I remember reading a couple months ago in some news magazine about "alleged" chemical sources of cancer in our environment - which concluded with a general attitude of "probably nothing to worry about though." It felt... deceptive.

Well in my reading of the zeolite patent yesterday I came across this -

"It is well known that chemicals cause 95% of all cancers contracted by humans. Some of the most potent carcinogens are aldehydes, ketones, pyrenes, benzpyrenes, benzene, and nitrosamines."


Ok I worked in patent law for 5 years (biotech patents) - so I know what goes into these patent applications - every single statement is meticulously evaluated for accuracy - by several lawyers, several scientists, and patent examiners.

So what the hell is going on here? Is this some government or media manipulation of the American public? Why aren't we being told the REAL FACTS??

The facts are out there for the people who look for them. Google "carcinogens chemical" and you'll find a wealth of information. Chemicals are taken off the market each year with little or no fanfair due to recent studies finding carcinogenic properties to them.

I worked in the greenhouse industry for a while... we would get advance warning about pesticides being removed from the market so we could either buy more to store for later use or liquidate what was on the retail shelves before the ban date was effective. I quit that job because the head grower was improperly using chemicals and backstocking chemicals that were soon-to-be banned.

My personal opinion is that it never makes big news because the general population does not believe products approved for use by the govt. could possibly be too harmful to them. They also can't fathom that over-processed foods could be bad for them since they have been apporoved by the FDA.

Judy

I just finished reading an incredible book titled "Hundred Year Lie", this book is required reading for everyone:

[www.HundredYearLie.com]

They talk about how in the last 100 years, our culture has lived by the philosophy "Better Living Through Chemistry" and they have introduced hundreds of thousands of chemicals / heavy metals / pesticides into our air, food, and water. Most of the chemical additives in our food and skin care / shampoo products have never been tested.

Sometimes these chemicals are okay by themselves, but when they are combined with other chemicals they become dangerous.

We are subjected to hundreds of cancer causing chemicals daily before leaving the house in the morning, from the chemicals in the synthetic carpet, paint on the walls, plastic chemicals leaching into food, cholorine / flouride in water, chemicals in synthetic clothing, chemicals in mouthwash, toothpaste, etc...

Mike



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2007 04:52AM by Bryan.

I think much needs to be done about the excessive chemicals in our environment, absolutely no doubt about that, but there is one study I would dearly love to see done, and I just don't know if it is really being properly addressed, and that is the following:

Why is it that many people can be exposed to cancer causing toxins in their environment, and yet only certain ones will go on to develop cancer or other ill effects? What exactly is it that sets those people apart, or more importantly, what are they missing? What do those healthy people have going on?

Why did so many people NOT get cancer after Chernobyl, why do many smokers NOT die from smoking, how many Japanese lived a long and healthy life despite Hiroshima? (etc,etc) These people need to be looked at a lot more closely. I bet there is a lot we could learn if we were only willing to look for it!

Our attitudes towards illness are so narrow - you get cancer, declare war on it, kill the cancer (and try not to kill the patient while you are at it), yet we don't look at how best to cause the body to deal with the problem the way it should have done in the first place. We are so great at "stationing ambulances at the bottom of the cliff", and nobody seems to be asking the right questions!

What if this all boils down in the end to some seemingly insignificant detail that nobody ever took seriously enough. There's certainly a lot of that in history - think of sailors who never knew they should eat oranges once in a while, or doctors who never thought about washing their hands, or pregnant women who never realized something as simple as a few leafy greens could prevent spina bifida in their babies. Our grandchildren will laugh at our stupidity! (I hope)

Well, I guess that's my rant for the day - Merry Christmas to all!

Sapphire

Sapphire, about 70% of cancers are estimated to be due to lifestyle/environmental factors, and about 30% are from inherited defects. Roughly--it varies by the type of cancer.

Damage to DNA is what causes the rampant growth of cancer. DNA damage can result in mutations to genes that encode for proteins controlling cell division.

Many mutation events may be required to transform a normal cell into a malignant cell.

Mutations can occur spontaneously, be caused by chemical or physical agents, or radioactivity, or viruses, and may be inherited as a result of mutations within germ lines.

For example, eight gene products are defective in people with xeroderma pigmentosum, all parts of the pathway that removes ultraviolet (UV)-induced DNA lesions. These people are almost guaranteed to develop skin cancer at an early age if they expose themselves.

I think that at most, about 70% of cancers could be prevented by diet. Staying thin and eating lots of raw leaves is probably the most important thing, along with making sure that no nutritient deficiencies develop. Exercise probably helps also. A lot of people who never get cancer (i.e. they die of something else first) don't do any of these things. They might also do a lot of "bad" things. But, statistically, there is a better probability of protection if one leads a healthy lifestyle from birth.

All of the chemicals mentioned in the first post are naturally occuring. There are a number of natural substances in the unrefined plant foods we eat that in themselves can cause cancer, and yes you can give yourself cancer if you eat enough of them. Google for the herp index of Bruce Ames for details.

But many edible plant foods also contain anti-mutagenic anti-carcinogenic protective substances as well.

Well I can tell you what I learned from my biochem professor about cancer - and this little nugget of info was what led me towards raw foods - that cancer is a disease of cell replication, and for normal cell replication you need a sugar, a base (i.e. an amino acid - protein), and a phosphate. Obviously we all get plenty of the first 2, but phosphate comes from the soil - thus, plants.

So my theory would be that the people who didn't get cancer from those environmental disasters would be the people who ate more fruits & vegetables, thus enabling better cell replication (in normal cell replication the body identifies abnormal cells & commands them to commit suicide).

However, I'm still baffled by the statistic that the 2 wealthiest zip codes in the US have the highest rates of breast cancer - the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Marin County, CA. These are also 2 of the "healthiest" populations - plenty of salads, exercise, slimmer, more health conscious etc. Someone on this board had mentioned soy as a possible culprit in breast cancer and that is actually very interesting & I wonder if that could be the culprit??

No. Lots of people who never eat soy get breast cancer. My mother, for example. She never had a single kcal of soy to my knowledge.

Thank you arugula - your posting is very well said - great food for thought.

You are right about the lifestyle stuff, but the thing is, I just have the feeling something is missing. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was a vegetarian. I was exactly four pounds above my ideal body weight. I was only 40 years old, I worked out at the gym, and walked or ran regularly. I had given birth to my (4) kids at a young enough age to have protection from this and breast-fed them all. I had zero family history.

All that good stuff didn't help me, and I bet Linda McCartney would have said much the same. Lance Armstrong's list of bad lifestyle habits is probably pretty short, and Dana Reeves never smoked a cigarette in her life. There are probably lots of people who get this diagnosis who are as astonished as I was. I am sure my recovery was so good exactly because of my good lifestyle, but that still doesn't help me understand why this had to happen in the first place.

I feel like there we are missing something on the list of things we should be doing. I don't have a clue what it is, the list is excellent, but just not enough.

As for the soy thing, I seriously doubt that soy could cause cancer. But breast cancers are usually estrogen receptor positive. In the simplest possible terms, estrogen helps the cancer grow, and becomes the enemy. So it would make sense to me that soy would not be a desirable food after the cancer gets started. (Neither is sugar) There are lots of other ways to bring your estrogen levels out of balance, in fact the list of estrogen-like things that I should now avoid was quite surprising to me when I completed my cancer treatment. Things like licorice, either ginko or ginseng, I can't remember, but I was surprised, and soy was at the top of the list.

Considering all the stuff that can mess up your estrogen levels - plastics, chemicals in the environment, birth control, stuff that gets put into the food supply, especially the meat supply, it probably would pay not to add to the burden.

Gotta run,
Sapphire

Sapphire Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was
> a vegetarian.

But as we know, vegetarian isn't good enough. Many cooked fats are carginogenic, even mainstream newspapers reported that a couple of years ago. What's it called acrmylide (I really don't know how to spell it.)

Rob

--
Rob Hull - Funky Raw
My blog: [www.rawrob.com]

dairy is a big one with cancer too..large amounts of hormone-filled dairy...

Vegetarians/vegans who went veg in adulthood have lower colon cancer risks, but their hormonal cancer risks aren't lower.

Lifelong vegetarians have lower breast cancer rates, but this is thought to be due to their increased vegetable intake and not because of meat avoidance.

But I very strongly suspect that the low fat raw vegan diet with adequate nutrition is much more protective, for many reasons. If only we had a huge cohort to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It will take decades to show. The more of us that jump on the bandwagon now to show it, the better. Some of us will still get it, but my thinking is that a much lower percentage of us will get it compared to the SADs.

And I agree with Rob to a point: some studies (actually many at this point) are showing that cooked vegetables and whole grains are not particularly protective for cancers, if at all. And even though the Western epidemiology studies are not showing protection from low fat, we still see a lot of evidence from the preWesternized Asians and in many tortured lab animal studies. Their low fat is generally cooked fat but it would hav reduced glycotoxin loading compared to cooked high fat.

It's a lot easier to prevent or reverse heart disease. Cancer is the much more difficult problem.

>>And even though the Western epidemiology studies are not showing protection from low fat, we still see a lot of evidence from the preWesternized Asians and in many tortured lab animal studies.<<

arugula, do you think that research on asians can be extrapolated to the general population. maybe people of different ethnic origins are adapted to different diets.

I would venture that environmental pollution is the culprit. Look at both zip codes - CHEMICALS off the map, even though most eat well, exercise, etc. Soy is a problem as are many other "supposed" health foods. You must know precisely what works and how in your body to avoid a 50% incidence of cancer in men and a 40% incidence of cancer in women.

We are living in the time of thantos....and we must all be aware.

Blissed be,

Annie

Anne Kaspar
BodyByBliss.com
bodybybliss@gmail.com
505.690.0169

sunshine79,

If you were being told the REAL facts about the causes of cancer, you would not allow various dangerous products to be produced or sold, products that make a lot of profit for the people that sell them. Also, if you understood what it takes to avoid cancer altogether, you would significantly reduce the revenues of a half trillion dollar industry, the health industry. Can't have that!

>arugula, do you think that research on asians can be extrapolated to the general population. maybe people of different ethnic origins are adapted to different diets.

Yes, definitely. But only for certain studies: the preWesternized ones where there was much more limited opportunity for misdeeds (McDonalds, etc.).

There are three reasons for this--

1. We see that when these people move to the US, their children's cancer rates go up, and their children's children's cancer rates are even higher, pretty much in lock step with the resemblance of their diets to SAD. The genetics are the same.

But is it something in the air or water?

2. We see that when these people stay put, the global economy has made their diets get worse with time, and their cancer rates get higher; they are closing the gap with us as their diets become more like ours: more meat, more fat, more dairy, more refined and processed foods, more calories, less f+v. Though exercise can help a little, it doesn't appear to be as powerful as diet.

3. As previously mentioned, the animal studies. The these poor animals have no opportunity to cheat and you can pretty clearly accelerate cancers in them with bad diets.

People tend to prefer to blame things beyond their control, i.e. environmental pollutants, and there is certainly a case for this when they are living in areas that are contaminated with carcinogens such as illegal dumping of airline wastes near rural communities. But such events are only a part of it. Foreign molecules cannot be blamed for everything. Lifestyle is usually the much bigger factor.

Worry most about those things that you can change, not what you can't.