Anyway, if you do worry about if wine increases your risk of developing breast cancer and you wondered if one type of wine may be less or more harmful than another – no, that’s not the case. A study done in Seattle found that each is just as harmful as the other. The study was published in the March issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

According to a press release issued by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, "The researchers found that women who consumed 14 or more drinks per week, regardless of the type (wine, liquor or beer), faced a 24 percent increase in breast cancer compared with non-drinkers."

The study looked at over 6,000 women.

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Image: MorgueFile.com

Tags: cancer blog, breast cancer, breast cancer and wine

Post from: Blisstree

Breast cancer risk not affected by red vs white wine choice

If the cancer is caught at such an early stage, cure rates are extremely high. Now, with a bit more investigating with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and/or positron emission tomography (PET) plus computed tomography (CT), finding the right treatment for even better cure rates may be possible.

According to a press release issued by the American Roentgen Ray Society (the "x-ray guys"), "Pretreatment MRI and PET/CT for cervical cancer may direct more women to optimal therapy choices and spare many women potential long-term morbidity and complications of trimodality therapy (surgery followed by chemoradiation), according to a study performed at the Institute for Technology Assessment in Boston, MA."

A study looking at women with stage IB cervical cancer compared those who were treated without further pre-testing with those who were. The results showed that while this pre-treatment imaging didn’t affect if a woman survived the cancer, the imaging did pretty well ensure that the women received the best therapy for their particular situation.

Right now, there are no guidelines as to when MRI and PET/CT should be used pre-treatment, but the lead researcher says that knowing what type of treatment to use right off the bat will prevent the need for added treatment that could seriously affect a woman’s quality of life.

The study appears in the March issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

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Image: morguefile.com

Tags: cancer blog, cervical cancer, MRI, diagnosing cervical cancer, pap smear

Post from: Blisstree

Cervical cancer? You may benefit from MRI before treatment

Reducing the effects of GERD may involve lifestyle changes (losing weight, not wearing tight waist lines, raising the head of your bed, for example) or it may involve taking medications. This should be discussed with your doctor and a lot depends on the severity of your disease. However, new research has found that drinking one glass of wine per day may lower the risk of Barrett’s esophagus by over 50%. Interestingly, other alcohol, including beer, didn’t have the same effect.

Study findings were published in the March edition of Gastroenterology. Researchers looked at 953 men and women in Northern California and found that those who drank one or more glasses of red or white wine a day had less than half the risk of developing Barrett’s esophagus.

You can read more about the study and its findings in this press release, Drinking wine lowers risk of Barrett’s esophagus, precursor to nation’s fastest growing cancer.

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Image: morguefile.com

Tags: cancer blog, esophageal cancer, barretts esophagus, GERD, gastroesophageal reflux disease

Post from: Blisstree

Wine may lower risk of Barrett’s esophagus

But if you have cancer, should you even consider taking them? First of all, it’s important that you speak with your doctor, because the treaments you’re receiving may interact with certain herbs or substances, which could make the treatments more intense (not always a good thing), weaken the treatments, or have a completely different reaction than what you wanted.

If you want to do some research on your own, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health, has made available this list of the most common herbs used in North America, their uses and cautions, including some that do have cancer warnings: Herbs at a Glance.

What do you think? Do you use herbs? Would you like to?

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Image: Newscom.com

Tags: cancer blog, complementary medicine, alternative medicine, cancer and herbs, CAM in cancer treatment

Post from: Blisstree

Herbs during cancer treatment? Are they safe?

To help you understand what is involved and what some of your options are, a new website has been started called My Oncofertility.org. The site is for people with cancer, parents, and partners. They offer videos, resources, and links to sites where you can get support.

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Tags: cancer blog, cancer and fertility, oncofertility

Post from: Blisstree

A new source for people with cancer worried about fertility

To help doctors in this field, a guide has been written that reviews the newest technologies in fertility and fertility treatments. The guidelines, published in an article in the most recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, help doctors understand the issues and gives them the information to discuss these issues with their patients.

According to the press release, New tool guides doctors to save cancer patients’ fertility, issued by Northwestern University, "Younger patients in particular are not benefiting from fertility preservation options. A new national survey of pediatric oncologists showed that more than half of them are not using fertility preservation techniques that are available at most medical centers for their adolescent patients."

Hopefully, this work will help more cancer survivors continue on to have families if they choose to.

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Image: iStock

Tags: cancer blog, cancer fertility, cancer infertility, childhood cancers

Post from: Blisstree

New tool guides doctors to save cancer patients’ fertility

As well, getting enough sleep helps you cope with every day life. If you don’t have enough sleep – and we’ve all experienced this at one time or another – a small irritant can turn into something much bigger if you’re tired and less patient. People who don’t sleep well can become anxious or depressed, or both. And if you’re fighting an illness like cancer, anxiety and depression is something that you can ill afford to experience.

Here’s a video that discusses the problems that people with cancer may face with trying to get good quality sleep and some suggestions to help. Just click on the TV screen:

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Tags: cancer blog, sleeping, getting good nights sleep

Post from: Blisstree

Getting a good night’s sleep when you have cancer

A cancer patient, given just months to live, stages a miraculous recovery. Doctors dismiss it as a fluke. Yet the mystery may offer crucial clues to fighting cancer.

An experimental drug helped Sharon Belvin, who was diagnosed with melanoma in her lung when she was 22 and spent two years in standard treatment.

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Tags: cancer blog, cancer miracles, melanoma

Post from: Blisstree

Meet some cancer miracles

According to the press release,

Here’s a Self-Advocacy Book that Can Change Your Life!

Before the Scalpel: What Everyone Should Know about Anesthesia,
a new book from Tell Me Press.

The decision has been made: you are going to have surgery. You’ve met with your surgeon. You have a good idea what will happen during the operation. But how much do you know about the anesthesia?

Did you know, by the age of 50 most people have had at least 3 encounters with some form of anesthesia? Before you or a loved one undergoes another surgery or medical procedure, this book will enable you to empower yourself and learn the basic questions to ask about anesthesia.

Author Panchali Dhar, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Anesthesiologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical College and is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Anesthesiology. She has demystified the process and terms associated with anesthesia and arranged the information in an easy to understand topic-by-topic sourcebook. Dr. Dhar takes you into the complicated, fascinating, cutting-edge world of anesthesia.

In Before the Scalpel: What Everyone Should Know about Anesthesia, Dr. Dhar explores such real-life topics as:

* Pain-relief options during Labor and Delivery
* Facts to know before deciding on Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery
* Why children are not just "small adults" when it comes to anesthesia
* How obesity adds risk to surgery and anesthesia
* The common fear of awareness during anesthesia

In Before the Scalpel: What Everyone Should Know about Anesthesia, Dr. Dhar walks readers through the various steps that ensure a safe and pain-free experience during medical procedures that may require or benefit from anesthesia. Before the Scalpel is formatted and illustrated for quick and easy reference in an interactive manner. This is a take-along-book to the doctor’s office, with outlines and room to make notations. Each chapter is a mini crash course for any person who is concerned about the anesthesia aspect of surgery.

If you’d like to learn more about the book, you can go to Tell Me, the publisher. If you buy the book, I’d love it if you could give us your opinion.

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Tags: anesthesia

Post from: Blisstree

Book: Before the Scalpel: What Everyone Should Know about Anesthesia

Justice Ginsburg is no stranger to cancer. Her mother died of cancer just before Ginsburg graduated from high school and her father successfully battled cancer while Ginsberg was studying law. Ginsberg herself had colon cancer in 1999.

Pancreatic cancer is a particularly tough cancer to beat, but since it was discovered early because of the routine scan, rather than symptoms, chances are it could be beaten. Of course, a lot depends on where in the pancreas the tumor is and if it had the chance to spread or not before it was detected.

Symptoms of pancreatic cancer include:

• Upper abdominal pain (sometimes radiating to your back)
• Loss of appetite
• Weight loss
• Jaundice ( yellowing of the skin and white of the eyes)

Justice Ginsberg joins Patrick Swayze in the celebrity pancreatic cancer group (Patrick Swayze – hard at work a year after pancreatic cancer diagnosis).

You can read more about pancreatic cancer at the Mayo Clinic.com, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the National Cancer Institute. 

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Tags: cancer blog, pancreatic cancer, pancreas cancer, justice ruth bader ginsburg pancreatic cancer, justice ruth bader ginsburg, jaundice, patrick swayze

Post from: Blisstree

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has surgery for pancreatic cancer