Media Admits to Obvious Disease Prevention Measures

I got a kick out of the article below because of the way the mainstream media has approached the "breaking news" that diet and exercise "may" prevent cancer. It's a bit like a weather forecaster peeking out the window during a torrential downpour and reporting a slight chance of rain for the day. At least more stories are starting to appear regarding nutritional and lifestyle changes that can keep us well, but conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical companies are still a long way from giving up on the use of toxic chemicals to "treat" diseases, often conditions that they have invented themselves.

I also found it sadly ironic that the lead author of the study labeled only obesity as a preventable risk factor for breast cancer (highlighted in red below). That is totally ludicrous! Breast cancer would not even be an issue if many risk factors were eliminated such as artificial hormones; toxic chemical and hormonal exposure in the food, water, and air; nutritionally-poor foods; medications such as birth control and others, only to name a few. The media, many allopathic physicians, and Big Pharma have all jumped on the "obesity" bandwagon in a big way without addressing the fundamental issues behind it: a lack of healthy, toxin-free, nutrient-dense food that the body needs to prevent disease and repair itself. This obsession with obesity has spawned a slew of new and faddish weight-loss drugs and regimens that again only make the drug companies wealthy without improving the wellness of the masses.

Those in the cancer industry like to make this disease sound like an inevitable part of life that some people may be lucky enough to avoid if they get enough "preventative diagnostics" like mammograms, for example. The idea of prevention by living a natural lifestyle and eating "as close to nature as possible", a philosophy that has ruled throughout most of human history, is looked upon as a radical, ridiculous, and outdated approach to medical care. But perhaps enough people are becoming fed up with this madness that we call "medicine", and we as a society are poised to return to the traditional ways of health based on nutrition instead of a cocktail of pharmaceuticals that only make us sicker.


Diet, Exercise May Modify Breast Cancer Risks
Combined, they produce more potent anti-disease effect in postmenopausal women, study says

Posted November 18, 2008

TUESDAY, Nov. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists believe they have found out why diet and exercise affect a women's chance of breast cancer after she's past menopause, a new study says.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found that cutting calories and exercise affect pathways to mTOR, a molecule that integrates energy balance with cell growth and can contribute to various human diseases when it is not functioning properly.

The research team, expected to present its findings Nov. 18 at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual conference on cancer prevention research, in National Harbor, Md., said these pathways are different, though. Calorie restriction affects more upstream pathways, which may explain why cutting calories delays tumor growth better than exercise when tested on animals.

"One of the few breast cancer modifiable risk factors is obesity," study lead author Leticia M. Nogueira, a research graduate assistant at the University of Texas, said in a news release issued by the conference organizers. "Our study may provide a good scientific basis for medical recommendations. If you're obese, and at high risk for breast cancer, diet and exercise could help prevent tumor growth."

Past research has suggested that consuming fewer calories or increasing exercise levels creates a "negative energy balance" where less energy is taken in than expended, and this lowers the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer associated with obesity. While scientists have thought hormones may play a part in this, it has never been proven.

For the new study, researchers studied 45 obese mice that had their ovaries surgically removed to model the post-menopausal state. After eight weeks, mice fed a calorie-restricted diet had significantly lower blood levels of leptin, a hormone that plays a role in fat metabolism, than those mice only put on an exercise program or those allowed to eat at will with no forced exercise. The calorie-restricted mice also had increased levels of adiponectin, a hormone produced in fat tissue that regulates some metabolic processes, the researchers said.

Some of the cell signaling pathways these hormones manage converge at mTOR, and the researchers found that the key proteins found downstream of mTOR were less active in both the calorie-restricted and exercised mice compared to the controls.

"These data suggest that although exercise can act on similar pathways as caloric restriction, caloric restriction possesses a more global effect on cell signaling and, therefore, may produce a more potent anti-cancer effect," Nogueira said.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/11/18/diet-exercise-may-modify-breast-cancer-risks_print.htm