenzo Cohen, professor of behavioral science and cancer prevention at the University. “Companies want to provide services that keep their employees healthy and productive.

Fortunately for some cancer patients, one hospital isn’t waiting for more evidence.  Beth Israel Medical Center in New York is one of the few facilities in the country to offer personal yoga-therapy instruction for all of its sickest cancer patients.

One of the patients benefitting is David Goldberg, a 30 year old computer programmer with leukemia, who receives yoga instruction at his hospital bed.  Because his immune system is so compromised from five rounds of chemotherapy, Goldberg’s instructor wears a mask.  Goldberg’s session includes slow gentle stretches, starting with his feet and ending with his shoulders, and breathing instructions to take him away from the hospital sounds and into his own body. “I’m hooked up to a machine, so I can’t totally forget that I have this. For me, it’s just an amazing experience to feel where my body is and what I’m experiencing,” he said.

New study shows multiple risk factors do not increase overall breast cancer risk.

Nearly 40 million US women die of breast cancer each year, making it the second cause of death among US women overall.  While there is no cure, scientists do know genetics, obesity, alcohol consumption and hormone replacement therapy are all risk factors for breast cancer.

Until today, researchers assumed there might be dangerous interactions if a woman was genetically prone to breast cancer and had one or more of the lifestyle related risk factors, such as hormone replacement therapy.  It was thought a woman with these combined factors would be at especially high risk for the disease.  Now, from Britain comes some good news that shows this thinking was wrong.

According to a study published June 2 in the British medical journal, Lancet, scientists found that found that although genetic mutations and lifestyle choices both contribute to cancer, they do so separately and do not mix for a more deadly effect.

Using a statistical analysis to examine the relationship between genetic and lifestyle factors, British researchers studied 7,610 women with breast cancer and 10,196 women without it.  Each woman provided a blood sample for genetic testing and information about other risk factors including obesity, alcohol consumption and hormone replacement therapy.

Researchers studied genetic mutations that are carried in up to 60 percent of women and known to increase a woman’s breast cancer risk from 10 to 20 percent.  Not studied were the rare BRCA genes which dramatically increase the risk of breast cancer.

“There’s a danger of feeling you’re at the fate of your genes,” said Ruth Travis of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford and the study’s lead author. “But whatever you’re born with, there are things you can do to modify your risk.” Britain’s Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK paid for the study.

A look at the iPhone AsthmaMD app

You’ve just completed some routine yard work while listening to your IPod. But you’re not able to sit back and enjoy your accomplishment because despite the 80 degree heat, your lungs suddenly feel like they’re taking in deep breaths of cold, cold air. Breathing is becoming harder and harder, and the little air your lungs can squeeze in or out is accompanied by such a sharp wheeze it almost sounds like you’re whistling.

This, my friend, is asthma. Each day 11 people die of asthma in the United States. One-quarter of all all emergency room visits are asthma-related. In the past 30 years, the asthma death rate has increased by 50%. Alarmed by these statistics, am Pejham (a doctor and researcher) and Salim Madjd created a new iPhone app called AsthmaMD to help sufferers.

In addition to letting users keep a diary of attacks, their severity and the medications used, users can opt to share data anonymously with the AsthmaMD service. The data will be shared with doctors and researchers in hopes that it will allow them to better understand the disease, and may even help people know when an attack is more likely.

As Madjd explains “since we have precise location of patient and the time of their asthma activity we can correlate that against local pollutant count, adverse weather changes, and different type of pollutants.” Or if one section of a city has a higher incident of asthma severity than the rest, it will be possible to notify parents of an asthmatic child of a potential pollutant by a nearby business.

How asthma (and its treatment) differs by age and gender or even things like the effect of exercise on asthma can be studied from data collected through AsthmaMD. Looking forward, Madjd notes “ultimately we could even send tweeter streams with zip code or geocode of areas with asthma flare-ups on real time. This app has the potential to make an impact on people’s lives unlike anything we’ve seen before and on a personal level is one of the most exciting projects I’ve worked on.”

You may not need proof of immunization before they let you in grad school or a note from your doctor that everything’s up to date before you can go to work, but as an adult you still need regular immunizations. “Wait, I got my flu shot. Isn’t that enough?” Well not really, depending on where you work and what you do, some other immunizations may be mandatory, and even if you don’t work in a field that exposes you to the risk of Hepatitis A and B, there are still other shots you need to safeguard your health.

In some cases, depending on age and other factors, adults may be more at risk for certain diseases than children. If you have any doubts, check with your doctor about whether you should be immunized for the following. The life you save could be your own.

1. If you’ve ever been walking and stepped on a rusty nail, you know it can penetrate a flip flop or $300 athletic shoe with equal ease. That tetanus shot you got as a child is no longer any protection. All adults need a booster shot every 10 years, and the current recommendation is that one of these boosters be replaced with a Tdap — a combination of three vaccines that protect against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (also called whooping cough) — at some point between age 19 and 64.

2. As hard as it is to believe in our age of medical miracles, people still do die of pneumonia. All adults over the age of 65 should have a one-time pneumonia vaccine. People with compromised immune systems and chronic illnesses such as cancer, AIDS, diabetes, kidney disease and heart disease will need to have the vaccine repeated every five years.

3. It goes without saying that a flu shot is recommended yearly for all adults, but is even more important for adults with compromised immune systems and chronic illnesses.

4. Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B vaccines are commonly given to people who work in health care, the food, or sewage industries. Check with your doctor regarding your risk factors.

5. Although generally not life threatening, those who have had chickenpox will attest to its misery. At its most serious chickenpox can lead to encephalitis, a dangerous inflammation of the brain. Chickenpox is caused by a type of herpes virus called varicella-zoster virus (VZV). After the initial chickenpox infection, VZV hides in nerve cells and is sometimes reactivated later in life. This reactivated, often very painful, disease is called shingles. The varicella vaccine for chickenpox was introduced in 1995 and is recommended for all adults who have never had either chickenpox or the vaccine.

6. The herpes zoster vaccine is recommended for all adults over the age of 60. It protects against shingles, regardless of whether the person has had the disease before or not.

7. Young women under the age of 24 who have not had the HPV vaccine as a teen should talk to their doctors about being vaccinated. This new vaccine protects against certain types of cervical cancer.

8. If you’re over 50, chances are you’ve had at least one of the following when you were young: measles, mumps or rubella. One vaccine, the MMR, now provides protection against all three. Adults born after 1956 should receive at least one MMR vaccination if they have never had the diseases or received an MMR vaccine during their lifetime.

9. The meningococcal vaccine (MCV4) protects against four strains of the meningococcal bacteria. Known for its sudden onset, symptoms may be dismissed as simply a case of the flu particularly by young, college age adults who are among the most vulnerable. Three strains are common in the United States and the fourth strain protects travelers to certain countries where meningitis is more common.

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